At Home with the O

If you are a follower of this blog, you know that I haven’t posted anything in a while.  Here’s the reason:  I went back to work.  And there’s just not enough time.    Unfortunately, I am no longer “at home with the O.”

I never really believed that whole saying “there’s not enough hours in the day,” but it really is true.  Bear with me as I try to catch you up on the last three months of little O’s life (it’s sad, but that is almost half of his life).

We started Oliver on solids a little after his 4 month birthday.  After his 4 month doctor appointment, when the doctor sparked the concern for Oliver’s “excessive” weight gain, he suggested that we start giving him some real food to lower his caloric intake each day.  Oliver’s first meal of rice cereal was a hit.  There was no delay in his desire to move forward with the foods.  I started by making his food for him, but that got old pretty quick (mostly for Oliver).  It wasn’t that it was too much work—it was actually really easy—it just made way too much of each food.  I made a butternut squash, and Oliver ate nothing but squash for three weeks before we finally decided to toss it all out.  The boy was going to turn orange if we let him eat the rest of the squash.  We’ve since gone to organic only pre-made baby foods.  This gives him quite a variety of tastes without overfilling the freezer with pureed food (we have enough of Oliver’s food in the freezer, if you know what I mean).

In September, our wonderful babysitter went out of town, leaving Oliver without anyone to watch him during the day.  Kevin and I took the opportunity to take the day off and spend some quality time with the little man.  We took him to the zoo for the first time where he experienced all of the animals he could imagine.  We even took him into the petting zoo so that he could interact with the goats.  The goats seemed more interested in him than he was in them, but I think they all had fun.  Kevin and I even joined the zoo so that we can take Oliver all the time.  I can’t wait to take him to see all of the Christmas lights during Festival of Lights!

In the three month hiatus that I’ve taken from blogging, Oliver has had not one, but two ear infections.  At his last doctor visit, the nurse practitioner that saw him said that he had “furry” ears.  I guess he gets that from his dad.  The chronic ear infections he gets from me, though.  He is such a trooper and makes it through the days just fine, but the nights are a completely different story.  The poor little boy can’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time when his ears are bothering him.  Hopefully this will not last too long, and he’ll be healthy for a long stretch.

There is not much to tell about Halloween, but there are some really cute pictures to share.  It's a shame that he'll really only get to wear these things once!

The biggest news in the last three months is that Oliver has started moving around.  He’s not exactly crawling yet, but he manages to get around pretty well without it.  He does a combination of army-crawling, rolling, scooting, and a move that I like to call the Oliver Twist.  He spins in little circles that are just slightly off from one another until he moves to wherever he wants to be.  We realized that we were going to be in trouble with Oliver’s new skills when we were getting ready for church one Sunday morning.  Kevin and I were in the bathroom and Oliver was sitting on the floor at the end of our bed.  When we came out of the bathroom, I couldn’t see Oliver.  He had moved himself around our bed, around the dresser, and was laying on his belly in front of the closet door with my shoe in his mouth.  My son acts like a dog.  What a funny little boy!

Thanks for sticking through with the long post.  Hopefully, I won't wait three months to post again :-)