10 Months Old!

Cal boy is 10 months old! I just can't get over it....before we know it, we'll be celebrating his FIRST birthday (to all you local folks, I have already set the date: September 19th!).

Mr. Smiles (as my dad calls him) is SUPER active and into everything. He crawls at an alarmingly fast speed (and it is still the unconventional crawl with one leg forward) and pulls up on everything. He loves to pull up and let go and see how long he can stand on his own. He has two new push toys that he loves to push around the house, and then let go of with his hands in the air.

Everyone kept telling me that it just keeps on getting better.... they are so right. I would have sworn to you 3 months ago that it couldn't get any better because he is just so much fun, but I am telling you, 10 months is SO MUCH FUN! Every day is an adventure and I love to watch him discover new things. He is SOOO much fun now. I love it :)

Sleeping: we are making all kinds of progress! Ever since we started weaning and giving him a bottle of milk at night, he's been sleeping through the night-- it is AWESOME! He is still taking two really good naps a day (usually about 2 hours each).

Food: Cal has NO issues in this department! He loves pretty much everything! Graham crackers are on the top of the list and he love ground meat (beef and turkey). He still loves cheese and we just discovered he loves some spaghetti--hilarious to watch him eat this! We are giving him yogurt in the morning and then nursing for morning nap, a snack when he wakes up, veggies at lunch, some milk for nap time, and then a big dinner and milk before bed. My sweet boy loves to eat!

Sippy Cup: Cal loves his sippy cups! He chugs from them and when he's done, he tosses them over his shoulder. I don't want him to get dehydrated in the heat, so I have sippy cups of water all over the house. He will push his little cart over to one and chug from it, toss it aside, and then push on over to his next mess to make. He is also now (finally!) taking a bottle-- I just give him one a day, at night, before bed. He is not to fond of milk in the sippy cup.

Crawling: anywhere, everywhere, anytime. He just wants to be moving. Constantly.

Words: He points to Hank and says something similar to doggah and says mum mum all the time. He also still says dadada and will point and a bird and say bur. Other than that, he will carry on a full conversation with himself pretty much everywhere!

Walking: He is a great "cruiser" and will cruise around everything! He walks while holding our hands, but doesn't really need our hands very much. He can stand on his own now (and get into that position without holding onto anything), but once he realizes he is standing on his own, he will drop to his butt pretty fast.

We are falling more and more in love with this little boy each and every day. I didn't think it was possible to love this much.....

Weaning update...

It's been interesting weaning Cal Boy. With some things it is so easy, but then we hit a little bump and it gets hard.

We have been doing milk in a bottle for 3 nights now and for 3 nights he has slept through the night (woooohoooo!). Last night, though, he had half of the bottle and shoved it away and started rooting on me BIG TIME. I had Eddie come in to finish the bottle, so he couldn't smell me, and when I walked away, I could hear Cal giggling. I love his laugh, but at this point, it was way past bed time and he needed to be asleep. I went back in to split the boys up and to try the bottle again, and he pulled down my top and was working on attaching himself before I could put the bottle down to redirect. He was SO mad and SO hurt that I would not nurse him! He was screaming and crying and trying his best to latch on to anything he could.....it broke my heart. Maybe I am doing all of this too fast for him...?

So, I nursed him for just a few minutes on each side, since he wasn't taking any more of his bottle, and then he went down for the night.

All in all though, I think we are doing really well. Yesterday, he woke up and ate his yogurt and cheerios, nursed before his morning nap, woke up and had a few graham crackers, played a while and had lunch and then had milk before his afternoon nap (wouldn't take much), and then I nursed a little bit before he went to bed. I have been pumping for a brief time before bed (when he didn't nurse), just to relieve some of the pressure to get me through the night.

It is definitely a painful process to wean down.... I think it's painful for both of us!

New at the whole bottle thing...

He did so well last night..... then we tried a new bottle during nap time.....

A little plug

HOW CUTE IS THIS LITTLE GUY???

