Nicholas Maravillas’ Blog

Nicholas is just a few days shy of his 8 month birthday and man, is he growing up!  Bear with me, this is going to be a long update!

Tonight was his first big boy bath in the real tub.  No more baby tub!  He did just fine.  I was afraid he’d freak out, but he did great and had fun crawling around and playing with his toys in there.

He is now shaking his head ‘no’.  We don’t think he knows what he is doing, but it sure is funny to see!  Sometimes he does it in response to something and that makes it even funnier!  Such as, “Nicholas, do you want to take a nap?”, “no Mommy!”- shaking his head.     He is gradually getting better with napping too.  We think he was/is going through some variety of separation anxiety.  The no-napping coincided with our return from CA so I chalked it up to that.  But it also coincided with me going to work.   I was perplexed because he naps okay for Ms. G, but not for me.  We think he didn’t want to sleep when I was around in case I left again.  Sorta sweet but also makes me a bit sad.  But he has gone down with minimal fuss the past couple of days so maybe we are getting past that.  I always come back so hopefully he’ll figure that out soon!  On that note, he is doing great at Ms. G’s!  He loves watching the older kids play and rumor has it that he is smitten on an older woman- a totally adorable 10 month old baby girl!  I am getting back into the swing of the working world and enjoying it.  I miss Nicholas of course, but I am not gone all day and I like what I do.  Plus payday is NICE!

He continues to crawl all over the place.  Well, his version of crawling.  He pulls himself on his belly with one arm and pushes with the opposite leg.  It certainly gets him to where he wants to go, so it works.

He is all over the place and almost ate cat food today! Yummy.  We think he dreams about crawling because we often find him like this at night.

He LOVES to stand up.  He can’t do it on his own, but is getting steadier if he holds onto something.  He hasn’t pulled himself up yet, but he is trying.  I am sure it won’t be long.  Yikes!

We are venturing deeper into the realm of food.  He had some waffle the other night.  We are letting him feed himself which is so neat to watch.  He is really close to perfecting the pincher-grasp.  I just love the concentrated look he gets and how he puckers his lips when trying to figure something out.  He also drinks out of a cup at each meal.  We have tried a sippy cup and he just plays with it.  But he loves drinking out of a cup so we’ll do that.  We probably won’t totally abandon the sippy cup… we’ll see.

And since he is sitting up like a pro, I bought him a floppy seat and he loves that! He is so proud of himself sitting up in a highchair at restaurants. We are loving not dealing with the bulky car seat and figuring out where to put that too.  It is so nice to have him as part of the table.  Plus he likes to chit chat so he adds lovely conversation to the meal!

He also likes to sit up in the laundry basket and supervise my folding.

So that is Nicholas in a nutshell!  Stay tuned, I am sure he has lots more tricks up his sleeve in the coming weeks.

Love,

your two leggers

We’ve recently added breakfast to Nicholas’ repertoire.  He gets oatmeal and fruit soon after he wakes up then a veggie and rice cereal at dinnertime with us.  We’ll introduce meats soon too.  Eventually I’ll add in lunch.  I swear between timing our outings with naps and all of his eating, we’ll never leave the house! Anyways, here are some pictures of his oatmeal adventures.

I did a mini-photoshoot today because I just loved his little outfit.  I am not a good photographer (I shouldn’t even call myself that!) but he is such a cute subject so I think they turned out great!

Here is the one and only good picture of the baby man’s teeth.  He has been shy about showing them off for the camera, but we were able to get this one.  Enjoy!

Oh and Nicholas and I both survived my first day of work! My mom came down to watch Nicholas (he’ll go to the sitter’s next week though) so I was happy knowing he was home being spoiled with her.  I attended a conference with a coworker which meant about 9.5 hours away from home, so that was really hard and I missed him like crazy.  Luckily my regular days are only 5 hours away (includes travel time) and not as demanding as the conference.  Today was a regular old office day and it was much better.  I am really excited to get into the job and to be a social worker again!   Thanks to everyone for all of the support and well wishes!

We are pleased and proud to say that we all survived our first trip cross-country!  We left at the buttcrack of dawn on the 2nd and just got back yesterday evening.  Glenn and Gayle generously flew us all out to California for Nicholas to meet his extended family.  It was so great to have their help the entire trip too! It was such a relief to have 4 extra hands around to help with anything.

Nicholas did really well. He was an angel on the long plane rides and really put on a show for everyone.  He got restless towards the end of the 4 hour flights, but we all were at that point.  He met Matthew’s Lolo and Lola, my grandmother and Aunt Diane, Matthew’s Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Joey and Tony and his cousin LJ.   He had smiles, hugs and kisses for all of them!  And you know the grandmothers juat ate that up! It was a total joy to watch him with everyone.

Along with meeting family, we also went to the Jelly Belly Factory, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory and the Pacific Ocean.   Nicholas loved the beach!  It was a lot cooler than we thought and pretty windy.  Luckily, Nicholas LOVES wind in his face, so he was all smiles there despite the cold.  He stuck his toes in the water and left footprints in the sand.  Matthew and I also went to Napa for a day to visit a few wineries.  But mostly we hung around the house for the family to spend time with Nicholas.

While we were out there, Nicholas decided to start crawling! Well, not exactly crawling on his hands and knees but more getting up on his arms and dragging his legs.  But whatever it is, it is moving him forward and into everything! Guess we need to get serious about baby-proofing around here.  He is also a pro at sitting all by himself now.  He looks so cute on his little booty playing with toys!

All in all is was a lovely trip! I am proud to say that we did it and all came out fairly unscaved.  Also, I masterd nusing in public with a cover (which I had never done before this trip) and changing an explosive diaper 38,000 feet in the air.   We are happy to be home now though, especially Zoë- although I think she’d be okay if we had left Nicholas out there!

Obviously we took a lot of pictures, but here are some highlights.  If you want the link to an online album, just email me.

That has been my mantra for years now but Nicholas shows me everyday that it is so true!

Zoë has a bunch of old wrapping paper in her ‘house’ that she loves to play in.  Well, so does Nicholas.  No matter how many toys I lay out for him, he always ends up in Zoë’s house rolling in her paper.  Seriously, I don’t buy him many toys because he has just as much fun in old paper and boxes!

We went out to dinner last night for our anniversary.  We went to PF Changs then got dessert from the Cheesecake Factory.  YUM!  Everyone we know who is a parent has asked us if we’ve given Nicholas a lemon slice while we were out yet.  And up to this point we had not.  They all said it is great fun- for the parents!  So we gave it a whirl last night.  It was pretty funny!!!