Scenes from Christmas Day

Playing with his new wooden truck

Eating some jingle bells

Checking out his new crawling tunnel

Besides the new toys and all the activity, Andrew enjoyed the simple things, like high ceilings...

...and stairs. He caught on to stair climbing immediately, and even managed to get down a few successfully.

Lastly, Andrew got a preview of birthday cake, with a tasty snowman cake from Grammy.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Watch out, Christmas trees

Here we see Andrew trying to helpfully decorate the tree for us. At least I assume that's what he's doing. Because why would he want to pull the tree down on his head?

I think my mom has the right idea, as pictured below in her preparation for Andrew's Christmas visit.

Second Meeting With Santa Didn't Go Well

Santa stopped by daycare this week and joined Andrew for breakfast. It was not a welcome visit, as you can see -- moments after this picture was taken, Andrew apparently was inconsolable for several minutes. But as his daycare teacher reported, "eventually he pulled himself together and was able to finish his waffles." Not a lot will keep Andrew from his waffles. Even Santa.

Santa!! (And Ebenezer Scrooge)

We braved the crowds and took Andrew to visit Santa this weekend. The adventure/line began in the ladies' underwear department of Macy's - much to the amusement of the trio of 9 year old boys behind us.

On the way to Santa, we wended our way through an extensive animatronic display of "A Christmas Carol." Very neat! Andrew was actually rather captivated by it (despite his expression below).

In fact, he attempted to join Tiny Tim for dinner.

When we made it to Santa, Andrew was timid but no tears.

Though not exactly all smiles. It was a fun time, despite the lines!

11 Months Old

For previous photos in the Highland Cow time lapse series, click here

At 11 months Andrew is relishing his newfound mobility. His attention span has been downgraded from “housefly” to “gnat” -- he crawls from one activity to the next every few minutes. Unsurprisingly, most of the pictures I attempted to take for this month's time lapse series looked like this:


He bursts into tears when you remove him from whatever he was doing, but is easily distracted within moments. As his daycare teacher spun it, “Andrew used to be so placid, but now he really expresses his opinions.”

Andrew pulls up on everything, loves being “chased” as he crawls, and each day helpfully demonstrates for us flaws in our child proofing. He will wave bye bye when prompted about a third of the time. He continues to add tricks and noises to his repertoire – lately he loves making hissing “S” sounds and he cracks us up by responding to the word “waffles” (his favorite food) with “wawawawawa.” His first word may not be “mommy” or “daddy,” but “waffles.” Terrific.

He's having a ball and growing up so quick!

Maestro

No longer content to just bop along with the music, Andrew has begun to act as conductor, waving his hands about to direct the music. He also seems to be getting a vague idea that by pushing the buttons on the cube he can stop and start one of the orchestra sections. ;)

Andrew the...scholar?

Now that Andrew is crawling, the entire apartment has become his playground. At least, all the parts that we don't cut him off from before he can get there. We spent much of this weekend baby-proofing the apartment--at least as much of it as can be done. This bookshelf has been safely secured to the wall to prevent him from tipping it over. Of course, short of gluing all the books to the shelves I'm not sure how we're going to prevent future episodes of this:


Andrew is the perfect embodiment of entropy. If a basket is full of toys, he takes them out. If a bucket is full of blocks, he dumps them out. If a shelf is full of books....

One of these years we're going to have to teach him about putting stuff away. I don't look forward to trying to get him to clean up his room.

Get a move on!

I know it's been too long since the last blog post. To Andrew's loyal fans, we apologize. You can blame Greg and Carrie's busy schedule over the past couple of weeks.

Some major developments on Andrew's part in the past week, which you can see demonstrated in his latest video. Sorry it's a bit of a long one, but I thought it merited some celebration.



Since learning to crawl, Andrew has definitely been happier with his lot. I always knew he would be--he's loved standing since he was a month old; loves to cruise around while holding onto his play table, the couch, or our hands; and of course he's always loved swings or getting waved around or tossed in the air by us. He still sometimes whines as he's getting going (almost like he forgot he can move at first), but now that he can get over to the next item that he wants to investigate (i.e. grab and stick in his mouth), he is quite pleased with himself.

Of course now this means that Carrie and I are going to be spending a bit of time this weekend baby-proofing the apartment. Our fall-back position is to just put him in a cage. I mean a gated baby play area. ;)

10 months!

And a few days, of course because I can never seem to get to taking the photo on the correct day anymore. For comparison to prior photos here.

At 10 months, Andrew seems to be chomping at the bit to walk. He loves cruising around while holding on to our hands, and is happiest when he is standing at his play table or our coffee table grabbing at the TV remote or similar items inappropriate for babies.

His favorite food is waffles, which he now gets to eat for breakfast most mornings. He does a pretty good job grabbing most foods we put on his tray these days--eggs, peas, tofu, cantaloupe, avocado--although not all these foods will stay in his mouth once they get there. He is a big fan of spitting out things he doesn't like....

He is actually making overtures towards crawling, despite my predictions that he never would. He is definitely a monkey, and refuses to sit still when he's on our lap. He'll do his best to clamber all over the place, and would happily dive off the couch if he were given the chance. He's going to be quite a handful once he's mobile!

Splish splash

I get soaked, and Andrew gets his last bath in the sink!

Brbrbrbrbrbr

Happy Halloween!!

