Technically still 5 months

Every month I let my friend Rebecca experiment with her photography on Austin. She rocks! and is getting better with every photo shoot. Well, we've been doing it about 1/2 way through the month, but this month we got a little behind. So really Austin is way closer to 6 months old, than 5 months, but it still counts!

Here are her beautiful products!





And my absolute favorite!


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If you want to see what all the rest of the months have looked like.....

Lions and Tigers and um...Kangaroos?

Austin officially had his first visit to the LA Zoo on Monday. I wouldn't say he was blown away by the experience, but I would say he enjoyed it about as much as the average 5.5 month old would. Although it could have been my descriptions of almost everything as either "kinda like Boomer" (Auntie Suz's dog) or "kinda like Kirby" (Uncle Ryan's bird) or "kinda like Herb" (Our sorta-ours cat) that kept him from getting horribly excited and probably confused him thoroughly. (Yes, we sorta have a cat named Herb. Sadly it's a girl cat. Brian named her. After he named her, his naming privileges have been limited to naming toys.)

Austin wasn't captivated enough to stay awake the whole time though. He slept through the giraffes, which I was bummed about because they're some of my favorites! They even had baby giraffes. And really I wanted Austin to see the real-life versions of his toy, Steve. (I told you, Daddy has toy naming rights)

The only other downside to the day was that a good number of the animals weren't out for display! We weren't sure if it was a Monday thing or what, but we didn't get to see orangutans, gorillas, otters or the elephants except for a brief glimpse of one's backside from a long distance away. But we had 2 for 1 tickets into the park, so we got our moneys worth. Had we paid an arm and a leg, we might have been more upset about it.

All in all, it was a great trip. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. We had fun with our friends - we went with Rebecca, Jack and some Northern California friends, Erin, Craig, their son Zach & Erin's little brother & sister. And I successfully took my child out on a hot sunny day and he returned without a sunburn!

Here are some cute pics from the day...

Austin and his new hat


Austin petting a really exotic animal


Austin, Jack & Zach


The whole crew - Me, Austin, Matt, Rebecca, Jack, Ceci, Erin & Zach. (Craig behind the camera)


A Beautiful Blue Eyed Boy, Zach


A cute giraffe & a kangaroo playing dead


And my worn out little buddy at the end of a good day


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Please, please, please still be praying for Stellan. He has been in SVT for the entire week, coming out of it only briefly a handful of times. So far all the meds and techniques have done very little. He's doing good considering what he's going through, but his little heart can only take this pace for so long before it will start to fail.
www.mycharmingkids.net

Please Pray for Stellan

Stellan is MckMama's youngest child. He's just one month younger than Austin. I've been following (okay, addicted to... okay, okay, obsessed with!) MckMama for almost a year now. She is an amazing, hilarious writer with ridiculously adorable kids. She has 4 under 4! And makes it look so easy!

I found her blog when she was about 20 weeks pregnant with Stellan when another blog linked to her asking for prayers. Stellan had SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) which means his heart rate was skyrocketing. It was 375 at one point. (Normal is 150) And they were told there was really no way he would make it. They put MckMama on heart meds and a HUGE following of people prayed and it worked. Not only did Stellan make it full term, he was born with basically no signs of a problem. They thought at the least they would have to put him on meds or do surgery when he was born. So he's her little MckMiracle.

Last night they took him to the hospital because he had a bad cold and one of the treatments they gave him sent him back into SVT. His heartrate has been in the 300s since last night and nothing they are doing is working. Please, please be praying for him.

New Toys!

Today we brought out Austin's jumper/activity center that Grandma Helen & Beth bought him. It's pretty neat! He can bounce up and down and the seat spins so he can access all the fun toys. He didn't quite getting the bouncing part yet, but he knew exactly what to do with the toys. He went right to work whacking that frog and making it spin.






I'm so glad I got the combo, cuz there would definitely not be space for both a jumper and a play center. Brian's not even sure we have space for this! And he still has big toys from Christmas that we haven't brought out. Someone wanna buy us a bigger place??

Finally!!

I finally got to see Austin roll over! He rolled over three times last month and I missed all three. And he hasn't rolled over since. But today, after a good nap (I'm convinced he figures stuff out in his sleep) he rolled over several times. And I was lucky enough to get it on video!

Don't mind the overly excited momma voice. Afterwards Austin was looking at me like "What in the world are you so excited about, lady??"



Now that he has belly to back figured out, the next step is back to belly. He's pretty close with that too.

Pttthhh!

A few weeks ago Austin learned how to "pttthhh!" He greeted me one more with the cutest raspberry ever. The day before he had never even tried and the next day he was an old pro. He must have been dreaming about it all night!

He started out strong, but it has sorta degraded to sticking his finger in his mouth and blowing out. He does that sometimes too when he's done with his bottle or nursing, but I think that's just because he likes to see the milk fly everywhere!

Apparently Life Isn't Worth Living

Austin is trying to "off" himself. No matter where you put his blanket in his crib and no matter how many times you take it off his face, this is where it ends up again.


And yes, he can breath like that. Trust me, we check often!

New 'Dos

Austin has one long sideburn that Brian desperately wants to cut. A first hair cut would mean my baby is too grown up so I'm resisting with everything that I am hoping that when Austin's hair grows in thicker, it won't be an issue. But for the time being, I figured he could try out some new hairdos to see if we could make the one side look better. What do you think?

"The Donald Trump Combover"



"Half a Flock of Seagulls" or "The Side Ponytail"



Definitely no reason to cut his hair, right?? He can get by with one of those for years!

He's Mobile!

Okay, maybe "mobile" isn't exactly the right word. He's not exactly crawling all over the place quite yet. But he moved. And technically that's being mobile, right?

I put him down like this...


And 5 minutes later I got back to doing the dishes and he was like this...


And as I'm finishing this post, he's like this...


Does going in circles count as mobile??

(I think he's taking a nap in that last picture. Being mobile is tiring!!)

When Good Bears Go Bad

5 Months Old

Who pushed the fast forward button? I just posted his 4 month pics yesterday, didn't I??






(By the way, I try to make it so you can click on any of my photos and see a larger version. So if the compilation is too small to see clearly, click it!)