Surfing, dogs, crawling, food!

Last Saturday we met Geoff and Nikki Ledford at the beach in Encinitas to surf at boneyards. For some reason, I was in a bad, bad mood that morning. Johan had had enough of me and said "Get out in the water and come back happy". What a good husband I have, it worked like magic. Geoff and I surfed while Johan watched Axel, then Johan and I switched off after I was done. Afterwards, Nikki and I let the guys keep surfing while we drove back with Axel to the amazing condo that they're staying at. Lucky for us, Axel fell asleep in his new carseat. We had recently returned his borrowed infant car seat and bought a convertible seat, the Britax Boulevard 70 CS. I was a little worried that the days of him falling asleep in the carseat were over, but the thing is like a lazyboy. When we got back to the condo we rolled the windows down and, opened the garage so we could keep an eye on him while Nikki proceeded in making us an amazing paleo lunch. It was definitely the best day this year (when compared with the other 9). So obviously, we're planning on repeating it again this Saturday.

I was thinking to myself the other day of all the things that I've realized about having a baby that no one every told me, and wanted to make a list. This is most likely going to expose my ignorance. Here it is:

1. Nursing can actually make you gain weight because you're so stinking hungry all the time.
2. Your hips get wider during pregnancy and don't always go back into place right away (It took me 7 months to fit back into my jeans!).
3. Your stomach doesn't shrink right back into place the second you have the baby (If yours did, I don't want to hear about it).
4. What to do when your water breaks and you don't go into labor? That was never covered in the birth class, and of course, it happened to us.
5. Having a well-rested baby on a schedule makes having a baby less of a guessing game.
6. Having a helpful husband will keep you well rested and make having a baby seem much easier than you could ever hope.

Axel is now 8 1/2 months old. He has learned to pull down his crib bumpers after he wakes up. He just looks through the bars waiting for one of us to come and get him out! Sometimes he spits his pacifier out through the bars as well. He can feed himself finger foods and just started holding his own sippy cup to drink. He's been sitting up for a while, but now he's more stable and doesn't fall backward.

Every single day I am so amazed to be witnessing a little baby becoming a person. I feel like every week there is something new happening. For example, last week (Jan 5th), he pulled his knee up under his body to begin crawling. He hadn't even started to crawl but I was so excited that I started taking photos and videos of him putting his knee under his body. My parents and Johan were probably thinking "ummm knee under body, that's great". Throughout the day he did start to inch his way forward. He looks like a centipede, he scrunches one leg under his belly, then sticks his butt up in the air and pushes the front of his body forward. It's pretty incredible to see him learning all of these new things. The funny part is that all of these new things he's been doing, like rolling over for the first time and crawling, have all occurred when I haven't been in the room. I remember when I walked into the room and he was all of a sudden on his belly and had rolled over for the first time. I was amazed because he had always hated tummy time. The picture below is of his first attempt to crawl.

For some reason, our rottweiler, Leia, has been ravenous lately. She is very trim for a rottweiler, even though she usually eats 5 cups of food per day. That's right, 5 cups. She's like a garbage disposal. We don't know why lately she's been acting as if we don't feed her at all. Maybe it has something to do with the baby who throws his food scraps on the floor? All day long she sniffs around the house looking for crumbs. We never feed her people food or from the table so the recent begging is pretty annoying. But nowadays, when we're cooking in the kitchen, she comes in and stares at us, begging for us to drop something for her, and when Axel is sitting in his high chair at the kitchen table, she lays below his feet waiting for droppings. She's pretty smart, so if she sees I'm not looking she'll go as far as to lick Axel's toes or any food that has dropped on his footrest. Axel thinks Leia is the funniest creature on the planet. He could watch and laugh at her all day, she is highly entertaining even though she's usually just laying on her belly staring at him. The funny thing is that he is terrified of my neighbor Suzannes tiny little French Bulldog, Chu-i. He cries and cries when he sees him, but he's not afraid of the big black rottweiler. Then after Axel finishes eating and leaves his seat, Leia goes up to his high chair and assesses the leftovers. She licks up every bit of cheese or cracker left behind, then she moves on to his walker, where he usually leaves behind a piece or two of puffed rice. I actually don't mind the help cleaning up....gross, but true.