A friend of ours out in Texas has started her own little children's clothing line, Petite Pineapples. Everything is ADORABLE and it's super inexpensive! This little t-shirt is only $12! I am getting one for Cal's first birthday, which is going to be here before we know it. Anyway, she has some of the cutest little girl stuff and a little boy's romper that I have my eye on... check out her blog by clicking here.

First night with cow's milk.....

....and he slept through the night!!!!!! THANK YOU, LORD!

(I know, I know.....it's about damn time, right? Yes, I know this. But I am starting to wonder if he just wasn't getting enough milk before bed and was waking up hungry? I guess I can't get too excited since it was only one night. He could have just been SUPER tired-- it can wear a kid out tearing things off of walls, you know.....)

We are going to try the same thing today: nursing before naps and then bottle before bed. Hope for the same outcome!!! Plus we are going to the pool today so I am going to just wear his little tail out! :)

PS- total side note....I took my friend, Julie, dinner last night. She just brought home her second baby. Her first is a little girl who turned 2 in December. She is convinced that Cal's name is really COW. We walked in and she started asking COW to come look at her toys! Then Julie asked her to say hi to CAL and she MOOOOOOOOed!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!! I guess that's what we get for such an....odd.....name! hahaha

He got the L

Above Cal's bed, we hung hand made letters: C, A, L. The A was a bit lower than the other two letters:

A while ago, I heard a loud THUD and went in to see the A pulled off of the wall. The C and the L were out of reach....or so I thought....

Today I went in and saw this: (notice the L laying in the crib--this is during NAP time....)

The Wonderful World of Weaning

This post is not going to be very interesting, but I think it will be helpful to me to look back later on in life to figure out how and when I started weaning Cal Boy.....

Cal is still nursing and for the most part, I LOVE IT. He is down to 4 times a day (not including the night time "visits"), but most of those are very brief. I have also started not nursing him when he first wakes up since I nursed him more than likely in the middle of the night. He is SO active and SO busy that it is super hard to hold him still long enough to nurse. Usually we are lucky to have 10 minutes of eating. He would rather be moving, wiggling, twisting, turning, etc....

I have been talking with the doctor about weaning him down for the trip Eddie and I are taking next month sans Cal. It is about 4 weeks away. Since we are nursing about 4 times a day, it seemed like a logical time to start introducing cow's milk. I was going to put it off another day, but as I was nursing Cal before his afternoon nap, he bit me. He has bitten me before and it hurt, but now that the top teeth are coming in, it REALLY hurt. I did the same thing I had done before where I say NO and put him in the middle of the floor and he just started cracking up (lovely, right?). After trying to nurse again, with again, the same outcome, we went to plan B.

We bought some vitamin D milk in anticipation of this week, and I had some milk pumped, so I mixed breast milk with vitamin D milk in a sippy cup (maybe we could skip bottles all together??). He loved it. He drank quite a bit, but was really ready to get moving again. I let him go around the room with his sippy cup and he would take a swig and then toss it. I put it in his crib with him during nap time, and he must have tossed it somewhere because now I can't find it.....

For bed time tonight, I used the only bottle we have (!) and mixed 2 ounces of breast milk with about 5 ounces of cow's milk and rocked him as I fed him. He immediately took the bottle from me and turned it up like a wino and started chugging. He couldn't get enough! He would stop to catch his breath and smile at me and then would go right back at it!

Once he finished the bottle, I sat him in the crib and he just toppled over to fall asleep with the fullest belly you have ever seen! I went back in not even 5 minutes later (to look for the first sippy cup.....??) and he didn't even lift his head to look at me. It will be interesting to see how tonight goes sleeping wise.

I am very sad to be done with nursing (or working on being done with nursing), but I know it's time. I just love snuggling with him and I love the way he feels curled up in my arms. I love having that special time just the two of us. I love the way he looks up at me while he's eating as if he is sooooooo thankful for me (and I am looking at him the exact same way: so grateful for him).

