April Showers

April showers...bring May flowers. That could be true this spring. Oklahoma City is officially out of a drought with the 7th wettest month on record ever.

But that's not what this post is about...We have been busy with baby showers this April. We have several people in our lives expecting little ones of their own this May/June.

The first shower this month was for a dear friend/couple (B&C) at our church. I enjoy hosting showers, but it gives little opportunity to take pictures of the event. Plus having my baby boy in tow, gives even less opportunities to take pictures. But it was a fun time and even the babies seemed to enjoy themselves.

My cousin whose mom is my mother's twin sister, is due with her baby in May as well. She had a shower thrown by her college friend last weekend.

I did bring Blake to the shower and he is in most of the pictures that I took using my cousin's camera :) This was the only picture I managed to get on my phone.

My husband's cousin's wife is also expecting and I went to her shower on Saturday in Edmond.

 

At that shower they had each guest make a hair bow for the baby girl. They had a craft table set up with headbands, bows, flowers, etc. and hot glue. Every guest made a hair bow or band and hung it on a tree. A very cute idea that I had not seen before in person. (I may have seen it on Pinterest!)

Then the finale was our family triple baby shower which consisted of my sister and two cousins. My grandma has three daughters and they each have a daughter who is pregnant and due in May. It was decided at our family Christmas Eve party that a triple baby shower would be thrown for all of the mommies. Little did someone in the room know that they would turn up pregnant shortly after Christmas. Another one of our cousin's is pregnant and due in September. It has been a fun and exciting time in our family.

Pregnant sisters!

 Three pregnant cousins! (Picture "borrowed" from my Aunt's Facebook page).

My little man played and played and played...

....Until he had too much.

 That finishes up our April showers, but we have one more at church next week! Then we will have a break, at least until my other pregnant cousin's shower at the end of the summer.

Firsts in Florida

Our trip to Florida was a new adventure for our family of three. Our little man also had a few exciting things happen during our trip. The previous post documents Blake's first plane ride, which he did remarkably well with. Thank goodness! We also got to enjoy more first experiences with our little man.

We were in Orlando, FL after the OK/TX Spring Break, but unfortunately it was Spring Break in FL plus Easter weekend. Which, by the way, Good Friday/Easter is the busiest weekend for Disney World. No kidding. We were there for a cousin's wedding, so we could not help this unfortunate timing. So long story short. We didn't bother with going to Disney World and we went to Sea World instead. However, Sea World was quite a zoo anyway, I don't even want to know what the crowds were like at Walt Disney.

Here we are, Blake's first trip to Sea World.

 Lucky us, Sea World gives free admission to military and their dependants and Blake's admission would have been free anyway since he is under two years old. Well, now I understand why some places do not charge you for your child under a certain age. There were not many things that Mr. Blake was able to do inside the park except for watching the animals. In the "kid friendly" area of the park there were rides that he was not old enough to enjoy. But mommy found a slide and was able to give Blake his first ride on a slide. There he is chewing on his jacket sleeve. You can tell he is "thrilled". (Ha ha! I don't even think he knew what was going on).

 At our hotel we were able to let Blake have his first experience in a pool. I think he wasn't sure what to think about that either. We just stayed near the edge of the pool where he was able to sit up and splash. Please excuse my "mom swim suit".

We did get a small Disney experience. Our hotel was right by Lake Buena Vista and Downtown Disney was within walking distance. It is a nice area outside the theme parks with shopping and restaurants. It gave us something to do and was nice to walk around. Here are some photo opportunities we took in that area.

We really enjoy getting to do new things with our son. It has been fun watching him grow and become ready for all these new experiences.

We flew with a 7 month old. You should too!

Before our son was even born we knew we were invited to a cousin's wedding in Orlando Florida. It was not until the end of February when we had to make the final decision. Should we go? And how: drive or fly. We took the plunge, RSVP'd, and booked plane tickets. We were really going to do this.

Keeping in mind that our son is very active and not content to just sit around, I did my research. I read every article on Pinterest which gave advice and guidelines on taking an infant on an airplane.

After all of our research and efforts, I am proud to say that our airplane travels went very smoothly to and from Orlando. All of the advice from Pinterest left us overly prepared for the entire situation.

Security was a piece of cake, we were even more efficient and faster than some fellow travelers who were flying alone. I was able to wear our son in our Ergo baby carrier and I did not have to take it or him off to walk through the metal detector. They just had to swab my hands afterwards to "check" for bomb residue.

All the information I read recommended feeding your baby during take offs and landings. Great idea in theory and I understand feeding babies on demand, but can you really feed a baby on your demand? We found that a pacifier did the trick. So, if your baby doesn't take a pacifier very well then you better hope they will eat on your demand :)

On the way to Orlando, we had a connection in Houston. Our first flight was at 6 am and when we got to Houston, we had about an hour and a half to kill and Blake was perfectly happy playing on a blanket on the floor while we waited. On the way home we had a direct flight that left at 3pm. 

Here is daddy and Blake during the landing of the 6 am flight

 Mommy and Blake

Lucky for us, flying with our infant was not a traumatic experience. We were blessed with flights that were not entirely booked, which allowed us to have a row to ourselves each time. All of the flight attendants were very helpful and attentive to us. On the 3 hour flight home Blake started out taking a nap and then woke up and watched Elmo for most of the flight.

