Throwing in the Towel

As you all know, I use this blog as somewhat of a virtual scrapbook. That being said, I am happy to announce (yes, happy) that as of last Friday, July 24, 2009, I am no longer nursing OR pumping. Yes, it was time. I never necessarily had a "goal" set for how long I would nurse, but I think 8 1/2 months is pretty good. Aiden is also more than fine with it. He would actually prefer a bottle to be honest. And let me tell you, there will be no love lost between me and my Medela pump. I was spending 45-60 minutes a day with that thing, we needed to take a break.

In other fun news, Aiden started clapping this past weekend. It is the cutest. He claps for food. He claps for cartoons. He claps for toys. He claps when he sees daddy. He claps when I come in his room to come get him after naps. He claps when he crawls all the way across the room. He claps when mommy laughs at him. Basically, we are doing a lot of clapping lately.

In between clapping we just played all weekend. Jeff had a delivery that he had to do on Saturday morning, but other than that and a couple other errands, we just kept it low key. I wanted to spend all the quality time that I could with Aiden before we leave on Thursday for the wedding. Yeah, I know it's only 4 days, BUT STILL.

Before our Sunday morning walk to Starbucks: (still would never think of parting from his bink, it's not even up for discussion)


"I crawled all the way over here, and now daddy won't let me play with the entertainment system"

Cabo San Lucas 2009

Disclaimer: Not that you need to know this or care, but I am disappointed at the quality of these since we didn't use the digital camera. Instead we used the "still image" setting on our video camera. Bummer. We did however get some good video, that I will be posting at a later date. But anyway here is the family vacay 2009. ENJOY ~ we did.

Grandma and Aiden Swimming

Sushi? We LOVE Sushi!



Grandpa sharing his Cheetos



Matchy Matchy (Misfits tattoo, meet Misfits onsie)

Sleepy Monkey

Group Shot

Mowhawk man


Lemon Family

Just the boys


Father and Son



I think I'm funny in my tent




MY GRANDPA not yours







The End

Ok...Ok...

so I know it has been a few weeks since I was able to update, but I promise it is coming. We all made it back from our WONDERFUL vacation. Aiden was amazing on the plane. He slept about 2 hours on the way there and almost all 3 hours on the way back. He was an absolute gem the entire vacation.

He is learning to do new things so quickly. I can seriously, hardly keep up! The first is that he is learning how to really express his emotions...LOL. It is pretty funny how quickly he can get so mad at me. I try not to laugh at him but it's truly funny. It is becoming increasingly apparent that he has mommy's temper, but it is always very short lived.

As of last night he started crawling...not scooting around...he is at a full blown crawl. He is also climbing and standing up on everything. In a panic will be running to Babies R' Us in the next day or so to gather all items necessary to soften sharp corners, block hallways, and make drawers and cupboards baby proof (this last one is mostly already been done, thank goodness). I know, I said I was going to do this before, but the time just got away from us.

Jeff and I are leaving again to go to Cincinnati for my dear friends wedding next Thursday. We will be gone for 4 days. Yep, first time I've left the baby and nope, not prepared for that. I have every intention to avoid confronting this until I have to. I know he will be in great hands with Grandma and Grandpa Martz though.

I promise I will TRY to upload all the Cabo pictures this evening. Hope everyone is well!

"Sometimes you just need a little push. Thanks dad."


~ courtesy of www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

I could not stop laughing when I saw this.

EIGHT months

I am a little late on these, as I have been crazy busy getting all of us packed for Cabo. Let me tell you, I never imagined how much stuff one little person would need for only 10 days! I tend to over pack every time, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Especially when we will not exactly have the luxury of jumping in the car to go to Babies R' Us or Walgreen's while we are there. I do find a little solace in the fact that they do have a Walmart not too far from our condo now.

On top of this, capturing these progression pics is getting increasingly difficult as Aiden is so BUSY these days. The very last thing that he wants to do is sit still for a picture! He now loathes getting his diaper changed because heaven forbid he would have to lay still for a couple seconds. I love it though. He is so much fun. He makes me laugh every single day with his antics. Here are some action shots as these are the easiest ones to get.

Picking the moss out of the tree:


Working hard on the crawling and climbing:




Right, before I took this he looked at me like, "I'm gonna go tear that down ya know".


Sweet as peaches though, when he wants to be:

Mama bragging time. This is mainly for my own archiving purposes since people ask me when Aiden did this or that, and I stare at them blankly because I just can't remember.

Aiden's Age: 8 months, 2 days

* He can somewhat speak - "mama" and "dada", however somehow I am not thinking that he is associating one parent from the other quite yet.

*His favorite solids are....well, all of them except peas or green beans. However, gross as it may be, all I have to do is mix them with bananas and voila! He eats the whole jar. Problem here is that bananas and apples constipate him. I know you wanted to know that. I also give him little puff snacks which he loves as well as mashed potatoes and small pieces of bread. I gave him some sort of Gerber jarred meat and gravy which smelled like (and probably tasted like) cat food. Needless to say, he wasn't a fan and I gagged the whole time I was feeding it to him. He does like the chicken and apples meal even though the consistency of it is like sand (and again the apple issue). Oh, and the macaroni and cheese in a jar....loves it. Gross right?

*He loves, loves, loves anything that has to do with water.

*He can lift himself to as standing position and will attempt to move a little. Mostly he just stands there and dances.

*He has moved on from watching Spongebob Sqarepants to Dora the Explorer. Oh, and her brother Diego has a show too. (Don't laugh) For those of you who are not lucky enough to watch these while you are getting ready in the morning, these are 2 cartoons that mix English with Spanish. Being that our sitter speaks Spanish to him all day, I can see the correlation. Cute huh?

*As you saw from the pictures he is pretty much crawling except he doesn't cover too much distance at one time yet. I am appreciating this while I still can. Shortly, I will be chasing him everywhere.

*He is extremely curious about the world around him. Always grabbing at everything and just taking it all in.