Sundays With Oliver - Week Thirty-Three

So much has happened this week that it’s hard to believe it’s only been one week. Oliver started out the week hanging out at Laurie and Robin’s house on Monday night while I worked to get the house ready for all of our visitors for Thanksgiving. I want to say a huge “thank you” to both of them for watching the little guy for a few hours while I scrubbed the house. I got so much done and it would have been impossible if I had to watch Oliver at the same time. On Wednesday, my parents and Brian’s parents arrived for Thanksgiving so we spent a nice evening eating dinner and watching the kiddo. Everyone chipped in for bedtime on Wednesday night - Richard and Ann read Oliver some stories, Bill fed him some cereal, Mom and Ann gave him a bath and got him in his pajamas and I nursed him and put him to bed. I wish we had four grandparents around all of the time! 

After Thanksgiving, we got to spend Friday with Brian’s parents. I had to work and Brian had to pick up the dogs from the kennel so Grandma and Grandpa finally got Oliver all to themselves for a few hours. Oliver is way into his New Mexico grandparents. Ann can make him laugh like crazy and Oliver immediately starts to wave when he sees his Grandpa. It’s so cute! I wish we could see them more! Oliver misses his Grandma and Grandpa. On Friday afternoon, we all went to the park and hung out on the swings and slide. 

Ann and Bill left for New Mexico early Saturday morning so it was pretty much business as usual for us - breakfast at Dan’s, hanging out at the park and chilling at home. All business as usual, that is, until Oliver started crawling around Saturday evening! It was a big week developmentally for Oliver - crawling, learning to wave (although he’s still not very consistent with that, and it’s more of an arm jerk than a wave but still...), and trying to learn to clap. 

Here are the pictures from this week. Ironically, despite the fact that this was his first Sundays With Oliver after learning to crawl, he actually let me take some “traditional” pictures. Go figure. Check out those thighs!

Thanksgiving

Brian and I hosted Thanksgiving this year for both sets of our parents, his cousins, Chris and Nicole (along with Chris’s girlfriend, Tiffany, and Nicole’s friend, Cindy), and our friend, Lindsey. If you lost count, that’s dinner for eleven adults! It would have been a challenge (especially considering the miniscule size of our kitchen) but everyone chipped in dishes and prepared things ahead so that on Thursday no one person was stuck slaving  in the kitchen all day. My mom took care of the dressing at her house on Tuesday, my mom and I did the turkey together on Thursday. Nicole brought a salad, cranberry relish and ratatouille tarts for dinner and a low sugar apple tart for dessert. Lindsey brought an amazing brussels sprout/chestnut in brown butter dish and pumpkin swirled brownies for dessert.  Richard made an awesome pumpkin pie (with pecans and ginger and sour cream, etc... yum!). Bill took care of the mashed potatoes and Ann made her famous rolls and apple pie. The meal was delicious! 

Because the actual preparation of the meal on Thursday wasn’t too stressful we all had lots of time to hang out and enjoy each other’s company and be entertained by Oliver. He had an awesome first Thanksgiving. He was in a good mood all day and even managed to sit at the table with us during the whole meal. He kept himself busy trying to feed himself some Puffs but got a little annoyed that he wasn’t the center of attention during the meal. He’s been working on waving hello and at one point in the meal, I looked over and Oliver was waving at the entire table as if to say: “Hey, you guys! I’m still here. Pay attention to me!” So, I had the table wave back at him and praise him for waving. What an attention hog! But so cute! 

Here’s the day in a few pictures:

Here We Go...

Well, I was going to do a post about the wonderful Thanksgiving we had on Thursday (and, I promise I will do it soon) but Oliver trumped that post with his new trick. Check out the video... our lives will never be the same again.

