A Few of His Favorite Things

Hunter develops his little personality more and more every day. It's SUCH a joy to watch him grow into such a sweet little boy. He is still extremely cuddly (which is definitely one of my favorite things about him). He loves to be cuddled and hugged. He initiates like 30 hugs a day or something. I LOVE it!

I thought I'd give y'all a little picture tour of some of his newly developed favorite -and a special treat at the end of his least favorite - things. Here goes. . .

Although Hunter is for sure a mama's boy, he'll still let others cuddle him - for a little while at least. Here's him visiting Nanny and Grandad (his great grandparents).

He also likes to play with his friends - as long as mommy is clearly visible. He is a little sensitive, but definitely has fun! Here he is with his friend, Jackson.

Bath time is still a favorite. He loves his rubber ducky. And I love that smile. Now how can that not be the cutest baby you've ever seen?

Every night after bath time, Hunter brushes his teeth. Surprisingly, he LOVES this too! After we dry him off, we grab the toothbrush and he opens really big for us to brush his bottom two teeth. Then he takes the tootbrush from us and "brushes" his gums.

He likes to read books, as long as he gets to do the holding. . .and the reading. He's a pretty fast reader, and does not like my slow pace:). Here he's reading one of his favorite books, Musti counts to Ten.

Now for Hunter's least favorite thing IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. This is serious y'all. He hates it more than diaper changes and nose and face wiping and even the horrible mittens that I make him wear when it's really cold out. Are you ready? Here it is. . .

The dreaded Tonka Truck. Dun dun dun dun! (gasp!) We're such mean parents for making him stand. I know I know. But it gets worse. . .

Here he is after escalating. It's been about five minutes since the previous picture was taken. The good news - he actually pushed it and took like 3 steps on his own! Oh my goodness, the boy can walk! Even through screaming and really big, fat crocodile tears!

You're laughing aren't you? How can you not? That baby is so dang cute, he makes my heart smile:). Even when he's screaming.

Off the Bandwagon

Okay y'all. I love American Idol. I've loved it pretty much every season. There was one season in there that I stopped watching. My excuse was valid though - planning my wedding maybe? or basking in the glow of newly married life when James and I would just sit for hours at night looking into each others eyes? Something important like that.

I jumped right back on the bandwagon after missing that one season, though. I love listening to talented singers. So, when it comes to a competition of talented singers I have to ask, who wouldn't want to watch that?

BUT, I think I've had enough. At least of the beginning weeks. I don't know if it's becoming a parent or just feeling more accountable for my sin or what, but I can't take watching the train wreck that is the first month of this show. I feel REALLY bad for those people. Why do we have to make fun of them while the entire nation is watching? I just cringe with embarrassment for them. Oh the horror!

The Go Down Moses dude is for sure the worst one yet for me. I loved this guy. Who wouldn't? So sweet and hardworking and kind of clueless, which is a good thing in my opinion (at least in this case. it makes him more endearing). After the audition, I wanted to call him and tell him, "Let's be friends! Jesus loves you! Forget those hateful American Idol producers!"

Here's Hunter watching American Idol with us the other night. . .He's a sucker for talented musicians too.

Here he is when the hateful judges were laughing at the clueless contestants. . .

He says, "Boo Simon. Don't be so hateful."

Technical Difficulties

Okay I've spent WAY too much time attempting a blog post today. First I spent Hunter's entire nap (we're talking 1 1/2 hours here people) typing a post. Actually, the typing just took like 10 minutes, the trying to upload a video from my camcorder to attach to my post took an hour and a half. I finally gave up. The post was worthless without the video, so I just deleted it. Basically I just wanted y'all to see Hunter saying his first (or at least I think it is) word. I'm just not 100% sure on his intent, so I was going to have y'all watch the video and let me know. But my computer skills are obviously not up to par. His first word is "hi", by the way. Also "dada". I think. It's pretty confusing to me whether he's purposefully saying "hi" and calling James "dada", but I'm like 90% sure.

Then I was going to blog on 27 dresses. I saw it last night with my friend Ronnee. Not good y'all. The expectations were seriously too high. The extras in this film ruined it for me. Severe overacting. Again, I wanted to find a video clip or at least a still picture to prove to you that the extras were b-a-d, but I couldn't find one. So I deleted that post too because again, it was worthless without proof.

I'll attempt to type up something a little more creative (and with pictures because who really cares about a post without pictures) this week.

In case you wanted to know how I was really feeling.

I am a feeding therapist. I treat kids who won't eat. Or drink. Or sometimes put any sort of food or utensil in his or her mouth. They often scream and kick and gag themselves (without hands - now that's talent) just at the sight of a high chair or feeding room or unfortunately sometimes just me because they know I am the mean feeding therapist that makes them eat.

