Bye, bye bottles...already?

Andy has 4 bottles/day. Since Kaylee was not keen on having her formula/milk in a bottle and I ended up going cold turkey switching her from bottles to sippy cups at about 11.5 months old and as a result she didn't drink much (any?) milk for about 3 days, I thought maybe I'd try to start getting Andy used to drinking formula from a sippy cup now and ease him into it - if he pushed it away, we'd just go back to bottles, but I'd at least offer it once/day for a while and go from there. He decided to just take right to it and has now had 6 sippy cups of milk in a row - his last bottle was the lunchtime one yesterday. Go, Andy! Of course the only sippy cup that works well for him right now is the freebie one (Pampers brand) we got at his 9 month pediatrician visit...so I've had to wash it in between each use. The others we have seem to let too much into his mouth at a time and he either can't swallow it right and coughs on it, or pulls the cup away and some pours down his chin. I went out and bought another brand tonight (they didn't have the Pampers one where I went), so hopefully those will work for him. If not, we might be heading out to see if we can find a few more Pampers ones tomorrow!

8 teeth!

As of late this morning (at least by the time I noticed), Andy's 8th tooth popped through - so now he's got big toothy grins for everyone, with all 8 front middle teeth in! Well, big grins for everyone as long as the separation anxiety doesn't kick in...

Merry Christmas!

New Tooth! Blowing Kisses! Crawling!

Andy had a lot of firsts yesterday! In the morning, I noticed his 7th tooth had broken through (on bottom right, next to the middle one). Also in the morning, he started "blowing kisses" (either a fist to/in the mouth that he pulls slightly away or a flat palm against his mouth that he pulls slightly away). Then in the evening he took his first crawling "steps" (or whatever you'd call them). He'd sort of been crawling backwards for a week or so, but just a little bit at a time and on accident, as he was really just getting on his hands and knees then would move backward as he tried to sit back up and would end up about a foot or so behind where he had been before...which frustrated him as he was then further from where he was trying to get to in the first place. He seems to be a reluctant crawler, though. He moans/cries the entire time as he's crawling to his destination. I'm sure within a few days he'll be all over the place and we'll be putting the gate up at the bottom of our stairs!

These photos are from 11/15 - his 9 month "birthday."

Thanksgiving Feast

Kaylee's Thanksgiving Feast at preschool was a week before Thanksgiving. She knew Andy and I would be there, but was surprised that Jamie, Poppy (Dan) & Baba (Barb) came as well. The kids sang a couple songs ("I'm Glad I'm Not a Turkey on Thanksgiving Day" and "Hello, Mr. Turkey") and said a prayer, then we ate and hurried out to let the next round of Feasters gather.

9 Month Photos

Here are some photos we did a couple weeks ago with Denise Crull Photography. Andy was not doling out the big smiles - I think he has another tooth (or two?) coming in on the bottom and he's had a runny nose - and Kaylee was not being too cooperative, either. And of course the day we met for the photos was the worst runny-nose day Andy had! But here are the pics...




Don't you love his expression in the family photo? "Are we done yet??" And we actually took the family one first...

The following photos I took when Kaylee was having a good hair day a couple days ago. :)

Andy at 9 Months

Andy's 9 month checkup was Friday. He is now 29" long and 21lb 2oz! Growing, growing! He only had to have one shot this time, but was still very unhappy about it. He actually started crying every time we laid him down on the counter, so he cried 2-3 times before he even got his shot! Oh, well. After the appointment we went to Slope's BBQ and Andy had some barbecue pork, bread and french fries, and he gobbled it all up. Kaylee thinks it's funny because we call him an eating machine!

Happy Halloween!

Kaylee had such a fun Halloween! She picked out who she wanted to be at least 2 months ago and never wavered in her choice. She was Kiki from The Fresh Beat Band. She also says she wants to have a FBB birthday party, so we'll see if she changes her mind in the next 4 months.

Here's our little Kiki before and after her transformation, and some FBB/Kiki pics:



Andy had a fun first Halloween...I think. He strolled around with us for a little while before Jamie took him back home since it was pretty chilly outside. I think he enjoyed the people watching, though!

