Holt is 10 Months!!

Since at your nine month check-up, your weight was calculated in the 25th percentile, your grandparents have made it their personal mission to fatten you up.  You've always looked thick and healthy but apparently, they believe that the numbers don't lie.  I'll bet you've gained at least two pounds in the last month, all courtesy of your loving grandparents.

When anyone says "Yaaaay!" you clap and then immediately smile, the big open mouthed one.

You now have two more top teeth which makes for a grand total of six teeth.

You have the most adorable little smirk face.  You squint your eyes, scrunch your nose, and grin ear to ear.

You're really starting to get around on two legs, with the assistance of a table, couch, etc.  You still aren't completely crawling on your knees yet, but you are beginning to use that mode of travel more and more.

You played peek-a-boo for the first time the other day.  It doesn't really count, since I was not around to witness it.  However, your Grammy, Papaw, and Daddy all insist that it happened and say it was the cutest thing ever!

You're officially an omnivore and now eat things like Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Chicken Noodle Dinner, and Ham with Pineapple.  You can eat an entire banana in one sitting.  We have yet to find something that you do not like.  You are such an eater!

I Have a Confession...

We've lived in our home for eight years and I've never mopped the floors.  EVER!  Come to think of it, I've never mopped any floor.  Ever!  Now don't gross out on me just yet.

You see, the United States Coast Guard equipped my husband with many skills, some more practical than others.  For instance, scarfing down a meal in thirty seconds flat and blowing up a toilet with a single firecracker, not so much.  Rescuing a drowning swimmer and scaling a light pole are skills that could possibly be useful but haven't been thus far.  My Coastie can pack a mean suitcase and tie some serious knots.  However, it's the mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms, that I completely exploit, even though he has a tendency to use way too much bleach (also courtesy of the good ole USCG).

I've posted before how Adam, with his back injury, is not able to do much beyond lie on the couch.  In his absence, Holt has really risen to the occasion in cleaning the kitchen tile.  He continues to do a decent job with his onesie.  What he lacks in thoroughness and effectiveness, he more than makes up for in persistence.

Needless to say, the floors have been haunting me for weeks.  With a family of six, and all but me are boys, the floors probably should have been haunting me for months.  But hey, I'm all about honesty here and it has only been a few weeks.  The slate stares at me with big googly eyes and tauntingly laughs at me.  You know the monster type laugh, "moo hoo ha ha ha".  And increasingly so everytime Holt chased me through the kitchen.

It was well beyond time to tackle the domesticated skill of mopping.  After scooting around the floor, inch by inch, scraping mashed in who-knows-what from all the crevices for nearly an hour, I was ready to mop.  I sought instruction from Mr. Couch Potato and ended up mopping the floor twice.  I could have mopped a third time since the water was still a little brown but I was exhausted!

We left for a late afternoon swim at my parents before I got a good look at the finished product.  By nightfall, I explained to my parents that I was anxious to go home and just stare at my kitchen floor.  Can you tell I was proud of myself?!  So proud that I considered serving breakfast on the floor the next morning, but decided against it.  That would mean mopping it again.  And I'm not looking forward to doing that in the next few months weeks, even though I'm no longer intimidated by the monster.

Holt is 9 Months!!

You are getting dangerously close to 1, big boy.  It still feels like yesterday that you were brand new.

You weigh 19lb 2oz, which no one would have guessed is only in the 25% since you look pretty chunky to all of us.  You are 28.5" which is in the 65% and no drumroll required, your head is above the 97%.

You now have 4 teeth which turns out is the minimum amount required for grinding.  Definitely not one of my favorite things that you do lately.

Along with the grinding, you are also growling/grunting.  This is definitely one of your more hilarious skills.  You growl for lots of reasons, but especially when food is not coming to your mouth fast enough.

You're still crawling with your tummy on the ground.  You have taken a few "steps" with your tummy off the ground, but nowhere near enough to say that you are officially crawling.  And occasionally, you will go from lying on your tummy to sitting.

You are pulling up on everything!  You love playing on the Leap Frog learning table.  It is just the perfect size and all the jingles and lights keep you thoroughly entertained.

