Now tell me that my baby is not a Mini Me…

I had to run to the fabric store to pick up more black minky fabric for a Mickey Mouse security blanket that I was making for a friend.  Really, it’s a thrilling life that I lead up here in the tundra.  Anyway, I had about 10 minutes before Lucas needed to take a nap.  Jo-Ann Fabric is like my black hole.  I could spend hours in there and not realize that the store closed 30 minutes ago.  So even though I knew exactly what I wanted, 10 minutes is not enough.

I decided to stretch out my time by giving him cereal that he now knows how to feed himself.  It worked like a charm until he ran out, started screaming, and all of a sudden I realize that the odd looks that I’m getting are because Lucas has cereal all over his face and stuck in his hair.  I take him out of the stroller to try to clean him up, and while I’m holding him he pukes all over me and the fabric that I was holding and then starts giggling while the lady who works there is staring at me with a horrified expression on her face.

“We’ll go ahead and take a full yard of that.”

Well, let’s get on with it while I still have a shred of dignity intact.  Here’s the stuff that I did while I wasn’t here:

Read a book called I Just Want To Pee Alone which literally had me laughing out loud.  Has your kid ever unbuttoned your shirt in church?  Because until he has, you’re not going to find the humor in this.  Luckily for me, Lucas totally has.  I’m so not kidding.  And it took me about 20 minutes to realize that my bra was hanging out.  We should probably find a new church now.

Took Lucas on a picnic after picking strawberries at a local farm with a few lovely moms who I’ve met.  Really, I just used their children as cheap slave labor while mine gave my back hickies from the comfort of his baby carrier.  And then we ate.

Lucas learned how to feed himself baby cereal.  He now screams when he runs out.  I would like to think that he’s just trying to find his voice.

Sitting in the stroller like a big boy now!  No more car seat for him

We spent Father’s Day in Saugatuck, which is a cute little beach town against Lake Michigan.  Lucas was a little less amused by the nice weather and grass than Angel and I were

Just as I suspected: I birthed a future Sun Devil.

Tonight was Lucas’ first formula bottle.  It was in the making since my boobs put themselves into retirement this week, but it was a little sad that my little “man” is exactly that- a man!  I keep trying to remind myself that my mom only nursed my brother for 6 months and he turned out to be an engineer so I’m not hurting him, but part of me just feels bad that I’m not doing something that I feel like I’m supposed to be.  And that’s a big part.  If this is something that I’m made to do, why did my boobs decide that they were done?  I mean, it’s probably about time (since I don’t hug trees in my spare time), but I still feel a little heart broken that I’m done with that milestone in Lucas’ life.  Let’s be real- dude eats his shoes.  You’d think I’d be fine.

Getting on with it, here’s my week in photos:

Turns out that it IS legal to cage your children

My Little Dude wakes up smiling. How lucky am I?

No words needed

His favorite toy continues to be: Mom.

Play time in the dog bed

Looks like we’ve grossly overpaid for his crib.

Guess who’s free to start drinking more, and only partially by choice?  Yep, this marks the end of nursing.  I knew that it was coming, but I wasn’t sure that I was ready to give up the time that I get with my baby yet.  So, my body went ahead and made the choice for me and stopped making enough food to feed my ever hungry child and gave me the middle finger in the process.  Lucas was less happy for a few days and expressed himself in a less pleasant and more vocal way when it finally dawned on me that my little man is probably hungry and maybe I’m not making enough anymore.  So I went upstairs to pump a bottle and 20 minutes later I had nothing.  So I pulled a bottle out of the freezer and went ahead and shed a few tears along side Lucas.  I’m now down to nursing three times a day (morning, night, and once in the middle of the day) and I plan on cutting out that middle of the day feeding soon.  If my goal for nursing was only 6 months and I’m 2 weeks past that, why am I so sad to be forced to slow down the dairy service?

Unfortunately for Lucas, I’ve finally discovered the “silence” button on the baby monitor.  That took a grand total of 2 seconds to start treating it like a snooze button in the middle of the night when he wakes me up.  I probably hit it a few times before I actually wake up.  Maybe frustration is at the root of his awesome sleep now that I’ve figured out the food situation.  Last night I put him to bed at 8:30 and he didn’t wake me up until 7.  And yesterday he only took 2 naps, but they were solid, 2 hour naps.  Even with my movement monitor I kept going in to check on him because I couldn’t believe that he was still sleeping.  And let me add, with a 2 hour break from baby duty I finally have free time!!  You know, to do laundry, cook, and run Angel’s errands.  All of the important things (insert eye roll).

Speaking of sleeping, we’ve now entered the stage of crashing in the middle of activities.  The man can’t help it if he’s suddenly tired!

Fell asleep crawling across the room

Fell asleep mid jump

Today I learned that Lucas is scared of the blender.  I don’t know how to explain it, but it was almost like he was more scared for what it was going to do to me than what it was going to do to him.  He was crawling on the floor in the kitchen while I got dinner together and when I turned on the blender he started screaming, whining, shaking, and holding out his arms for me to come pick him up while he looked at me with these eyes that were about to explode into a pool of waterworks.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  The blender is Lucas’ kryptonite.

Mommy Speed Bump

Not only am I his favorite toy to play with (or crawl on), he’s started pulling himself up totally on his own!  What the heck is going on here?  I was laying on the couch half asleep (see: poor sleep for days until I figured out he wasn’t eating enough), and all of a sudden the Leapfrog table started making noise.  Thinking that the table was haunted, as I recently learned it was, I was about to turn it off and instead saw this:

Which is him playing with his car under the table, pulling himself up to play with the table, and then going back to playing with his car.  Ugh!  Another sign that he’s growing up entirely too quickly.