Aside from Andy's potential Daddy costume (see post below), we had 3 costumes for him. The Tigger costume Kaylee wore for her 1st Halloween, a giraffe costume that I got at a consignment sale and a monkey costume we borrowed from a friend. All are 9 month size, but since Andy's mostly wearing 12 month onesies already, I wasn't sure any of these would fit! The giraffe and Tigger costumes' hoods were on the tight side, but luckily the monkey one, while still somewhat snug, didn't seem uncomfortable on him, so our little monkey was a monkey for Halloween! As you can see, though, he was a little tall for it as his red jammie feet stuck way out below the built in monkey feet and the sleeves were a bit short, too.

I tried the costumes on Andy and took photos while Kaylee was at school one day, and when I showed her the photos later, I started with the one of the monkey where you can't see Andy's face. She said, "is that a real monkey on our porch?!?" Then I showed her the one showing Andy's face and she thought it was so funny that he looked like a real monkey crawling around. :)



The photo below of Kaylee and Andy with the pumpkins is from earlier in the day and the one of all of us is just before heading out to trick or treat.



Halloween weekend, we went to our neighborhood fall festival. Kaylee had fun in the huge bouncy there, and also loading up on sugar! She got a cute black cat face painting and a balloon sword (she'd been wanting one for a while after having seen some kids with one a couple months ago). She also thought the spider cookies that someone brought were very funny!

Another tooth

Andy's top left middle tooth broke through on Friday and he's now up to 6 teeth - the four front middle ones on top and the two front middle ones on the bottom. I always thought he was so cute with his gummy smile, but you know, he's just as cute with a toothy grin, too!

Pumpkin Pics

These are the pumpkins we got a couple weekends ago at the pumpkin farm. The big one I got with the intention of putting Andy in it for photos. He fit, but might have been more comfortable in a bigger one! He didn't complain too much, though. The new porch lends itself nicely as a backdrop for these photos!



Here's this year's carved pumpkin (this is the huge pumpkin I put Andy in). I saw a few similar carvings online and thought I'd give it a shot. I didn't really have the right tools for the job, and this took a bit longer than I'd anticipated. All told, it probably took about 5 hours to carve, but I was half-watching (more listening to) TV during most of that time. I do think it turned out pretty well, though!


We have a few costumes for Andy, but three of them are 9 month size and the rest are 24 month or bigger...and he's mostly in 12 month clothes right now. So if none of those end up fitting, we can always go with this. A drawn on goatee is a possible accessory!

5th tooth

Andy's front middle top right tooth broke through today, so he's now up to 5 teeth! And it looks like the left one isn't too far behind. He's already enjoying testing them out - but he doesn't like the response he gets (a stern "no biting") when he does so on my arms and legs!

Cumming Greek Fest

While Jamie stayed home with Andy, Kaylee and I went with some friends to the local Greek Festival. We didn't stay long - just long enough for the girls to jump in a bouncy house and go down a bouncy slide a few times, plus have dinner. Here's a cute photo of the 3 girls we took! Kaylee, Ellie & Delaney

Pumpkin Farm

We took Kaylee, Andy & a friend (Erin) to Kinsey Family Farm on Saturday. We took pictures (obviously), tried to feed the catfish, but I guess they were stuffed (we could see some swimming just below the surface, but none came up to eat), tried to feed the goats and cows, but they didn't want the crackers (there were plenty lying on the ground by their feet), though they would munch on an apple we offered and picked out pumpkins!

We bought 7 pumpkins and an apple gourd (like the green "pumpkin" on the haystacks behind/above the kids in the first photos) that are currently sitting on our front steps (5 of the pumpkins are the tiny ones, so we didn't really go way overboard).

For Andy's first visit to the farm, he did pretty well! We packed lunches and ate when we first got there (just before noon) then did all the fun stuff without having to break for lunch. It worked out well, since Andy was happy enough at first, but conked out shortly after we took some pictures. I think the sun did him in! It was nice weather, but luckily we'd worn long sleeves - I think it was close to 80 degrees, but it was very windy! The next day Andy even had rosy cheeks from a bit of windburn!






Kaylee has two identical pairs of shoes. I didn't realize until we'd been at the farm about an hour that she was wearing the two left ones! It didn't seem to bother her, at least.