Toy Box

I was so excited to move into our new house at the beginning of August because it's so much bigger so that meant I'd be able to build more stuff, since our apartment was totally maxed out.  Well, sort of.  I did build a pantry.  But it turns out that even with an extra bedroom, a real dining room, and a bigger living room, we didn't have need for much of anything new, except for one thing: a toy box.  Since our living room has become Spencer's playroom, I felt the need for a place to corral the toys, at least at the end of the day.  Plus, I really wanted to build something!

I used the extra plywood from the pantry and a plan from ana-white.com and went to town.  It's taken quite a bit longer than I expected because I've been busy with other things and could only really work on it while Spencer napped, but I finally finished it today and I love how it turned out.

I might add some letters on the side that say TOYS, but we'll see

I got to use my new jigsaw to cut the curves for the bottom.  I love getting new tools

Standing

Spencer wasn't going to sleep as fast as he normally does when I put him down for his nap today, and eventually he started screaming more than normal, so I walked in to see what was the matter.  He was standing up in his crib.  Oh boy!  This is going to be exciting.  I tried to put him back down and watched him through the crack in the door.  He pulled himself right up his little mirror attached to the side of his crib and then cried piteously for me.  When I didn't come in he tried to grab for the end of the crib without moving his feet and wound up falling face first into the slats on the end of the crib.  So bring on the standing.  Hopefully he learns to move his feet a little before he gets too many head injuries.  The child is fearless.

Why do babies hate sleeping so much?

Spencer is currently laying in his crib crying piteously "ma ma ma ma ma" while he kicks his feet against the mattress or the sides of the crib or the wall, whichever way he happens to be turned at the moment.  Albeit endearing, I wish he would just go to sleep.  He's much happier when he sleeps, yet somehow he acts like I'm torturing him when I put him down for a nap.  I don't get what's so bad about it.  I would love to sleep for hours during the day.  :)

So I realized I have taken significantly less pictures of Spencer recently, and he was wearing the cutest new outfit today, so on a whim I pulled out the camera.  Did I get any good pictures?  Uh, no.  At least none smiling.  He is generally such a happy little guy.  He laughs and smiles all the time.  But when I pull the camera out, total stone face.  See the proof?

 

 

 

 

 Rest assured though, he is generally smiley and happy.  I think he's teething.  Actually, I know he is since he just pushed through one of his top teeth.  Not his front two.  One of the side ones.  He's going to look like such a jack 'o lantern when it comes in enough to see it.  He's already got his bottom two middle ones.  We didn't even know he was teething until it came through, but now I think he must be working on more because he's been super fussy for the last couple days. 

In other news, he's started pulling himself up!  It's so fun to watch.  It opens a whole new world of interesting things to play with.  Bill and I are definitely his favorite objects to pull up on.  See?

 Oops, fell down!

 And if you're still reading this, I had to take a couple pictures of him sitting to prove that he can indeed do it, even though he generally refuses to.  Who does that?  He won't bend his legs, or he'll push back against my hand until he's laying down.  He just likes to crawl.  Sitting is boring.  What a goof.  But he's my goof. :)

 

 

 

 

 

7 Months

I nearly missed it!  Spence is halfway to 8 months now.  He's still growing like a weed.  He's so tall compared to other kids his age, and he's finally starting to fill out a bit.  He's been eating solid food for several months now and just loves it.  When he particularly likes something he says "mmmm" every few bites.  It's cute.  He's got pretty strong opinions about some foods.  Green beans are not his friend.  Neither are carrots or peas.  He'll eat any fruit though as fast as I can get it in his mouth.  The other day I fed him some avocado and black beans from what we were having for dinner and he was in heaven.  He's also learned to feed himself cereal.  At first he could get it in his hand but couldn't figure out how to get it to his mouth, but lately he's learned how to pick things up with his thumb and pointer finger.

He's still army crawling like crazy.  He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks a bit, but then is off like a rocket army crawling.  He doesn't care to take the time to learn to crawl normally since he can move everywhere he wants on his stomach.  His clothes are showing a bit worse for wear, but it's all good.  He just learned on Wednesday how to pull himself up on things, and he thinks that's the bees knees.  He loves being in the middle of things.  If we leave him on the floor playing too long, he comes and head butts our legs until we pick him up.  He really is fantastic about playing on his own though.  It's great for me because I can get lots of things done.  As long as he can come find me every now and then, he is good to go.  Well, unless he's tired.  But that's understandable.

Sleeping has been quite the interesting issue the last few months.  He has struggled a bit, but he's doing better now.  He take two or three good naps a day and if I get him totally full before he goes to bed he'll sleep until about 5 or 6AM.  He still wakes up a lot in the middle of the night though.  We're working on that. 

He's talking up a storm.  He keeps trying out new syllables.  So far he says 'g', 'b', 'w', 'm', and lots of 'ahs'.  So cute.  He'll talk to us or his toys or just to himself.  I just love my little guy! 

Painting

Painting.  Yup.  That pretty much sums up my last month.  See, my parents hired Bill and I to redo their deck.  This is not just any deck.  It's one of those decks with a slatted roof over the top. Read lots of details, so lots of sitting on the hot roof painting 2x2s.  We have been working on it since the first of August and just about finished the first coat on Wednesday.  Now we've got to do it all again for the second coat.  Thank goodness that should go way faster.  The wood was so dry that i just soaked up the first coat like crazy and took a long time to paint.  Oh, and 6 cans of paint.  Wow.  I'll have to post a picture when we finish, because it looks fantastic now. 

So since we're doing all this painting at my parent's house, what did I decide to do in the rest of my time?  Build a pantry and paint it too!  Genius. 

Actually, I really love how it turned out.  We have lots of cabinets in our kitchen but no pantry, and I've never been a fan of putting my food in cupboards.  The kitchen cabinets are that old '70s pale oak wood color that matches nothing, so Bill and I decided to go a little crazy on the color we painted the pantry.  Nothing was going to match, so we picked a fun color: yellow!  It's definitely a conversation piece. So fun. I got green covers for the shelves, so this is definitely an eye catcher.