One Tuth Bloke - a story of firsts

We've created our first house rule: no eating your socks.

In general, we've tried to start having the mindset of "please do this" instead of "stop doing that" - rather than Levi growing up thinking his name is "no!" :)

Mommy put this together almost all by herself!

Levi's had some big firsts this week. On Saturday morning, he tried to chomp on my hand while I was still half asleep - and low and behold, one of his bottom teeth had started to break through! He's been drooling pretty heavily for about two months now, so we didn't realize the toothing was iminent. Though if his sleep habits last night were indicative of it continuing to break through his gums (or a tooth nearby, perhaps) then yes, that was a sign.

Exactly in tandem with the new tooth was Levi's half birthday! On which momentous occasion, we gave him his first taste of grown-up food, in the form of watery rice cereal (which all grown-ups love, of course :) He ate about half of it before he realized that he did not actually want the stuff I was putting in his mouth.

Also a first for the boy - his first snowfall! Though we were in Syracuse last weekend visiting friends, it was only cold and rainy there, not snowy yet. However, this weekend in Pennsylvana we got some very heavy, wet snow. I tried to capture Levi with the snow falling outside of our bedroom window, but a) he kept reaching forward for the camera, b) He can't really sit up by himself so I had to be close enough to hold him, and c) it was so bright outside the photo couldn't really come out. But I tried.

We spent most of the snowy day running errands, and bought Levi a proper (and possibly the most adorable one ever) winter hat! His baby hats are now too small, they don't quite make it to his ears.

Oh, I need to report on his doctor's visit of late last week: only 10th percentile for weight, which is likely because we haven't given him solid foods yet, 50th percentile for height (at 14.4 pounds) and 25th percentile for head circumference. He got his vaccinations all set and only screamed for a minute or so from the shots.

Hm, also of note in Levi's life, he got in his first car accident, spent his first night in a hotel, saw his first deer up-close....Bet some of you can guess where this is going. While heading back from visiting our friends and stopping by my grandparent's in Buffalo, there was a deer. In the road. On Route 15 heading south through Tioga County. FYI, Tioga County is mostly filled with deer, trees and trucks.

Trying to eat Dinosaur barbecue with mommy and daddy

We're all perfectly fine except my car and the deer. Tim saw the animal coming across the road and had slowed down before the dang thing stopped in our lane smack in front of us. We hit it, it flipped over my car and landed in the shoulder and we managed to back my car without an engine starting to the side of the shoulder. Some folks were nice enough to stop and let us borrow their phone since our $25/month plan isn't the best in rural areas. Long story short, we were stuck in some podunk town until noon the next day when we could wrangle a rental car out of the one company for miles that actually had rentals available. I did play the pity card and got us a hotel room with a nice hot tub in it while we were stuck there, yay. Now we're just waiting on the insurance folks to give us the all-clear to fix my car. The crappy part (aside from actually hitting the deer in the first place) is that my car is 200 miles away and we have to pay for a rental car until it can be fixed, blah.

So that's our recent crazy life!

Bigger and Faster

Baby Levi is rapidly approaching six months! His six-month birthday will be on Oct. 29, which I think is a Saturday in a couple of weeks. His six-month checkup is this week, so we'll have the official stats update for you next time we blog (I'm going this time instead of Tim so I'll be sure to actually record things like height, weight, etc.).

Levi's most recent new skill is his ability to grab anything mommy is holding. He's not terribly quick yet, but if I'm holding it, then he wants to see/have it. Sometimes its useful for distraction, like part of the menu at a restaurant we stopped at yesterday, other times its trying to rip pages in a book or tilt a glass out of my hand. Hopefully as he gets quicker, so do I!

The older he gets, the more easily he gets bored, it seems. I can't wait until he's old enough so that when he says "I'm bored" I can say "Then you must be wanting to do this chore," like my parents did. We learned to self-entertain pretty quickly. And also to do a lot of household chores, I suppose.

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Levi loves to watch us eat. Since its nearly time to start feeding him "real" food (i.e. brown rice cereal) I suppose its only natural, but sometimes its a pain. If he happens to be eating while I'm trying to snatch some dinner, he needs to stop what he's doing to watch me. And, of course, try to take whatever it is out of my hand to put into his own mouth. We're going to hold off until his half-birthday because of the history of food allergies in Tim's family, as is doctor recommended, but I'm thinking he'll at least really like to get big boy food IN his mouth, if not in his tummy at first.

I should mention Levi also moved up in diaper size. He is now officially size two, which for some reason seems so much larger than size ones. He was certainly the weight to move up, but the boy does not seem chunky enough to need larger diapers :) Until we put them on and realize that the leg-holes are much more fitting to his little thighs :)

This is Levi in the morning. We're not sure how he's related to us.

Speaking of weight, while Levi is still by no means chubby, he is getting enough baby fat to brag about a little bit. He's got dimples where his knuckles should be, thighs that almost have a roll in them, or at least a couple of wrinkles down by his knees, and his cheeks are a tad bit round ;)

Bubbles and Jammies

Levi is widening his repertoire of funny faces and sounds. This week we noticed that he makes a concerned look by tucking his lips in in a straight line sometimes. We haven't been able to capture it on camera yet. With Auntie Krista, he was also trying to make kissy faces the other night. He's also learned to blow bubbles by making raspberries with his lips. Though as my dad pointed out, he only makes bubbles because he drools so much :)

We've introduced the warm jammies, which he hasn't worn since he was a newborn and needed all the extra layers he could get. Now its 55 degrees every night, so we're into the froggy, monkey, elephant and firetruck jammies, and he looks SO CUTE in every pair!

My whole family came down this past weekend and we had a grand old time buying pumpkins, snacking on fresh apples, eating Tim's delicious pulled pork (which he actually took pictures of, he thought it was so beautiful) and hanging out at a local diner.

We promised you info on what the Boonga Boonga's were, and though it's late in coming, here it is!