Happy 9 Months Cole

Holy Moses!!! Cole, you are 9 months already....what have you been up to this month??

• Not sure, but we think you still weigh about 26lbs. You have definitely plateaued!
• Still wearing size 3 diapers and size 4 night time diapers
• Thank God, you have been in the same clothes for awhile now, you've been in 18 month clothes for almost 3 months.
• You graduated into the bigger car seat and love it!
  
• You are eating so much more finger foods, but still love the baby food we make you. We have also tried some new foods this months such as blueberries, rice pasta and about to try some chicken. Yeah, I may pass on pureeing the chicken from now on, I almost threw up the first time I tried it.....yuck!!!
  
• You eat 3 meals a day, with dinner being your pig-out meal.
  
• You are pretty much now on only 2 naps a day. The first nap is usually no longer than an hour, but your second nap is closer to 2 hours.
• You are crawling all over the place now. You love to explore all over the house and follow us wherever we go.
• You also are pulling yourself up and standing on everything...because of all these new tricks you have learned, you have found it unnecessary to sleep through the night. All these new tricks need to be practiced, so who needs sleep?
• You still love your bath time, but now you try to climb out of the tub, so or baths usually get cut kind of short.
  
• One thing you still love more than anything, is when we take your clothes off to take a bath, you love to stand in front of the mirror and laugh at yourself...ha!
• Lately you have become such a momma's boy. You still will go to anyone, but you have been so cuddly with me lately and I love it!
• You are babbling so much more. You are saying: Da Da, Ma Ma, Duh duh AND you started giving high fives.

This is such a fun stage in your life. There are so many new things you are doing and it seems like everyday brings us something new. We love you so much Cole!

Proud Daddy!!!

Tonight I was at Young Life and I get a text message from Nick saying..."check your email, I'm the proudest dad ever!". So I check my email and there was this video


This is the first time he has "walked" on his own like that. I couldn't believe it! I mean, he JUST started crawling, he shouldn't be walking yet. As exciting as it is to see him do all these new things, it is kind of sad because it's going so fast. I don't think I am ready for him to start walking, he needs to stay a baby :)
Nick did take a few videos of him walking tonight, but this is the only he would let me post because he said his voice was too high-pitched in the others...haha!!

Weekend Wrapup

We did a whole lot of nothing this weekend, but it sure was fun!!! The weather was absolutely perfect and we did a lot of family bonding...haha!
Saturday we had to go to Babies R Us and get some "baby proofing" things for our house and then just hung out the rest of the day. Nick gives me a hard time when I make him run errands with us....for instance, when we got out of the car he says, "aren't you going to tip your driver?" He thinks I just invite him along to drive us around. :)
I made a bunch of food for Cole and am still in the process of making a whole lot more. We gave him some cantaloupe to try yesterday and then we're also going to try some chicken, rice pasta and blueberries. I'll definitely have to take some pictures after we eat blueberries!!! Wonder if it will permanently stain his lips purple :). Go Vikings!!!

Speaking of Vikings, here is Cole cheering on his team...
Cole and I don't get a whole lot of pictures together since I'm usually the one taking the pictures, but here we are....ahhhhh!!!! Mr. Homie-G with his hat backwards.

Nick didn't think this video was too funny, hence the look on his face while I'm hysterically laughing in the background. I was laughing so hard I was crying, but I guess what's funny to me is not as funny to others.


This picture also cracks me up, he looks like he's doing his football pose, you know, when football players cock their head back to make their neck look bigger than it really is?? ha!! (What do you think, do you see the similarity??)

This is just a funny video I took this morning...he's just playing in the office

Not a whole lot going on, but so much at the same time!