I know every child and family is different, but this worked really well for us. Blake enjoys new experiences and he also loved it when the flight attendants would come and talk to us and he would flash them his killer smile. What can I say? My son is already a ladies man.

Weekend Fun!

Last weekend Sesame Street Live came to Oklahoma City and since we have an Elmo fan in the house we took Blake.
 Here our little Elmo fan is watching me get ready before going to the show and sucking on his feet.





I realize people may wonder why we would take a less than 7 month old to such an event, but this little man is something else. Watching Sesame Street on television is one of the few times during the day when he is still and not restless. Initially, I guessed this would not be an age appropriate outing but, our little man made a concerted effort to stay awake without being grumpy. He watched the first half of the show and then fell asleep ten minutes into the second half after the intermission. Overall it went fairly well. Here he is after the show all tuckered out.

On the way home, Mommy and Daddy were hungry so we ate lunch at the Chick-fil-a by our house. Blake was happy to sit and play while we ate.

Then we made it home in time for him to play and take a nap.

It was such a beautiful day outside, that we decided to grill turkey burgers for dinner and let Blake play outside.

We even managed to go for a walk that evening.

Weekends are surely different for us than they were a year ago, but it has been a good change.

However, this weekend has been totally different. Our weather has reverted back to a wintery state and it has been cold and rainy. Plus the Easter bunny came to our house early. Both grandmas brought Blake his Easter baskets which allowed Mommy and Daddy to go out on a date alone.

We ate at the Mule which is a gastro pub like sandwich place in the Plaza district of OKC. Then on the way home we stopped for a yummy, sweet treat:

Thank you grandma for watching little Blake!

Hungry boy!

Blake will be turning 7 months old in about two weeks. That means he has been on solid foods for about a month now. Since everything I had read and researched said the order of introduction of solid foods does not matter, I decided to be "mean mommy" and start him out with green beans!

He would open his mouth and eat them, but he seemed very less than thrilled. On about the fourth day he started opening his mouth for more. After green beans he had squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, prunes, and pears. With each new flavor his first initial response would be a face of uncertainty, but then he would always open his mouth for more and finish the pack. Until...we got to the prunes. He really liked the prunes and did not make a face of disgust like he did with all the others. Silly boy!

Here is my little prune loving man.

 He has also been a very busy little boy lately getting into things. He's not fully crawling, but he sure does a good job getting over to the toy that he wants to play with. He gets on his knees and holds himself up with is arms and lunges toward where he wants to go.

And just for fun, here are additional pictures from a Thunder photo shoot the other day.
 

Happy Friday !

One more thing

Signs of a busy Momma:

• Messy house
• Neglected text messages

• I get on my blog to post something specific and totally skip it! So back to the last post.

One of Blake's most favorite things is naked time!
This boy sure enjoys not having his clothes on. Which is fine with me, plus he looks so cute!

Yesterday morning I was letting him play sans his clothes and he became interested in Mommy's foot and proceeded to chomp on it for a bit. He really went to town.

Good thing Mommy had just had a shower :-)

Moving on...

For our birthdays Bob and I decided to catch up with the times and get a computer that runs faster. The laptop we had been using as a desktop was at least six years old and was S.L.O.W. So slow in fact, it was rather time consuming to even turn it on and check my e-mail or open a PDF document with a busy baby that needs most of my attention :-)

So now that I am hooked up with windows 8 my blog should no longer suffer from a lack of posts.

We shall see...fingers crossed.

Blake's Favorite Things

Our boy will be five months old next week and he already has quite the personality along with some strong preferences. I thought I would just lay out some of his top favorite things.

Water!
Our little boy loves water. The sounds of water, whether it's the rainfall app on our phone, running water from the faucet, sink, shower, you name it. He is even quite cooperative during bath time, he just sits there, looks at us, and smiles as we wash him and dump water on him. I consider us lucky since I have heard of babies who cry during their entire bath time. I am also blessed to be able to take a shower daily since he likes the sound of the running water and the hair dryer.

Here he is being a good boy while waiting for mommy to get ready.

Rolling over
Ever since he turned over on New Years Eve from his back to his tummy, he has not stopped! If I lay him down on his back on the floor, he immediately turns over. He does not spend much time on his back anymore, he is a busy boy and has stuff to do, like figuring out how to crawl...

Elmo!
I take full responsibility on this one, but our little boy loves Elmo already. If he sees and hears Elmo on television, the phone, or the computer he immediately lights up and smiles. People have warned me that Elmo gets old after a while, but I don't care as long as I can keep him away from Sponge Bob for as long as possible...

 













Football
Blake loves to watch football. I partly say it is due to the fact that we got him home from the hospital in time to watch the first OU football game of the season. We also watched most of the college game day's on ESPN this year and professional football as well. So basically it has been football season for this boy's entire life. Hopefully he will like basketball as well...

Women
Our little man is quite the flirt. Why wouldn't he be? He always has women coming up to him and telling him how cute and handsome he is and he just sits there and laughs, smiles, or makes cooing sounds. I even noticed him making cooing sounds when he saw Jessica Shambach on our local news last night...too cute.

For now those are Blake's favorite things. I'm sure his favorite things will expand and evolve over time. It's been so exciting to see him develop and grow thus far.