Jag remarked recently that there’s very little difference between cat toys and baby toys (except maybe the presence of catnip). Griff recently discovered one of the cats’ favorite fishing-pole type toys, and has spent a few hours playing with it on and off this week. He seems to be quite a natural; should we start training for a Bassmaster tournament?

Griff has absolutely no idea that the cats are very attracted by the leather sproingy things at the end of the string. Towards the end of the video, he notices that Thumper has crept up behind him and starts to crawl after him. Thumper’s reaction should make it clear that the cats have already learned to avoid the crazed lunging baby. 🙂

Yesterday I had been planning to go to a picnic with Griff, but that ended up not happening. Jag IM’ed me from work to let me know that there was a quilt show (by the Durham-Orange Quilters’ Guild) at the American Tobacco Complex, where he works. I was initially bummed because I didn’t want to go alone, but our friend Michelle was getting off work early and wanted to go, so we met there in the afternoon and had a nice time looking at the quilts! Yay for fun impromptu stuff! By the time we were done, Jag was ready to leave work, so we carpooled home. It all worked out great. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten out of the house on a trip that was purely for entertainment and “Heather” time. Griff was great through the whole thing.

Here’s a small selection of the great quilts at the show. These are all horrible iPhone pics…I left my real camera at home, and I was taking these over Griffin’s head while he was riding in the mei tai.

This monster quilt (which I think is from a commercial pattern) was way cute.

I love purple.

This quilt was simply spectacular. Huge, with complex piecing, and hand-quilted!

Here’s Michelle for scale. As you can see, the quilt is close to 2 Michelles tall!

This mixed-media mermaid quilt really caught my eye.

This rocket quilt is adorable. Michelle is pointing at a little patch where the quilter inserted fabric with a little kid’s face in the rocket’s “cockpit”.

The “white trash” part of this recipe is the *gasp* canned biscuits. The *doublegasp* store brand canned biscuits. Homemade biscuit dough would assuredly taste even better, assuming you have time to make some because you don’t have a 7-month-old who is really unhappy about being in the Pack ‘n’ Play while you try to make dinner, and who doesn’t really want to be in the exersaucer either, and who also really wants to nurse right now.

Meat Pies

The dough:

1 1lb can of biscuits, usually this means 8 pieces (or equivalent homemade biscuit dough)

The filling:

1 lb ground lamb
zest and juice from 1 small lemon
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
fresh rosemary and oregano, minced
1 small onion, chopped finely
a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the over to 375°. Brown the lamb and onion together in a skillet. Add the remaining ingredients and cook for a few more minutes.

Flatten or roll out the biscuits into 5″ circles and divide the meat mixture evenly between the circles of dough, about 1/4 cup per circle. Eat any leftover meat directly from the skillet, omnomnom. Fold each circle in half and crimp the edges together with a fork. (Do a better job of this than I did.) Place on a baking sheet and bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with your favorite version of tzadziki sauce, if desired. (Mine is just grated cucumber, minced garlic, and yogurt.)

Griff turned 7 months old on Sunday! He’s crawling like a champ now, and we’re slowly turning the living room into a giant playpen.

Along with feeding Griff homemade baby food and baby oatmeal, we decided to give “baby-led weaning” (aka “baby-led solids”) a try as well. No, we’re not trying to wean at 7 months! The idea is that instead of purees, you give the baby pieces of food that are soft enough to eat with limited toothage, and big enough to grip well so the baby can self-feed. Babies Griff’s age don’t have a well-developed pincer grasp yet, so they need something larger than little bite-sized chunks, with a “handle”. There are videos of 9-month-olds being handed a whole apple and just gnawing away with no assistance.

We started out by giving him a quarter of a peach (stone removed, of course). We gave him chunks of peach in his mesh feeder as well, and he alternated between them, which was interesting.

Here he is, breaking up the peach into chunks with his gums and two little bottom teeth, and sucking the juice out.

Here’s what was left of the peach. There’s a fair amount of waste, but he ate a good amount of peach juice and peach bits.

Avocado slices were also much enjoyed. This one required an entire wardrobe change. I have some oilcloth for the floor under his chair coming in this week. 🙂

Griff loves his sweet potatoes, so I made him a batch of sweet potato “fries” to gnaw on, sprinkled with a little cinnamon and nutmeg (he’s had both already with no bad reaction). This was a big hit.

The sweet-potato-smeared aftermath:

So far we’ve had no choking scares; if a piece is too big, Griff just pushes it out of his mouth and gnaws on it some more. He still really enjoys the oatmeal and purees, so I think we’ll keep using both methods to feed him.

Griff has been sleeping better this week, so I’ve started feeling like doing things like making him shirts again. Here’s his Halloween shirt. He’ll only get to wear it for about a week and a half, but it was quick to make.

And here he is, modelling it. His little face looks more mature every day! We look back at his newborn pictures and can’t believe it’s the same baby.

Well, I had intended to post about the awesome veggie lasagna I made for dinner, but Griff decided to be all exciting today and crawl and pull up for the first time! 🙂 We didn’t get the (short) crawling spree on video, and of course he has since refused to be coaxed into crawling again, but we did manage to capture the whole pulling-up thing for posterity. He wasn’t able to stand for long, but we’re totally impressed anyway!!! 😀 He took an alarming-looking spill at the end, but he was totally unfazed and kept right on going. He used to get very upset every time he fell over, so this is quite an advancement for him.