It's been awhile since I've posted, to be honest, I couldn't think of anything spectacular to write about. We haven't had a whole lot of exciting things going on in our house, but at the same time, a whole lot of "firsts" and new things the little one is experiencing.
Let me take you back to last Friday....I gave our babysitter some yogurt to try to give Cole, she said at first he didn't like it so much, but then by the end he was loving it (I knew he wouldn't turn it down, he has yet to dislike anything I have given him). We drive down to Houston for the weekend and we wake up Saturday morning to one unhappy baby!!! Holy Moses, it was bad! He wouldn't let me or Nick put him down, and he just whimpered and cried all day long. His breathing was funny, he was acting very lethargic, and just not himself. We originally thought it was his tooth coming in or his belly was bothering him. When he starting acting lethargic, I started getting very concerned, I almost took him into a doctor down there but Nick just told me to wait it out. Since Cole has yet to be sick I was a little panicked. We were in Houston for our friends baby shower and all the women there told me that maybe we should try some apple or pear juice to try to get him to poo-poo. :) At that point I realized that he was probably very bothered by the dairy we gave him the previous day. I should have known...my whole family practically has dairy issues so I wasn't terribly surprised. We give Cole some pear juice, 10 minutes later he exploded, and then he was happy....which makes momma happy! I don't like my little guy being miserable! It does kind of suck to think that he might have a diary intolerance, but we definitely won't be experimenting with dairy anytime soon. Guess we'll talk to the doctor about that at his 9 month appointment. I am surprised that they recommend giving babies dairy before a year because dairy is hard to digest...hmmmm.

So other than poo and dairy issues, Cole has been on the go! He's all over the place now and literally we can't take our eyes off him. This picture shows that he is now pulling up and his first place to crawl to is the TV and fireplace...the 2 safest places in the house of course. ha!
He has been doing the army crawl for quite some time now, but just this week, he has consistently been "real" crawling. I finally got a video of him crawling. The last few seconds of the video kind of suck, I was trying to figure out how to pull the blinds up while holding the camera...didn't work so well obviously.



We are hoping to do some fun things this weekend, visit a pumpkin patch, go to a kid's thing in downtown Frisco and just enjoy the nice COOL weather.
Oh, and another exciting thing...Cole is graduating into his bigger car seat. We've been needing to get it for some time because he's almost to the weight limit in his infant seat, but we put it off because they were so dang expensive. We decided to shop on ebay and we found a brand new 2008 model for about half the price. I guess if you buy an older model they are quite a bit less. I'm sure Cole will love his new seat. Shoot, it looks so comfortable that maybe I want to sit in it.
Oh wait....I did sit in it :)

Weekend Review

Boy did we have a busy weekend!!! Our friends Dave and Steph's little Evan turned one year so we went to his party. Cole had a great time playing with all the kiddos! Then I had my friend Katy's baby shower and then later that night we went out for Blake's birthday. We all went out for seafood at Lefty's (very good by the way!). We decided to have a later dinner so we could leave the baby home with Casey. Nick and I haven't been out like that in 8 months, so it was nice to have some adult time. Here are some pictures of our evening out.We had to get a shot of Blake with his awesome lobster bib....nice Blake!

Here's me and Nick before dinner

Everyone deep in conversation...

Saturday night Nick and I gave Tracy her birthday present since she was not in town for it. A few weeks ago our friend Rebecca took some pictures for us and we framed them and gave them to Tracy. Here are a couple pictures of those

Luckily, I have had a 3 day weekend and it has been awesome! I love having Mondy's off!! Cole and I had such a great time hanging out today, but I realized that my days of leaving Cole on the floor and going into the other room real quick are so over!!! He follows me all around the house and just scoots everywhere. I literally can't take my eyes off him now! I also realized all the baby-proofing stuff we're going to have to buy real soon.
During Cole's lunch today, I tried to give him one of those biter biscuits. All my friends have told me how messy they are but I still wanted to try it. Take a look at these pictures and they'll give you an idea of how messy they really are!! He sure liked it though!

This is Cole after eating the biscuit....yummy...who wants kisses???

"MOM...come on, don't take it away from me!!!!"

