cousiny fun

just a cute photo of cole and kaeli together at little nest the other day. fun times ahoy!

playground fun

just a few more photos of cole from his favourite place - the playground! we've been every day this last week, including twice one lovely day. he now knows the word 'playground' and he grins and says 'puh' if you say it first. yesterday he practically lept out of the carriage when we got there.

it seems he loves walking and crawling all over the play surface and concrete almost as much as he loves the slides. i think he could make it all the way to starbucks! ;-) i loved seeing him all dusty after his adventures - what a little boy. as long as he's not eating things he finds along the way, i'm all for adventure!

i'm a little concerned about buggy theft so i try to find places to park ours that make it awkward to get to for would-be thieves. our lovely neighbours recently had their bugaboo frog stolen from a different playground across the street from our building, on the science world property, in the middle of the day! apparently some bad-karma-loving folks just walked off with it. and not even hoboes or anything - parents with their own stroller already. honestly people - that is really low. think i should buy a bike lock for our stroller? is that weird? i kind of think i should but am aware that i would look weird, but will probably do it anyway.

ahh, it feels like spring!

Now that I have my crafty blog started, I can get back to the business of posting the stuff that everyone (especially the Grandmas!) want to see. Photos of Cole!

Today we celebrated what felt like the first real day of spring. The sun was out and the weather was glorious. The birds were chirping, the skaters were skateboarding, the basketballers were basketballing. We took a short walk to Gastown to visit Button Button, a vintage button (shocking!) store that recently reopened in a new location but was unfortunately closed today. I only found this out after lugging the carriage up about 10 steep stairs, to be greeted by the owner of the store who told me they weren't open. Um, you're standing there and the door is open. I just lugged a baby carriage up the stairs and I'm definitely going to buy something (browsers wouldn't have bothered) so just let me in, ok? We'll try again sometime this week because I do need some more vintage buttons for my projects.

Anyway, on our way to the closed button shop we stopped in one of the various nondescript parks in our neck of the woods. There are lots of them and none have swings, unless you walk over to the parks along the seawall, which are plentiful and do and are great too. But of course the advantage of the parks without swings is that they usually have much better slides. Cole is a bit wee for slides, but I stand to the side, hold him halfway up and then slide him down (over and over!), which he loves. Sometimes when there are no judgey moms around to give me the side-eye we climb up and slide down together. Today we had the place to ourselves and did lots of both!

Cole had a blast trying to climb up the slide - there was no way to discourage him. He was getting all sorts of static zaps from the plastic slide but he just laughed and laughed.

And he had a great time meeting his first real-life ladybug! I had to really try to keep him from touching her - it looked like a disaster (for the ladybug) just waiting to happen. Or maybe protein for Cole, who of course does put mostly everything into his mouth...

We went on a strange ambling stroll through Gastown after the button semi-fiasco, stopping to try on clothes and shoes, for an iced mocha (to celebrate spring, of course) and we stopped at our favourite place to pilfer daffodils on the way home.

And you must check out his walking! I haven't ever been able to get a video or photo even of his walking until now - he has prefered to hold a finger and run around the room or go between the two of us, but all of a sudden today he can really walk on his own! I don't know what changed, but he can just walk across the whole kitchen, or across his room or clear through the middle of the living room. He still reaches for a hand if there's one nearby or the edges of things when he gets wobbly, but it was so strange and amazing.

Happy three quarters birthday, Cole!

Yesterday was Cole's 9 month birthday. Three quarters of a whole year - amazing! I was thinking that 9 months sounded familiar, and of course this marks the point where his time outside the womb is equal to his time inside.

We spent the day doing a mix of the familiar and the new. We played as we do in the morning, before naptime and after lunch. Cole has figured out how to climb into his toy baskets after pulling everything out and seemed to really enjoy the experience.

He was treated to a free show as workmen came into our place during our 11 am lunchtime to inspect, and then rip out a few pieces of, our severely warped flooring. (A pipe burst three floors up a few weeks ago and hilarity has ensued.) They responded to my tales about the floor driving me crazy by ripping out a section of floorboards for now and chucking it on the deck. Apparently it will take several more weeks to get started on actual repairs. For now, this is a far sight better than walking on flooring that buckles with each step. Cole promptly learned how to pull painting tape off the spot they left.

Then we took a trip to my office. Cole was resourceful and found ways to amuse himself endlessly. Aside from beaming at everyone, he found out just how much fun you can have with a rolling step-stool and a bottle of water. Especially the step-stool - he pushed it around (thank you, low-pile sensible carpeting) and had a grand time walking behind it. And it was only a matter of time before he realized that he could climb on it too. Everything seemed very exciting for him, albeit beige.

