9 Months already?

Thirty-nine weeks ago, in the wee morning hours, we checked in to the hospital. I was nervous, excited, overwhelmed. Chi was beyond giddy. Marq was apprehensive and proud to see his son enter the world. It was a special day.

At 2:20 p.m. Ya bellowed, proclaiming himself "Healthy and here at last."

And in the blink of an eye, we are at today's milestone: nine months old!

Ya is so amazing. He's done so much already - from the first real smile to holding his head high to the rollie-pollie stage to sitting up alone to slithering across the floor in a military trench glide to chasing his sister in a bonafide knees and knuckles crawl.

He's seen two teeth rise up high (and we've felt their biting stings). He's developed a preference for certain solid foods. He drinks out of a straw, but prefers a cup. He's traveled across state lines to visit family in North Carolina and New York. He's surpassed the baby bath and now uses the big people tub, loves bubbles, and plays with water toys. He stands up with ease holding anything, everything, and (even if ever-so-briefly) nothing at all. He's shown flashes of temper. He's already a computer geek... truly his father's child. He's found his sense of humor and his tickle spots.

Whew....that's a lot.

And even though he's done all this, we know there's a new discovery every second to come!

Look!

Guess whose photo made it into the I ♥ Faces collage? Ha ha, you guessed it, mine...
Here's the picture they posted : Now this doesn't mean I'm a finalist... but it does make me feel ultra special to see little Ya's "Two Teef" on the webpage today :)

I ♥ Faces Week 19 - Special Blurb Book Contest

So I totally missed last week's competition (which is terrible, because I had a laugh all picked out!) and so I have now "scheduled" the next 5 contests to post whether I am mentally capable or not :) But picking out which photos to use for each week is terribly difficult.

So after much thought and perusing (actually, Ya was demanding attention by crawling around eating everything the vacuum did not pick up that no grown human can ever see, but baby finds effortlessly, so I had about 1 minute to choose ::sad face:) I came up with this photo selection happily titled "Two Teef" (sic - in other words, we mean to spell it that way):

This is my little Ya, now 8 months new, (photo taken on May 5, 2009). And yes, he's our little bulldog with two teeth, and the growls and bites to match!

The technical details and disclaimers required for legal purposes (read in a quick voice with low tones so no one really pays attention while background jingle reaches a climactic point):

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb book photo contest. If chosen, I grant I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

Randomness

My cousin had her baby shower yesterday... and though I wanted to go and support her, I was unable to make the trip southward for the festivities. But Oma made sure Chi got the souvenirs from the event including this smoke-free announcement: As if it weren't bad enough that this lovely placebo cigar encourages kids and adults alike to pretend to be smoking leisurely in the celebration of life (while shortening their own with tobacco toxins), the company thought it fitting to include the following on its wrapper "For ingredients & nutritional info. Write to:"

So, were holding the bubble gum cigar and before Chi can bite into the eerily blue treat, I'm supposed to tell her "We have wait until the company writes us back to see if you're allergic to anything in it!"

Yeah, that'll happen.*****
While taking a picture of my beauty, I cautioned her not to inhale too deeply while holding steady for a "smell the roses" picture, she replies, "Yeah, cause I don't want to get too much pollum [pronunciation-accurate spelling] up my nose."

A Day At the Waterfront 5.16

I've been introduced to a new photo spot. It overlooks the river and is frequented by people boating, kayaking, and fishing. It hosts a wide collective of newts, salamanders and creepy crawly things. Geese flock there. And there are open fields of grass, real trees and quaint benches and gazebos throughout. It's a natural oasis.

Why did we happen to get to this location? A would-be party that was missing the birthday boy.

Here are a few shots from our day:

First Chocolate and Mint Cookie

5-12-09

Actually, he didn't get to eat the mint... just snagged a quarter of one side of the chocolate wafer and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a good thing he savored it, because Mommy does not like chocolate and will not volunteer to deal with the tremendous mess one quarter of a cookie made again anytime soon!

Birds and Bees

It's wayyyyyyyy too early to have to think about things like discussing the reproductive process with my just barely 6 1/2 year old daughter. I don't want my  little girl thinking about sex until well after she is married. It is, after all, strictly for the purposes of creating children, right? And all really smart folk make their parents proud by following the proper order of things: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

Right????

