Funny Moment

Just a few minutes ago while Tom and I were reading bedtime stories to Griffin, I farted audibly, laughed, and said "excuse me".  Griffin pointed at Tom and said "Dad." Hilarious. That's right, Mommies are ladies and ladies never fart.. Ha. Little does my sweet Griffin know that I am actually the Queen of Farts.

Penny and Simon (and Griffin)

Penny and Simon's lives changed forever when Griffin made his debut at 20 Willow Road in his Graco bucket seat wearing an oversized blue jungle print onsie back on that cold but sunny morning, Thursday January 13th, 2010.  One of my biggest fears with having a baby (human), was how he would impact the happiness of my original babies (cats).  Would Penny get really stressed out and poop in our tub or worse, in other places around the house?  Would Simon try to climb in Griffin's crib to snuggle and then accidentally smother Griffin?  Would Griffin be allergic to the cats?  Well, I can say that our family of five is doing just fine, and Griffin and the cats are making progress toward getting along.

The first day we brought Griff home, I was attempting to nurse Griffin with my watermelon-sized-my-milk-just-'came-in'-boobs up in his nursery.  Griffin wasn't happy, and his crying totally (and probably my crying) freaked out the cats.  I vividly remember Penny and Simon nervously standing at top of the stairs trying to peek their heads around the corner into Griff's room to see what the f#*@ was making all that ruckus.  Their tails were poofed, totally enormous, and the hairs on their spines stood up straight.  Thankfully neither of them had any crazy reactions to the baby, but it did take them a little while to get used to having a new tiny (and loud) person around.  I felt like for the first few months, when Tom and I would come home with Griffin after being out for a bit, we'd be greeted by Simon and Penny, who were really excited to see us, but they were also a bit disappointed that we brought Griffin back too.  I felt like Penny would give me a slightly bitchy look that was saying "Really Mom?  You really had to bring that baby back here?"

Now that Griffin's extremely mobile, and quite quick, the cats have to be on alert so they don't get whacked in the head or tackled by our toddler.  He is still learning to give them "nice touches only".  (Both of them bolt whenever they see Griff coming due to learning the hard way.)  Griff really likes the "kitties", and thankfully he doesn't seem to take it personally that they scurry away whenever he approaches.  Griff says "Goodbye Kitty" every time we leave the house, and he has been really interested in giving them kitty treats recently.  (I'm hoping Griffin can bribe the cats for their love with crunchy tuna treats.)  Griffin gets their treats container out of the cat food cabinet, walks to the bottom of the stairs, and mimics how I yell for "Simon", while shaking the treats.  Then he fake snores to indicate that the cats are sleeping upstairs.  It's too funny.  Sometimes when the cats are awake, with my help, he'll gently set down a few treats and then watches Simon or Penny enjoy them (other times Griff puts a cat treat in his own mouth and chews until I fish the moist half eaten bit out with my finger.. totally gross.)

Poop Finger

Yes. It happened.  By the title of this post, perhaps you can figure out what completely unfortunate incident took place yesterday afternoon when I stuck my middle finger down the top back flap to check if Griffin had a poop in his diaper.  Holy crap (pun totally intended), did he have a poop!  It was warm and soupy, and covered the entire inside of his diaper, and my now my finger.  I know that's way too much information, but it was a blogworthy (and picture worthy) moment.

New Last Week

The speed at which Griffin learns new words and concepts is truly amazing.  It seems like almost every day I witness him do something new.  It's hard to keep track!  In the last week, Tom and I have noticed the following new things:  Griff says "mitten" (sounds like "mit-ney", he learned this from his Goodnight Moon book), "cheese", "hat" (sounds like "dah"), "banana" (says "ana"), "peas" (uses this interchangably for "please" and "peas", though he almost never says "please"), and now he can moo like a cow and makes a whoooosh sound everytime we see or talk about an airplane.

Time with Gpa and Gma

Griff and I took a little roadtrip up to Maine to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa; Dad had to stay the weekend in Calgary (boo, but he got to go to the Stampede, so it wasn't all bad).  We had dinner at Chowderheads, where Griff gobbled up his first fish and chips, and we also spent an almost perfect morning at Ferry Beach (It was high tide, the water was totally flat, it was sunny and beautiful, but it was greenhead season so we didn't last long).  Griff played in the sand and there were a ton of periwinkles int he water. The time that Griff gets to spend 1 on 1 with Gma and Gpa is so precious.. he loves it. 