It will more than likely take a few weeks to be completely weaned, and I am okay with that. Cal will be 10 months on Friday and I am pretty proud of myself for doing it this long. Truth be told, I would have continued nursing until a year if we weren't going away. This trip will be really helpful to me though. I have to just draw the line and if I weren't traveling, I am sure I would try and do it just one more time.....

I'll keep you posted on the weaning wars :)

Goofy Boy!

Cal has been imitating me a lot lately and will match my faces and then we both crack up. Today, we did this for quite a while and we both had tears running down our faces from laughing so hard.

I tried to capture a little bit of it using my computer's built in camera, but it was hard to capture it all. Plus it is time for bath and bed, but I really wanted to try to take a snap shot of the day...you know, in case he forgets how to be a copy cat tomorrow (I know he won't, but still....).

Here is a link to the video. Ignore the girl in black.....

Who reads this anyway?

Eddie was giving me a hard time the other day because I really enjoy reading other's blogs and I like to update ours as well. He asked me if anyone actually read The Williamson Family blog.

It got me thinking... Most of my posts do not have comments on them, but friends will often comment in person that they loved the post about ______, or they thought the story about Cal throwing his poo was hilarious.

I added a "counter" button on the side of the blog and was blown away by the numbers! It has had over 3,000 views since I installed the button, and that was less than a month ago. Then, I added the device on the side so you can see where people are from who read your blog-- that is THE coolest part! I love to think of people in Indiana and Charlotte and Massachusetts reading this blog! Do I even know anyone living in Massachusetts??

I do not make my blog public knowledge on facebook or anything like that. I don't have a real reason not to, but some of the things I write are more private and I like to think of my blogging "family" as a little closer than my facebook family (which is ironic in itself because I can choose to be friends with someone on facebook, but I cannot choose who reads this....hmmmmm). If a friend on facebook asks for the blog address, I send it to them via private message as opposed to writing it on their wall. Again, I have no real reason for this-- a blog is meant to be public, right?

The whole purpose of this post is to say HI to those of you who read this that I don't know about. It makes my day when someone tells me they read my blog. I have several girlfriends from college who have told me that follow it now and I love that!

You think your life is trivial and who would really care to read about your day to day boring chores, but apparently, I am more exciting than I thought: YEEHAW, y'all!

(now post a comment, will ya??)

We've been gone...but now we are back!

The Williamson's just spent a week at the beach. Well, part of the Williamson's. Eddie had to work, so he was down for the 4th and then came home, and I stayed down there with my parents and Cal for the rest of the week. It was BEAUTIFUL! The weather was perfect, and at times it was even cool-- very unheard of for July in NC! The cool weather didn't last long though, and the heat and humidity came back in full force.

I took a TON of pictures while we were down there. Cal was so much fun and was always putting on a show. He didn't do very well at night down there (big shocker, right?). Our last night there, he got up FIVE times...!!! Come to find out, he has two new teeth coming in on the top and I think they are just killing his little mouth. He was in a lot of pain and it was breaking my heart (and making me super tired!).

Cal's first trip over to the ocean. He spots a bird long before any of us ever see it and starts pointing and saying "bah!" (or something similar to that). He gets soooo excited whenever he sees one and has to point to it. This day at the beach, there were a ton of seagulls out. It was almost more than he could take!

Cal is obsessed with his sippy cup-- the kid can drink some water!!

Didn't your momma teach you not to point?

This little outfit was a gift when Cal was born. I remember thinking it looked so huge. It is precious on him. I love how it has his name across his bum.

These are just a few other fun ones of Cal loving the beach!

Camp Richards was in full effect everyday with paddleboarding, boating, kayaking, and just enjoying being outside. We were all worn out at night and mom and I would play Rummikube and then crash hard. Oh, and I mentioned Cal's new teeth? They are on the top, but they aren't the two front teeth-- they are the FANGS! hahaha! His two bottom teeth will fit perfectly in between his new fangs- hilarious. I will try to get a picture of them if he'll ever let me.