This picture pretty much speaks for itself. 🙂 We went to see Santa with Griff’s Nana and Grandpa. Griff managed to hold it together for a minute or two, but the weirdness was just too much for him. He still looks cute, though!

Last night, Griff woke up at 1am, 3am, and 4am. At around 4:30am Jag got an emergency call from work and I dragged poor still-crying Griff to our bed. Griff woke us up at 6:20 all happy, babbling and raring to go. Jag went outside around 7:30 to find no Sunday newspaper, but that several of the neighbors’ mailboxes had been smashed or knocked over (not by a car sliding into them, by some idiot redneck teenagers with a baseball bat, most likely).

If I hadn’t had this to look at while making breakfast, I might have been in a really bad mood this morning.

It’s been a while since I blogged, so here’s a whirlwind update of the exciting goings-on in my life.

On the craft project front, I made Griff a new shirt and 2 more pairs of Big Butt Baby Pants.

Here’s the shirt; it’s supposed to be a rocket ship with some stars and a moon. Doesn’t it look exactly like a rocket ship? Shut up, he’s wearing it anyway.

I tried to take a picture of him modeling it, and they all ended up like this. Even cats are easier to photograph than babies who can crawl.

I made him some owl flannel pants to match the owl shirt I made for him a while back.

Drool pretty much goes with everything, luckily.

I also made him some fleece Steelers pants so he can root for his grandpa and mommy’s favorite football team and its sketchy sleazeball quarterback. Yay Big Ben.

Griff’s grasping abilities keep improving, and we can let him self-feed a whole lot of smaller foods now, including banana slices, cheese cubes, lima beans, and peas. He absolutely loves blueberries, so we just drop them onto his tray and let him pinch them up one by one while we eat our meal. Great entertainment.

One food he won’t be getting again any time soon for self-feeding is refried beans. By the time he was done it looked like someone had tried to stucco his face. It took 3 washcloths to get him cleaned up and the beans dried up on everything and it was a disaster.

And lastly, we had an extremely busy day today which started out with some exterior work at my old townhouse that we’re trying to sell, and ended with a surprisingly heavy and gorgeous snowfall. Griff had a great time with his nana and grandpa during the morning, and then got to see his first snow in the afternoon!

Here he is with daddy in our front yard.

And here we are at the TROSA Christmas tree lot at Northgate, picking out our tree. Yay tree! It’s drying out in the garage overnight.

We took our little turkey to Grandpa and Nana’s house yesterday for the holiday feast.

The food was great, as usual. 2-3 years ago, none of us would have predicted that high chair being at the Thanksgiving table. Ha.

Griff was very fussy after dinner yesterday, and while he started out ok this morning, he was totally miserable by late afternoon. Me and Jag were about ready to tear our hair out after trying everything we could think of to make him feel better. The only thing that seemed to help even for a few minutes was a frozen gel teether. So yeah, he’s teething again.

He already has 4 teeth. His bottom central incisors came in first, then his top lateral incisors (he currently looks like Vampire Baby when he smiles). At least one of his top central incisors has just poked through, and I think I saw some puffiness a bit farther back on the top where a canine may be about to arrive. Whatever’s happening, it clearly hurts a lot. 🙁

Griff was pretty unhappy about being spoon-fed this morning (probably because the spoon was poking his hurty gums) so I gave up and dumped the oatmeal and blueberries on his tray. Amazingly enough, he managed to shovel a good 75% of his breakfast into his actual mouth. (Yeah, we had to bathe him after this.)

Poor little guy. Hopefully he’ll be doing better tomorrow.

Knitted, edged, embroidered, pom-pom’ed, and lined with fleece. All done! Griff looks like a little gnome in his new hat. Now all we need is some cold weather to justify sticking this very warm thing on his head. 🙂

We were driving down Roxboro Road this afternoon on our way to run some errands and do some grocery shopping when the car suddenly decided to take a right turn into West Point on the Eno. We had no choice but to hang out for a while and enjoy the lovely fall weather.

We found a nice spot near the mill and lounged around on a blanket. (Sorry, annoying-making-out couple that turned out to be right behind us that I didn’t notice until we were already settled. Scram! Get a room! Ahem.)

Griff was in good spirits despite the continuous nose-mucus flood. Jag had to make an emergency trip back to the car for kleenex once we realized we had nothing except our clothes and the blanket to wipe his nose with. 😉

For some reason, I love this shadow family portrait of me, Jag and Griff on the bridge over the millpond. Griff liked watching the water wheel turning below us.

We stopped by the McCown-Mangum House on our way back to the car. Just about 13 months ago, we were taking wedding pictures on this porch. We knew there would be big changes, but we really had no idea how different our lives would be starting that March. 🙂

We use cloth diapers at home with Griff, and finding pants that fit over his big fluffy butt has been a challenge since the weather got cooler. We have certain pants that he can only wear over a disposable, and certain pants that we can stretch over his great big booty at home (ie, jersey knit pants deliberately bought one to two sizes too big for him). It would be nice to have pants that actually fit his bottom.

