What??? My crib has been recalled????

So this week started out pretty calm, nothing much really happening. We broke down and found Noah a gently loved walker on Craigslist since he can't seem to be still long enough for us to get anything done (basic housecleaning, meal prep, eating...you know the basic stuff). As much as I hate to say it, and I know I will live to regret these words, but the child needs to become independently mobile. He has far too much energy to be stationary. Hopefully the Jeep Renegade walker we found will burn off some of that extra baby spaz in him! I was especially hesitant to get a walker given the strong safety recommendations against them, but honestly, we were starting to lose our minds. Thus far, Noah absolutely loves the thing and will happily spend at least 20 minutes in there, which is usually enough time to complete what ever task is at hand. It really is cute, there is a steering wheel that has buttons that play music, beep the horn, and start up the engine. He has even figured out how to turn the wheel to make more noise! As for mobility, he is still working on that part, he tends to stay stationary unless he accidentally rocks himself back and forth a bit. This is okay with me, at least he isn't running me over yet.


Over time, as we get to know Noah more, we are learning that the child is NOT a good napper. He has his good days, but those are far outnumbered by the days when you can spend half the day trying to get him down for a good mid-day snooze. Here is one of my more successful attempts to get him down for a nap. Interestingly, he spent the 30 minutes preceding these pictures babbling to himself and squirming all over the place. In the midst of all of this he managed to roll himself over and thus the stomach sleep (he literally just crashed where he laid his head down)! :)


Sadly, that will be the last picture you see of Noah in this crib...EVER! This week, the darn thing got recalled by the company because some obviously over rambunctious children (not a snoozing 6 month old) managed to break the slats on the sides of the crib causing minor injuries. Because of the 6 case of injuries, the company is recalling multiple styles of their cribs, totalling 320,000 to be precise. Go Jardine Enterprises! Now, I would never be one to keep a recalled crib, given the amount of time Noah spends in it unsupervised (i.e., while we are sleeping also), but I am also quite irate with the series of flaming hoops you have to jump through to get a new crib. First, you fill out an online form confirming you own one of said recalled cribs. They then send you a UPS envelope in which you are supposed to enclose ALL of the hardware for the crib, the dated manufacturer's label, and the mattress support beams...rendering the crib USELESS. Once they receive that package from you, they will send you a voucher for the maximum price paid for your crib model plus tax. Of course their entire point is to make these cribs of no further use so they do not have any further liability, but could we perhaps get a replacement place for the small baby to sleep before we render his bed useless??? Nope, not how this show is running. When I called the company to ask how long this whole process would take, the lady at Jardine said 2-4 weeks!!!! When I asked where she recommended my 6-month old baby sleep in the meantime, she actually said, we should have him sleep in the bed with us!! WHAT?!?!?!?! Do we ever wish to get a good night sleep again? Now, I have absolutely nothing against those parents who wish to co-sleep, however, Noah has a fragile enough sleeping routine that a month of sleeping in the bed with use would result in a consecutive month of sleepless nights for everyone while we transitioned him back to his new crib. I can't believe this is what the company is actually recommending parents to do!!! Thankfully we have vacation coming up soon, so we can go into denial for a while and Noah will get used to sleeping in the pack and play at night at the camp, so hopefully he won't mind too much continuing for a bit when we get back. I'll keep you updated on the process...thus far we are on day 1 (June 29) submitting the online form...stay tuned.

In other, less frustrating news, Noah is still cute, and we still love him dearly, especially when he acts like a ham for the camera. Here is another go at it, when you are Jeeping, you gotta have your shades!


I don't remember exactly what we were going out for...probably looking for a pair of shorts for me to wear on vacation, but I didn't feel like doing my hair, so on came the Red Sox hat. Noah had to have his on too, so we are a matched pair, right down to our squished down ears! :)


Speaking of the Red Sox, the wee man was outgrowing his Red Sox wind suit, so we found him a replacement outfit to wear when he is cheering on the home team. Its a romper this time, as it is summer and all. I know it has pin stripes on it, but believe us, there are Red Sox logos all over it...there is no love for the Yankee's in this house!

