Learning to maneuver

I have to say that one of the greatest presents Johnny has gotten has been his walker, from Grandma and Grandpa Durso (thanks!!). He could spend HOURS in this thing! I try not to let him stay in it for too long for fear he'll just give up on learning to move by himself (hey, I'm a new parent, I'm allowed to worry). However, he's spent enough time in it to figure out how to steer the thing and maneuver it rather adeptly. Whenever I'm making dinner, he's in the walker, following me around the kitchen. We play hide and seek, which he loves since I just hide around the corner so he can come around and "find" me. He gets excited every time.

Click here to watch on YouTube.

SD County Fair

The weekend of the 4th of July, my mom, Johnny and I went to the fair. My Aunt Teri got free tickets and passed them on to us, much to our delight! So, we got there early in the morning (well, 10am, not really early) and spent the day checking out the livestock, plant displays, fried food, the shops and, my favorite, the camel milking demonstration. Yes, they milk camels. It's awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I make sure to catch it every year. As you can see, Johnny enjoyed much of the day from his stroller, asleep. When he was awake, though, he did have a good time with all of the people around checking him out.

Just a little fun

Have a great weekend everyone!


Click here to view on YouTube.

Sleeping through the night?

A couple of weeks ago, I had a revelation. When I went in to Johnny's room at 10:30pm, after he woke up for the first time (this is relatively normal) I noticed he was burying his face in the mattress and throwing his legs to the side. Now, he's done this before, and I've just chalked it up to him trying to settle himself. Well, this time, I tried putting him on his tummy and Wham! He was out. He stayed out until 7am the next morning. SEVEN O'CLOCK! It was glorious. It got even better when the next night, instead of putting him on his back as per usual, I put him on his tummy. Wham! Asleep. All the way up to 6:30 the next morning. He has NEVER done that before. Usually when I say he's "sleeping through the night" it means that he will go down at 8pm and wake up around 4am to eat. Well, this time, I had two REAL nights of sleep. Absolutely amazing.

And that was it. Every night since he as awakened at least twice during the night (every 2.5 to 3 hours on a bad night) whether he is on his back or his tummy. *le sigh* I just don't get it. Perhaps one day, preferably before he goes to college, he will reliably go to sleep and stay asleep until 6:30am. One day.

This is typical naptime for Johnny. Asleep in the swing with the vacuum noise going. The ball is new though... I couldn't get it from him without waking him so he just slept with it in his hand.

Solid food update

Last time I checked in about Johnny's eating, he was only having rice cereal with enough breastmilk to make it super runny... like breastmilk. Well, we have since moved on to bigger and more exciting things. Here are the things we have tried:
baby oatmeal
avocado
banana
sweet potato
mango

He likes everything except for avocado. He'll eat the avocado, but he's definitely not a big fan of it. Hence the face below:

Yeah, not real wild about the avocado. Banana, however, he could eat that all day long!

Next we'll be trying asparagus, then probably egg yolks. Yay! Trying new foods is so much fun!

First airplane trip!

This past weekend John, Johnny and I took off to Denver for a wedding. Since Denver is a bit of a drive from San Diego, we decided to fly out, which is only two hours of air time. Johnny was a champ on the airplane; he wasn't bothered by the change in altitude and even managed to nap during take off. However, he did get a little fussy about 1.5 hours in due to boredom. I mean, who wouldn't get bored just staring at your parents' faces for two hours? Geez.

After landing, we got our rental car (equipped with car seat) and headed to our hotel in downtown Denver. The hotel was pretty great; they had complimentary cookies and milk from 8pm - 10pm, a crib for us to use, and an hot breakfast buffet each morning. Very nice digs.

The next day we went into Boulder to walk down memory lane and see a few friends. We got to see a friend of mine from high school, Priscilla, and we also met up with John's friend Josh and his girlfriend Jackie before we went to the old KA house (which is  now owned by Sigma Phi Epsilon). We also went to the sorority house John used to be a hasher for, Pearl Street Mall, Old Chicago (where he was employed as a bouncer) and Salvaggios, his favorite sandwich shop. It was a lot of fun checking out all of the places he tells stories about constantly.