This video shows how Cole is now pulling himself up onto everything...and why is it that babies are so drawn to electronics?? Now I'm wishing that when we were picking out a TV stand a few years ago, that we would have thought about future children...ha! It sure would be nice if it had doors on it...oh well.

Random Things

I was sleeping so well last night when I was woken by a cute little boy over the monitor saying, "dada dada". I looked on our video monitor and he was wide awake...I looked at the clock and it said 1:00 AM!!!!!! Whaaa!!! Heck no, I am NOT getting up. So what do I do? I go back to sleep, well, I try. He's not crying, just talking and rolling around. At one point I knew we were in big trouble because for the first time, he pulled himself up and was pretty much standing in his crib. I was afraid he'd get himself up, but not know how to get himself back down. I had to laugh because it's like he's learning all these new tricks and wants to practice them....so who needs sleep? Needless to say, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, but how can you get annoyed with this cute face??

Something else random....(I swear I can talk about other things besides my kiddo..ha!)

I'm super excited about the new fall TV lineup, sad, I know. I'm pretty much watching my staple shows: Private Practice (my fav), House, The Mentalist, The Office, Desperate Housewives and this is the one I'm sort of disappointed in...Grey's Anatomy. Has anyone else been watching this? I'm SO over this show. I just can't handle the story lines and certain characters being so "deep". I guess I'm such a no-nonsense type of personality and hate all that "poor me drama". So me and Grey's Anatomy are breaking up, time to start a new show. Don't even get me started on The Hills!!!! That show needs to just crash and burn. I used to watch that show but honestly I can't handle anything on MTV anymore. I just think those characters on The Hills need to get lives. Like I said, don't get me started on that...

Here is one last picture to leave you with...What on earth are we going to do with his hair!?!

Fun Weekend

Grandpa and Grammy Volk came into town this weekend and we all had a great time! They got here Thursday night and were able to watch Cole Friday while Nick and I were at work. The rest of the weekend was spent mostly hanging out, watching my parents play with Cole and LOTS of baby food making. The freezer was getting pretty low on food so I went to Sprouts and picked up some food. Now that Cole is 8 months, I thought we should be introducing some new foods into his diet. Some new ones we are trying are Broccoli, Asparagus (get ready for some stinky pee-pee!!!!!!!!!! ha!), pumpkin and oatmeal. I also got a couple melons but not quite sure how to give him those. You can't really freeze melons so I think I'll just have to mash some up for him if we have it around the house. Now that Cole is eating 3 meals a day, we definitely go through food a lot quicker! It's totally worth it though...I made about a months worth of food and paid about $30 for everything. Now, let's do the math: A jar of food costs about $.80 and he eats almost 3 of those a day.

30 days x 3 jars = 90

$.80 x 90 = $72!! - for the month

That's more than double what I'm paying! So even though it takes more time and effort to make his food, it's worth it in the long run and he's getting such a variety of foods. Don't get me wrong, we still use jars every once in awhile...when we go out to eat or when I've run out of homeade food like last week. Last week I did realize how easy it was to just pull a jar out of the pantry and I understand why parents do that, but I'm just trying to help our budget out and lessen an expense that could potentially be pretty big. Plus...it's good for him!

So besides all the cooking and baking I did this weekend, we also watched lots of baseball and football. Wahoo for the Twins, Rockies and Broncos!!!! I am a Cowboys fan, but not when they play the Broncos. I was pretty excited for the team because nobody thought they'd be any good this year. Now if only the Vikings beat the Packers tonight, we will have one happy household tonight!

We will be planting ourselves in front of the TV tonight for the big game and maybe we'll keep Cole up a little later so he can watch the opening kickoff, then it will be off to bed for him.

Go Vikings!!!

Here are some pictures of this weekend

Cole playing with his new piano that Grammy and Grandpa got him

Grammy and ColeCole got stuck under the chairCole with Grandpa

8 Months

Happy 8 Months Cole!!!
Besides being a lot more mobile and not as cooperative with these monthly pictures, what have you been up to?!?
(We are also wearing our Minnesota Twins outfit and wish them luck with getting into the playoffs!!!)