Happy Half Birthday Little Man!

So this week marks yet another milestone! Noah, as of today at 3:07am is 6 months old! Happy half birthday little dude! He is still happy and healthy and hamming it up just as much as ever. Although the week was fairly calm and was just a repeat of the usual routine, we had a very busy extended weekend so as to mark this special occasion and as an excuse to make beer-can chicken and eat cake!

First some pictures from this week. Daddy was being good and following the routine and put Noah down for a nap on Wednesday in his crib (no more swing napping for Noah)! Someone, however, forgot to inform Noah that during naptime, the baby is supposed to go to sleep. Apparently, Noah spent 1/2 an hour babbling and chatting with himself, rolling over and playing with his animal friends in the crib. Finally when Daddy went in to see what he was up to, this is what he found! Crazy baby. Eventually he did wear himself out "talking" to himself and did take a good nap, but he did it on his own schedule just to spite us!

Later in the week, we headed to Maine to visit family there and to get a break from the craziness of the city. Here is Noah, sort of sitting up/sort of falling over playing on Memere and Pepere B's living room floor. The Boppy pillow is supposed to help him sit up, but he is too busy wriggling all over the place for it to do much of anything but get in his way!

Here, we were showing Memere how Noah is trained to look up, stop what he is doing, and smile whenever the red light on the camera comes on. We literally have about 15 variations of this picture, all of which are suitable to be submitted as head shots to a modeling agency...he really is funny!

On Sunday Memere and Pepere B. and the 3 of us all went over to Pepere L. and Nana's for a cookout lunch. As usual, the food was absolutely amazing and there was plenty of it! We sampled all sort of wings and grilled kabobs, salads and fruit, and my favorite iced tea as well! No one left hungry that's for sure. While we were eating, Noah tried out a little Jeep Renegade walker Nana had around the house that Elijah (another grandson) also uses when he is visiting. Noah absolutely love the thing and was tooling all over the deck (well the 6x6 foot square of the deck we let him loose in! :)

Check him out with his hands on the wheel checking out behind him before he starts backing up. Driving safety is very important and we are starting at an early age!

Here is Noah (still tooling around in the Jeep) meeting Maggie, Pepere and Nana's newest addition to the family. She was only 8 weeks old this past weekend when we were there visiting. She is the sweetest little thing and was very patient, even while Noah grabbed her paw to try and give it a taste! Thankfully I managed to get the paw back before it ended up in Noah's mouth!!

Noah also said hello to Sakari, one of Nana's miniature horses. She is a sweet little thing and Noah seemed quite interested in this new type of furry creature!

Such a relaxing afternoon...I am so glad we got a chance to visit and all get together! What a cool way to start the half birthday celebrations. The party continued on Monday evening, on his official half-birthday. Monday night we had BBQ at our place and friends of our from my work came over to enjoy company, cake, and most importantly beer-can chicken...Daddy's speciality! We had lots of fun, and more excellent food, and cakes decorated to look like hamburgers (cause you can't have an official birthday cake on your half-birthday...not that Noah was eating cake anyway). Noah was very popular and an extremely happy baby (especially since he had taken 3 naps already that day)! It was great to have a chance to get together and celebrate us successfully surviving the first 6 months!

Update: On Wed. (6/25), Noah had his 6 month check-up at the pediatrician's. They said he is doing wonderfully, looks perfect, and is developing right on track! He got his third round of shots, which he took like a trooper (though not quietly)....thankfully at his next appointment at 9 months there are no shots! He is now 17 pounds, 8 oz. (which is the 50 percentile for boys his age and right where he usually is) and he is 27 inches long (75th percentile, also his norm), and he is in the 90th percentile for his head size (can't remember the actual number)...not sure if this means he is heading for another growth spurt and his head is ahead of the rest of him or is he is going to inherit Memere B's big noggin...time will tell! :)

Noah's 6 month pictures...hehe!