After about a week he is now full on crawling. He does look pretty funny, it's kind of like an army crawl with a knee push every once in a while. Yesterday (Jan. 9th) he finally figured out how to crawl out of his room and just went crazy. He crawled through the living room, the dining room, into the kitchen, into our bedroom, then to the laundry area. Granted, our house is only 950 sq ft, so all of those rooms are probably the size of most modern homes' living rooms. That is one good thing I've realized about having a tiny house, that I can be in almost any room and still keep an eye on him.

I mentioned that Axel is infatuated with Leia. This morning, he spent about 45 minutes just crawling after her. It was actually pretty nice for me, because I just sat on the couch drinking my coffee and let him crawl. When he got close to Leia, I'd just tell her to move to the opposite side of the room and lay down, then Axel would turn around and go after her again, and on and on it went. We took a Dogs and Babies class before Axel was born to prepare ourselves for how to train the dog to be around a baby. The main thing we learned from that class is to teach the dog and baby to ignore eachother for the baby's first 5 years of life. That's because babies and toddlers don't really understand the meaning of "gentle". They might pet a dog gently when you're standing there, but they can still pull on its tail, its ears, lay on the dog, etc and think that they're being nice. But more importantly, it teaches your kid to respect a dogs' boundaries. Your dog might be fine with being around your baby because it learns to tolerate that baby, but if your kid goes over to someone else's house where they haven't taught their dog to be around babies, that's where dog bites usually occur. The teacher said that something like 95% of all dogs that are put down are domestic, family dogs. They're not wild street dogs. And it's almost always a neighbor kid who pushes the dog too far and the dog snaps because they want to be left alone.

Anyways, we thought that dogs and babies class was really great. But I asked Johan last night if we are totally failing at following the rules, since now our baby is definitely not leaving the dog alone! I think our plan is to still continue to not make Leia a big deal to Axel, and vice versa so that, hopefully, soon enough she wll just become another thing in the house that ignores him (which she is learning to do pretty well), and is not interesting to him. In the meantime, she is a pretty good distraction for him so that I get a break to sit and drink my coffee!


I am still blown away at how much the kid can eat. In the morning we make him super porridge from the Super Baby Foods book. This is what's in it: A grain (barley, brown rice, or oatmeal), a green vegetable (peas, green beans, etc), an orange vegetable (carrots), an egg yellow, and enhancers (brewers yeast, dessicated liver, kelp, and ground flax seed). I usually throw in some mashed banana to make it a little sweet. Axel loves it. The good thing about it is that it has almost all the vitamins and nutrients that they need for the entire day, so if they don't get a complete lunch or dinner, at least they've had their super porridge. I also have a snazzy song that goes along with preparing the super porridge that Johan and I sing. Super Porridge, Super Porridge, it's the best thing for you! Super Porridge, Super Porridge!  I didn't say it was a cool or clever song....

Yesterday we went to Henrys to get our weekly groceries. After entering the door to the market, Axel started getting REALLY cranky. Crying, didn't want to sit in the cart, just plain mad. I hurried over to the baby food section, got a box of teething crackers, ripped it open and gave him one....Angels singing...He was completely happy. So I guess it's time to carry snacks around with me. However, by the time he was done with the cracker he had brown sticky cracker residue all over his face, his hands, his belly, and his thighs. It was really embarrassing. I was one of those moms with the dirty, grubby kid who everyone winces at. I tried to wipe him down with a wet wipe, but those crackers stick to clothes like glue. So note to self for next grocery shopping trip: Bring clean snacks!