March, so far

We got to have a special date night this weekend when Grammy and Grampy came up and babysat Little Sir overnight. Apparently he was pretty good aside from waking up super early! Will have pictures of that later, once I've uploaded them.

What has he been up to lately? He is still loving his bouncy swing and bath time and his own feet. He can put his feet in his mouth now, even with shoes on (ew!). He is not napping much. He'll have some days, like today, when he won't really nap at all for more than 10-20 minutes when he falls asleep while eating. Then he is up and awake again. And yes, we put him into his crib when he shows signs of drowsiness like yawning and staring. But as soon as we put him in there in the dark, with the blackout curtains and his sound machine on, he starts playing with his pacifier, a blanket, his feet, ANYTHING and is no longer sleepy at all. He'll talk to himself, louder and louder, for an hour until we come and get him or he starts crying, whichever comes first.
Good times.

He seems to sleep better at night and even take a nap sometimes when he eats more. We have been having to add formula to the breastmilk I pump for him, because I can only make 4-5oz. and he really needs 5-6oz each time or he is hungry again in 2 hours. And yes, I take fengugreek, I drink Mother's Milk tea, I breastfeed exclusively during non-work hours and on weekends. If anything, he gets much less nutrition breastfeeding. I say this as a loving mother: he does a terrible job of breastfeeding. He cannot focus on the task at hand. He just does not care for it that much. He would rather starve, honestly. I am probably going to write a post about this on Conscientious Confusion.We are doing the best we can, but we are having to add formula.

In order to help get some more food into him, I've been trying to give him rice cereal and oat cereal again in the mornings. (Before you panic, he is 23 weeks. He will be 24 weeks in 7 days, although his "birthday" isn't for a few weeks. That is pretty much 6 months.) However, he continues to refuse to have anything to do with either rice cereal or oat cereal. He makes faces at it and hits the spoon and writhes in the other direction.

I have no idea what we will do in a few weeks when he is officially 6 months and will start needing some solid food in order to get proper nutrition. Maybe feed him bananas and see how that goes?

Cute new pictures

Be sure to head on over to my Flickr photostream to see new pictures of Little Sir, mostly taken by his Daddy the last week or so. Here are a few.

Daddy let Little Sir type on the computer. Of course we saved his "first document".

I love these pictures of bathtime - Daddy does the best baths! Lately Little Sir has been grabbing his own toes. I just know he would put them in his mouth if he could. He's possibly a tad too chubby for that.

I feel like these two new pics of after-bath time really show his face - he is getting some more definitive features of his very own! Which of us do you think he looks like?

Consignment Sales!

All this month I've been stalking the periodic giant consignment sales in the Dallas area. Thanks to Jes from Chirky who put together a cute little calendar of all the sales going on at different times! I even found one this week that wasn't on her calendar. Here's my fun summary of each sale I've attended so far, what I got, and what I thought of it, in case anyone wants to register for the next time each sale comes around!

Three Sisters Consignment Sale - I attended March 5 which was the first day of the sale. It was one of the smaller sales I've been to, in a church auditorium, but I actually got some of the best stuff here. The best buy of the day was the $10 bouncy swing that has given Little Sir many hours of crazy fun! Also got a pair of Robeez for $10. These shoes are GREAT because little babies can't pull or kick them off but they have leather as soft as socks so they are uncomfortable to wear when the little one falls asleep. Usually they are $30!

Divine Consign - The second biggest sale I've ever been to, located in the Plano Centre in Plano. Admission was $2 for this one and I got there on March 7 (first day of the sale) about 30 minutes after it opened with fellow blogger Bobbi Janay and while we there met up with Jes. Bobbi got some really great stuff. I found a diaper bag I liked and a few safety items but their clothing wasn't the quality I was accustomed to after the other sales I've been too...and also I'm picky. By the time I was ready to leave the line was an hour or more long. Bobbi was smart and went through the line early on and was finished. I was tired and hungry by that point, though, so I actually gave up on my diaper bag and didn't buy anything. The moral of this story is that this particular sale needs a more efficient checkout process! JBF (see below) is just as big and has just as many people but their checkout system is so much more efficient that I've never waited more than 15-20 minutes.

Sweet Pea - Also a smaller sale, I was actually there in line when it opened today (March 24), the first day of the sale. I just happened to get out of the house that early. At this point I was very focused on a few things that I wanted, one of which is a jogging stroller. They did have a small selection of strollers and one jogging stroller but it was a brand I'd been trying to avoid. The layout of this sale is weird because it flows into several rooms and the aisle are small so there is a lot of maneuvering around other moms. It was a small sale. I would say that if you are looking for clothing only, or fairly common toys, or even the more common bouncers or vibrating sling chairs, they had a number of them...but not a ton. I wouldn't recommend traveling far for this one. If it's in your area, fine, but it's nothing to write home about.

