YAWN

So mason has a new trick. You can say to him ‘YAWN’ and he will pretend to yawn, it is really funny. He opens his mouth all wide, then scrunches up his eyes and nose, then smiles. It is really funny.

Independence Grove

We took mason to the park today up in the burbs. He basically walks around carefully watching all the other kids. He doesn’t quite get it all yet, but he will. He does like the concept though. Slides are fun, swings, and stuff to climb on.

I think rebeccca wanted me to catch him, but instead I took pictures. He was fine.

The rest of the pics are here.

Mommy progress…

mom is doing well as she progresses through the incubation of baby #2. The midwife appointments have been going great, heartbeat and everything seems fine. It is funny, cause when she was pregnant with Mason, it was like normal. This time around, she has more of the pregnant kind of things. Like she is much more tired than the first time around (which is to be expected). Also, she has this crazy sense of smell, but it is primarily the ability to scope out things that smell BAD, which is unfortunate. She also is a bit more moody and crampy and stuff (sorry sweetie, it is true). That combined with the fact that the midwife is confident, it would seem we are leaning towards a girl, which would be cool.

Not saying I have a preference, I will be excited for a boy or a girl, but having one of each would be cool. We shall see!

Mason and his words…

So like every child, Mason is beginning to identify things. I mean he has been able to identify things for quite a while now, in that you could say “go get lion” and he would go get his stuffed lion, etc….

But now he is spitting the words back at you… You can point to a ball in a book and he will say “baaa” (baaa can also mean bottle)… other things include “burrr” (bird), “caaaa” (car, the is is like aahh), “caaa” (cat, the a is like AAAAAple), “mom”, “daaa”, etc…

It is pretty cool to watch…

Mason is a walking fool

And by fool, I mean he is getting a BIT cocky and not paying attention and falling, but such is the life of a baby I guess. Let me backtrack here… on Tuesday, March 13th, I went, for the first time in like a year, out drinking with the Audi people. And robyn and rebecca were hanging out, and low and behold Mason got up and started walking. (Rebecca needs to finish that post up).

Sure, I missed it, but that is ok, cause he has been walking ever since. By that friday (my birthday) I had the new camcorder and everything up and running, so I have video footage somewhere. He began walking slowly and cautiously… but time has passed and he is more and more… confident… and thus he has taken a few falls… a bruise here or there and last weekend he managed to scrape up his nose by falling on the sidewalk while out with grandma and grandpa Dugan… poor guy.

So he is a walking fool, which is fun. It would be nicer though if he would be willing to hold your hand… he will have nothing to do with that, and thus it is hard to walk with him. He wants to go whereever he wants… be it the street, right in front if people, etc.

The Mason Room Routine

When Mason plays in his room, his routine is usually along the following, although the order sometimes changes:

-Pull all the books from the book shelf onto the floor. Usually not to read them at the time, but surely later, provided he is in the room long enough. This is usually done very quickly. He doesn’t even watch them hit the ground, he just grabs and throws them behind him. I have been hit in the head with a book as it flew the 4 feet from the bookcase to where I was laying on the floor. Usually, he just about empties the bookcase of books.

-Open the toy box, and pull out about 1/3 to 1/2 of the stuffed animals. This is not done as quickly as the books, and not always as much. Unlike the books, Mason will often stop and play with or otherwise examine the toys he is pulling out. He will often revisit the toybox and pull out more as his time in the room passes. As far as I have noticed, he has never actually emptied the entire toybox.

-Empty the clothes hamper. This usually happens when the above 2 have already been done and if he has otherwise become bored with the items in the room. He hasn’t emptied the ENTIRE thing due likely to his inability to reach the bottom of the hamper, but he enjoys making the pile on the floor.

-His room has 2 child size rocking chairs in it, and you will often find a pile of toys behind each one. Mason will take a toy and carry it over to the rocking chair and put the toy behind the chair. He will repeat this with any and all types of toys. It is not odd to find a pile of toys sitting behind the chair, ranging from books to stuffed animals to cars to blocks.

-We have a gate at the top of the 2 stairways, and mason enjoys pushing his toys under the gate and littering the stairway. Not sure if he wants the cat, who often sits on the stairs just on the other side of the gate, to have the toys or if he just likes to watch them go down the steps…

-He will bring a book to you to read to him. It is quite cute. His current favorite appears to be “Goodnight Moon”. He also likes “Guess How Much I Love You” and to a lesser degree “I Love You Through And Through”. It is cute. I think I have read “Goodnight Moon” about 40 times in the last week. Which is fine, cause I remember that book as a child as well.

first step?

So technically, mason took his first step tonight. I was walking around with him (he was walking, holding on to my hands) in the kitchen. Lately, he has been able to STAND on his own without issue, but he hasn’t stepped. We have attempted to lure him into walking, but he usually plops down on his but, crawls the distance (as little as 12 inches) and stands back up again.

So while he was standing there, on his own, I stood just out of his reach with my outstretched hand. He looked at it for a moment and took 1 step with 1 foot to get close enough to grab my hand. Once he had my hand he took the next 2 steps to hold onto my leg.

When he walks holding your hand, he actually doesn’t put that much pressure on you in any way, which leads me to believe if he WANTED to, he could walk on his own, since I am not acting as a very large support for him. But for whatever reason, he isn’t there yet. I am sure he will get there, and he did seem happy with himself that he took a step on his own immediately after he did it. So perhaps I will have more to report soon?

Midwife Checkup, Baby v2 Due Date

We met with Sarah again today for our first real checkup. Rebecca got a little poking and prodding and I kept Mason occupied. Evidently Sarah thinks Rebecca’s uterus it large for how long she has been pregnant. Twins? That could be scary. (Honestly, neither of us have any history of twins in our family, so I doubt it. It doesn’t help that we have been watching a bunch of stuff on the Discovery Health channel about people who have had multiples.)

We did get to hear the heartbeat on the doppler though. So that was cool. As I have said in the past, it is always cool to hear the heartbeat.

Our due date has been set as 9/1/2007, FYI.

Mason, soon to be on 2 feet

Mason still surfs the furniture, and a couple times has attempted to stand on his own. He usually lasts a few seconds then falls. He has mastered going up the stairs, and is pretty quick at it. He has also realized he is pretty quick when he crawls on all 4s…

One of the more entertaining things has been the roomba robotic vacuum. I only recently run it with him in the room, and he loves it. He gets all excited and chases it around the room. He does like to push the buttons on the unit, but he pushes them over and over again, so the roomba won’t actually start. But when he does push it and WAITS a second, he gets all excited cause he turned it on.

Speaking of turning things on and off, last month he figured out which button turns the TV on, so he will crawl up to the TV, pull himself up, and turn the tv on, watch for a bit, change the volume or the channel, then turn it off. Pretty funny.