You can now wave.  Whenever we tell you "Hi!" you smile and wave with one of your hands, open palmed with hand moving up and down.  Of course you never perform on cue, like when trying to show one of the grandparents.  Your wave also happens to be your one and only dance move thus far.  Every time you hear music playing, you start waving that hand.

You LOVE to eat.  If we're not feeding you fast enough, you do this clearing throat/machine gun noise "uh uh uh uh" followed by slapping the table three or four times.  You've moved in at the dinner table and you sit right next to me.  If those hints don't work, you lean over with your gooey hands and either grab and pull my shirt or pinch my arm.  Also, not one of my most favorite things you are doing lately.

You've not been the best napper this month.  Most days you refuse to take a second nap.  You're still too young to drop that second nap and Mommy really enjoys/relies on your second nap.  So can we bring it back this month, please?  When you wake up, whether from the night or from a nap, you do your best to shove the empty bottle through the rails of the crib and then you toss your pacifier out of the bed.

29

You might ask, so how does one celebrate her birthday when her husband is incapable of doing anything but this all day?:

 On birthday eve, while picking up groceries to cook your favorite items the next day, you spot flowers on special.  Roses are not your fave, but for $3, they'll do and will give a sense of birthday cheer in the house.  You splurge on a case of 4 Starbucks Frappucino and a 6 pack of Snapple Peach Tea.

You stay up much, much later than you anticipated baking a cake for yourself.  Since you've been on a crazy almond kick lately, you dump a bottle and a half of almond extract into your homemade buttercream a half teaspoon at a time, in efforts to achieve a strong almond flavor, which actually just ends up making the frosting taste funky.

Since your husband was supposed to have back surgery the day before your birthday, he had your presents wrapped and on the table for two days now, which he begged you incessantly to go ahead and open.  However, you stayed true to your convictions because a birthday doesn't feel like a birthday if you have no presents to open on your big day.  Therefore, on birthday morning, his impatience could wait no longer.  So after being permitted to sleep in until 8 a.m., you are greeted with a bed full of boys, grins, and presents!

You love all of your gifts because your husband is the most thoughtful gift giver and remembers everything that you ever said you loved/wanted.  You love the new crackle nail polishes, in pirate theme no less, as well as the new beads for your bracelet - a skull and crossbones and a Celtic cross.  And you totally bust out the tears when you open this breathtaker:

That's a handpainted plate by my hubby of my favorite Van Gogh.

 After present time, it's on to breakfast, which just so happens to be your favorite meal of the day.  So much so that you are considering serving it again for dinner.  (It is your birthday.)  Waffles, hashbrowns, applewood smoked bacon (another birthday splurge), and it wouldn't be your birthday breakfast without something pumpkin or cinnamon.  Because you could not find canned pumpkin in the middle of Summer, despite multiple failed attempts, you whip up, from scratch, some french toast muffins you found on Pinterest instead.  However, don't bother next time.  The eyes feasted way more on these than the palate.

While you're deep in the thresholds of meal preparation, your parents call to wish you 'Happy Birthday', and you invite them to the feast.  You're excited that they agreed to join you, and wish the in-laws were in town so they could also attend.

You left no counterspace unharmed in the making of said meal, (refer to exhibit #4 on the right) and you were totally content with leaving the mess until your un-birthday.  But you have the sweetest Mom in the world who insisted on cleaning it up and then proceeded to fold some laundry and clean a bathroom.  Yes, you can all be jealous of my awesome mother.

You then pack up everyone, except for the hubby, to head over to cool down with a swim.  Some were more happy to be there than others, which directly correlates to the truth that some require more sleep (aka naps) than others.