Enter the Big Butt Baby Pants pattern from Made by Rae. They’re specifically designed to fit cloth diapered babies, and have a special wedge-shaped panel to accommodate the “party in the back”. I whipped up a pair in the 12-18 month size using some purple flannel I had lying around, and they fit perfectly. I’m going to make a bunch as pajama pants, and then see about ripping apart some of my old jeans to try and make him some denim ones.

Walking butt!

Crawling butt!

Big Butt pants are great for the modern baby on the go!

Train your stuffed doggie to heel!

Plumb the mysteries of the bottom of the blue stacking cup!

Practice your “Blue Steel” pose!

Browse the magazine selection for a tasty-looking issue!

I made butternut squash soup the other day, and it turned out pretty well. The leftovers were even better the second day, and I set aside a small ramekin of it for Griffin to eat (maybe 1/3 cup) with the soft chokey bacon pieces taken out. Griff was munching on some sweet potato fries while we ate, but as soon as the soup arrived, he was no longer interested in finishing them.

Jag fed him the entire ramekin, but once it was gone, Griff started pounding his hands on his tray, asking for more. There was still a little soup remaining in the tupperware in the kitchen. “Do you think he’ll take it cold?” Jag asked. “Well, give it to him and see if he’ll eat it,” I suggested. Jag served out some cold soup, which Griff enthusiastically polished off, and then expectantly smacked his tray. Jag just gave up at this point and brought over the entire container of leftovers. Griff ate every last bit that Jag was able to scrape out of it for him.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash, approx 2.5-3lb
3 carrots
2 small onions
4 cloves garlic
2 cans cannellini (or Great Northern) beans
1/2 lb bacon, chopped
24-32 oz chicken broth
1/4 cup half & half or light cream
Thyme, rosemary, sage, salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 400. Split the squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds and strings. Place face-up in 9×13 baking dish, along with 1 peeled, quartered onion and the three carrots, cut into chunks. Drizzle all with olive oil and sprinkle with herbs and salt and pepper. Bake for 45-60 minutes, flipping the squash and stirring the veggies halfway through, until squash, carrots and onions are cooked and soft (and hopefully slightly caramelized and yummy).

Meanwhile, fry up the bacon in a dutch oven or soup pot until crisp. Remove bacon but leave as much of the drippings as you’re comfortable with. Chop the second onion and fry in the bacon drippings until softened. Add the garlic (minced or crushed) and cook for 1-2 minutes.

Puree one can of beans, the scooped out squash, and the roast vegetables together in a blender or food processor, and add to the soup pot. (Best to do the pureeing in batches, and make sure your blender jar is screwed on tightly to avoid hot squash puree leakage. Ahem.) Add the can of whole beans, and as much of the chicken stock as needed for desired thickness. Stir the soup well to combine the ingredients and heat to a low simmer. Taste and add additional seasonings as desired. Add cream, stir and remove from heat. Add the crispy bacon bits to the pot now and stir in, or use them as a garnish on top of the individual bowls. Serve!

Griff is 8 months old today, as of 9:14pm! Holy crap!

He had a busy day of eating blueberries and yogurt (note Gene Simmons imitation),

crawling,

cruising along the couch with snake in hand,

admiring his reflection,

gnawing on his wooden train (is that the dining car?),

pulling up on the TV stand,

and sitting in the yard, playing with leaves.

It was a gorgeous day.

Sundays are free admission days at Kidzu, the childrens’ museum in Chapel Hill, so we took a drive over there this afternoon to check it out. There’s a “Tot Spot” area in the back just for ages 0-24 months, with a padded-wall play zone with a sort of crawler obstacle course, surrounded by a carpeted area with a bunch of toys and a little reading area with books and a glider.

Griff was actually much more interested in watching the adults and other kids than playing, but he did find some toys that he enjoyed.

The vinyl fruit and veggie collection was of particular interest.

Griff is so outgoing, mobile and curious at home, it’s always weird to see how reserved and cautious he becomes in an unfamiliar environment. It really does take him a while to get comfortable in a new situation and start exploring. He seemed to adjust faster to crawling around the big field at the park yesterday than to this busier indoor area. Also, he’s so huge, usually bigger than the much older kids who are playing around him, I keep mentally comparing him to the more mature babies and forgetting that he’s only seven. months. old.

We spent about 45 minutes hanging out in the baby area. The rest of the facility had some fun-looking activities for preschoolers and elementary-age kids, including a really cute play garden adjoining a play kitchen where the produce could be prepared and served to customers at a “cafe”. There was also some cool stuff to do with oversized building blocks and a “Gravitron” that releases balls into configurable ball tracks along one wall. It’s all more or less educational, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call Kidzu a museum (which is not meant as a criticism).

Speaking of free stuff, here’s Griff’s latest toy. We finished off a box of oatmeal this morning, so Jag poured in some dried beans and taped up the lid with masking tape. Et voilà! Noisy rolly toy! It was a big hit.

Here Griff appears to be trying to levitate it using the POWER of his MIND.