Attack of the SnackPack

I left the kitchen while Khage played in the pantry. You think I would have known better. He is tall enough to reach the items on the lowest shelf and he uses his height to his advantage. I come back into the room, not even a few minutes later to find this kid sucking on a butterscotch snackpack. He punctured two holes in the foil top with his uber sharp baby teeth and proceeded to squeeze the package while sucking out the pudding. I am sure you hear this all the time from parents, but my baby really is a genius. So I rewarded him for his efforts and ability to problem solve.

At less then eleven months old Khagey got to eat his first snackpack.

Then he carelessly tossed it aside and attempted to work on removing the vanilla snackpacks from the shelf. He was feening for it. But at that point Mommy had to intervene.

Halloween.

I may be biased but Khage was just about the cutest kid out there. We went to a Trunk or Treat and he stayed propped on Daddy's lap on the back of the car the whole time, just watching the little kids come and go in their costumes. It didn't seem to bother him that Daddy and I looked like oversized poultry or that he was tucked away inside a costume as well. Poor Khagey welcomed in his first year of Halloween without a single taste of sugar and with absolutly no trick or treating. I am saving all that for next year when he will be old enough to request a costume of his own and trick or treat without me talking for him like hes my ventriloquist dummy. All in all I enjoyed this Halloween, because it is I assume one of the last simple Halloweens before Khage has his own itinerary for the night. Soon enough he will be running from door to door and filling up a pillow case full of candy while I race to keep him in sight.

So yes, this Halloween I enjoyed.

 

^{Dont mind my feathers all in a bunch.}

Yogurt Paint.

I stumbled upon this genius idea to mix yogurt with food coloring on some stranger's blog. It comes into great use if you have one of those kids who tries to eat the paint instead of actually painting... sadly we have one of those kids. In addition to snacking on the paint he is also a smearer... he just smacks his hand into the colors and smears it around viciously until paint splatters the walls around him. So again yogurt paint could come in handy... its edible and washable. Whoda thought?



These two.

She has figured him out... but those others, they are still oblivious. 

He is her link to snacking in between meals.

And boy does she know it.

These two have got a great thing going on.

Who am I to intervene?

My first Halloween Costume.

We don't call Khage our little chicken. We don't have an obsession with poultry either. This costume choice came about before Khage was even a thought. There is history behind this costume. When I worked at Albertsons, years ago, we sold Halloween costumes. And because it's Albertsons and very few people go there for costumes, we ended up stamping them more then half off and throwing them in a cart hoping to get them out before Halloween was over. This was four years ago mind you. I was not married, Brad and I were just friends, and I had no hope of having children in the near future. But after some persuasion by a dear friend of mine I bought a few and threw them in a box to hide in my closet until they were needed or found. This was one of those costumes.  It waited patiently all those years to finally break out of that box and play dress up with our sweet little boy. Here it is making its grand debut as Khages First Halloween Costume.  

Oh dear, look at that poor little snot nosed boy.

Dot Mobile.

 I spent two days of my life tracing and cutting out card stock circles. I wanted to make a paper mobile for Khages room... yes he is ten months old and no he wont lie on his back in his crib content at staring at bright colors floating softly in the fan induced wind. But, he needed some colorful decor above the chair in his room and its just about the cheapest thing I could find to make on pinterest. Costing me a total of like five bucks... not even if you count all the left over card stock I have for other projects. The instructions required jewelry pliers and fancy Martha Stewart circle punches in two different sizes. I, so cheaply, did it without those items and went old school with tracing and cutting out 200 circles myself and using a tack to punch the smaller holes. Oh yes, back off Martha or else I will shove you with my poor carpal tunneled hands.

Its definitely not perfect but I think that only adds to it's charm. And Khage just loves to stare at it while he drinks his bottles. I think it's darling and it adds a nice POP of color to his room.

Materials

Cardstock (5 8.5x11 pages of 4 colors)

Embroidary Hoops (8 inch & 5.5 inch)

Jump Rings (8mm)

Needle Nose Pliers (I used two pairs of tweezers)

A tack (I used this to punch tiny holes in the top and bottom for the jump rings)

Glue Gun

Fishing Line

Ribbon

Directions

Trace and cut out as many circles as you can fit on the cardstock. My circles were 1.5 inches. Use the tack to punch holes in the top and bottom of every circle. I put cardboard under the circle to be sure the tack punctured all the way through the cardstock. String the circles with your pliers in various lengths, or go ghetto and get your tweezer like I did. This will take up most of your time. Hot glue your top circles to the embroidary hoops, fitting 16 circle on the larger hoop and 9 on the smaller one. Tie three pieces of ribbon at various lengths to the smaller hoop and let them dangle (I cut the bottoms of the ribbon in upside down V's for visual appeal). Connect the smaller hoop to the larger hoop with fishing line at three equidistant spots. Then do the same with ribbon or fishing line to hang the mobile to the ceiling. Using ribbon for this step looks lovely but it wont spin as well as it could with fishing line.

Now hang it & let your baby enjoy it!