I tend to be very protective of Cole's naptimes. We left the office armed with a travel mug of free coffee and he conked out in the car right away, so I figured we'd better keep rolling. I was hungry (after eating lunch at 11 am) and figured we'd come across a drive-thru along the way... Cole doesn't generally awaken and then go back to sleep for naps - you only get one shot each in the morning and afternoon. As it happened, it was a great, somewhat meditative, drive. Our car battery died a week ago (I left the ceiling light on and then parked the car for a week) and now our radio won't work without a special code that no one can give me over the phone. So I had an hour and a half to drive around without any music or talk, and it was really quite lovely. On a whim, we drove to Porteau Cove, halfway between Vancouver and Squamish. It was so beautiful out - the fog was rolling over the water and above it the sky was gloriously clear. Never did end up finding a drive-thru and instead resorted to eating one of Cole's teething cookies. Not bad, actually...

We must really start getting up to the mountains more often, or out of the city in general. I love it, but sometimes just a breath of that fresh woodsy aroma and an open stretch of road really hits the spot.

A day in the life

Just a few photos from our day yesterday. We had scads of fun at home, playing and getting out and about (well, that was fun for me).

Cole is crazy about the wool monkey from Auntie Kathy, Uncle Al & the boys - we call him Orangelo (for Orange Jello).

He's also great at helping me with my projects - he holds the lens cap for me and pokes the lens, and even helps keep my ball of wool from rolling under the couch. :-) He's been a little anxious lately when I move too far away, so I'm trying to find good ways to not only play together, but also to play independently while staying close by. I'm not sure how well the knitting & sitting on the floor with him plan is going to go, but it was adorable to watch him pounce on the wool like a kitty. I'm knitting a little scarf for him, so if he wants to suck on the wool it's fine by me. It will end up being munched on anyway in the long run!

By the way... After I posted about his naptime irregularities and stuck photos of him cavorting around in the nude on the Internets for the "world" to see, Cole was an angel and had a long nap in the morning and napped again for over an hour and a half in the stroller in the early afternoon - long enough to walk to the west end, go to Capers and walk all the way back. No comments on this happening again - just reporting on yesterday. :-) In fact, only an excessively loud man in our elevator woke him up. What is with otherwise very nice people shouting things like "OH - HE'S SLEEPING!" into a stroller at a sleeping baby? Or continuing to spew loudness at his mother, who is bristling visibly and talking as politely as possible in a very low tone? I actually shushed a still-hammered youngish man on the street on New Year's Day around noon. Thank you for bellowing "HAPPY NEW YEAR BABY" to Cole while he slept - he thanks you for your well wishes, I'm sure.

Oh - and check out Cole's top teeth!!!

I've been meaning to take a picture of them, which is easier said than done at this stage. You can see them best when he's upside-down or from another angle when he's howling with laughter - neither are easy photos to get single-handedly. His three top teeth are out, with the fourth about to come through. Aren't they awesome? Love that gap - it makes me giggle. To get this photo I tickled him and snapped away - ticklish and an adorable gap in his front teeth? Seriously, he gets more squishable and kissable every single day.

Just playing...

Too lazy/tired/busy to write much of interest, but I couldn't resist the chance to post a few photos of Cole from the past couple of days, playing around some of his new toys...

He loves his Uncle Goose wooden blocks. They're really fun to play with - for us too - stacking, building towers, loading them back into the wagon they live in. Cole loves to smash the towers down, and apparently the way they taste doesn't lessen the appeal... Mmm, piney!

Cole received an adorable Melissa & Doug wooden barn puzzle from Grandma B & Grandpa D. He is enjoying the large wooden knobs on the animals, which true to form end up as stand-in soothers, and of course the bizarre animal noises we make to encourge his *learning*. ;-) He picks the animal we call out quite often, actually.

He seems to be having a lot of fun on the new piano that we got him for Christmas. He enjoys pounding on the keys and using the piano itself as a good balancing tool for his standing adventures, and we are enjoying having a new toy to play on too. Hey, I've even expanded my own musical repertoire, past my ability to play Mary had a Little Lamb on anything and sea shanties on the harmonica. I am proud to say I can now also play I'm a Little Teapot. We're hoping to decode the secrets of the Murder She Wrote theme song soon... ;-)

And Cole really enjoys playing with his chewy teething keys. These aren't new - we were given them for our baby shower and he's begun to really enjoy chomping on them... We love how he looks like he's emerging from a snug little cocoon here - we caved and spent too much on the Bugaboo footmuff to keep him warm, ordered in true Vancouver fashion a few weeks ago when it was uncharacteristically cold out. Jamie figures that's the time that all Vancouverites buy things like coats and snow tires and shovels... The big snow storm before the Christmas eve one was my excuse to finally buy a new pair of wellies, so I figure that last minute thinking works well! Anyway, the footmuff (despite it's ridiculous name) is great, and much better than the alternative - my plan to spend probably many hours making a cozy zip-up for the same purpose.

