The crawling king!

I have been meaning to post for a while, but never quite find the time to do it. Now that the little man is able to crawl around, watch out world here he comes! As soon as he started crawling he started pulling himself up on things. Most of our pictures now are of him pulled up on some surface trying to grab what he can. It is a funny sight to see in the mornings. He loves to be able to pull himself up on the open dishwasher and also to check out what is in the refrigerator. So in the mornings we see him crawling between the two while Jeff and I are prepairing breakfast and packing Jeff's lunch. Jason gets mad when someone closes up the fridge before he has a chance to explore it.



It has really become winter here in the last week or so. We were so lucky it held off so long. There is snow on the ground and it doesn't look like it is going to get above freezing again until spring. In a way I am thankful that we have an apartment because we don't have to worry about shoveling the snow at all. One of these weekends I hope to take Jason and Jeff out to take pictures in the snow. I think we would have a lot of fun and it would be great to put in Jason's scrapbook.




Many people have asked us if we are going to stay in the apartment the whole time we are here. Most of the concern comes from the treacherous staircase. This thing looks like the stairs that the priest fell down at the end of the exorcist. We have looked around at houses/apartments for rent, but haven't been able to find anything good. Well we have found some places, but they are unfurnished and all of our stuff is in storage in the US. We looked at buying new stuff and the cost would be about $10,000. No Thank You!!! So for now we will carefully deal with the deathly stairs and the furnished apartment.

Go Big or Go Home!

Jason did go big this past weekend. Friday afternoon he was gnawing on my finger when I thought I felt something sharp on his gum. Sure enough there was a little bitty ridge of a tooth poking through. At first Jeff didn't believe me since people have told us he is teething for the past 7 months. Over the weekend the tooth emerged more. He has been dealing with it alright, but I think we have restarted some of our sleep issues.

Over the weekend Jason also decided it was time to get off his butt and go! Yes, ladies and gentlemen we have a crawler. He is still a little wobbly, but with the right motivation he will crawl. His favorite thing to go after is the Christmas tree and wires. I ran around the house yesterday baby proofing as best I could.

A while ago Jason discovered he could stand in his crib holding on to the railing. I though oh this is cute and he loves to do it. Now instead of sleeping he is standing and calling out for us all night. I am not sure he even knows how to get himself down. We may have to look into doing some more sleep training with him in the next week or so.

Nine Months Old!

Where did my baby go? I know I start just about every monthly post with this, but seriously he is looking and acting more and more like a little boy lately. Almost every morning when we go in to get him he is standing at the railing of his crib. Today he had not even been crying out for a minute when Jeff went to get him and sure enough he was standing up waiting for him. In fact when I want to get him into a better mood we go in there and he shows off how great he is at standing up.



Jason scoots around the floor like no ones business. He isn't crawling yet, and honestly I thought he would be. He doesn't let that stop him. Jason goes from the back scoot to the back crawl to sitting and scooting to get all around any room. He might be one of those babies who skips crawling to go right to standing. His next development is anybody's guess. Last week he just randomly started clapping. Now he has gotten the hang of it and claps when others do. It is the cutest thing and he is so proud of himself.

Tigger says Happy Halloween

Jason was the cutest little Tigger for Halloween this year. We didn't go out trick or treating because Jason didn't need to be out in the cold or the candy (neither did Mom and Dad.) He did wear his costume all day on Saturday and we got quite a few comments on how cute he is.



We also went to a Halloween party on Friday. There were 2 other Tiggers there!!! We were so surprised that Jason wasn't an original. Jason really did enjoy watching the other kids playing, especially the bigger ones.



Since Thanksgiving is celebrated early here all the stores are getting out the Christmas stuff. Jeff and I even went out and got a fake tree this weekend. Jason loves to run into it in his walker and we are trying to train him to stop doing that. I haven't quite put on the Christmas music yet, but I am seriously considering it.

Hit the panic button!

How did this happen? When did it sneak up on me? What am I going to do? It's only 60 days until Christmas! The only person I really know what to get is Jason and let's be honest he is just as happy to play with the empty box from the sodas. It isn't really helping that we don't live near any good shopping. I mean I love Walmart as much as the next gal, but who wants the blue light special as their gift? One of my friends said it best on Facebook when she wrote, "no target! how do you survive?!?!?" I am sure we will be spending many weekends in the next two months driving 2 hours to Timmins to search for gifts.



Every Christmas the most difficult person to buy something for should be the one I know the best: My darling husband. I would love to surprise him with something wonderful and thoughtful. My dream is to hear him tell me that I got him something that he loves so much, but didn't even know he wanted. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep hoping! This year when I have asked him what he wants he gives me a laundry list of what he doesn't want. He doesn't want books because he doesn't read. He already has more computer, board, Xbox and Wii games than he can play. He has tons of tools that are in storage somewhere. We also already have more DVD's than we have time to watch. What is a girl to do? Any ideas? If nothing comes to me he is getting warm socks :)

Our little guy is 8 months old! We celebrated with a feast and a national holiday of Thanksgiving. The holiday may or may not have been in place pre-Jason, but he is someone we are very thankful for. For Canada’s Thanksgiving on Monday we got together a couple of Americans that Jeff works with to have a nice little dinner party. I was pretty excited because that was the first time I have made a big dinner for un-related people (relatives are too nice and forgive you when you mess up all the dishes.) For some added fun our electricity went out about a half hour after putting the turkey in the oven. Eeek! Everything turned out okay and I haven’t heard of major cases of food poisoning yet.

We had our first real snow on Sunday. I am already concerned about the cold winter we are going to have. I guess we just bundle up and deal with it. There are some indoor mommy and baby activities planned around town that I think we will be taking advantage of to ward off cabin fever.

Jason always wants to be moving now. I mean he never really liked to sit still for very long, but now he really wants to go. He is struggling to crawl and our hard wood floors aren’t making it very easy for him. Every time he tries to get his knees under him he just scoots backward. The backward scoot has become a means of transportation, but it is made more difficult by the fact that you can’t see where you are going. We believe that it won’t be too long before he figures out crawling and Rachel’s life will never be the same.

Jason did have one milestone that I could have skipped. Our little boy recently had his first cold. The poor boy was all stuffed up and not very happy at all. It made sleeping through the night difficult when he had trouble breathing. I think we are past most of it now and there is just a little nose gunk leftover. Jeff caught the cold from Jason and was just as miserable as the baby if not more so. Jason is not a fan of loud noises and starts crying and freaking out a bit when someone sneezes. We are all glad that the family is recovering.

Baby babble

Our little man has been chattering away lately. His latest syllable is "Da" Jeff is so proud to hear him say DaDa. We are working on Daddy or Mama. Sometimes he just moves his jaw as if he was going to start talking. We try to get videos of this, but of course every time we turn on the camera he stops doing whatever he was doing.