Just Between Friends - This is really the mother of all mass consignment sales, in my humble opinion. It happens at the Mesquite Rodeo Exhibit Hall. Admission is $3 on the first day it is open to the public, but if you are a First Time Mom you can register to get in a day early, and free. This is totally worth it. I have attended 3 times now, twice while I was pregnant. The thing I like about this sale is not only that it is huge and has plenty of stuff, but that the quality and condition of the items is very good. There are always very clear descriptions on the packaged items as well. Although the checkout line can get long, it moves very quickly. This sale also has a good number of maternity items, which was helpful when I was pregnant. This year's buys: a Mei Tai for $25(!!!), several outfits, a wooden Stacking Train set, a book, a package of pj's and a sleep sack for when Little Sir is bigger, and another wooden toy.

There is one more on the list, North Dallas Mothers of Twins Consignment Sale, which I think I am actually going to skip. All that I am looking for right now is a jogging stroller, and I can never find a single one used! For some reason I can find tons of double jogging strollers, but no singles! I am thinking that a sale by mothers of twins isn't going to yield many singles...

Bouncy swing

Little Sir loves his bouncy swing (which I got for $10!) so much!
It's funny because at first he wasn't that good at it. Here is a video from when we first put him in it...

And here is a video from Friday - now's he's got the hang of it!

Little Sir's first visit to the DMA

We've been members of the Dallas Museum of Art for several years. Sadly, this year we haven't been able to go as often as we'd like, due to my work schedule. But we did get a chance to take Little Sir for his very first visit a few weekends ago! He was very polite and quiet the whole time we were inside. He slept through most of one of the exhibits we visited and then listened intently to some live jazz being played at the end of the exhibit. Here he is in the hallway, half asleep.

We spent some time in the courtyard outside, it is allowed to take pictures out there if you avoid photographing the sculptures (we've gotten in trouble for that before!)

They have a great children's area at the museum but he is just too small to be able to interact with it yet. We look forward to going back in the future as he gets big enough to enjoy it!

A Dallas icon

If you live in Dallas you probably know about Wild About Harry's, a local custard shop, and its famous giant hot dog. Recently, Harry's expanded into the store next to it and acquired a giant french fry as well. We took Little Sir the other day and got some cute photos!

Sam Houston's Big Ol' Face

On Tuesday we took a day trip to Huntsville, Texas where Little Sir got to meet his Uncle Austin.

While we were there we took a trip out to the big statue of Sam Houston to take some pictures.

We also got to see cousin Mazzie again!

Another catchup post

Sorry, sorry about the lapse in posting! Since Christian lost his job, we also lost our other computer (which belonged to his work) so when I am not actually working on the one computer we had, I had to give it to him to look for jobs. Fortunately, my work let me take a monitor home and we were able to buy a cheap Mac mini this weekend so that we are back in business with 2 computers and I can blog while he uses the other computer for work.

So many interesting things! I am going to make a bulleted list again. You know you love them.

• Little Sir is sleeping so much better. He stirs at certain times in the evening before we go to bed, but he basically goes to bed at 8 PM and only wakes up once at 3 or 4 AM to feed and then goes back to sleep until 6 or 7 AM. Then I take him into the bedroom with us and sometimes he'll go to sleep for another hour there.
• However, he still does not nap reliably. Take that Dr. Weiss@ss "your-baby-will-nap-better-once-he-is-sleeping-better-at-night"
• I went to several consignment sales this weekend (Three Sisters and Divine Consign) and at one I got a jumper for $10, the kind you hang in the doorway. Little Sir LOVES this jumper! I will be posting video of him in the jumper having fun.
• He is blowing raspberries now - making "pbbbbbbt" noises at various times. We make a big deal about it when he does it to encourage him to do it more. For some reason he does it mostly when he is having a diaper change or sitting in the Bumbo. I haven't got a video of it yet.
• Little Sir met his Uncle Austin for the first time today! Will have pictures of that also.
• He took a 6-7 hour road trip to see Uncle Austin and did pretty well! There was a meltdown the last 30 minutes but overall that isn't bad at all!

I'm uploading pictures and video to post the next few days but I will leave you with this funny picture Christian took on our road trip today:

Bath time

Little Sir loves bath time now! Even though babies his age really don't need baths every night, we have found that it works best to let him bathe every night because it gives him a good outlet for his energy and puts him in a good mood before bed. Also, we are aiming to have a routine that is exactly the same every night so that he can identify that "now is sleep time", and we couldn't figure out how to accomplish this if some nights had baths and others didn't.

Most nights Christian does the baths because I work the night shift. I can always hear them in there having so much fun! A few weeks back, Nannie and PawPaw came through town in time to observe the bath time fun and we took some pictures of his favorite time, which is after the bath. He likes to hang out on the towel and play with Daddy.

Getting his last bottle of the night from Nannie!