Andrew's lobster costume is--Greg's brothers will not be surprised to learn--a Simpsons reference. After months of having our eyes, ears, lips, etc clawed at, Andrew earned the nickname Pinchy. "Yarr, someone's been coddling him." So when time came to choose a costume for Halloween, a lobster seemed quite appropriate. "Pinchy would have wanted it that way." Undignified maybe, but also cute as hell.

Nonetheless, he doesn't seem too upset about his lot.

On Friday at daycare (a.k.a. "a small academy for lobsters"), Andrew was part of a parade to entertain the elderly nuns in the adjacent nursing home. By all accounts, he was well received. Luckily not a single nun was pinched!

Halloween prep

We took Andrew on a visit to a farm today to pick out a pumpkin, and go on a hay ride.

As you can see, he was quite excited by the hay. I'm still picking hay off of my clothes.

Carrie picked out her favorite little pumpkin with plans to carve her first Jack-O'-lantern. Apparently she'd designed plenty as a kid, but never did her own carving.

Andrew quite enjoyed the hay ride.

The sheep on the farm had apparently gotten into the pumpkin patch!

Carrie guts her pumpkin, and feeds the innards to Andrew. (Not really, he's just eating some orange squash....)

Not a bad showing for her first try. Stay tuned tomorrow for Andrew's ridiculous/ridiculously cute Halloween costume.

Yummy eggs.

Family photo - 9 and a half months

Because it's been a little while since the last one.

Junior Firefighter

Firemen came to visit Andrew's daycare yesterday to show the kids the truck. Everyone got a fire hat.

Andrew gets a kick out of his hat, but pulls it off immediately. He then puts it to better use:

Riding the Rails

For some reason, I love singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" to Andrew. It's one of my go-to songs. After our ride on the Leheigh Gorge Scenic Railway in Jim Thorpe, PA last weekend, I am sure Andrew will have a whole new level of understanding and appreciation for the song.

The train ride was fun -- lots of pretty fall foliage in the gorge. Jim Thorpe was cute too. (The town, not the athlete it was named for.)

Does his head look larger than 55.85% of other 9 month olds?

Andrew went to the pediatrician yesterday and emerged with the following stats: he is 29.5 inches long (86th percentile), which means he has 2.5 inches to go before he's too long for his beloved jumperoo. He is 19 lbs, 14 oz (39th percentile), or 5 lbs 2 oz away from being too heavy for his parents' beloved lamb swing. Do I read my owner's manuals or what?

Actually, we haven't let him in the lamb swing for awhile despite its magical nap-inducing qualities, as lately Andrew tries to climb out. But when we arrived home late afternoon from the pediatrician's yesterday and Andrew refused to nap, I tried it again under supervision. No go. Andrew practiced his new favorite trick by making spitty raspberry noises at the lambs suspended overhead.

Goodbye lamb swing. You did your job well for 9 months.

9 Months!

Earlier photos on view here.

Andrew turned 9 months this weekend -- I can't believe it! He is starting to look more and more like a toddler, especially with his 6 teeth. He enjoys standing more than ever and can toddle a few steps while holding our hands. That's the extent of his mobility, however, much to his frustration. He grabs and dives for everything in sight, so once he does start moving independently I think we're in trouble.

He loves taking his socks off, as you see here. Animal noises read from Sandra Boynton books make him giggle. He loves to bend over backward and look at things upside-down. He enjoys playing with his little plastic blocks and his Fisher Price stackable rings. He will also bop his head and making other dancing motions when we play him music.

Andrew prefers to feed himself finger food more than being spoon fed baby food lately, so I just bought one of those mesh food bag thingies, which always struck me as so gross. But I am tired of having carrots spit at me. At lunch today I actually wore an apron.

Lastly, at 9 months his hair still shows no sign of laying flat.

How do you like them...

...Apples! It being fall, we are obliged to go apple picking.

I actually quite enjoy apple picking (and I love me some cider donuts) but I don't particularly care for apples. In our household, we take our apples and turn them into:

A DELICIOUS cake baked by Greg. We also made Andrew some applesauce.

There were also pumpkins, so we took this obligatory Baby on a Stack of Pumpkins photo.

We managed to escape the pumpkin pile without Andrew tearing the stem off any pumpkins.

Carousel Ride

Andrew took a ride on the Central Park Carousel during a recent visit to NYC. He seemed to enjoy it and wasn't scared...which is something, considering the carousel ride basically consists of spinning around in the dark on a somewhat angry looking horse with carnival music blaring.

Cruel but Cute

Yes, we know we shouldn't assault Andrew's dignity by putting Panera bags on his head. But it's a pretty funny photo.

Cape May album

In conclusion, our trip had many highlights including a trip to the zoo:
A trip to the Cape May Winery:
And subjecting Andrew to a miserable bike ride with this enormous helmet:
It was a great trip! Full album on view here.

Cape May cont'd

More pics of Cape May coming soon. Here are a couple of my favorites, though.

Vacationing in Cape May

Carrie and I were thinking about going on vacation, but instead we decided to bring Andrew with us. ;) As Genevieve says: it's not a vacation, it's a change of scenery.

Nonetheless Andrew seems tickled pink with his change of scenery--no big surprise since he seems to get bored hanging around our apartment on the weekends.

Yesterday Andrew got briefly introduced to the beach. He was quite thrilled to watch the waves rolling in. Didn't try dipping his feet in the chilly water, because I'm pretty sure that would have been a good way to ruin a nice afternoon.

He did quite enjoy wiggling his toes in the sand.




This morning it's been raining, but he's gotten to enjoy lounging on the big bed, and trying to devour a jelly packet while Carrie and I had pancakes for breakfast. Yum!