Not Me Monday

Not Me! Monday was born out of MckMama's desire to admit some of her imperfections and reveal a few moments she'd rather forget. She invited her readers to also post things that they couldn't possibly have done. You may find it therapeutic to join in and do the same thing!

I've never joined in Not Me! Monday because I've never done anything that would warrant such a post! After all I'm such an attentive Momma!

For example, it certainly wasn't me that turned her back on a one year old on a changing table to retrieve a sock, allowing him just enough time to tumble off and land on the floor. Not me! I would never do something like that!

And I'd never leave said one year old downstairs alone at my parents' house so I could just grab a few things from upstairs, only to find him, not 30 seconds later, rounding the top stair of their two flights of stairs! I know that it's dangerous to leave a child alone by himself! So that couldn't have been me!

And of course, I'd never take my eyes of my child near the bathtub while the water was heating up, even if it is just to flush a dead bee. Not Me! That's just asking for him to attempt to climb over the side, whack his head on the faucet and get caught under the down turrant of running HOT (but thankfully not scalding!) water! Nope, I always have 2 hands on my child at all times near the bathtub.

Oh and I'm sure it wasn't me that said "My child is soooo cautious, I don't need to wrap my furniture in baby proofing cushions! He's not going to fall hard." So it certainly can't be me that has a poor little boy with a huge red line down his forehead where he took a header into the side of the sharp-edged computer desk. If I did have a kid like that, he might look something like this...



And all of this wouldn't be in the span of just one week, cuz if I were to make such atrocious mistakes, I'd at least spread them out over the course of several months!

But once again. That can't be me. I'm such an attentive Momma!

I'm Sorry, I Did Not Understand Your Selection. Please Try Again

I just learned that voice automated phone services do not work so well when you have a one year old. A loud one year old at that! The pilot light on our heater keeps going out and our house is ridiculously cold in the morning. So cold that my child has purple-y lips right now and my fingers are frozen. I'm trying to make an appointment for the gas company to come out and fix whatever needs fixing and this is how my experience with their system went.


Gas Company Automated phone lady: Thank you for calling the Gas Company. If you smell gas, please say "Emergency." If...

Austin in background: Blah blah blah doodle bwahh ahhh

Gas: I'm sorry. I did not understand your selection. Please try again. If you smell gas, please say "Emergency." If you have a billing question, please say "Billing." If you need an appliance fixed, please say "Appliance."

Me: Applian...

Austin:Pttthhh ahhhh grrrrr eeeeeee!!!

Gas: I'm sorry. I did not understand your selection. Please try again. If you smell gas, please say...


And that's when I hung up and realized that I'm just going to have to wait until naptime to make this appointment! Whoever designed those systems did not have children or otherwise they would have given me a touch-tone option.

We're Having A Little ...............................

That's right! We're about to enter the grand new world of dresses and bows and oh, so much pink stuff! I can't wait! Honestly I would have been just as excited about a little boy too. It would have been fun for Austin to have a little brother, but I'm just as excited to do all the girly stuff too!

Our ultrasound was wonderful. She's healthy as can be. Cute little round head. Got all her brain, which is a good thing! Good pumping heart! Both kidneys! And the all so important 10 fingers and 10 toes! Our dr has a beautiful new ultrasound machine and you could (well, I could at least!) really see what the tech was looking at. It was so neat to see her cute little cerebellum and the ventricles or the brain and watch her heart beat in real time. This technology is amazing! Yes, I'm still an uber-nerd even in motherhood!

Isn't she just the cutest little Skeletor ever??

And look at that perfectly round little noggin'!


This one is kinda hard to tell what you're looking at, but she's sucking on her hand.


She was really active the whole ultrasound. I had a bag of skittles right before hand, in hopes that she would be enough of an exhibitionist to tell the gender. But I may have overdone the skittles cuz she was bouncing around a bunch. It's so weird to see kicks on the screen but only be able to feel about 1/2 of them. It won't be long though until I feel every kick and wiggle!

At one point she even reached down and grabbed her foot. You can see it in this pic.


That's a hand holding a foot. You can even see her big toe!