I work in a world full of people trying to help kids - to eat or speak or reason or walk or use their arms and on and on and on. Any therapist can relate to me when I say that sometimes parents can be stressful, whether they are pushy or high maintenance or "crazy". I always thought that being a therapist and being surrounded by other therapists in other disciplines on a daily basis would be really helpful for me when I was a parent. That I would be totally calm with my kid even if he wasn't the leader of the pack on every skill. Especially when it came to feeding or speaking or language acquisition since I've seen the worst of the worst. I mean parents come to see me (not me specifically, but me and my team, us) from all over the country to "save" their kid and get him or her to eat. So in my mind, I was going to be in total control.

Well y'all. I'm sad to say it. I was wrong. I'm pretty sure I've become one of those (heaven forbid!) "crazy" parents. We all remember this post and this one and this one and this one. See a little bit of a pattern here. Obsess much? Crazy? Yes. I think so.

I'm proud to say, though, that I've moved past the HUNTER'S ALMOST 10 MONTHS AND HE'S STILL NOT CRAWLING OR DOING CALCULUS OR RUNNING MARATHONS. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!!! stage. I have to confess that I mainly moved past that because I started a new obsession. I've just been reluctant to blog about it for fear of everyone knowing the true crazy that I am, but what the heck, here goes.

Hunter refuses to drink anything that isn't breast milk or formula. He also won't chew soft solids - just sucks them or lets them sit on his tongue or tries to swallow them whole and inevitably ends up gagging himself. So since this is what I do everyday at work, I've been trying multiple feeding strategies and I'm proud to say this is what he did with his black beans at dinner tonight . . .

And after he self fed, he even gummed those beans before swallowing them.

Then after much clapping and praise and smiling and yelling "Good drinking!!!! Yay Hunter!!!" like a crazy, idiot mother, he drank this. . .

What's that in the bottle? Breast milk? Formula? No ladies and gentleman, that's juice. Yes it is.

And because I am a drill sergeant of a therapist (seriously one of my supervisors in graduate school called me that), I didn't stop there. You can't drink from a bottle forever. By the end of the meal (after more clapping and yelling like a lunatic), Hunter was drinking - I use that term "drinking" very loosely - from a sippy cup (or really quasi sippy cup - the therapist in me is not a big fan of the Nuby, but you do what you have to do).

The blue one. I couldn't make my boy drink from a pink cup when there was a blue one clean.

Blame it on the Terrorists

A little piece of advice to all of my bloggity friends - Never go a week without checking your blogs. Especially if you're subscribed to like 50. Okay, I'm not really subscribed to 50, only 23 (which might as well be 50). I've been sitting at the computer reading the updates for way too long, especially when I have a list of a million things I should be doing while little H sleeps. But what the heck, I'll just post instead.


James, Hunter and I went to Utah for a little holiday vacation (or for all of you British readers, a holiday holiday). We went to visit my friend, Laura and had some good discussions (including one about some ganstas on patrol), watched 2 movies - 1 good, 1 with dead bird blood, so we'll label it not-so-good, hung out with some fiesty kids, played in the snow, ate some good food, which definitely made me feel so much less domestic (I did get a good recipe though), and much more.


Then we made our way to the airport to go back to Texas where it was 73 degrees instead of 15. James had packed while I took care of the moody sleep deprived baby. Since he's a boy and doesn't often carry liquids in his carry on bag (wait. what carry on? james is so not the metrosexual - no man purse for him) he didn't think twice about throwing my lotion into my purse.


I realized when we were in the crazy long security line that my bottle of lotion was too big to fit in the ziploc bag that is now required for all liquids. I just kept it in my purse thinking maybe they wouldn't notice it. Right.

Well they did notice it, and they confiscated it. Yes people. They took it. My yummy Bath and Body Works red-bottle-that-I-really-wish-I-could-remember-the-name-of-but-it-has-escaped-me-now-which-is-not-good-because-how-am-I-going-to-replace-it body cream. I've only used it ike 4 times, and now some skanky TSA employee is basking in the beautiful aroma. Tear.


For real TSA. What am I going to do with my body cream on the plane? Squeeze it out onto someone's face?


I was mad people. Seriously mad. Which I realize is completely ridiculous since it cost like $10 or something, but I couldn't help it. I'm sure the patrons of the Salt Lake airport thought I had a major attitude problem because. . .well, I did. I was not talking quietly as I ranted like a lunatic to James about my body cream being confiscated because of the stupid terrorists. Boo terrrorists!


At least I got to see my cute baby in his hat



And the snow


Y'all are totally still singing "Blame it on the Rain" in your head aren't you? Don't you just love Milli Vanilli!