Sundays With Oliver - Week Thirty-Two

Oliver’s new tricks this week? Separation anxiety and temper tantrums! I don’t know if it’s the teething that’s making him so needy/fussy but I’ve had a heckuva hard time with my little guy this week. He’s been great for Brian during the day but when I get home from work, he just wants me to hold him the all of the time. If someone else is holding him, he’ll dive towards me. It’s a little cute to see him reach out for me but when I’m here by myself it’s hard to keep him constantly in my arms or on my lap. In addition, he’s started throwing tantrums for me, especially when we do his cereal feeding before bed. He really wants to hold the spoon and when I take it away from him to put more food on it, he screams bloody murder. He’s instantly quiet when I give him the spoon back. So, it’s time for our next parenting adventure... discipline! Don’t know how you discipline a seven month old but we’ve got to figure something out. I don’t want to teach him any bad habits now. 

Other than that it was a pretty typical week. His bottom teeth are really coming in now and he’s really really close to crawling. He can now get wherever he wants to go pretty quickly but it’s with a combination of crawling, dragging himself and rolling. He’s particularly quick when he’s heading towards electrical cords and outlets. It’s probably time to childproof the place. 

Here are the pictures from this week. I’ve given up trying to get our traditional Sundays With Oliver pose as he won’t lie still on the dog anymore. I just have to take what I can get, I guess.

  

Sundays With Oliver - Week Thirty-One

Lots of firsts this week. Oliver and Brian had their first night alone while I went to work the Women’s Conference in Houston on Wednesday and Thursday. They both did great and Oliver even cut his daddy some slack and slept through his 4 AM feeding (he woke up and fussed a little but was fast asleep before Brian could get the bottle ready... maybe it’s time I try to let him drop that feeding?). Oliver also cut his first tooth this week. Since the last post, we can now feel it and can see the other bottom tooth starting to come through. Oliver spent Saturday night at my parents’ house and apparently practiced his moving a lot. When we got home to take this week’s pictures, Oliver kept getting up on all fours rather than sitting still for his pictures.

I’m afraid crawling isn’t too far away.

Here are some pictures from this week, although it was impossible to keep him still so there weren’t many good ones to pick from.

  

I have a feeling that the Sundays With Oliver photo shoots are going to be a struggle from here on. There doesn’t seem to be any keeping this kid in one place anymore!

Chompers!

Yesterday, Brian and I tried to go out to lunch at Pho Van near our house. Oliver, however, wasn’t having it. He got so loud and fussy that we had to take our food to go and head home to eat. As I was strapping him into his carseat for the trip home, he was screaming his head off. His mouth was wide open and suddenly the source of this particular meltdown was obvious. He’s got a tooth coming in. So far it’s just a white sliver on his gums (we can’t even feel it yet) but it is definitely coming through. I’ll try to get photo evidence of it soon but Oliver isn’t crazy about letting us peek in there. No wonder he was a cranky pants at lunch!

Sundays With Oliver - Week Thirty

We had a great weekend. Oliver and I met my mom in San Marcos yesterday and went to the outlet mall to find Oliver lots of cute clothes (including what he’s wearing in today’s pictures). Today, we went over to Laurie and Robin and Lydia’s house for a delicious brunch and to let the kiddos hang out. It’s so cool to see them sitting across from each other and to hear them “talking” to each other. They’re getting so big. 

Oliver will be seven months old on Thursday. That is too weird. These past seven months have seemed to fly by although the time when he was just a tiny baby who could only sleep, poop and cry seems like so long ago. He changes everyday. This week he kept working on trying to crawl (he can get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth but can’t figure out the mechanics of the whole crawling thing) but his biggest development was finding a whole new noise to make with his voice. He’s still not babbling in the traditional sense but in the past few days he has found this shrill yell that he uses to express pleasure. It’s really loud and pretty annoying but he seems so proud of himself when he does it. He kept doing it as I was taking the pictures this week so lots of them look like this:

  

Sundays With Oliver - Week Twenty-Nine

Lots of fun this week. Oliver had a great first Halloween and spent a long time practicing his moving. He’s squirming all over the place. 

Here are the pictures from this week. Thanks to Liz for the t-shirt from Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi.

  

And, an extra picture because his new hat is too cute.