No Daddy for a week.

Daddy went to San Diego for a conference for a week. During that short time, Richie has learned how to crawl up onto the couch, stacking blocks (not just knocking them down), eating cup cakes, drinking through a straw and his seventh tooth has erupted out of his gum. Not bad for five short days.

Oh, he still loves water and hates milk. Huh.

Busy busy busy...

Everyone is napping, so I finally have a moment to post...Hooray! So much has happened since Richie's birthday (which really has not ended, yet). In global Richie news, about the week after his birthday he started walking more than crawling. Now, he's basically done with crawling all together and walks (waddles, really) to his destination. He'll still get distracted along the way, so he doesn't always make it to his destination and he still falls. He's started to climb stairs, when we let him near the stairs. They're still open, so, in theory, he could crawl through them and have quite a big fall. Unfortunately, he was climbing the stairs outside and was sitting on the lowest step when he fell backwards and dad was not close enough to catch him. He mostly hit his back shoulders when he landed on the welcome mat, but he did bump his head and it scared him a bit. (Me too.) I resisted the temptation to get a CAT scan, but it took a lot of effort to do that.

He's also learned how to shake his head for "No." Not exactly sure where he learned that one because we rarely shake our head when we say it. He "says" no to a lot of things but often doesn't really mean it.

He's been drinking water out of his sippy cups. He has no real interest in whole milk, although we're mixing it in to the formula in greater concentrations. Richie frequently just wants water; and a surprising amount of it, too. That's my boy! (Must be passed down from his Oma's side.)

He had a rough spell after his shots, which was expected. He even got the fever and rash about two weeks after the shot, just like they said. Then, we all had a cold (I also had a touch of food poisoning for a night), but we're all on the mend.

Richie has started eating a lot more table food! He seems to really like a lot of our cooking, too! He really likes one of the Thai dishes the ML makes, although she did take it down a notch. He likes Daddy's chicken soup, too!
I'm sure there's more stuff that I'm forgetting, but I figure you've waited too long for some new Richie pictures anyway...here they are...

When mommy is doing "stuff" in the kitchen, Richie is playing around on the floor with toys, pots, pans, etc. He frequently like to nibble and instead of having him cry every time he wants a Joe-O (Trader Joe's version of Cheerios), we have a little dish of them. Papa-Nat thought we had a cat in the house! (Nope, just a little Richie...who likes to watch the alley cats! Meow.)


He still likes oatmeal, too.


Richie's birthday party was postponed due to the potential for more snow! Can you believe it? It did not actually snow, but we decided not to risk it, so we had the party the following Friday. Oh, by the way, we're all melted-out now. We did have some heavy rain storms that caused the house to leak a bit, but that's a different story. Here's a picture from the party with some of his play-group friend. Papa-Nat and Honey happen to be in town for a couple of days, too.


Here's the boy after climbing two steps!


This is a picture of the Thia food that he gobbled down! (It's the dish we call "Red." He has not had "Yellow," yet.)


He still enjoys swinging, especially now that it's getting warmer. Fortunately, he had a nice infusion of warm clothes from his Oma for his birthday to tie him over.


And, he has not outgrown flying around on Mommy's legs!


Even though he chowed down on the Thai food, this is all he had to say.

Quick Update

Poor Richie. For his first birthday he got a bunch of shots in his arms and he has been crabby ever since. We had to give him a dose of Tylenol and Motrin tonight. He has learning how to pitch a (not so) little fit!

For the record, his head circumference is 19 inches (although I'd claim the nurse under measured it because she was not actually on the crown in the back...and that was the same size last time), but still in the 90-95%ile. His height is 32 inches which is in the 95%ile. And his weight is 24.25 lbs which is in the 80%ile. We've been given license to feed him anything we want.

Yummy pulled pork BBQ from the Harborque! Mommy fed him french fries.

The Day After

Richie learned how to blow kisses! Actually, he just makes a clicking noise with his mouth but he does it in response to you blowing him a kiss. He's SO cute and clever!