[the hypocrite is clearing throat of foot in mouth]

I'll just keep her sheltered in a little bubble of naivete until she's walked down the isle in a pretty white dress with a shimmering bejeweled veil over her almond eyed-face and a bouquet of wildflowers in her hand (each one unique and special).

But public school children talk... the radio serenades... and television blasts with conversations about S-E-X far too often for me to keep the bubble intact. It tore a bit a few weeks ago. It burst last week on Friday.

I initially managed to convince Chi that sex was something that only married adults did. That it was kinda yucky and I didn't want to talk about it. Apparently, though, someone else did continue talking, so Chi decided to inquire further about the validity of what she'd heard.

The conversation went like this:

"Ma, is kissing part of sex?"

"...huh?"

"Do people kiss when they have sex."

thinking: "Save me from this conversation... divert her attention to any other topic..."

I elect not to answer, hoping that ignoring the question will frustrate her enough to change the topic...

"Ma?"

"huh?"

"Is it?"

"Uh.... yes, it is a part of it."

"Oh. So when I kiss you, or Oma, or Uncle, or Ya, or PopPop, or someone, I'm having sex?"

[Stifling a nervous laugh, but thoroughly amused at the connection being made however uncomfortable this failing conversation was making me]

"No, honey. You are not having sex. A kiss among family is perfectly okay."

Chi seemed to be processing the information silently while seated in her booster seat directly behind my chair, but I couldn't see her expression. I'm certain that she's creating more questions to ask and is waiting for me to contradict my previous assertions about this taboo topic that I'd already said in previous discussions was yucky and not one I was supposed to talk about.

I think I failed miserably at trying to avoid the sex talk while planting the "this isn't something good people do" philosophy into her head. And, of course, I am kicking myself for allowing my child to be subjected to public school kids who - if the playground banter is any indication - are far more knowledgeable in adult activities than some adults are.

Suddenly the Fiddler on the Roof refrain, "Sunrise, Sunset" hits me hard:

"Is this the little girl I carried? ... I don't remember growing older... when did [she]?

When did she get to be a beauty? When did [she] grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday, When [she was] small?"

WooHoo

I'm Making A Magazine!

This has absolutely nothing to do with my kids... except that it is a photography magazine... and the majority of the photos I take these days are of MY CHI :) So then, I guess it has everything to do with them.

Anyway... it'll be a few days yet before I get anything up and "printed" on the web, but the good folk at MAGCLOUD are making it possible for me to create and publish (in real, hard copy print) a magazine of my very own. It's vain, it's totally solipsist of me, and it's so darn appealing that I am dying to get home NOW and get to work on my inaugural issue.

There's hope for my journalism degrees after all.

Crawling!

He's been perfecting mobility for a few weeks now, and suddenly the military scootch turned into a knee tuck and rock. Then the rock included a few careful forward slides of the knees (and a subsequent belly break while relaxing his elbows after every slide set). And this week (somewhere between 35-36 weeks old) he's realized that he's strong enough to crawl on elbows and knees and that this effort moves him quickly to optimal locations - - locations where there is ample un-baby-proofed ookies he can slip into his mouth before mommy wrestles the whatever out of his hands and finger sweep anything that might have entered the wide open orifice before she got close.

Add to this newfound triumph of the mobile kind his penchant for pulling into a standing position and you have T-R-O-U-B-L-E. He's already sliding the feet as he steadies himself with hands placed gingerly on chairs, bags, dresser draws, and the like. Perhaps, like Chi, he'll walk before he hits 10 months old?

Today (5-8-09) also marked the retirement of the baby bather. Ya'd been fighting with me about sitting in the blue tub for awhile now - no doubt because he is too tall for the infant tub and doesn't want to recline at all. So, I used the temperature guage on our high tech tub, then kept the water running in the big tub at our desired baby safe temperature. Chi donned her swimsuit and sat nearby as our newly assigned baby-no-slip-catcher. And Ya discovered that bubbles are yucky... toys are fun to play with... and splashing is awesome!

F

... is for flower

I ♥ Faces Week 17

I ♥ Faces

Kids Category - Child's Face and a Hat for a prop

I L-O-V-E hats, especially the custom made dome covers we had created for us from Melissa (NuxieMade @ Etsy)! And since I L-O-V-E taking pictures even more, I had no shortage of images to choose from for this week's contest...

Here is Chi looking quite darling and grown up in my her favorite hat.