• You still are in size 3 diapers, still size 4 overnight diapers
• You weigh about 25lbs, over the last couple months, you haven't grown a lot in weight/size which is kind of good because we were going through our clothes WAY too fast
• You are sleeping through the night so much better...every once in awhile you'll still wake up around 5:00 but will quickly go back to sleep till around 7:00am. On the weekends I like to just rock and cuddle with you while you go back to sleep because I know this cuddliness won't last forever (is cuddliness even a word??)
  
• You are now eating 3 meals a day and a snack. Our sitter Teresa started giving you some puffs as a snack and you absolutely love them! It took you no time to figure out how to get those treats in your fingers then to your mouth. We will gradually start adding more finger foods, probably some chunks of banana or avocado, just to get you used to it. I heard if you coat the avocado/banana in crushed cheerios that they are easier for the baby to grab a hold of, otherwise they can be slippery
• We haven't added a lot of new foods to your diet, but this next month we will try to add more. With me still making your food, sometimes it takes some time to restock the freezer and figure out how to prepare new foods
• While at the sitter, you only take 2 naps a day, but when you are home with mom and dad, you take 3 naps a day. I guess you get bored with us and don't have all your friends to keep you entertained...ha!
• We finally lowered your crib down all the way down as you were starting to pull yourself up onto the sides of the crib
  
• You no longer say "Ma Ma" anymore, but now say "Da Da" all the time. Sometimes it sounds more like "Ah Duh" but either way it's still cute
• You still have no separation anxiety and will go to anybody. However, you really have gone through a clingy stage, but again, it will be with anyone, as long as they hold you
• You finally have a tooth on the bottom and it is so cute! You look like a little homeless man. You sure were Mr. crabby pants while it came in, so hopefully you aren't like this every time a new tooth comes in
• Like every parent says, "this is my favorite age", I'm finally understanding that....every stage is my favorite and watching all the new stuff you do each day is such a joy. We can't wait to see what the next few months hold and in 4 short months we will be celebrating your 1st birthday.
  

First Tooth

Cole has officially gotten his first tooth. He seems kind of old to finally be getting his first one, but oh well! He sure was a bear while it was cutting through, very clingy and needy so hopefully that is all over, although it was kind of cute watching him be all clingy to me because normally he isn't. He also has been super cuddly lately and I'm LOVING it!! Here is a picture that sort of shows his first tooth, it's on the bottom. Ok, nevermind, I realize the picture is a little too small, but I promise, the tooth is there!

Here is a picture of Cole pulling up, he just started that this past week. He'll get up onto his knees. Don't mind that fact that he's clawing at my chest...haha!!!

We also are having a lot of fun watching Cole try to scoot around. He's trying real hard to crawl, but he won't get up on all fours, so for now we are just doing the army crawl. He sure is good at going in circles but doesn't move forward too fast yet. Here is a video of him scooting around.
ALSO, I would like everyone to notice Cole's father sleeping in the background on the couch....yes, he was sleeping like that! ha!!!

Videos

This is mainly for the grandparents that are miles away from Cole right now and love seeing the videos. Now don't get mad but there is one video on here that is actually very sad but very funny at the same time....you'll see....

This is Cole SO excited to go take a bath!! He cracks me up! As soon as you take his clothes off and walk to the bathroom, he just starts screaming! I also love how Roxy is just looking at him like..."what the heck is he doing!?!".



Ok, this is the mean one....this is what his horrible parents do to him while in the bath. Trust me, I felt horrible, but once he stopped crying and knew he was ok, we had to laugh. I can hear the lectures coming from the Grandma's already!!!



I can't believe I'm posting this one, he will KILL me when he's older but it's hilarious right now.
EDIT**** So apparently nobody could tell, but if you listen closely you can hear me say "this is Cole trying to poooo"...:) ha!