Although, when we went to the park there was another little boy walking in the park next to his dad. ML asked how old he is and his daddy said, "Oh, he'll be one next week."

Awe SNAP!

I'm in the midst of rebuilding my computer, so nothing more to post just yet.

365 days

Happy Birthday Baby-Boy!
We Love You!

One year ago, today, I started blogging about Richie's (extra-uterine) life. Yes! Master Richie turned one year of age today! And, just like the first day of his life, it snowed. Well, really, just flurried. Which is all it did the day he was born.

The original plan was to have a little party today with his play-group friends. However, earlier in the week they were predicting up to a half foot of snow today. Moreover, I was in the hospital overnight last night which meant there was a chance that I would not be allowed to go home if my relief was not able to make it in to work. So we decided to postpone the birthday party until next Friday. We'll have pap-Nat and Honey in town too, so they can babysit while we get the house ready. (This will be the first they've heard of that plan!) Besides of rescheduling due to the potential weather, of note, the city actually pretreated the roads THIS time. And, as Murphy's law would dictate, it did not snow to any significant amount.

In any case, we had a nice little birthday as a little family unit. We had homemade cupcakes, opened presents, and then went to play at the Baltimore Science Museum for a few hours. I took a TON of movies today. (About 4 gig worth of movies and pictures.) I'm put some pictures up now, but movies will have to wait...Daddy is sleepy! (Only had 3 hours of sleep last night and a couple hours worth of napping.)

Here are his birthday presents and cards! We tried to get him to open the presents (which we thought he'd do right away since he love to rip paper) but he just didn't get it. Well, until the last present! He opened that one almost completely by himself!


We were getting ready for Cupcakes. He really did not like the hat too much. I seem to recall feeling the same about them when I was young.


Check out how long his hair is! I keep begging ML not to cut it....I LOVE IT!


One of the presents we got him was a giant Woot monkey! And, really, we got it because I wanted to put the cape on Richie! He is, unfortunately, terrified of the actual monkey especially when it makes its monkey noises....he crys and crys and runs behind the nearest parent. But, he looks GREAT in the cape! (If you don't know what woot is, go to www.woot.com)


That's the cape-less monkey in the background. I think it is Super-Richie Kryptonite.


Richie because SO hungry today that he resorted to trying to SUCK the dry formula from the sleeve.


Moment later, all was right with the World.


Here we are at the science museum in our favorite playroom. Richie's got his favorite orange ball!






Just so show that he's not smiling ALL of the time.


These were actually take a few days ago. Just too cute to pass up.




Okay, I had time for one movie! Richie LOVE to play with the computer they have set up in the infant's room. (No big surprise there.) Mommy was playing hide-and-seek behind the monitor. Richie was absolutely cracking up! Just so you know, that's him jumping up and down. I'm not bouncing him.


That last one went up so quickly, here's another.
This is his actual homemade birthday cup-cake! Later, I'll show you where he spits it out. ;-)

Aftermath

The aftermath of Blizz Part Deux and the loss of all of my files since October. My Windows XP decided to eat my Windows 7, which I've been running since October. Don't ask me how or why. I have some ideas, but I've never experienced anything like this in my computing life. I had planned to do a DVD back-up this weekend, but apparently I was a week too late. I know you're sick of snow pictures, but I have some more that are just too impressive to pass up. Don't worry, I have a ton of new Richie pics and a movie of him WALKING!

Here's the second blizzard after liberating the car from the alley. Oh! Did I mention that we're supposed to have more snow tomorrow?



Here are images of the Inner Harbor from the Baltimore Science Museum.





Ice cycles (Yes, that's Richie in the background.)


Okay, I couldn't wait. Here's Richie WALKING!!

Totals....so far

We've had three snow falls in February:
Feb 2-3: 4.9" (but who remembers this snow fall?)
Feb 5-6: 24.8"
Feb 9-10: 19.5"

Normally, the average Feb total is 6.4" for the month~

Guess what the forecast is for Monday?