Working on teeth

Anthony has been seriously teething for a few weeks now. I'm ready for it to end. It hasn't affected his sleep too badly, but he's been pretty cranky. (Plus a minor runny nose and tons of drool.)

He won't let me poke around in there, but I can see at least three teeth on the verge of coming in.

One of his current favorite teething toys is my shoulder and arm. Once he decides to start chewing its kind of hard to make him stop! He'll just lean in and keep going while I'm trying to pull him off! Anthony only has four teeth now, but they're sharp!

We know where Anthony's hair came from!

At the kid's birthday party we learned that Anthony's biological grandfather works at Walmart right next-door to Chuck-E-Cheese. After the party we went over so that he could meet Anthony. Poor Anthony was pretty much exhausted so we had a quick visit. (Besides, Thomas was working.) Its pretty clear where he gets his curly hair from, though!

The Morning Paper

Caden's blog has a great picture of him "reading" the Toys R Us advertisement. Anthony clearly has different interest in the newspaper!

After breakfast this morning he had a grand old time emptying the basket we use for newspaper recycling.

Chuck E Cheese

Anthony has three older birthsiblings all born within two weeks of each other. (He isn't far behind.) Today was their joint birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. He's got a bit of stranger anxiety and wasn't terribly into being passed around. (We haven't seen them since May.) It was also just a little bit LOUD. He was a relatively good sport about the day, though.

He and Yesenia got to ride the "roller coaster" ride. Yesenia also fed him lunch briefly. The bottom picture is with Victoria's mother. She hasn't gotten to see him since the day he was born. Needless to say, he's changed a lot since then!

I didn't get pictures but Bob did take him up to sing and dance with the mouse himself.

More party pictures

I decided that this year Anthony was giving everyone books for their birthday.

We got Tatyanna "B is for Betsy" by Carolyn Haywood and "Amelia Bedelia". I remember enjoying both of those when I was her age. She's in second grade this year and should be able to read "Amelia Bedelia" by herself!

Yesenia and Jeremy each got picture books--"Olivia" for Senia and "Harry the Dirty Dog" for Jeremy. I remember the "Harry the Dirty Dog" series from when I was a kid.

Playing the drum

Anthony really likes the drum that was in the Kindermusik basket we won at the neighborhood picnic. I don't trust him with the drumsticks that came with it, but a wooden spoon works just fine!

Not JUST a bib....

I've become a bit dissatisfied with the bibs out there. The cheap ones are well, cheap. The nice ones are quite expensive and even those are often not as large as I would like.

I started a bib-making project awhile back and finally got going on it this weekend. Anthony is modeling the prototype, which can also double as a super-hero cape. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out--its plenty big enough to cover his entire front.

(I have detail issues, so the topstitching isn't exactly straight. But, this is a garment whose main (sole?) function is to end up covered in food. I also bought Buzz Lightyear fabric, so Anthony will be styling.)

Susie Homemaker

I kid you not, I decided to take a Wilton cake decorating class. While my baked goods are always excellent (from scratch, of course), they tend to look a little homemade. That's putting it nicely.

I signed up for the class hoping for the bare basics--to maybe do a shell border and learn to write on a cake. I figured that all the fancy stars and what-not would be WAY more time consuming and require much more attention to detail than I have in me.

Turns out, I was wrong. I decorated this cake with all the stars in under 1/2 hour. It came out looking pretty good! I bet I can even do a character cake for Anthony's birthdays when he gets older without killing myself!

They finally fit!

Donna gave use these airplane duds for Anthony back before he was even born. At the time they seemed impossibly large. Now they fit great, and he looks wonderful in yellow.

(The jeans are still long, they are rolled up in this picture and will probably fit him through winter.)

Meow!

When I picked Anthony up at daycare today they were playing cat. The whiskers and nose have mostly rubbed off, but you can see his ears nicely!

We've had some progress today. Ate TWO Ritz crackers for dinner. Well, we went through two, probably swallowed one. They're a bit crumbly. He chews on his new vibrating toy first to help desensitize his mouth. Seems to be working! Absolutely no gagging!

Anthony also crawled for the first time today. Now, crawling isn't a milestone but he's still coming to it a bit late. He essentially skipped the part where they rock back and forth on their hands and knees. He was slow and deliberate and went about a foot the first time. Good thing we're working on childproofing!!

Neighborhood Picnic

Today was our neighborhood association's annual picnic. (The CPNA is basically a social organization. They sponsor various neighborhood activities; they do not mandate house color. Nor are there dues associated--they get grants from the city and sell advertisements in the local newsletter to fund activities. Volunteers from the CPNA also are on our neighborhood emergency response team.)