We can't wait to meet our little princess! What a fun new adventure!! I'm so looking forward to seeing Brian as big time mushy daddy too! All wrapped around a sweet little finger! But if she's anything like me, we need to start praying about the teenage years now!

Also, we have no final decision yet on her name, but hopefully we will figure it out soon. We just need to "live" with our few last choices a little bit before pulling the trigger. I can't wait to start calling her by her name though instead of calling her baby girl or munchkin! We'll announce it when we have it figured out.

13 Months (And One Week)

We had to wait to get Austin's Pooh picture until Daddy was home during the day. I just can't wrangle a kid and get a cute shot. By the time I back up to take the picture, he's off the side of the couch, tackling the lamp! Definitely a two person job.


(Notice the spoon in his hand? Yeah, that's apparently the best toy ever! He crawls around with spoons all day long)



New this month:

OOOOh so close to walking. I mean really walking. He can take multiple steps in a row. But he has to be highly motivated. Which usually means he's walking towards food. If you put him down at just the right distance from the table he will walk to it to get Cheerios. But if you try to make him go too far, he gets down immediately and crawls. He did however walk to me from his walker! Awww! I think it was the farthest he had gone at that point! Double Awww!

As mentioned above, he loves spoons. He crawls around with them. Holds them in the carseat. Etc. I think it comes from us working on him feeding himself. He can actually do pretty darn good if the food he's trying to eat is relatively thick, like mashed avocado or applesauce. He likes to try to take his Cheerios or chopped fruit and put it on the spoon and then try to get it in his mouth. So far that hasn't worked out so great for him, but it's stinkin' adorable to watch!

He has learned to spit. If someone has a magic solution for making a 1 year old stop spitting, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!! I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does! He used to just simply spit out food he didn't like, but now he does it with some juice behind it and then continues to spit like he's trying to get the taste out. And he's doing it just because even if it's not meal time. And he KNOWS it bugs me cuz he'll take out his pacifier, look at me, spit (with the most defiant look a 1 year old can muster up! Seriously, how do they learn this already???) and then stick his pacifier back in! I've tried saying "no, we don't spit", tapping/flickling him on the lips, time outs, and ignoring it completely and yet he still does it!

He learned to sign! I started signing with him at like day one, thinking if I did so, maybe I'd have a cute little 6 month old telling me what kinds of food he wants to eat! Yeah, that didn't happen. He could recognize them for a while but would never do them. All of a sudden, though, he picked it up! He does the cutest little "More" and he does "Milk" and occasionally "All Done." He seems to think that "More" is a magic sign that gets him whatever he wants whenever he wants, just cuz he's so cute! Nice try, buddy! We're also working on "bath", "mom" and "dad" and the different types of foods he likes, like yogurt, cheese, apples, etc. Again, he recognizes those, but won't repeat them yet.

He's loving all his new toys from his birthday party! It's so fun to see him interacting with them and discovering new things about them each day.

His walker is his absolute favorite things right now though. He pushes that around the house, almost non-stop. I think maybe part of the reason he can't walk is because he pushes it so fast that he's usually leaned forward at good 30 deg angle!

Austin is completely weaned. (Not that most of you care or really want to know, but I wanna have it in my notes) I was NOT ready to be done nursing but apparently my pregnant body was and Austin didn't seem to care. Over night, one week after his birthday) he went from nursing for all but one meal to nursing for only one! And then two weeks later he dropped that last meal too. Let me just say that that is a very mean thing to do to a hormonal woman! I was a mess! I'm better now though.

At his 12 month check up, he was 31" tall and 19.2 lbs. A little string bean! Actually he dropped from the 20th percentile in weight to the 8th! So we had to do a weight check again last week and he had gained appropriately. Still in the 8th percentile but at least he didn't drop more percentile points. We think he just wasn't getting enough milk from me. So weaning was a good thing for him. Plus he's a really active little guy. So it's not too surprising that he has a high metabolism. I wish I was in the 8th percentile for weight!

Naps have not been good this month! I want my good napper back please! He's just having a really hard time winding down. And often he'll fall asleep for 10-20 minutes and then wake up tired but wired. Just sits in there talking, or does laps around the crib. He's definitely tired enough though, cuz once he falls asleep for good he's out for 3-4 hours! I think we're getting close to dropping a morning nap too, since he often has a hard time falling asleep for that one. But some days he really needs it, so I'm not sure what to do exactly.

