New sounds

As Johnny gets closer and closer to talking age, he makes all kinds of fun new sounds. I think this one is John's and my favorite thus far.



Freaking adorable, yes?

Pumpkin carving!

Last weekend John, Johnny and I went to a friend's house for their annual pumpkin carving party and it was a great time! John and I met Nick and Leslie in our childbirth class last year. Johnny and their son, Jacob, are only a month apart and similar in size, which is nice.

We brought our pumpkins, my cookie bouquet and some spinach artichoke dip and had some nice messy fun. Some little girls at the party chose the design I was going to do for my pumpkin and, to my misfortune, they chose a relatively difficult werewolf design. Needless to say, I had to use all of my artistic skill to pull THAT one off. While I carved, Johnny played with the other babies that came to the party, which was ADORABLE. He and Jacob had a great time pushing each other over, pulling the other's hair and poking each other in the face. Neither seemed to mind all that much.

Watching everyone in the backyard

John choosing a pattern to carve

Johnny and Jacob playing together

Wrestling

The pumpkin on the left is John's, the other one is mine.

Me and Leslie with our boys!

NBR: My newest hobby

 I took a cookie decorating class a month ago and have been practicing my decorating skills all month so that I could make a cookie bouquet for some friends of ours who hosted a pumpkin carving party (more on that tomorrow). So this is what I made:

Not bad, huh?

Big boy car seat

We've upgraded Johnny from his infant car seat to a big boy "convertible" car seat that is rear-facing for now and then we'll switch it to forward-facing at his first birthday... I think. Though after a little research, the recommendation is to keep toddlers rear-facing until they reach the weight limit on the car seat, which for ours is 40 pounds... Johnny could be 3 years old by that point. Personally, I think that's overkill... but whatever.

Lookin' cool in his G ride...

It has an ultra-long strap that he can chew on while driving around.

Ugh!

Johnny's new pose when he gets tired of something or just tired in general:

Cute, right?

Making messes

One of Johnny's new favorite things to do is open any cabinet or drawer and pull everything out of it. Endless hours of fun! My favorite thus far: Johnny managed to find a wrapped tampon in my bathroom cabinet while I was brushing my teeth. When I looked down at him, he had a little string sticking out of his mouth... ew!!! Everything else is fairly innocuous though, like the stuff he finds in the kitchen.

What?

A big mess means a happy Johnny.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

 Weather in San Diego lately has been dismal. Sunny San Diego. What a complete misnomer. Our summer was about four days long at the end of September and now our fall has been taken over completely by rainstorms. And the worst part? No El Nino or La Nina to blame.... oh, scratch that. Apparently El Nino occurred in January and now we're in the midst of La Nina. Seems I need to watch the Weather Channel more like my Uncle Charlie. He would be so ashamed of me.

Anyway, I digress. Back on topic: Our weather has sucked majorly. So, Johnny and I have been stuck inside. No morning walks, no afternoon park trips, no being outside in the swing. Needless to say, Johnny and I have a little touch of cabin fever. It's a glorious day when I have to go to the grocery store... that's how bad things are. I can only hope the sun shines again sometime soon. *sigh*

Watching the rain

Johnny's little residual hand print.

Hayseed Dixie

Johnny has another tooth! This time, it's not so flattering though.

See, last time, when his bottom tooth grew in, the one next to it grew in at the same time. This time? No dice. He's got one huge honkin' tooth on the top with no sign of its buddy on the left growing in. To make matters worse, the one on the OTHER side (the right side) is starting to come through. Have I mentioned that I have issues with symmetry?  Oh well. I guess he'll still be cute even though he looks like he should be playing the spoons in a bluegrass band.

San Diego Zoo's Safari Park

Sorry about the little hiatus from blog posts this week. Johnny's naps have been.... not quite nonexistent, but quite insignificant. Thus, I have had little time to do any blogging. Apologies.

Last week, my friend Renea and I took Johnny to the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. It used to be the Wild Animal Park, but apparently they have changed it according to their website. All of the signage is the same, though. Whatever.

It was a good day for viewing animals and doing a lot of walking because it was overcast, but not rainy, and cool, but not cold. Perfect! We saw elephants (lots of babies, too!), giraffes, lions, lemurs, flamingos, rhinoceroses... the list could go on and on. One Safari Park patron commented that Johnny looks like, "a young Paul Newman," which I think is a compliment, but seeing as I have no idea what a young Paul Newman looks like, I can't say if that's good or not. (Ah, Google Images says yes, that's a good thing.)

Anyway. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Fascinated by the elephants

Watching the gorillas

DUCKS!

 

In a stork's egg. Perhaps this will be my answer when he asks where babies come from...

He seemed to know that he was going to look dumb because he kept pushing himself away from the ears.

NBR: The Flowbee Fiasco

So remember when Johnny got his hair cut? And I mentioned that John wanted us to cut it ourselves?

Well, John's clippers broke, unfortunately, but John thought that cutting Johnny's hair with a Flowbee would be easy (win!). Plus, he could use it on his own hair and not leave clippings all over the bathroom counter (double win!). So he ordered a Flowbee.

Of course, the second it arrived, we had to pull it out of the box and try it out. Do you remember the "Suck 'N Cut" from Wayne's World? Yeah, that's what it is. It consists of clippers that are connected to a hose which is then plugged into a vacuum cleaner. The idea is that the vacuum sucks the hair up and the clippers cut it. There are guards that attach to the clippers so you can adjust the length of hair that is sucked up and clipped.

When we pulled it out Johnny was definitely fascinated by the hoses.

John, on the other hand, was ready for the cutting action of the Flowbee to commence!

And here's what we ended up with:

So... he purchased a cheap pair of clippers. And is back to normal... a little short, but  normal.

Needless to say, the Flowbee will be up for sale on Craigslist soon.

Eating on the move

 I try to take Johnny on a walk every morning, though lately that's been a little difficult since the mornings have been wet. The best thing about Johnny being able to feed himself is that I can take food wherever we go and I don't have to worry about giving it to him, he can do it himself! Lately, we've been finishing his breakfast on the walk (he takes forever to finish his multigrain flax waffle... it sounds awful, but it's delicious, I promise) and it really helps keep him from getting fussy halfway through the walk. Yay for being a big boy!

First haircut!!

This past Sunday, Johnny got his hair cut for the first time! I wasn't sure where to take him and John was advocating that we just do it ourselves... which I wasn't into, so I asked some other moms where they've taken their kids. The answer was a place not far from us called Bambinos Salon for Kids.

It was great! A little overpriced, sure, but hey, what do you expect for a place that caters to bratty kids?

I was really worried that Johnny would be pretty difficult to deal with, especially considering he didn't go down for his nap before the appointment. However, he did really well. Granted, he didn't enjoy the whole experience (as you can tell from his face in the majority of the pictures below). His stylist Chris was very quick and did a nice job.

You can tell he's tired, poor baby. But doesn't he look older?!

Check out the awesome certificate we got, complete with some of Johnny's hair! Aww....

10 Months!

I'm 10 months old today!

Quite a bit has happened in the last month! I can crawl with my stomach off the floor and I can move pretty quickly now, too. I learned how to open drawers and cabinets and enjoy showing off these skills all the time. I have even figured out that I can open a bottom cabinet and then use the door to stand myself up so that I can almost reach the stuff on the countertop. One day soon I'll be standing by myself and I will pull everything down. In the meantime, I go crazy for things that I can reach that I'm not supposed to have... like cords! Electrical cords are probably the best things to chew on and I take them where I can get them since Mommy has done a pretty good job of removing the easy-to-get ones... she's such a killjoy.