winter wonderland

dada and tobo investigate the snow


Thanksgiving was very good and homey. It was nice not to go rushing out and spend time together as a family. We made a 7 lb turkey breast on the bone (no wings) which turned into yummy turkey white chili the next day. I also tried my hand at making press cookies. Paul approves, so apparently I figured out how to make them in high altitude.

Every week something new comes up with tobo. This week we've started pulling up on everything. Again, I find this out after he gets real quite fater waking up from a nap:



waiting for a jail break


Needless to say birdies have now been moved up to the top of the crib to keep someone from using them as a stepping stone.

In action:






Here's a picture of mister droolly two teeth:


Tobo is officially an explore, into the cabinets, down the hall, investigate the carpet, on and on.



Some of this I set up for him to get into... some of it he figures out before I do. All this wandering led me to work out a plan for baby safing our apartment as well as rent a steamer over the holiday weekend. It was a lot of work, but I'm quite pleased with having a clean floor for my little monster to crawl around on. Or stand up as the case might be:



Poor paul ended up having to go out for the afternoon while I vacuumed, hauled furniture and steamed, all on a snow day too. We didn't end up switching rooms since both rooms were about the same temperature when I added some insulating curtains to the kid room. The steamer took care of the funky dog/cat/mildew smell we were getting in the room, which was the other reason we even considered switching rooms. With some effort, we cleared out all the junk from his room so he has an almost childproof bedroom now. Much needed for someone who is getting bored with front room. I'm putting off doing all the drill chores (ie, using a power drill to put hangers up, child locks in drawers, etc. ) just because I ran completely out of juice the sunday after thanksgiving. In the middle of all this, Tobo when through either teeth or indigestion that kept him up most of the night Saturday. I think I got about 10 hours of sleep in 48 hours. So I turned in early last night. Tobo was better, so we think it was food not agreeing with him. He woofed down a lot of squash at dinner.

I did talk to the nurse finally and now have a better idea of where tobo is foodwise. She was very helpful. Basically until he's eating 32oz of formula a day, don't push the solid foods too much. I'm starting to track how much he's eating now (around 21 oz a day). It also means I should ignore how much the books are telling me an almost 9 month-er should be eating. Tobo is still around 17 percentile in size, he's just not a big kid, so he's not going to eat like one. What's so crazy about it is that mentally he's ready to feed himself, he's just not able to process the food he wants to eat. So tonight we tried diced up cantalope with pretty good approval, a good source of vitamin C, which he hasn't really been getting. We've also stopped giving him any water and are just giving him formula to drink and we've dropped solids for breakfast. Hopefully this will up is milk intake.