One small step for man....

One giant step for Zachary! At the tender age of 10 months and 1 week old Zachary took his first unsteady steps into toddlerhood.

To be fair, his steps are basically running steps as he lunges into my outstretched arms. But hey, I am a first-time mom and I can brag if I want to. :)

Anyway, this all happened because of our new grass....Zachary hates grass, so he tries to stay off of it as much as possible. This means if you stand him on it he doesnt want to fall down.



Zach gives his new lawn a thumbs up!

We are getting a backyard!

Well, we sort of always had a yard in the technical sense. It just didn't have any grass on it. So, after two years of looking at a jungle of weeds and mud, plus endless piles of trash dragged out by our dog, we are finally going to have the smooth, well-manicured lawn we have always dreamed about.

Jeremy is on his way to pick up our new sod right now :)

We have spent the last few weeks roto-tilling, building retaining walls, installing a new garden pond...okay, Jeremy has spent the last few weeks doing these things. I did help pick up the rocks and things :)

I will post pictures later, I just can't wait. Jeremy can't wait either....according to him men like to have grass in their yards so they can drink beer and admire their grass. So, I guess some beer drinking is in our near future ;)

Things My Baby Has Eaten...almost

Yesterday Zachary attempted to eat an enormous carpenter ant. Fortunately (I guess) the insect didn't want to be eaten and instead chomped down on Zachary's hand. I heard the sudden piercing screams and saw Zachary sitting on the floor holding his hand straight out in front of him. I turned his hand over and saw something black and ugly, so I did what any reasonable mother would do....I scooped him up and ran to Jeremy screaming hysterically about the "beetle-thing" attacking my child.

Jeremy did the manly thing and grabbed a tissue and killed the ant. Now, I am not normally afraid of ants, or any other bug for that matter. After years of owning reptiles I have reached into buckets filled with thousands of crickets and hand-fed my baby lizards....snagged superworms for my turtles....even grabbed 8 inch nightcrawlers out of dirt with nary a shudder. However, this was a particularly huge ant and it was attached to my baby's hand. Apparently these two factors change things dramatically.

When it was all over, Zachary's hand was bleeding a bit, from two small punctures made by the vile ant's bite. He stopped screaming as soon as it was removed, and is none the worse for wear.

Oh, and in case anyone thinks that we live in a filthy mice and insect infested house, let me assure you that prior to this week I have never seen a mouse or an ant in my house....maybe it is the crazy cold weather we are having?

Star Wars

We went to see the new Star Wars last night. The movie was pretty good, although it was obviously taken very seriously....it doesn't seem to really fit with the next three, which are goofy in comparison.

The big news is I said the words "I am SO blogging this when I get home" to my husband for the first time. No, it was before the movie even started.

Why is it that we now pay nearly $10 a person to watch 20 minutes of COMMERCIALS before the movie starts. No, not previews for upcoming moves....I rather enjoy them. I mean commercials, for Ford Escapes, American Express, Cingular, and a host of others. I mean, if you are going to make money by making us watch commercials why did I have to pay to get in?

I suppose this is the same reason why I pay to watch commercials on Cable TV. They charge us because they can. *Sigh*

Zachary Update

Two days post-mouse and our little guy is just fine. No crazy diseases or anything.

Some random accomplishments to date:

He has all 4 front teeth
He claps his hands and waves
He gives High-fives
He crawls and climbs stairs
He pulls up and cruises
He stands up without pulling up, and can stand unassisted for about 20 seconds
He says mama, dada, bye-bye, cat, hi, and yeah....he says yeah, yeah, yeah most of the day :)
He shakes his head NO

My little baby was 10 months old yesterday. Where does the time go?

Things My Baby Has Eaten *sigh*

This lady has a section of her blog on things her dog has eaten....my dog could use his own section too, having once eaten two boxes of rat poison, and following that up later in the day by eating the entire bottle of pills he was given to combat the effects of the rat poison. (In my defense, he used a broom stick to knock the pills off of the top of the fridge....and somehow he is still alive and kicking a year later). However, today this is eclipsed by the actions of my small child.

Today I was unable to wear my contact lenses, due to a horrible allergic reaction to the high level of tree pollen. Since I don't have any glasses, I was going around half blind....I could see, but not at all clearly. So, I am downstairs watching American Idol while Zach crawls around happily playing with toys and being happy. I see him putting "toys" in his mouth, and crawling around, just like usual, although without my contact lenses I can't really see what it is he is playing with.

Well, finally I get up to make his bedtime bottle, and see what it was he was playing with....A FREAKING DEAD MOUSE!

I picked him up and ran him upstairs and washed him...totally shaking and almost puking....Jeremy had to go deal with the mouse. I guess one of the animals dragged it in, Jeremy said it had been dead for a good long time, but geez....I may never eat again.....