Today, while we were up in Maine for the weekend, we had Noah's 6 month pictures taken. We tried out a different place this time, Kiddie Kandids, and overall they did a pretty good job. I felt a little rushed, but I guess that is how it goes with those sorts of places. The funniest thing happened though while we were getting the pictures taken. We recently (as in the last week) discovered that Noah is a camera hog...he loves having his picture taken! He is also very well trained. On our digital camera, we have a red-eye reduction feature that shines a red light if you half press the button. So when we take a picture of Noah, we half press the button, therefore shining the red light on him and then talk to him until he makes a cute face or smiles and then quickly press the button the rest of the way to take the picture. He has obviously started associating the red light with smiling and being cute because now we hardly have to do anything besides shine the red light to get cute pictures. So while we were getting his professional pictures taken, I was sitting next to him and the photographer was making all kinds of noises and faces and shaking things and he was just looking at her with a concerned look on his face like she was utterly crazy...no smiles. After about 10 minutes of fruitless efforts, my mom mentioned that it was too bad we didn't have the red light. Brilliance! I carry our old digital camera (the one with a broken LCD screen) in my diaper bag and it too has the ever popular red light feature! Within 10 minutes of pulling out our camera with the red light and holding it near their camera we had a bunch of adorable pictures of the little man. He's a weirdo, but he is at least predictable! :)

Here are the end results...the first and last ones are my favorites! Enjoy :)

Happy Daddy's Day!

So we had a great Father's day weekend. What a nice change to weekends where we spend our free time cleaning the house and catching up on the boring household tasks. On Saturday afternoon we took the little man to the Beaver Brook Reservation where they have cute little walking paths and a spray pool. Although he is a bit tiny to be running around in the spray and the puddles, once the spray stopped, he did enjoy hanging out in the puddles with us for a bit. He didn't even mind when the bigger kids would run by and splash him. He really seems to love the water. Here he is showing Daddy how cute he is hanging in the puddles.


And another mom was nice enough to offer to take a picture of the 3 of us. We finally have another family picture to post!


Saturday night was bath night, and since we caught him in a good mood and far enough before bedtime, we figured we would take a chance to try on his wee man sized bathrobe! It is one of the cutest things ever! He was very happy with himself to say the least! :)


Sunday was Father's day and Memere and Pepere B. came down to visit and for a nice dinner. We were originally going to go to the Father's Day Walk in the Park at Fenway, which would have been great, but it was pouring rain for most of the morning and the walk ended at 2pm. We decided instead to check out the Stone Zoo down the road a bit, which we have been meaning to go to for a couple of years now. Fathers got in free for the day, so it was just me and Memere B. that paid for the visit. We figured we would go around until Noah decided he had had enough or until we finished visiting all of the animals. Since he had a good nap and a bottle before we left, he ended up lasting through the whole zoo and was a very very good baby! We figured it was a cooler day and so he traveled in the Baby Bjorn with daddy. Here are the boys hanging out together.


We saw lots of great animals, bald eagles, bears, leopards, snakes, wolves, monkeys and some flamingos. Here are the boys checking out the bright pink birdies!


We had a great time visiting, and although Noah didn't know exactly what was going on, he did seem interested in all of the new creatures. He also made lots of friends with the other babies visiting with their daddies...he seemed very interested in a little boy about his age and even attempted to grab his bib. Strangely, other babies his age are not something he sees frequently, but Nana Lou is supposed to be getting a 4 month old in August, so maybe they will end up great friends! After the zoo, we all came back and made a great steak dinner. Noah had some dinner too in his high chair for the first time and sat at the table quite nicely while we ate our dinner! This weekend, he started on some vegetables, I made homemade sweet potatoes and after a little bit of convincing he seemed to enjoy his sweet potatoes and oatmeal tonight and ate it up really well. What a nice ending to a stressful week!