He loves lids! He will take the tops off of his Puffs container, a water bottle or one of his toy bins and then put them back on, over and over again. He's got pretty good control.

He likes to turn the lights on and off and loves to ring the door bell!

He is into everything! Which means I really have to watch him these days because we also discovered that none of the baby proofing tools actually work on our house! Seriously, the stove lock doesn't fit, the fridge lock doesn't fit, the cupboard locks don't fit, the drawer locks don't attach right, the stove shield doesn't stick because the contact surface was too small on our stove, etc. The only things that have worked are the outlet covers and the stove knob covers! Oh and he likes to pull the table corner protectors off too, so even those aren't safe!

The boy is addicted to Cheesy Goldfish! He wants them for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even the occasional 3am waking! How do I know this? Cuz he makes the sign for more and then makes a fishy face! It's horribly cute and horribly difficult to resist, although I'm trying! Good-for-you food first, then fishies! He doesn't quite get that yet.

We finally got tooth #3 and tooth #4 looks like it might be popping through any day now. But who knows. He still is such a slow teether but I have no problem with that since he doesn't seem to be bothered by them recently.

Austin is blowing kisses a bunch now. We call them fishy kisses. When Brian leaves for work and we tell Austin to say "Goodbye", he'll either wave or will make kissy faces. It's very sweet!

And I think my favorite new thing is that he starts to kinda hyperventilate when he excitedly is waiting for food! I need to get it on video cuz it's really funny. Crowleys do love food!

Note: Definitely stop by later Wednesday evening! We're hopefully finding out what gender the new munchkin is!

Happy Halloween!

Since I didn't have a blog last year, I'm going to share cute pics of my little Baby Banana first!

He looks so enthused to be a banana, doesn't he?


We visited Daddy at work. Mattel has a great tradition of letting the children of the employees come trick or treat on each of the floors. Brian dressed up as Batman, The Dark Knight, since that was one of the lines that he was managing at the time.


You can see he was very excited to be at Daddy's work!



This year Austin was dressed as Winnie the Pooh, dressed as a Bee. I didn't think it would be a confusing costume but apparently it was! We got several "Oh what a cute bee!" (when they saw the antenna) and then "Oh wait, a cute Pooh Bear!" (when they saw that the front says "Pooh". I kept having to explain it! Regardless, he was pretty dang cute!

Isn't he the cutest??


Visiting Daddy at work again. This year he actually stayed awake! (Daddy went dressed as himself this year. It's a good look!)







Austin's still a little young for trick or treating, but I wanted people to get to see how cute he looked, so we went visiting!



Visiting Grandma Judy


Visiting Nani & Papa




Visiting Auntie Suz & Uncle Ryan


Oh and we decorated pumpkins too! The decorations were given to us by Brian's Aunt DeeDee. This was much easier than carving!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere!

Last Tuesday Austin and I made a trip down to Tanaka Farms in Irvine with Rebecca & Jack and Rebecca's mom Phyllis and Rebecca's nephew Luke. Last year, being only 3 weeks old, Austin was slightly too young to enjoy picking out his pumpkin.


This year he still didn't quite get it, but he at least seemed to enjoy himself and was only a bit confused by all the orange balls all around him.

Acres and acres of "You Pick Pumpkins." They were pretty picked over by the time we went but there were still some good ones.


First experience with these weird orange things. Not incredibly excited yet.


Neither boy seems to know what to think!


I'm a sheep!


Turns out he likes hay as much as he likes grass.


Wagon Ride!


"If I look really really cute, maybe Auntie Becca will let me touch her camera!"


I loved these big pumpkins. They looked plastic!


Austin wasn't too sure about the petting zoo at first, but when we went into the baby pen, he perked up a bit.










"We love Tanaka Farms!"


Jack showing off his feats of strength!


Luke enjoying his first Pumpkin Patch


"All right, Momma! I'm kinda over these pumpkins!"


"Okay, they're fun again!"


The boys and their pumpkins


Our pumpkin purchases! One for Austin and a little one for the baby!