Egg Salad: NOT a hit!

So, I made some lovely egg salad today and mashed some up extra small for Oliver, and MAN did he not like it! Spit it out instantly, started crying... like I was trying to poison him!! Ah well, maybe next time!

His new favorite thing is climbing up onto/into everything - chairs, coffee tables, and especially his ATW ("All-terrain wagon!). Not just climbing onto, but standing up on all these things. And screaming with happiness. And climbing back out/off, and sometimes falling. But he's pretty much a pro now at getting in and out of the ATW. Here's a picture!

We're off to run errands now, although I have to make something for Oliver's lunch first, since the egg salad failed.

Our English Lad

So, no doubt about it, Oliver's a little Englishman -- he apparently LOVES crumpets!!! When I've given him a piece of toast recently, at least half of it ends up on the floor, in small or large chunks. But this morning I gave him half my buttered crumpet, and all that was left at the end were tiny crumpet crumbs on the floor - he just loved it! Definitely making good choices, our boy.

Dad's off to Colombia today, back on Friday... I'm trying to plan lots of things to keep us occupied (and me not too lonely). Today our new friend, Beth, is coming over, with her 20-month-old son, Georgie. So that'll be nice!

We got an unexpected few inches of snow overnight, maybe just two inches, light and fluffy and covering all the trees, very pretty to wake up to. I've filled up the bird feeders and they're having a good time out there, along with our resident squirrel. Saw a big fat cardinal out there this morning, so pretty against the snow!

Ready for everything!

I'm trying to be better about posting photos now -- here's one taken just a couple of weeks ago, when Oliver first wore his new snowsuit when we had to run errands on a very cold day. He didn't seem to mind it too much! (Note our new wall color in the background!!)

Our big boy

Hello and sorry for the delay in writing a new post! I started one last week but got interrupted, then never finished... it was about how Oliver was seeing in the new year with a reaaaally bad cold! But now that's mostly behind him - he still has a bit of a cough, bit of a runny nose, but is mostly himself again.

Trying to think of what he's been up to lately - walking up a storm, that's for sure. It's been so warm here for two days that we've been up to Lake Mohawk both days, walking on the boardwalk then playing in the playground there. He toddles around all over, climbs up on things that are made for bigger kids, keeps me running after him, and he loves the slides! He's a very brave boy, nothing stops him.

He's made big strides in his bedtime routine in the last week - Andy and I have been so pleasantly surprised! I used to have to coax him to sleep and then move him to his crib - otherwise, he'd stand up and scream and cry for ages in his crib. We didn't try it too often, because once or twice he cried so hard he threw up, but it was getting crazy because coaxing him to sleep sometimes took a LONG time. So anyway, one day this week I could tell he was really tired but just wasn't falling asleep, so after about 40 minutes I said, "that's enough!" and brought him to his crib. As usual, he started crying right away, and I closed the door and went downstairs to greet Andy, just home from a late night at work. Literally two minutes later, the crying stopped! In a few more minutes, we went up to check on him, and he was ASLEEP! Just couldn't believe it. And best of all, he's repeated this each night since!! Just a couple minutes of half-hearted crying, then boom, asleep. Yay! He still wakes up halfway through the night and won't settle down unless we take him into bed with us (and dad has to go to the spare room on weeknights for those last few hours) - but I'm sure that will change soon, too. Our big boy.

He's still loving his soups -- we have one more portion of Grandma Carole's celery soup left, and his other recent favorites are chicken noodle (pureed together), split pea with ham (first Uncle Steven's, then a portion from Davy's down the road), butternut squash, and a nice tomato with beef we got at Krogh's in Lake Mohawk. I was thinking how cool it is, and how unusual, that we can bring our 14-month-old to just about any restaurant and know we can find him something to eat on the menu - generally soup - and he'll be happy. How good's that?! A very good boy indeed.

A very big day!!

Well, I think it's safe to say that December 12th is the day Oliver started walking!!! He had done a few steps in a row when Steve and Al were here, but it didn't keep his interest for long. Then when we visited Alison Snow and her 2 boys on the 11th, he walked about 6 steps in a row, several times. Then yesterday, we went to this big children's play place, where there was a huge gym mat and lots of things to play with and a big room filled with balls to roll around in. I think Oliver got brave because he knew if he fell down it wouldn't hurt, and he just started taking off! First it was from one thing to another, maybe 6 steps or so, and by the end of the 2.5 hours, he was walking long stretches, maybe 20 steps in a row!

When we got home, he walked from one end of our kitchen counters to the other, and from our bathroom halfway into the bedroom. This morning he walked in a circle, very advanced!! He's very, very cute walking, as you can imagine. Poor dad is in Germany right now, he'll be back tomorrow - but it's ok because he really did see Oliver's first steps, he just hasn't seen the more advanced techniques yet. He'll be very impressed!

Our little lamb

So, Oliver is turning into a sheep, I think - he had a very sheep-like poo this morning! Aren't you glad to know that??! But the big news today is his marathon night of sleep... he didn't have an afternoon nap yesterday, and seemed pretty tired when we put him to bed. He fell asleep at 7:30, then woke up to join us in bed around 2:30am, and slept till 8am! 12.5 hours of sleep! He actually woke up around 6:30, but we played around in bed and he decided to fall asleep again. Nice!

I've just been on the Sparta Public Library website, where they have a nice storytime program for babies and kids, but there's a waitlist for the baby group, and I have to cross my fingers that I'll be able to register fast enough for the winter session. Registration is on January 7th starting at 8:30am... man, it's cut-throat around here!

Anyway, time to heat up some of Uncle Steven's pea and ham soup for Oliver's lunch. Yum! PS, just adding this a half hour later or so -- I scooped a lot of soup out for O, thinking we had extra and he'd never eat that much, but he's just gobbled it all up!

Say "bye-bye"

Man, we had to say good bye to Steve and Alison today, after a one week visit, and it was really hard! They had so much fun with O, but more importantly, he had so much fun with them! Constant playmates, none of this "mom doing a million things while I'm close by" stuff, just lots and lots of attention and fun. We had such a great week, and Oliver is even closer to walking now - he has made about three steps in a row now.

I couldn't make it halfway through "The Wheels on the Bus" song without crying after we dropped them off at the train station today, though we did try some of the English-style verses, like "the mothers on the bus say natter natter natter" - pronouncing the "t"s and all! I forget what the mothers say in the American version, but it isn't natter... but we'll say that when we sing it. Then I smiled when Oliver kept pressing "three, three three" on his toy phone, which he always did when Steve was with him.

Anyway, we'll look forward to our next visit, which can't come soon enough... and now it's 3:19pm, I'm taking O upstairs for a nap, and Steve and Al should be just setting off on their flight... safe journey!