I Love My New Camera!

[baby attacks!]

[little mr. attitude]

[babyzilla!]

[family]

[being silly on the couch]

[pppsssshhhhfffff!]

[i'm gonna get you daddy!]

[look at me! i can do a baby push-up]

[no pictures please, i'm eating my baby toast]

James' Day in Pictures

The lion where mum and dad met on their first date :)

The "Nottingham Eye"

Cute little Justin eating his crackers

Phoebe playing with her toys

Jay plays with his as well

Phoebe chewing on Justin's new "stay by the buggy strap"

Justin and Sarah having a good laugh in Jon Lewis

James loves her shoes!

Justin showing off his photography skills

A tree in bloom, spring is almost here!

My point of view :)

No more pictures mom, I'm tired!

~mel

Another week down...

"You've got the strength of 6 lion cubs!" 

Phew, another week gone already and he's a full 5 months old. Where has the time gone?? 

James has definitely grown in the past week. He's getting very good at jumping in his little jumper, he's started eating solids, with bananas and sweet potatoes being his favourites and he's starting to sit up on his own! His little smiles are absolutely infectious and we just constantly laughing at him. 

He's also added some new sounds to his repertoire. He says 'ooooh' and 'ahhhh' a lot now, along with the screams of course. 

Flapping his arms and slapping the table also seem to entertain him while we're eating dinner. Oh, and who can forget the hair pulling and grabbing of noses? He is growing before our very eyes and everyday is a new discovery for us all! 

We were just playing around with him while he was standing up and leaned him against the stool that Nana Nell got for him, he actually stood there! We just can't believe how strong he is and how much he loves being on his legs.  

Saturday was his second time in the swimming pool. We signed him up for aqua-babies classes on Saturday afternoons for 5 weeks. We sang nursery rhymes and did different exercises to get them used to being splashed and having water on their heads. At the end of the class he got dunked and didn't seem to mind it at all. Such a little trooper :) 

Aqua Baby

Looks like we have a little fish on our hands. We took James swimming at the Bramcote Leisure Centre on Saturday morning and he absolutely loved it! 

We had to take him into the cooler splash pool because the warmer teaching pool was closed due to an "incident" before we got there, but he didn't seem to mind at all. He wore his little red swimming shorts, they were were so freakin cute! There were the occasional chattering of teeth (okay, so more like chattering gums) but he just kept on kicking his little legs around. He seemed very inquisitive about the other people... he was probably confused why there were other people in his bath! He loved bouncing around and he loved being held on his tummy while he kept his head above the water all the while kicking his legs around like he was actually swimming. I really wish I could have gotten a picture of it! We decided to sign him up for Aqua Babies on Saturday afternoons. They teach how to get babies used to the water and splashing and how to dunk them under. It should be a lot of fun having our little family trip to the pool every Saturday :) 

Off to The Farm

Today we had a little gathering with Aquila and Mahir, Victoria and Fin, and Clare and Thomas for lunch at a pub called The Farm. It's so cute watching the little guys check each other out! James was so well behaved this morning, so it really made getting together fun. On our way into town we took the stroller on the bus. I had an old busy-body lady tell me that my stroller was parked the wrong way and that I was taking up all the stroller room for allll the other babies that could potentially get on the bus. Mind you, she was really old and definitely didn't have a stroller :0/ She just kept on yapping at me to move the stroller! I sort of just ignored her and left my stroller the way it was. Oh, the joys of public transportation..... at least lunch was great! Can't wait to see the ladies and little guys again soon! 

Take care

~Mel

it's already been 2 years!?

Well, this post isn't really about James (ha, actually it sort of is...) but just wanted to post that it's been exactly 2 years since me and Kev's first date!! Can't believe how quickly the time has gone by!

Our first date consisted of meeting by the left Lion on Market Square (his name is Agamemnon by the way) at 7. I had my trusted body guards, Jessie and Lyndsey by my side just incase the date turned out to be a dud [we even had a buddy system where I could run to the bathroom and text them to come save me!]. I ended up being 20 minutes late because didn't know the bus wasn't coming and we had to quickly hop in the cab to make it. Poor Kev had to stand in the rain and wait for me, but being such a sweetie he waited! Finally I got there (Jessie and Lyn slipped off and waited for the call) and Kev and I had a little pub crawl around the city centre. We stopped at The Bell and listened to some Jazz while sipping (?, haha) lagers and breaking the ice, then off to The Social for another pint, and finally a place called Dogma for Chocolate Monkeys... we didn't know that it was "single's night" in the basement until we found ourselves the only ones not trying to hit on loads of people around us. We definitely were laughing when we figured out what was going on! Kev was a perfect gentleman and asked for a sweet kiss while everyone else around us was wondering what his secret was to wooing a stranger on single's night (either that or they thought I was that type of girl). So, we hit it off very well for a first date and here we are 2 years on going out for some sushi and drinks. Yay! Happy 2 years!

James-led weaning

Sooo, we decided to go the untraditional, alternative method with allowing James to start on solids called baby-led weaning. 

