Play Ball!

Our little Monkey LOVES balls! Baseballs, footballs, koosh balls, soccer balls, ping pong balls - if you ever want an easy gift idea for this monkey, a ball would just make his month!

I took him to the grocery store with me the other day. He saw all the huge piles of round fruits (oranges, apples, peaches, you name it) in the produce section and you'd think the boy had gone to heaven. As he sat in the grocery cart, his eyes were big as saucers, arms flapping in excitement and he couldn't stop pointing and saying, "Bah! Bah! Bah!" It took everything I had to keep him from climbing out of his seat to get to the bag of nectarines I had in the basket behind him.

But when we got home I let him play with a new "bah."









He seems to be a fan. Now if we can get him to play "bah" without gagging, we'll be doing great!

Remodeling

About 2 months into my pregnancy with JK, N and I started making a list of all the things we needed to do with the house before little Monkey's arrival. Get rid of our nasty carpet and installing hardwoods was one of the biggest projects.

I think some of you remember this lovely 11-week project? *snicker-snort*

The other big project was to redo the bathtub in our hall bath. The original 1959 bathtub was in dire need of being replaced or reglazed. It was rusted, discolored, no amount of cleaning cleaned the stains off of it. Not a big deal as we both used the shower in the masterbath, but you can't really shower a baby very easily and I didn't want to bathe our sweet angel in a gross tub like ours. Since replacing the tub was well out of our budget, reglazing was our choice. Well, one thing led to another and it never got done before JK's arrival. We bathed him in a blow-up rubber ducky tub inside said gross tub. He doesn't seem to mind, but the Mommy does.

Fast forward about a year and a half later...

What started out as a simple one-afternoon honey-do, turned into a full scale bathroom remodel. Not only are we reglazing the tub, we've decided to rip out the fiberglass shower stall and replace it with tile. We've got a beautiful new sink, ready to install, the walls are being retextured and painted, and new tile will replace the cheap linoleum squares on the floor.

*shaking head*

Don't. Ask.

In the meantime, I still don't think it's a good idea to shower our child. So we're "playing in the pool" every night. Let's just say that I'm glad it's summer time, so our baby doesn't freeze his little cahones off taking a bath in our front yard. It starts getting cold in October. If it weren't for the baby shower that's being hosted here in three weeks, we would have another 11 week project on our hands. Haha!

I laugh, but it's with a half serious tone...

So I've given N a hard deadline of August 14th. I can't have my pregnant guest of honor doing her business behind my oleander.

Some shots of the not-so-shy little Monkey. He got bored with the duck and moved off to investigate the hibiscus.

Heaven and Sweet Potatoes

A little piece of Heaven has fallen into our neighborhood this past weekend. Saturday afternoon I hit the grand opening of Sprouts here in our town. I can't tell you how excited I've been waiting for this place to open up! If you aren't familiar with Sprouts, let's just say that for folks like me with big food allergies, it's by far, THE BEST place to grocery shop. Unlike other stores, that might have 10 - 20 gluten-free products, this store has AISLES of them. What started off as a run-in for two items, turned into a $80 grocery run. I am blessed with a husband that doesn't have a cow when I go crazy over GF cookies and pasta shells. He knows if I don't have alternatives, I cheat and get sick. Bad. Bad for everyone in our home!

We've been having a few food issues with JK. He's closing in on 11 months and fully walking, speaking several words, but not doing so well with table food. He's been on jar baby food for awhile now, but foods with any type of dryness (cookies, crackers, cereal) make him gag and foods with any type of texture (applesauce, yogurt), also make him gag. He's broken out a bit on his cheeks the times I've fed him something with wheat or oats, so I'm sticking him with a GF/CF diet until I can get him tested.

This weekend we had a breakthrough and he ate some canned sweet potatoes that I pureed and a few gluten-free Perky O's (a cheerio like cereal, only without oats). Thanks KareBear on both counts! He hasn't quite mastered letting go of the Perky O's once they hit his mouth, so his solution is to put his whole fist in his mouth...which...makes him gag.

Here he is experiencing the fresh sweet potato that fell out of the grocery bag.



Hmm. Not as good as the pureed stuff Mommy made a few days ago.



Here he is...you got it...gagging. LOL!



But he goes back for more. Glutton for punishment. This kid has too much of the bad parts of my character.



Here he is running down the hall about to clobber me with the sweet potato. Sorry for the blur. I was trying to adjust my camera setting, but he's getting fast on his feet!