Lots of neat activities for the kids. Anthony was too young for most of them--I don't see him enjoying a water balloon toss quite yet. But he did get his face painted and watch the local bluegrass band play.

He also won a raffle prize--a gift basket donated by Wendy who teaches Kindermusik.

Five Years Ago....

And what a great five years its been.

Tonight we're going out to dinner downtown. (We're finally using the gift certificate Donna gave Bob as a birthday present.) Then we're getting dessert at the bookstore cafe where we met.

A visit with Uncle Bob

Bob's Uncle Bob (everyone else calls him Bob, but I call him Uncle Bob, otherwise it gets too confusing) came down for a nice visit Saturday night. Anthony enjoyed playing with him.

He brought down a little outfit that used to be Kevin's, we'll get a picture of Anthony in it soon.

You can't quite read Anthony's jammies, they say "Good looks run in my family".

Hmmm....

Wonder what's up there???

Anthony's gotten REALLY tall. He's clearly had a growth spurt recently. (He can now pull up on the coffee table, whereas a few weeks ago he couldn't reach the top.)

Did I mention he's curious???

Its therapy, really!

We've been instructed by Anthony's speech therapist to encourage him to "fingerpaint" with his food, to help with his texture issues. (Assuming that's what his problem is.)

He seems to be taking to those orders with gusto! (Note the yogurt in the hair.)

While I certainly wish for him to learn to eat cheerios, I liked early eating better. In the beginning he didn't make a mess because heaven forbid something interfere with food entering mouth!

First Day of Speech Therapy

We've been increasingly concerned about Anthony's lack of ability with actual solid food. His pediatrician was content to wait until a year, but I decided it was time for a referral to speech therapy.**

The therapist called me back while we were in the car going to Yosemite last weekend. In addition to the food questions, she asked me about his babbling skills. I replied that he has the full range of "da-da, ba-ba, ma-ma, etc". Anthony heard me and of course started going through the whole repertoire. Christine's said that her next question was if he imitated, and she heard him do that!

Yesterday's appointment was quite helpful. A lot of what she said made sense with what we've seen. His lack of interest in "finger-painting" with his food, for example. She said there is a big correlation between texture on the hands and texture in the mouth. (Now, he is fine with smooth textured food.)

In any case, we're going for de-sensitization. Before meals he gets a nice scoop of goop on his tray to "finger-paint" with. Or eat. We're also expanding the finger-foods he gets on his tray to examine.

He also got two new toys: a chewy star that vibrates and a textured "food-stick". Anthony took an instant liking to the vibrating star. Essentially you can't get it out of his mouth.

The "food-stick" has textures at one end. You dip it in his favorite food so that he can get the idea of his favorite food with texture associated. Its on a stick so he can control the outcome. At Christine's office he enjoyed chewing on it, but no luck so far when there's food on it. We'll keep trying.

**Bob and I spent years in speech therapy. I'm moderately entertained that now its our son's turn!

11 Months Old!

Wow! I can't believe little dude is 11 months old.

Current tricks:
1. He learned to roll over. Apparently he didn't read where the baby books say he should roll over before sitting independently, cruising furniture, or pushing chairs around the house.
2. A few days ago he pushed to sitting 3 times in a row. Hasn't repeated since.
4. Getting better at pulling to standing, but still kind of klutzy with his legs.
5. Tonight he spent a good while practicing sitting down (from standing).
6. A full range of babbles, including Mama! (Without meaning, though.)
7. He will also carry on a "conversation" where you take turns talking.
8. He's pretty much a cruising pro. He can also walk a little bit with me holding one hand.
9. Putting stuff INTO containers has become interesting. He has a decent amount of hand-eye coordination in that he can get the balls into his elephant toy.
10. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but he's REALLY curious. He's definitely fascinated by the world around him and wants to check it all out!
11. Four teeth, two on top, two on bottom.
12. He gets frustrated really easily. Especially when he's sitting down and wants to be standing. Sometimes he'll wiggle to a chair to pull up, but he's just as likely to fuss until you come and stand him up.

Lack of progress:
Eating real food. We had our first speech therapy appointment today!

Train Dance

Anthony does the cutest little dance when his Peek-a-Blocks train starts up!

(Be sure to have the volume up for the raspberry at the end!)

Terror in the bathtub

Not quite sure what went wrong....

Anthony has pretty much outgrown his little bathpillow but isn't quite ready for the big tub. His friend Ciaran has a "Safety Duck" inflatable bathtub, so we thought we'd give it a try. (Nearly killed me inflating the darn thing.)

For fun we bought some bubble bath, too.

We're not quite sure where we went wrong tonight, but it was very, very wrong!

Hurricane Anthony

Yep, he discovered that he can pull over the toy basket!