For those keeping score at home, he slept like crap again last night. His proto-teeth are all red and swollen again, so no wonder. To add to the agony, the #(*@&#(@(*@$ teenagers next door took advantage of their mom’s absence (she’s a nurse at Duke who works lots of odd shifts) to have a party and were yelling and carrying on outside on and off until 2am. Griff slept through that, but we couldn’t. We’re going to have a little talk with their mom this week.

Anyway, the spinach artichoke lasagna was from this recipe and was very very good. I doubled the amount of spinach called for by the recipe. 10oz of spinach for a whole lasagna? Pfft.

Well. First up, some crafting updates. The crafting has slowed of late due to Griff’s current sleep “schedule”, which ranges from totally agonizing to pretty bad depending on the night. I honestly don’t know what I would be doing right now if I was still working full time. Probably taking a lot of vacation/sick days, alternately with being a very crappy zombie employee. For me, the 6.5 months of sleep deprivation (and counting) has been the hardest part of having a baby.

I finished the Moc-a-Socks, and they are freakin’ adorable, if I do say so myself. They fit over Griff’s regular socks, so he can wear them as slippers/shoes for a bit until we get him some soft-soled baby shoes. I’ll be making many more pairs of these for Griff, and the pattern author sells a version in adult sizes, so I’ll probably be buying that one, too. 🙂

The 18-month shirts I bought for Griff are running small, so I decided to start making them into seasonal shirts, since he won’t be able to wear them long. The first is this happy leaf shirt.

He looks like such a little man when he wears big boy clothes like jeans, it cracks me up.

I’m convinced that baby clothes are adorable so you don’t give in to utter despair after a week of nights where you only get 4-6 hours of interrupted sleep. You see your kid wearing feety pants WITH CLAWS, and they’re so damn cute, you manage to get through another day without losing your mind. 😉

Griff is still not crawling, but not for lack of trying! He generally can get where he wants to by wiggling and humping along, and he’s getting good at pushing himself into a sit from his belly. He seems more interested in standing (with help) and trying to pull up on various things, like his exersaucer and the ottoman/table we have in the living room. He’s not quite strong enough to pull all the way up, but I’m sure he’ll be there soon. When he pulled up on the ottoman and saw Thumper sitting on the couch, he broke into giggles. 🙂

And, for a bit of randomness, it looks like someone in the Harris Teeter bakery has been hitting the vanilla extract a bit too hard. These cupcakes were $3 off…the decoration assortment is, um, quite assorted.

Griff was completely unimpressed by frozen washcloths on his first round of teething, but they are apparently the new hotness this time around. We’ve gone through four so far today, and keep putting new ones in the freezer for him. The frozen banana chunks are also still a big hit.

There’s been a little bleeding from his poor gums this afternoon, so we hope this means that the teeth will be breaking through soon to put an end to his (and our) suffering. He hasn’t slept well in over a week. (OK, he’s slept like a newborn who’s been drinking Red Bull and espresso shots.) Neither Jag nor myself has been able to nap during the day (and we have tried), so we’re both very very tired. Here’s to a good night’s sleep for everyone…

8:20pm: Jag rocks Griff to sleep after his tank-up and bath.

11:something pm: Griff wakes up, has to be nursed to sleep.

3:something am: Griff wakes up, has to be nursed to sleep.

4:something am: Griff wakes up, Jag rocks him to sleep.

5:37am: Happy loud babbling followed by panicky wails. Griff has somehow managed to get his leg stuck through the crib slats even though he’s in a sleep sack. We drag Griff to our bed to try and salvage an hour or so of sleep.

5:45am: Griff finishes his early morning snack, gets his paci.

5:46am: Baby wrestling match ensues wherein the front of my nightgown is attacked. Apparently Griff is still hungry and wants “the other one”. Nurse Griff, reinsert paci.

5:54am: Loud hiccups from Griff.

6:07am: Hiccups finally stop, Griff falls asleep. Unlike his parents.

Testing my blog upgrade…

Trying to finish my WordPress upgrade before Griff wakes up….

This past week was pretty crappy for a variety of reasons, but chief among them was Griff’s inability to sleep for more than about 4 hours at a stretch on his “good” nights. (This, after sleeping for 8 hours solid on Monday night! Arg!) The poor kid seems to be teething like a madman, and at this level of discomfort I expect him to look similar to the following within a few days.

Luckily Griff did have his occasional good moods, or three of us would be in the loony bin by now.

I even managed to get a couple of little craft projects done! The weather is finally getting cooler, so I wanted some little sock/shoes for Griff to wear when it’s a bit too chilly for just socks, but not cold enough for shoe shoes. Here’s the first half of a pair of Moc-a-Socks I’m working on knitting for him.

The pattern can be found here. It’s very well-written, and the construction is really interesting. Griff has some very wide, chubby little feet and thick ankles, so I’ll be making the next size up for him after I finish these. Hopefully he won’t outgrow the first ones til the second pair is done!

I recently bought some solid-colored size 18mo t-shirts for him, with the intention of decorating them in various ways. Here’s my first attempt at felt applique on a shirt. Yeah, my blanket stitch sucks, but this is what you get when you throw something together in the hour and a half between when your baby goes to bed and you do, and you’re running on 6 hours of interrupted sleep. (This is supposed to be a little viking ship.)

Here’s Griff wearing his new outfit. I’m planning something with pirates or gnomes for the next one.

And here’s Griff using his dinner spoon as a teething toy (that’s oatmeal he’s covered in).