Ten Months

A few special facts about our little baguette:

He gives the most adorable open mouth kisses ever

Sometimes when I make Wilbie say arf arf, he will make doggy sounds too

He is finally holding his own bottle when he drinks his milk

It is getting very hard to keep him quiet and still during church

He hates to eat vegetables and loves black beans

I bonk his poor head while trying to get him into his carseat at least twice a week

He is so easily frustrated

All day he rearranges the chairs in the kitchen

One of his favorite toys is a plastic rake

If we brush our teeth he will always want to brush his too

He tries to eat the binding off all his books

His feelings get hurt if you tell him NO

Playtime in a fort never gets old to him

He is so proud that he can scoot backwards on his belly on the tile

It drives him mad if he cant get the lid off his toy box

He makes the most loveable baby mumbles when hes tired and sucking on a pacifier

If he is in our room without supervision he is surely playing with Daddies church shoes

He puts his play phone to his ear and acts like hes talking to someone

He can climb into his wagon on his own

Looking at pictures always makes him smile... ecspecially if they are of him

&

He is definently the main reason our lives are filled with such happiness. He makes the hard days easier, the boring days fun and the smallest moments memorable. He is our world.

The Vegetables and the Vacuum.

This little chum. He refuses to eat his vegetables or anything that's not fruit, cheese, cheerios, black beans or chicken. So help me if Khage turns into a picky eater like his Daddy, I will flip out!

Yesterday I am feeding him, Khage not Brad, sweet potatoes and he is using all force necessary to evade that spoon, ducking and weaving with lips tightly sealed. But I am determined, so I get another spoon full, airplane it towards his face, he smacks the spoon away, I woosa, wipe up most of the mess, and give it a few minutes before I try again. Hoping persistence is the key. After five failed attempts, and sweet potato chunks everywhere but in the kids stomach, I figure I will get the vacuum and knock out some house cleaning in between bites. I return to the kitchen to plug in the vacuum and Khage starts to get all stir crazy. Hes wiggling and trying to move about to get a clear view of the vacuum. I ignore his weirdness and spoon up some more potatoes. This time he happily takes the bite... and immediately opens his mouth for another... all the while looking around me as to not break eye contact with the vacuum. He finishes off the potatoes like they are his favorite meal in the world and I smile proudly because I finally beat him in a battle of the vegetables. I take him out of his chair and he then hightails it towards the vacuum. That's when I realize he ate the sweet potatoes for one reason only, not because he finally thought to himself "maybe I should mind my mommy" but because he thought to himself "if I eat these nasty things she will let me out of this darn chair so I can play with the vacuum."

I have known for some time that he has had this long distance thing going on with the vacuum. I say long distance because I avoid vacuuming when hes on the floor because he loves to play with it and it always ends in him knocking it over. I have this returning fear of him getting stuck underneath the fallen vacuum for all of thirty seconds before I save him. I dunno, it could be traumatizing.

But I figured I would reward him with some vacuum play time, under my supervision of course, since he ate his vegetables.
What can I say I'm the fun mom!
And after that I locked him and his long johns in his room while I mopped the house.
You know, because I'm the fun mom.

.

Pumpkins Smumpkins.

I was going to write a big long post about how frustrated I am with the high prices of pumpkins this year at the pumpkin patch. I was gonna say something along the lines of how upsetting it was to go to a pumpkin patch and leave without pumpkins because we couldn't stomach paying that much money for a vegetable that we planned to leave on the porch. Stupid pumpkins smumpkins.

But, after looking at that adorable picture of Khage and his Daddy holding hands, this all just seamed so insignificant and a change of topic may be in order.

Then again I am finding it very hard to forget about the three pumpkins for fifty bucks. And its not like we wanted to get one of those record breaking pumpkins that you see on the news with the farmer whose standing next to it and the thing is freaky bigger then him and hes got all five of his grand kids sitting on it with the biggest smirks of their lives and the dog to the left looks all scarred because he has no idea what that big orange thing is...

This rant of mine has run its course.  

Lets get back to my little smumpkin.

Romping in the mud and rain.

Finally it feels like fall. It did just officially turn into Fall a few short weeks ago, but we have been waiting for this kind of weather for months now. We celebrated the long awaited rain with some time rompin in the mud. We got Khage all booted up in his fall apparel so he wouldn't catch a chill and we headed for the empty field around the corner from our house.

He was more then willing to wear his owl head gear and I thank my lucky stars because I know how frustrating it can be to try and keep your babies warm when they refuse to wear the required attire. It was funny to see him watching his hands covered in owl mittens, he could not figure out why he couldn't grab anything. And he looked darn adorable and I could have eaten that face for lunch.

Only one three-wheeler is running, so one of us had to pull Khagey with the bicycle. It doesn't sound too bad but coming home there is quite the uphill climb so Brad courageously took on that battle.

We didn't get any pictures of us flying through the muddy marshes but we all had a great time. Including our little Khage who is already a professional rider; whenever we step on the gas he immediately throws each leg around the gas tank in preparation for a ride.  

As Brad took Khage around the field, driving slow and cautiously while he held Khage tightly around his full belly, it made my heart smile. The two of them together, doing what Brad loves with the little person he loves the most really just warms me right up. I thought I loved Brad plenty before we had a child and now I see Brad as a father, through Khages eyes, and it only makes me love him so much more.