Tommy On the Move

We have NO space left on our computer to upload things - apparently we have taken way too many pictures of our little guy the past (almost!) 10 months! So unfortunately this is a post without pictures (sorry Maria! I know that's what you want to see!).

Tommy is On The Move! Crawling, scooting and zipping all over the place. He pulls himself to a standing position with the baby gate - I have a ton of adorable photos - some where he is happy and some where he looks like he thinks we've put him behind bars! So those will come in a future post.

Someone also graduated to a convertible car seat as of last Sunday! It's been an adjustment for John and I since now we have to carry HIM as opposed to a car seat, along with whatever else we are carrying out to the car or in to the house. And since Tommy still likes to fall asleep even on short drives (to and from school), we now end up waking him up as we get him out of the seat even if we are trying not to.

We are heading out on vacation tomorrow - Tommy and I are driving to the Outer Banks in North Carolina with my family - a big reason we wanted to switch to the convertible car seat, since we think it has to be more comfortable for Tommy. John has to work this weekend at the golf club but is flying down on Tuesday and will drive back up next weekend with us. The car is jammed with so much stuff, I am not even sure where I'm going to sit - and yes, I'm supposed to be driving! We will meet up with everyone at a rest stop on the Turnpike and my sister will jump in with us so we can possibly take turns driving and entertaining Tommy. I sure hope he doesn't think he is going to sleep the entire trip, because then he'll be up all night for our first night on vacation!

We are looking forward to a nice, relaxing week, though Tommy will probably get stressed out because the house has a nice big pool, and the kid still isn't a fan of pools. Or fun water stuff, unless it's his bathtub, which he LOVES. He has finally discovered how much fun SPLASHING is! Once a week at school, they have a "water fun" day, and the babies tried out the sprinkler this week. Tommy was not a fan of that apparently. I'm told this is common for a lot of kids, and was the case for both of my nieces, who both now LOVE the water.

My next big thing is to get Tommy eating table food. Those of you who know me, know I'm not much of a cook. Once in a while I get inspired and then that's all I make for several years, so I end up perfecting it (i.e. pepperoni bread - LOL!). I never took an interest in learning how to cook - I've always been a very traditional eater (meat and potatoes for dinner, salads for lunch, toast or cereal for breakfast), though I have made some progress as I've gotten older. I do eat more veggies at least. And my in-laws are big breakfast people (well, compared to me anyway), so when they are visiting or we are visiting, I will join in and have even eaten...french toast, bacon and EGGS! (I can hear many of you gasping in shock who have known me for a while!) I realize I can't let my tastes dictate what Tommy eats. Honestly, it is SO easy to give him the jar food - it's like take out, which John and I are VERY guilty of getting, though while not the best excuse, I blame it on our schedules and not having the time to cook every night.

So, last night, I dug out our blender and found the instruction booklet. I think we used it once since we got it as a wedding shower gift (and I think John actually used it, not me). Pretty self-explanatory though. So I bought a combination of fresh, canned and frozen veggies and fruits to attempt to make for Tommy this next week. Yup - bringing it all on vacation hoping that I will figure this out and see how my little boy actually likes (or doesn't like) Mommy's cooking. After reading up a bit on some of the baby websites I refer to, I've decided that I should probably make stuff once or twice a week and freeze it. You can use ice cube trays as each one is slightly more than an ounce, so you would know how much you are feeding (and that's something I like to know)! So we'll see how this goes...might be a total disaster/flop. I am getting the impression sometimes that Tommy is bored with the foods I'm giving him, even though I spend WAY too much time in the baby food aisle picking out a nice variety of foods for him (so maybe this experiment will work?). I realized this the last 2 times I was at the store, including today, when other moms zipped by me, quickly found the items they needed, and were off. I swear it took me at least 20 minutes today. Yes, I still bought some jars of baby food to bring with us in case this experiment fails miserably!

I did find this GREAT website though: www.weelicious.com. A colleague of mine sent an email this week asking us to vote for this woman to get her own show through Oprah on the new network she is going to be involved with. So I check out the video link and LOVED this woman's audition and have been voting for her as much as I can. She basically shows you how to cook EASY things for the whole family, with kids, babies and even shows you how to get the kids involved. This type of show would be so perfect for a clueless cook like myself, who does not even know where in the store to find half the ingredients in a recipe!

Before I sign off, since I never got on here to post earlier in the week, we want to wish Oma Cathy a very happy belated birthday (June 30th)! And also a special congrats to Grandma Barb on her retirement from the Bayonne Board of Ed effective July 1st!

John is going to clean up our hard drive this weekend hopefully so when we come back I'll have a bazillion more pictures to clog the thing up again to post for you! Hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July!