You wrap the day up with a Papa Murphy's pizza and head to bed without doing the following, which were all on your birthday to-do list:

A. Blogging

B. Napping

C. Watching Beauty & the Beast with your home full of boys (You're brutal with your birthday requests, obviously)

D. Indulging in a slice of cake (you still haven't finished decorating your cake yet)

The next day, you do catch a nap and enjoy a slice of cake with a scoop of the best vanilla ice cream on the planet.  And as it turns out, your funky almond icing is actually not bad when paired with the sour cream almond cake.  Your doped up hubby had difficulty waking from his late nap so he missed out on the festivities.  It's just you and your boys.  It was a wonderful birthday weekend, despite all the sarcasm that may have led you to believe otherwise.  29 was truly awesome!  Stay tuned for my '30 before 30' list!

Proverbs 3:24

...and thy sleep shall be sweet.

Growing Up, Almost

Hawkins has only a few inanimate loves in life and they are as follows:

Candy
Scooby-Doo (which has recently replaced Dora the Explorer)
Frog BB (his blanket)

When Hawkins was just nine months old, he traded his bottle for a sippy cup on his own accord and rather suddenly.  One day he was downing a bottle and the next he refused it.  The same goes for his pacifier.  At around fourteen months, he traded his pacifier for a blanket.  It started off where any blanket would suffice, especially a fleece taggie blanket.  But after a month or so, he had chosen his favorite and from then on, only "Frog BB" would do.

For the last two years, Frog BB has gone everywhere with us.  He has been on multiple road trips, several hospital stays, subjected to hundreds of baths, and thousands of naps.

Adam and I had been discussing for months when we should take away Hawk's security blanket.  If he only snuggled with it, we'd have no problem with him keeping Frog BB indefinitely.  However, he sucks on it, which he calls "chewing".  His older brothers did not have a pacifier beyond 2 1/2.  Here Hawk is nearly 3 1/2.

I tried for about a week, as I tucked him in each night, to convince him to just cuddle with frog bb.  "Don't put him in your mouth."  Hawkins would sweetly nod and agree, though he didn't understand why.  Sure enough, he would "chew" on it all through the night.  (See here for one of my attempts to talk him out of chewing on his blanket.)  I knew talking him out of it would be futile and unsuccessful but I couldn't bring myself to remove what Hawkins loved most.  Frog BB was like a member of our family!

The three big boys slept over at Grammy and Papaw's house and we decided it was time.  Adam "hid" him up on the top shelf of Holt's closet, which also happens to be in Hawkins' room.  The next night, when we were putting him to bed, he asked for Frog BB but we told him that his blanket had disappeared and we couldn't find it.

He was slightly upset, but went to bed fine without it.  Over the next few days, each morning I found a substitute in Hawk's bed.  We figured since Hawkins was faithful to just the one blanket for two years, there would be no replacement.  Apparently, his addiction was a bit more serious than we had anticipated.

It wasn't but a few days later and the boys discovered Frog BB.  It was as though they had uncovered a sunken ship filled with buried treasure.  "Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!"  They all bolted into the living room with such joy and excitement.  "We found Frog BB!  He wasn't lost, he was just at the top of the closet!"  It never occurred to them that his location might have been a bit more intentional than coincidental.

Perhaps all Hawkins needed was a bit of a hiatus to realize that he doesn't need anything in his mouth to sleep.  Hawkins now continues to sleep with his beloved Frog BB but he no longer chews on him.  In fact, some nights he has not even noticed that his favorite blanket is not in his bed with him.  Truth be told, I'm kind of glad that Frog BB is still around and not in anyone's mouth.

Noodles & Green Beans

This brings a whole new meaning to the old adage, "You're not getting down until you've finished your plate."

Now don't look at me like that.  I know for a fact that all of you have done the same thing.  It wasn't like we were torturing the poor kid with livers and squash.  It was a botched fettuccine alfredo recipe which turned out to be glorified butter noodles.  And Hayes is all about some butter noodles, just not these, for some crazy reason.  They were served with a side of fresh green beans, which is my children's vegetable of choice.

He nibbled on his lunch while we all enjoyed it.  Then, he sat there staring at his plate as we all got down.  After a few reminders that he was not getting down until he finished his plate, he just curled up in the hard wooden chair and took a nap.

Needless to say, when he woke, I showed him some compassion and gave him some mercy.  The kid took a nap at the dinner table!