Stretch!

I realize I haven't been here much lately...Life has me a bit overwhelmed and busy right now. That and I can't find that doo-hickey that lets me transfer pictures to my computer so I can post. I am WAY backed up on pictures to share with you. But in the meantime, my sweet father-in-law shared this shot he took of us at the beach earlier this summer. I love it!

Gramma J, click on it and it'll enlarge for a better view. Then, you can right click on it and save it to your computer to print out. :-)

just a few more days

Hey momma! It's me again. I've been going non-stop from about 4:30 to 8:30, so I'm a little short on words. It's been a great day. I went to church, behaved myself for the teachers and took a nice little nap once dad and I got home. After I woke up, I had lunch and off to the mall to we went. They have this awesome foam play area that I can run around in and act silly.

After the mall, we came home and I took a nap with dad in the big bed. It was awesome! So much room to wiggle around. We ended the day with dad playing sand volleyball at church, and me playing with my friends. It's been a nice day mom, but it would have been much nicer with you here. Dad tells me it's just a few more days...I'm not sure what a day is though. Anyhoo, dad wants me to post this little video of some footage he took today. He says it's not really edited, just a quick little collage. I love you mom. See you soon!!!!

i luv saterdaze!

Hi momma! I miss you! When are you coming home? Dad tells me that you'll be home soon, but I don't have the greatest understanding of time, so when is soon? Or like Morrissey says, how soon is now? I'm pretty well versed in music and sentence construction for a 10 mo old!!

I've had a great day mom. I spent most of the day at grandma's house while dad worked on the bathroom and saw X-Files2, which he said wasn't too good. Dad picked me up about 4pm and we went home. Mom, is Texas always this hot? I get stinky pretty quick in this heat. I think dad realized that and took me out front to play in the water.

This sprinkler thing is great!

But nothing beats finding my own special watering hole, even if it's the cat's water dish.

Don't worry mom, dad cleaned me up nicely in my duck tub! Look ma, no hands!

Here I am about 7:30pm. We just got back from Tin Star. Dad said I was so good at the restaurant. All I did was look around and stare at dad eat. He let me have some water from a straw, which I loved. And you know what momma, I like limes. They make me act funny after I eat them, like I get the shakes and stuff, but I just kept coming back for more! Dad had to stop me because he said something about enamel. I think he's making stuff up!


I love YOU mom!

Dad is taking great care of me, but I miss you. I miss your sweet momma voice. I heard some of it on this thing called a phone today, but it's not the same. Come home soon to me momma, I need your hugs and kisses! (and so does dad)

Love,

JK the Super Monkey Boy

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!