Stupid cat

My god do we have a stupid cat on our hands. I know she's just an animal, and I know she doesn't have the powers of linear, logical higher-order thinking, but seriously...why do we have to pay (an dearly) for her extreme lack of survival skills???

This is the cat in question...I know you say...she looks like such a sweet and well-behaved little kitty. Do not be fooled, what cuteness she has in excess she lacks tenfold in intelligence. She licks plastic bags...she eats twist ties...she trips people on a daily basis trying to rub them to death...she sleeps under the covers and swats you with her paw if you impinge upon her personal sleeping space in your own bed...she's like the Velcro kitty that never goes away. That being said, she is sweet at times and has the softest fur on the planet and I would never want anything to happen to her.


Currently though, I am feeling slightly homicidal towards this furry creature. She has a price on her head now and has cost us dearly. Last night just as I was finishing up a sewing project, the little man started squawking from his quilt on the other side of the living room as it was very close to bed time. I placed the needle and thread carefully in the middle of the coffee table, which theoretically should have been out of her way...mind you with the plans of permanently putting away the needle as soon as I rescued Noah. I was away from the needle and thread for a total of about 30 seconds, which obviously was just long enough for little miss Mia to suck it down like a piece of spaghetti! Looking at her you'd swear nothing had ever happened, she went to the kitchen for a snack, groomed herself, and laid down for a rest. However, the needle was definitely gone along with the thread. So as I got Noah ready for bed, Tim brought the brain child to the emergency pet hospital downtown. If you have any experience with these places, you know that you are not walking out of there with a $50 bill, especially when your furry village idiot has swallowed a sewing needle. Suffice it to say, the needle went down the throat blunt end first being pulled by the 18 inches of thread and ended in her stomach, which thankfully at the time was full of food to cushion it (when isn't it full of food is the real question?). After being sedated, x-rayed to confirm the needle's location, and anesthetized, Mia had an endoscopy done to retrieve the needle and prevent further damage (cause its certainly not coming out the other end without problem). She is back from a night at the hospital completely fine, unscathed, and no worse for the wear (and sadly I am sure she hasn't learned a thing). As you can expect though, our bank account has not gone unscathed, a $1500 bill has taught us not only a really valuable lesson about what you leave around the house and that we need to baby-proof NOW, but also that we can live off of a much tighter budget than we ever thought possible! Thanks Mia, we really appreciate it!

Dear lord its HOT!

My goodness we had a hot stretch in the Boston area this week. It was over 90 degrees for 4 days straight!!! Given the fact that the poor wee man was born in the winter, he was not prepared to be quite that hot. Thankfully, we had bought a couple of new air conditioners a bit before the heat wave and so we had them in the bedroom and then decided to put up the old ones in the living room to help cool off at least a portion of the rest of the house on the unbearable days. We also set up our kiddie pool in the backyard, which is a really nice way to cool off and still get some fresh air. Here is the little dude in his swimming duds right before we headed in for a little dip. He is adorable and loves the water, so once we get him in a bit warmer water, he should have a blast!



Still in the middle of the heatwave, Noah hung out with daddy in his NC State romper. He decided to try out his bib as a cape instead of the traditional method. Not sure how effective it is this way, but it certainly is funny.


Noah has gotten much better at eating solid foods over the last couple of weeks. He has moved now beyond just rice cereal into oatmeal too. I think he is a much bigger fan of the oatmeal too, it smells better so I guess I don't blame him. By the way, in this picture we were trying to get one of him being cranky and upset since we have heard from certain family members that he seems like the most contented baby in the world. Let me assure you, that while he is adorable and in general a very well-behaved baby, he has some less than ideal moments (this was one of them). We have, however, discovered that he is an enormous ham and he loves the camera, so even when he is upset and cranky if the camera comes out, he stops screaming and crying and starts striking a pose! Good to know for the future cranky moments.


Mommy finally fixed my shades so they fit on my head now. Too bad she put them on so low that she squished my ears!


Check me out, I am getting so good at being on my tummy. I was hanging out on the couch here with Daddy waiting for Mommy to come home from work!