Monday, February 27, 2012

My Baby's growing up!


I just love this little man!! This month Conner has really progressed a lot! Some of the new things that have gone on are:
  • Crawling - !! I think the day after I wrote my last post saying that Conner wasn't going to ever crawl he started to army crawl. While he is still not up on all fours crawling he has gotten a lot quicker.
  • Hair cut - this little guy was getting a little baby mullet and we finally bit the bullet and trimmed around the ears and top a little. It made me sad
  • Waves bye bye - Conner has started to wave bye bye to people. He's a stinker a lot of times and won't perform his tricks for people but he does it for us.
  • Sign language - I've been working on baby sign language with him and it seems that the sign for milk has now become his sign for wanting something. It's a work in progress :)
This past week I started working a lot more regularly. I work M-Th 9:00-2:00. While I know this isn't much, it has been hard for me to be away from my little pal. While I want to be home with my boy I feel like this was an answer to our prayers and everything just fell into place. My work considerably raised my pay, one of my best friends from high school who is awesome with kids and is probably one of the few people I would trust with Conner is able to tend him, and I could pick whatever hours worked best for Conner's schedule. With Mark in graduate school we are trying to save up as much money as we can to buy a house and pay for graduate tuition. My favorite thing in the world is to come home to Conner and see his huge smile and get a hug and a kiss from him.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

8 months!

I can't believe my little boy is now 8 months! I echo the millions of moms before me that have said "wow that went fast". I REALLY love the stage that Conner is at right now. He is constantly making me laugh and he is learning so quickly.

Conner loves to play peek-a-boo. Sometimes it's me or Mark hiding behind something and sometimes he plays and does it himself. He's understanding object permanence really well now which is good and bad. Not so good because it means I can't just put something under my leg and make it disappear and good because it means he's developing :)

For some reason Conner refuses to crawl. Instead he turn himself to the right angle with his arms then roll wherever he wants to go. Sometimes he fakes us out and will be up on all fours but then when we encourage him to move forward he falls on his stomach and acts like he's swimming. If we stand him up he will hold onto chairs or his crib (as seen above) and has even taken a step or two. I'm thinking he's just going to roll around till he walks. He loves it when his daddy helps him practice walking all over the house and he can move pretty quick if you're standing above him holding his hands. His walk does slightly resemble a soldier though.
Conner is a little ham! He already loves smiling for the camera. Every time I get the camera out he puts on the gummiest smile and I have a million pictures of him doing it. Maybe it's because he's trying to imitate me as I'm smiling at him with the camera....does my smile look like that?

Conner recently showed more interest in "real" food. Meaning not pureed mush or baby cereal. While he still enjoys the pureed baby food I make him he also loves eating finger foods especially strawberries, shredded chicken, puffs, noodles, mandarin oranges, scrambled eggs, and bread. It's been a lot easier to make dinner lately because I'll put him in his high chair with food on his tray and he'll eat and sing to me while I cook. He also started drinking out of a straw and sippy!! We were pretty impressed when he started sucking all by himself especially since he has refused to take a bottle since 4 mo.

Conner loves playing with his cousins. He always rolls over to Carson or Audrey and will grab their faces or lean on them. Carson and Audrey are really good with him. Carson is always giving him loves and kisses and Audrey thinks Conner is the funniest thing in the world and she'll push him around when he's in the walker. Every time she see's him she just goes off laughing and talking nonsense like we understand her. I love it!

This is about as close as Conner gets to crawling. He'll go up from here on his knees but then just fall on his stomach. He's been doing it for a couple months now and nothing has changed.

Another classic cheeser smile!
Conner will play for the longest time on the ground by himself. He rolls around and pulls out his toy baskets from under the coffee table. One day I was on the phone and I heard him crying and I looked all around and found him completely under a big arm chair!

While he is usually content to play by himself he would much prefer to be held and played with. When he's being held he loves to be touching or grabbing your face. He thinks it's funny to put his fingers in your mouth or put both hands on your cheeks.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it because this was one of the things that I hoped Conner wouldn't get from me, but he shakes when he gets excited... I always used to get made fun of for doing it and I'm afraid Conner is going to face the same fate. He does it when he's excited or frustrated with a toy, when you pick him up, when he sees grandma or grandpa or someone he's familiar with, or when he's excited about eating. Poor kid.