Zachary's New Friend

Zachary had a new cousin born three weeks ago, a little boy named Brady. We went to visit him today.



It is amazing to look back at a tiny baby when you are busy chasing an energetic 10 month old. Where does the time go? On the other hand, an energetic 10 month old is a lot more fun than a 3 week old baby :) All they do is eat, poop and sleep.

And yet....I am looking forward to someday having another tiny baby.....amazing how quickly we forget the lack of sleep and day to day exhaustion of dealing with a newborn.

Zachary's Little Adventure

Yesterday Zachary was happily playing with a toy (yes, an actual toy!) in the middle of the living room, and I thought I would take that opportunity to sneak to the bathroom for a minute. We have baby gates up to keep Zachary contained, and I figured he would be perfectly safe for just a minute.

Well, there seems to be a difference between having the gates set up and actually remembering to close them. When I came back downstairs Zachary was gone and the house was quiet....where could he have gone?

I walked through the downstairs calling his name, and realized the gate to the kitchen was open. Quickly walking into the kitchen I see Zachary....HALFWAY THROUGH THE DOGGY DOOR! The little bugger was making a break for it! A few more seconds and he would have tumbled down the back steps and onto our patio.

So, from now on, must make sure to actually close the gate.

Looking Good.....

Zachary is looking good in his new shades :) Not many 10 month old boys would leave the shades on, but as long as we are in the sun he lets them stay :) He sure does look like a cool little dude ;)

Zachary's new friend

Our minister's wife had her baby Friday morning. They now have 4 little girls. Looks like they have the girl-only curse :) Zachary won't mind having a little girl to play with, he already likes the ladies :)

Milestones Big and Small

Why is it that every big milestone seems to take forever to arrive, and then once it does happen you wish you could go back?

Zachary is now crawling and pulling up on everything. He also has learned to climb up the stairs, and to throw temper tantrums. Where has my sweet innocent baby gone? He seems to have been replaced by a small cranky almost-toddler. He has also gotten 4 teeth in the last month, and now he bites me all the time. Luckily we gave up on breastfeeding at 4 months, or I would be hating this phase much much more! Still, it is surprising when your sweet baby crawls up to you, gazes at you adoringly and then chomps down on your big toe. Yikes!

It's Amazing....

My small child's accomplishment of the day....he managed to produce five, yes FIVE poopy diapers today. No wonder he stays so small! He is 30 inches tall now but only 18 pounds. He eats a ton, but between the constant wiggling and the constant pooping no wonder he stays so skinny :)

Max & Penny - A Love Story

We have a bit of a zoo here, with a large dog, small cat and an assortment of reptiles and fish all sharing the same space. I will get into the reptile saga another day. Today I want to focus on the dog Max and his kitten Penny.

That's right, Penny is his kitten. My husband Jeremy is a cat-hater, and I am somewhat ambivalent towards them. So how did we become the not-so-proud owners of a 5 pound furry demon? Well, lets look back....

We had been married for two months when we adopted Max, and he was our first child. Little did we know that a human child would be conceived only 2 short months later. Anyway, Max was a great little black lab/greyhound mix puppy, smart and eager to please. We installed a puppy door in the backdoor so he could go in and out as he pleased and he never had an accident in the house. His only bad habit was taking things outside with him, usually our shoes or garbage from the house. But, after a few months we were able to pretty much break that habit, unless there was something particularly tasty in the garbage.

Then Zachary arrived and something short-circuited in our dog's brain. Suddenly everything was going outside....not just tasty garbage treats but anything in the garbage....even junk mail. Anything baby related was dragged into the mud and destroyed, including stuffed animals, toys, pacifiers, bottles, my nipple shields (!!!!!), and even the only outfit that my husband ever saw Zachary wearing and pronounced "cute". All destroyed in the backyard. It got so bad he was even stealing mundane items: the balancing kit for a new ceiling fan (a small baggie of magnets and screws), screwdrivers, car keys, and his old favorite, our shoes.

So, one afternoon after spending an afternoon filling a 33 gallon trash can with the trash from the backyard, Jeremy had a brilliant suggestion. "Maybe, we should get him a cat to keep him busy" Well, at that point we were willing to try anything, so we adopted Penny, an adorable little calico kitten with a bright orange nose.

Max adored his new friend, although she was less than enamored at first. But after a few weeks of hiding, spitting and growling, she realized that he wasn't going to eat her and they became buddies. Miracle of miracles....the endless dragging of junk to the backyard stopped! So, we were home free....right?

Well, then Penny started destroying things. She seems to have a love of any paper product on a roll. Entire cases of toilet paper can be reduced to shreds in minutes under her attack....paper towels don't stand a chance. Cardboard boxes are reduced to confetti. Oh, and the shelter we adopted her from made us sign a contract to not declaw her (wonder if that is REALLY legally binding?).

Maybe we should get the kitten a hamster......