That night (Friday), my dad and stepmom came into Denver from Albuquerque so they could watch Johnny for us the next night (Saturday). So on Saturday, we spent the day walking around Denver, checking out the 16th Street Mall until it was time to hand Johnny over to Dad and Gayle for the night. The wedding was a blast and Johnny actually behaved for his babysitters... or so they said. :)

We flew home the next day, Sunday. It was quite a trip; three full nights away from home with a 7-month-old... but I think we did well. I even managed not to over pack too much! Though I think the 20 extra diapers might be considered overpacking... but hey, you never know!

Lion Photo Shoot

Grammy and Grandpa Mitchell got Johnny this adorable, and rather large, stuffed lion for his baptism. Since he looked so cute with it I just had to take lots of pictures. Enjoy!

New Remote Control

Johnny is still in love with remote controls. The VCR remote has definitely not lost it's luster in the last couple of weeks. However, Grandma Durso found a nice, safe child's remote for Johnny to play with since it's probably not the best idea to set a precedent of him playing with "adult" objects. The remote Grandma got for Johnny is ADORABLE and it makes lots of cute noises that aren't too loud or obnoxious. Yay!

Can you see the eyes on it? They blink when you press a button. So cute, right?

Yeah, I think he likes it.

Rolling around

Remember when I tried to get Johnny rolling on video but all he did was roll from his back to his side and back again? Well, I finally got him rolling from back to tummy on video... I had to sneak up on him though, which is why the angle is all weird and he's in my bathroom. If he sees the camera, he stops what he is doing, which is why I have two minutes of footage (not included in the video below) of him staring at the camera while I wait for him to roll again. He's such a ham.

Click here to watch video on YouTube.

He's a rolling master!

On the move...

The other day I was preparing brownies to take over to a friend's house for dinner. Usually when I have a quick kitchen task to complete and Johnny refuses to sit in his high chair, I will just sit him in the middle of the living room surrounded by toys for a few minutes. On this particular day, I did just that. I sat him in the middle of his blanket with some toys and went to the kitchen to chop chocolate. Five minutes later, I returned to the living room to find that Johnny was no longer in the middle of blanket, he was ten feet away from where I had left him! Ack! He's moving! Here is video footage of how he manages to get around when I'm not looking.

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Blog Maintenance

Okay, Blogger has become much more awesome as of late. Do you see all of the new modifications? Yeah, thank you Blogger people for understanding my strife at the limitations of your program. Now, the blog is wide enough to view the videos I post (I know that was getting annoying) and I can customize the layout of my blog as much as I want. YAY!

In other news, I'm only human, so of course I wonder who is reading this darn blog. Please vote in the poll on the right, if you don't mind. :)

Baptism

On June 27th, John, Johnny and I were all baptized together at La Jolla Presbyterian Church by the pastor who married John and me. It was a very nice ceremony and the whole congregation was taken with Johnny because he's cute and he behaved well even when water got poured on his head. The pictures below were taken by my mother-in-law, Gail, and my sister-in-law, Leslie. They are quite the photographers, no?

The Beach

Johnny went to the beach for the first time about a week ago with myself and my friend Renea. We hit La Jolla Shores with a picnic, a few blankets, an umbrella, a bunch of toys and lots of sunscreen. Basically, Renea and I got a tan and had excellent conversation while Johnny hung out under the umbrella happy to play with his toys (and the remote control, of course). I did put his feet in the ocean, but he wasn't all that enthusiastic about it since the water was pretty cold.

Except for a little cloud cover at the end of the day, it was a pretty fun experience. Yay for the beach!

Remote Love Affair

As you might imagine, Johnny has quite a few toys; toys of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Of course, he has his favorites, Sophie being one of them. However, of all of these toys, he likes remote controls the best. Not a play remote control, but real remote controls. So we let him play with the VCR remote because who uses VCRs these days? :)

We used lots of different remotes for this photo shoot, obviously, but we removed the batteries from the VCR one so he can play with that one most often. Every time you hand him a remote, he gets this really excited look on his face:

Look at that smirk. He loves these things.