Family Portraits: Party of 3

This past Saturday I dragged Griffin and Tom to Picture People at the Northshore Mall to get some formal family portraits taken (and I had a groupon!).  I wanted to officially document our current life as a family of 3 (or 5 if you include the cats!).  Though Griff was very "Tiggerish" during the shoot and attempted to lunge/crawl/squirm/walk out of every picture, we got a few cute ones that I will cherish forever:

These were taken on July 9th, 2011.  Griffin is 2 days shy of 18 months old, Tom is 29 (turning 30 in Oct), and I'm hanging on at 28 years young (I turned 29 three days after this picture was taken).

Griffin turns 1.5 years old!!!!

Holy smokes.  Griffin turned a year and a half old this week, and I turned 29! 

Stats at yesterday's 18 month checkup:

Height: 34" (95%)

Weight: 27lbs 11oz (75%)

Weight for Height: 65%

Head Circumference: 49.5cm (90%)

BMI 16.9

What is Griff up to these days?
Trouble. 

Jumping has become his favorite past time. Running and his ability to reach and climb onto furniture has become a bit alarming.. Last weekend, Tom and I found our little monkey sitting casually in his highchair checking out snacks that are typically out of reach... he climbed up unassisted and unsupervised- oops.

His current words are: ball, mama, dada, byebye, more, baby, kitty, dog (doh), duck, rock, man, knee, booboob (that means boobs or pirate's booty), bottle, boo, bus ("buhh"), bubbles, nine, adobo (no clue what the heck that means), ut oh, and mmmm, peepee. My favorite thing I've heard him say so far was directed at our flushing toilet.. "bye bye pee pee".

He is off the bottle (got cut off when we went to Cape May 3 weeks ago), just moved up into the toddler 1 class at school, still uses a pacifier at naptime/nighttime, loves his lovies, likes puzzles (I think he just likes clapping proudly and cheering each time he gets a piece in).  Griff can climb/walk down a few stairs holding the rail, he uses utensils, enjoys throwing rocks, and dumping things out of containers and putting them back in (or not putting them back in).  In particular he loves dumping Greta's huge bucket of sidewalk chalk, and my unused box of tampons all over the bathroom floor. Griff plays the recorder while marching around the living room (he can blow into it to create sound whereas he used to just walk around making humming noises with it in his mouth).  He blows his nose, he is starting to color, he makes siren sounds when he sees large trucks/emergency vehicles, makes an airplane noise and says "dada" when we see one in the sky, says "choochoo" when he sees or plays with trains, and he can sort of throw a ball and knows how to hold his arms out to catch (but can't catch yet).  Griff tells us when he wants to watch Curious George, by sitting on the couch, holding the remote up and saying "ahh ahh" or "mann".  He loves listening to Kindermusik during car rides and now anticipates motions or parts of the music.  His favorite food is avocado and anything with cheese.  He ate his first Kraft jet puffed marshmello the other day loved it.. so high in nutritional value.. oh well.

Griffin has quite the sense of humor.. he laughs all the time, and loves sneaking up to me and saying 'boo'.  He is wild but cuddly and lovable, and definitely has a strong personality.

I love and treasure every minute with him. 

4th of July Weekend Part 2, Marblehead

4th of July Weekend Part 1, Maine

Sheep in a Jeep

Earlier tonight I asked Griffin to pick out some books to read for bedtime, and he pulled out the book "Sheep in a Jeep", a board book given to him by Gma and Gpa Hendrix, as part of their 'give-Griff-a-book-each-year-tradition'.  He pointed to the Jeep and said "da ba", and right then I totally had a Eureka moment and realized that "da ba" means "Grandpa"!  I thought I heard him mumble "da ba" a few times this weekend, but I never made the connection. 

This past weekend while we were up in Maine, Tom and I had taken Griff for a ride in Grandpa's black Jeep Wrangler with the top down.  It's amazing to me that Griffin can ride in a Jeep for the first time on Sunday and then recognize that it's the same car in a book on Tuesday night- maybe this is part of his Hendrix genes?)

Also, a side note: Griff made a bunch of fake sad/crying sounds when we got to the page where the sheep are all sad because they accidentally crashed their jeep, "Jeep in a heap. Sheep weep." (and Griffin fake weeps...)

Happy 4th of July!