Conner loves jumping in his bouncer! And he loves being in the walker at Grandma Kings house. We also have a walker but it's not as maneuverable and doesn't go as low to the ground as Grandmas so he's not as good at maneuvering it. I don't understand why the made the walker so high??? It's adjustable so I put it on the lowest setting but it still barely works!! I mean who do they make these toys for Conner is in the 80% in height so it's not like he's a shrimp-o!

Conner still doesn't sleep through the night. Every time I tell myself I'm going to exercise some tough love and let him cry it out he gets sick and I don't feel right doing it then. Something about hearing that little cough makes me give in every time!

He goes to bed at 7:30 and usually wakes up in the morning anywhere from 7:30-8:15. He usually wakes up at least once a night sometimes twice. The first time is around midnight which I don't really mind because with him going to bed at 7:00 I start missing him and I enjoy cuddling. It's the 4-o-clock feeding that I definitely need to get rid of! As far as naps go he'll take 3 naps a day if his first nap is under an hour but if it is over an hour an a half then he'll only take 2 naps.

I've really tried to get a solid schedule down but every time I think I've got it he switches things up on me. I'm okay with that though because his flexibility allows me to go run errands and things like that without a problem.

Being a mom has brought a lot of changes but fun and difficult but I would take them all in a heart beat because I can't imagine life without my little Conster J!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Feliz Navidad

Just catching up here! I've always heard people say that the holidays are so much more fun with kids and they're definitely right! I mean how could you not just smile when you see the cute little rudolph below!
My grandma is incredible! While we were in Arizona I asked her to make Conner this Rudolph hat and she sent me home not only with the reindeer hat but a snoman hat as well! Because Conner is a boy,obviously, I accessorize by his hats and shoes :)
For the first time this year we went and saw the zoo lights!! Boy were we impressed. I mean, temple square is always a classic but these lights were really fun. In addition to the normal tree lights they had all sorts of lights like animals that were animated. We went on pretty much the only day it snowed around Christmas time but the snow and cold made it all the more magical.
Not sure what Mark is grabbing here!





We spent all Christmas Eve with my family. Here are my parents with their grandchildren.
We get toys every year from my dad and this year we all got fighting tops! It was pretty cool because they were all different sizes and had different features. We did a full tournament. Sadly I didn't win :(
My parents even bought an arena for the tops to battle in.
For dinner we had soups and breadsticks and Jennifer made an awesome Rasberry bread pudding.
I was in charge of the games this year so we did some Christmas minute-to-win-it games! It was really funny. I didn't get pictures of all the different games. We split up into teams and for the game below you had to put vaseline on your nose and by swinging your head you had to get a pom pom that was attached to tape hanging from your mouth to land on your nose. Did that make sense?


Another game we played was the kissing ornaments game. You had to move ornaments from one side of the room to another by kissing it.
My grandparents even got in on the action! My grandpa is a total ham (we all got it from him) and he used this opportunity to get a little frisky with my grams!!
*Games not pictured snowflake fight, O Christmas tree (with whip cream cans), and Jingle bells.

Then it was time to open presents. We got a sword that lights up for Carson from the Zoo. When he saw them at the zoo Carson was begging his parents for one but they stayed strong and didn't give in to his tantrums-but we did :) We got one for him and he was so surprised when he saw it Christmas Eve.
True to little kid fashion Audrey loved the boxes. Conner had a fever and wasn't feeling well so he was asleep.
Bill (my Dad's work partner who has been living with them) bought all of the boys high powered nerf guns and they had a war downstairs. By the looks of it Tyler lost!
Christmas day we spent with Mark's family and this time Conner got a little more in on the actions. He was actually pretty good at ripping the wrapping paper off of the presents. I think this stems from his love of paper! He loves to eat paper so I have to make sure there isn't any in reach.



Christmas was really awesome this year! I wasn't that great at taking pictures but some are better than none. Because we're saving to buy a house Mark and I decided not to get each other gifts but Mark surprised me with an AWESOME new snowboarding coat! I've already used it once at Brighton and it work like a charm! I love my hubby!
Okay so I'm obviously way late on this post but better late than never right :)