Baby-Led Weaning:

 "Baby-led weaning (often abbreviated to BLW) means forgetting baby purées and weaning spoons and simply letting your baby feed himself. Many parents unconsciously choose baby-led weaning, particularly with second or subsequent children. Babies love to copy their older siblings and try to grab food from their plates and are often much happier if they are allowed to feed themselves.

"Gill Rapley, a health visitor for 25 years and now deputy programme director of UNICEF UK's Baby Friendly Initiative, has a personal interest in baby-led weaning. She believes that babies who are allowed to feed themselves by being offered a selection of nutritious finger foods can easily join in with family meals from the start, and are less likely to refuse foods or become fussy eaters as they grow older. She considers that many childhood feeding problems stem from a child's unwillingness or inability to accept foods which require chewing, and that these problems become apparent when babies move from purées to "second-stage" foods which contain lumps. She also suggests that the baby food industry puts unnecessary pressure on parents to introduce puréed foods into their babies' diets at an early age."

-babycentre.co.uk

http://www.babybanana.biz/index.htm

http://babyledweaning.com/

I first heard about it while we were discussing weaning (ie. starting on solids) in baby massage class and thought that it sounded like a good idea. James has been really interested in watching us eat and is always reaching for foods off of our plates. While we're holding off from completely starting him on solids and feeding him all of the different foods we're eating, we thought we'd see what he thinks of a few different food items. So far he's tried celery, cucumber, banana and some courgette (zucchini). He's kind of "meh" on the celery and courgette but he really liked the cucumber and bananas. Looks like we're off to a good start! 

mmmm, cucumber!

banana-flavored fingers are better than the real deal, I guess.

what am I supposed to do with this?

not really a fan of courgettes...

Some MN Pictures

Just wanted to show off a few pictures from our family holiday to Minnesota.

Nana Beth

Auntie Em

Auntie Katie

Auntie Shay!

Daddy and James on the train to London.

 

20 weeks

He can roll over!

15 lbs. 7 oz. 

67 cm (26.4 inches)

There is no way that I could have ever anticipated that 20 weeks would fly by this quickly. I can remember being 20 weeks pregnant with him and thinking the end would never come. Now James is going to be a full 5 months old next week. He's growing so much everyday. Sometimes it feels like he's heavier and longer than he was the night before. He also seems to have figured out how to accomplish things over night as well. Last Friday he completely surprised me and he rolled over while I was in the other room. I set him down on the floor on his back with some of his toys and when I came back in he was on his tummy! It took me a minute to realize what had actually happened. It was so exciting! Now he's a little master at it after only 4 days. He was having troubles getting his arm out from under his chest at first but now he's just a rolling fool. I don't think he really understands what he can do because he gets really frustrated that he's now somehow on his tummy. He looks around like "how'd I get here??" He used to roll from his back to his front... but now that he's mastered the other way he seems to have forgotten how to do the reverse. I'm sure he'll be keeping me on my toes once he's figured the result of rolling the opposite way! 

"Only the dogs can hear you, I'm afraid."

His new favorite sound to make is an extremely high-pitched scream that sounds like only something dogs and dolphins would be able to hear. He screams when he wants attention and in response to Kev's questions. He makes a little face too, I have to try to get a picture of it because it's absolutely adorable. His other sound repertoire includes "ahh goo" and various versions of screams and shouts. He's become a master at crying. He absolutely knows what he's doing and will let out wails that send us running, only to start giggling a minute later. We're definitely wrapped around his little finger.

Sleeping Beauty

Oh praise the lord he's sleeping through the night again! After our trip to Minnesota, getting him to sleep through the night was like a nightmare on Elm Street. He would act sleepy so we went through our normal night routine of bath, lotion, jammies, and feeding and then putting him down. He would sleep alright for about 45 minutes and then wake up absolutely screaming the house down. We were so worried because he seemed to be in absolute agony and would  not stop crying. We tried everything! Calpol, more feeding, rocking, music, burping, he would not stop. We finally just couldn't handling being in the room with his crying so we'd take him downstairs and then he would act as if nothing happened! This went on for about a week until I finally took him in thinking maybe it was his ears (since that was he was grabbing whilst all the crying was going on). The first doc we took him to was horrible and was basically like "you're an over-worrying, obviously inexperienced parent and don't know what an ear infection looks like. He's fine." Two more nights of his screams and I went in for a second opinion. We saw another doc in the same practice but she really checked him over and suggested that he could be teething and maybe it was the nerves in the jaw that was irritating his ears as well. She gave us baby strength ibuprofen and some teething gel (all on the NHS, yay!!) and so far it's seemed to do the job. I also discovered, out of an act of desperation, that he likes to sleep on his front! I know the risks of front sleeping for babies, but he is old enough where he can roll over and he's very good at holding his head up so since this is the only thing that's getting him to sleep through, so it's what we're sticking with. It'll probably change next week and he'll want to sleep on his back again, but it's working for the time :)