Nicholas Maravillas’ Blog

Nicholas turns 7 months old today and is as wonderful as ever!  He is so much fun these days!! Let’s see, I hope my ramblings make sense…

He rolls all over and although he doesn’t crawl, he gets to where he wants to go.  It is a combo of pushing up on his arms, rolling, spinning and dragging his legs.  He is sitting up more and more.  He isn’t totally steady to sit independently yet, but he is getting there.

He loves to eat.  His favorites are pears, squash and sweet potatoes.  Whenever he takes a bite he goes “mmmmm”.  It is so funny!  He has also learned what the highchair means now and gets so excited when we put him in it.

Zoe is a constant source of amusement, much to her displeasure.  Daddy is his favorite playmate by far.  Matthew can make him laugh and smile like no one else.  It just makes my heart smile to watch them together.

He has his two front bottom teeth and they are pushing up more everyday.  No signs of any more yet, but I am sure they won’t be too far behind.  We are still trying to get a good picture of them.

We are heading to CA this weekend for a week to visit his great-grandparents.  Hopefully the trip will go smoothly! Stay tuned for lots of pictures from that, but for now enjoy the latest ones. 

Love,

Nicholas

Nicholas met the Florida branch of the Maravillas’ this past weekend.  Well, most of them.   Winter and Steve couldn’t make it.  They all loved him and he had a great time! They brought him a fun piano and cow toy that giggles and shakes.  The debate is still on going as to who is the favorite cousin… I think he needs more playtime to deliberate!

We took lots of pictures, enjoy!

He also got to meet two of my NJ cousins, Karen and her daughter Ellie.  They brought him super cute toys too!  He loves them! They ran into some traffic so they got here later than planned, so we didn’t get a chance to take a picture together before Nicholas went to bed.  But we still had a lovely visit chatting away.  Here is Nicholas enjoying his new toys.

His bottom right front tooth has cut through!! I am just hoping that now he will chill out and sleep better…

love,

Nicholas

We are forging ahead into the world of food and so far it has been hit and miss.  Isn’t that the name of this whole baby game though?!  I made applesauce and the first time he tried it, he wasn’t a fan.  I even tried putting some on his tray thinking that he’d suck off of his fingers, but no luck.

The next day I didn’t warm it up.  I also mixed in some cereal and he gobbled it up! So, I’ll add apples to the yummy list.

Then we moved onto carrots.  I was excited about it because I used carrots grown in our own garden. Can’t get more organic than that!  Today was just the first day but he was not impressed.  At all.

They were a hit for fingerpainting though!

It is true, our baby has cut his first tooth! He hasn’t been himself for the past week and yesterday we saw the beginnings of his first pearly white!  It isn’t out altogether yet, but you can see it and definitely feel it.  It is just about impossible to take a picture of it, but lately he has been biting his bottom lip and smiling- so cute!

Yup, I am a working woman again! Nicholas is and always will be my priority and full-time job, but a great part-time position recently fell into my lap.  I have been involved with a local volunteer organization since we moved to NC and have really enjoyed it.  But a couple of weeks ago, the program coordinator called me saying they had an opening and was wondering if I’d be interested given my degree and experience.  Long story short- I sent my resume, got an interview and was offered the job!  It is only 12 hours a week and completely flexible- perfect!  I’ll be working with older adults with dementia and their families as well as providing dementia education, both aspects of my previous job that I miss so much.  It will help me keep my toes in the working world and wet my social work whistle all while learning the local resources as I only know the system in VA.  Honestly I am very nervous as it has been awhile but also very excited! Fortunately, I start in a month so I have some time to get used to the idea.

And I know you are wondering, but what about your adorable son?  Where will he be while you are out earning some moola?  Well, our fabulous neighbor has graciously agreed to watch him.  She has a little girl and also watches a couple other children from the neighborhood so Nicholas will be able to make some new friends.  Plus Matthew works from home most days so he will just be a few doors down if need be.  But I am sure everything will work out just fine!

We’re forging ahead into the land of vegetables!  Since peas seemed to irritate his bottom, we moved onto green beans.  He was not a fan.  They didn’t seem to bother him, he just didn’t want any part of them! We tried for 4 days straight and I even mixed them with squash since he loves that.  But he didn’t fall for it.  So we’ll try those again later.  He is already becoming like his father in their common distaste for all foods that are green.

So, we moved onto sweet potatoes.  We went to Whole Foods (best store ever!) in search of organic produce since you can’t find much beyond carrots and lettuce at the regular grocery stores.  And indeed they had an abundance, including organic sweet potatoes.  The sign said Hannah Sweet Potatoes.  Hm, nice name I thought and I picked out a couple of those, some organic apples, a pear and some frozen mangoes for later.  Then I go to bake the potatoes this morning and would you know that they were white inside!  This was surprising to me as a sweet potato is usually orange.  Well, apparently not the Hannah variety.  Anyways, it tasted the same so I pureed them up and Nicholas loved them!  He acted like I couldn’t feed them to him fast enough, so he wanted to give it a try.  Hopefully he won’t have any sort of reaction to them.  We’re moving onto fruits next!

And here he is just being silly.

Matthew introduced him to the piano this evening.  He had ‘played’ it before but wasn’t so interested.  But tonight when he hit the keys, he seemed to realize that he was making that sound!  He even looked up to see where it was coming from.  He was very focused on it too.  I got some pretty cute pictures of our musical prodigy.

Stay tuned for a tooth update as he is cutting his first bottom tooth!!!   All I gotta say it, thank God for baby Orajel!