Continuing the trend of growing up too quickly, on Tuesday afternoon I actually got the opportunity to do all of my grocery shopping at once.  Why?  You may ask.  Well that’s because this munchkin’s car seat doesn’t fit in the top of the grocery cart in the store that I shop in, so I have to put it in the cart which only leaves me with 2 square inches of space for my groceries.  Now that Lucas is getting better at sitting on his own, I took a chance and sat him in the cart like a big, little man.  And he did great!  He loved looking around….

And GRABBING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!  Things off of the shelves, things in my hands, things in the cart, eating the side of the cart, screaming, crying, throwing his pacifier, and then melting down roughly 5 minutes before I was done shopping because he was tired and couldn’t just fall asleep in his car seat anymore.  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the start of the end.  Grocery shopping just became infinitely more difficult and I now understand what moms complain about.

(may be an add at the beginning of the clip)

It’s like Lucas’ body fluids have gone on strike and thus decided to stage a walk-out.  I’m out of bleach and carpet cleaner, and even Molly is hiding.  Meanwhile in my backyard, the neighborhood rabbits are having an orgy in the grass.  Yep, it’s a day for the books.

Yesterday, prior to the Liquid Strike of 2013, I dropped Lucas’ crib to the lowest position and took a few 6 month photos.

Which is getting harder to do now that all Lucas wants to do is crawl all over the place.  You have no idea how many photos like this I now have on my phone:

In the middle of our Liquid Meltdown, the last of our new family room was delivered.  Here’s where I spend most of my time now:

Naturally, it’s not ever this clean so I had to take the photo during nap time and cut out the second half of the room that’s COVERED in baby toys, play mats, burp cloths, changing table, and I think you get the idea.

Lucas got a new toy yesterday.  And you know the saying that kids are more interested in the box then the toy?  Yeah, what’s up with that?  Little Dude, we got you a new toy.  Screw the box that it came in and play with the actual toy before I throw you in your crib and take away all of your toys until you understand how awesome your parents are for giving you this new toy!!

And lastly on this super quick post because I don’t have a ton of time between laundry, cleaning stains out of the carpet, more laundry, and more laundry, here are more naked photos of my baby today because everything I’ve put on him today has ended up being soaked in bleach and I’m out of bleach so he’s out of clothes:

pause between diaper blow out and puking

Nap time with Momma.  The only break in cleaning that I’ve gotten all day.

Once again, I’ve gotten extremely behind in filling everyone in about my week.  I’m getting better about it now that Lucas is starting to get better naps in during the day.  Leave it to my trusty iPhone to remind me what I’ve been up to….

4th of July wreath for the front door (made of yarn)

Lucas’ favorite game is to chase after Molly. she usually hides in her bed but now he’s started kicking her out of her bed and using it for himself. It appears that we over paid for our crib if a dog bed would have done the trick

If I sit on the floor, this little carpet dweller has learned how to crawl into my lap. Think he wants to be held?

Lucas started pulling himself up. He’s done it on my diaper bag, the couch, and now he’s starting to learn how to on his toy. He’s going to skip walking and just go straight into running I think…

And then a few fun videos to get you through the day of my adorable son.

I had no appropriate bath photos but this video seems alright.  Lucas started playing in the bath tub and is starting to appreciate bath time:

Another giggle fest between my son and my husband.  Sometimes I wonder how i got so lucky with these two:

Lucas started crawling over to the TV, sitting down, and watching what’s on for a solid 5-10 minutes before moving.  Naturally, I took a few photos, got a good laugh in, and then started to video when he decided that he was done watching.  But how cute is this?

There you have it.  A week of baby photos.

Last night we were winding down our day a little bit late.  I was ready for bed before Lucas was but he insisted that we keep playing so I laid on the floor with him to play and quickly fell asleep.  Angel was watching from the couch and took a few photos of what happened next….

First, Lucas came over and tried to wake me up

When that didn’t work, he decided that he would just take a nap with me.  (The tiny, wet hand on my face is what actually woke me up)

We get the baby off to bed and he’s sound asleep (Finally!!  Getting back on schedule with a teething baby from a trip has been brutal) so Angel goes to the basement to watch TV, and I head upstairs to put this tired Momma to bed as well.  I’m thhhhhhhhhhhis close to falling asleep to the sound of the thunderstorm when the tornado siren starts going off.  Um, what?

5 seconds of panic trying to decide if I’m asleep and dreaming this or if it’s real before I jump out of bed, yell at the dog to get up, run to the nursery to grab the baby and start heading down the hall for the stairs all while yelling at Angel.  Which in retrospect, it’s not like there’s anything that he could do and he should probably just stay put in the basement anyway.  But whatever, he was on his way upstairs to go to bed when the siren went off.

An hour later, Lucas was wide awake, I was totally freaked out, the dog was confused, and Angel was a little annoyed at the three of us.  Needless to say, poor little man just can’t catch a break…. And thus, neither can this extremely tired Momma.

Holiday weekends are meant to be spent exactly like we’re spending them in the Rivas Household: in pajamas, in the rain (okay, maybe not that part was meant to be), watching old movies on ShowTime and snacking instead of making a real meal because Mommy doesn’t feel like cooking.  First, we watched Back to the Future 3, then we went out to get baby food and stuff for lunch, and now we’re watching Jurasic Park while Lucas naps.

Seriously, who doesn’t enjoy an old movie marathon bundled up on the couch?  The giant mess we’re making in the house can wait.  It will still be there tomorrow.

To anyone with DirecTV- this weekend is free movie channels!