Cole loves his ball!

We dug out an old beach ball the other day after getting inspired by another one of the brilliant-yet-simple ideas from our book of 1001 games for babies. They suggested tossing up and catching the ball just before it lands on the baby, but this seems a little startling. I tried it anyway, and Cole seemed to enjoy it, but not as much as he enjoyed playing with the ball himself! He has been loving the ball - rolling with it, grabbing it, trying to eat it... It's adorable!

It's as much fun as a balloon, but more safe, since it won't explode and send delicious-yet-deadly rubber shards everywhere!

And, I figured out how to upload videos to YouTube! I was thinking about doing this last night at 2:30 am when, in a cruel twist of fate, I was again unable to sleep. It's really easy (uploading videos, not sleeping). Yay for me! :-) I think 90% of YouTube is split 50-50 between adorable baby videos and movies of teenagers hurting themselves... By the way, the video is smoother if you pause it at the beginning and wait for it to buffer.

Cole vs. New Year's baby

Ahh! The dreaded New Year's baby is back for more... We dug him/her/it (I think it's a her, since she's wearing lipstick) out of the closet last weekend for some fun. Cole and baby hadn't even met yet! We keep the baby in our bedroom closet, right under Jamie's section of clothes, so it's never too far away, should we need it...

Cole seemed both confused and interested. The funniest part happened much later - we'd left the New Year's baby on the bed and went off to play in another room. Hours had gone by. I was walking into the bedroom and saw the baby lying on the bed. It scared the bejesus out of me - I illogically thought at first it was Cole and we'd somehow forgotten he was lying in there or something crazy, all naked with arms and legs akimbo on the bed! Phew - it was just a creepy doll...

Chock full o' good ideas...

Playing with Cole is awesome - he is such a good-spirited baby and he's pretty much happy with anything you play with him. Aside from his playgym, which he is crazy for, he LOVES patty cake (especially the patting and rolling parts), anything involving being lifted up high or rocked about, being read to and touching his books, reaching, and everything in between. He even seems to love my constant singing! He touches everything and puts everything into his mouth. He thoroughly gummed the characters to his very first finger puppet show today, and then seemed fantastically entertained by a drool-soaked washcloth.

But, there certainly comes a time every single day, usually just before bath time, where Jamie and I feel like we are out of new, interesting material. So, we bought this awesome book to spark our creativity - Play & Learn: 1001 Fun Activities for Your Baby and Child.

It's full of great ideas that are both fun and developmentally appropriate for ages o-5 years! Some are pretty obvious, some we're already doing (a little pat on the back there) and there are lots more that are really just simple, easy things that seem like lots of fun. Oh, and for the time-strapped Mama, all the tips are presented in quick paragraph snippets. With pictures! :-)

Baby days

Jamie has just gone back to work after his month off, and Cole and I are doing pretty well so far! (Although it has only been a day and a half!). I know I definitely miss Jamie's company and all his help throughout the day, and Cole does too - he's not too sure why Mama is changing his diapers all the time! ;-) We're sticking with our well-honed routine pretty much - Cole and I went for a great walk yesterday and he was a very good baby for me.

Right now I'm sitting here with a mountainous pile of clean (yet unfolded) laundry on the dining room table and I have just noticed a dab of what I hope is chocolate sauce from cocoa on my laptop. I think I might also smell like milk... Nice! I have at least showered though, and brushed my teeth and hair, and am ready to take us for a walk after Cole's next feeding...

I have been doing more important things than laundry during Cole's short morning nap... Some research online to see what activities are appropriate for a one-month old baby - Cole hit that mark officially yesterday. We have plenty of fun gadgets for him to enjoy and some awesome toys and books from our shower too, but he seems to have the most fun so far just listening to and looking at us, squirming and testing his vocal chords and movements. He's getting really good at raising his head when on his tummy, he is following us with his eyes and he's starting to notice the mobile more too. He also really seems to become absorbed staring at light/shadows. I was wondering if we are on the right track in terms of playtime (of course worried that I'm boring him or encouraging him to sleep too much!). So far, so good, it would seem, from this website on baby development. Very simplified tips, but good for the sleep-deprived!