is he strong because i moved the woodstove while pregnant?

In case you never read about that, find it here.

One of the first things that shocked us about Roscoe was when he was 12 days old.  He was mad, screaming and pitching a fit in Mark's arms.  Mark was sitting in the recliner trying to hold Roscoe to his chest to calm him down and Roscoe stiffened up and stood up on Mark.  Arms straight out pushing away from Mark, legs strong, standing.  That lasted a good 5-8 seconds... At 12 days old.  We were amazed.

Roscoe has always shown unusual strength for his age, especially when it comes to his leg muscles.  Sometimes, he just isn't happy sitting or lying down, but wrap his hands around your fingers so he can pull himself up to stand, and the smile erupts.

This week he has shown a fascination with the blanket on the back of our couch.  It's an afghan a friend made for us as a wedding gift.  Roscoe loves weaving his fingers through the yarn and attempting to eat it.  He was practically climbing the couch trying to get to the top day before yesterday, but of course that was with assistance.

Today, however, he scooted down the couch away from me, so I let him go.  And he gave me a good 30 seconds to a minute to try to capture this picture with my phone (it's the only camera I had near me).

Keep in mind that Roscoe is now 5 1/2 months old.  If you feel led to say a prayer for me, I wouldn't mind.  Time to put my seat belt on....things are about to get interesting.

time for change

This post is dedicated to all of you who join me in being critics of pretty much everything.  I hope you get to eat your words as well.

Before being a mom, I had always said that I didn't understand why new parents felt the need to have the baby in a bassinet in the bedroom.  I knew the practicality of just going to the end of the bed to get the baby for nighttime feedings (instead of having to go to a different room), but honestly, could it have made that much of a difference?

Before Roscoe was born, my sister-in-law offered to let me use the bassinet her dad built for her children.  I was going to turn it down because my cynical self figured Roscoe would start out in his bedroom.  Mark convinced me to take her up on the offer for the sake of convenience.

Well....long story short, Mark had asked me at the beginning of the summer when I was planning on moving Roscoe to his bedroom.  My response: "After you take your last trip in July."  That was an easy way to postpone moving him, right?  I enjoyed knowing Roscoe was in the room with me while his Mark was out of town for those 9 weeks, and he couldn't blame me.

So..... Mark got back from that trip on Sunday.

Aaaaand...... The little guy's still in our room.  I'm still not ready for him to sleep across the hall at night.

Sheesh.

Any moms out there sympathize with me?  Why is this of all things a difficult transition to make?

can it really be 5 months?

It's hard to believe this post is about the little guy being 5 months old today.  2 months?  I could believe that.... But 5?!

So what's Roscoe up to at 5 months? 
-He's a mover.  Almost non stop motion.  High metabolism like his dad?  Most likely.  Consequently, he's a long a lean dude.
-He takes *maybe* 2 good naps a day in his crib.  If we're lucky.  If not, he takes multiple 20-30 minute catnaps.
-He loves sucking his finger and thumb together.  He uses his thumb to push his finger up a little and sucks both of those simultaneously, eliminating our need for pacifiers (thanks, bub!)
-He eats still exclusively breast milk.  He's not showing any desire for anything else and I see no need to force it on him just because of his age.  That time will come, and we're both enjoying nursing (not to mention the fact that it's so incredibly good for him).
-He loves, loves, loves his daddy!  Mark will often get double the smiles and giggles and squeals that I do from Roscoe.  I love watching the 2 of them together.
-He can now roll over, all the way around.  Yesterday he started out lying on his back and ended up on his tummy and back to his back again, all on his own (as much as I wanted to assist the process to make it go faster, I kept my hands off him and let him figure it out all his own--waaay easier said than done for me).
-He reaches and grabs for anything within reach.
-He sleeps great at night, except for the occasional growth spurt that requires an extra nighttime feeding.
-He still sleeps in a cradle at the end of our bed (at night).  He's quickly outgrowing it.  I'm not looking forward to moving him out.  There may be a few tears shed over that one from this mama.
-He rocks the cloth diapers (way to be green, son!) (oh, just to keep anyone from assuming we have no choice in the matter, we love cloth diapering.  Seriously.  I hate when it isn't convenient and we use disposables.)

I've got a ton of catch-up to do with pictures.  Here goes


sherman is great with roscoe






so sweet.  i love watching him sleep





grampa and roscoe

I hate that the next 2 pictures are blurry, but I had brought the camera out of the air conditioning to the hot, humid lake and the lens got foggy.  I did the best I could with them.


Really, mom?



oh, this isn't so bad after all



Roscoe had a diaper blow out right before this, messing up the onesie



father's day, a birthday, and a baby dedication



RAWR!!! I'm monster baby, and I'm gonna eat eeyore



he had just rolled over and was quite proud of himself



oh my, i love this boy, drool and all.... happy 5 months, little love



hacked and busy

After 2 weeks of frustration with a hacked email account, I finally discovered that the hackee had set my account up to automatically delete emails from my inbox and forward them to another address.  So it appeared that my inbox was sitting there, lifeless.  Hopefully it's fixed now.  I don't see what the point is of doing that to someone.  And I would keep going on specific things that are going on in my head about it, but to be honest, I'm kinda freaked out.  The forwarding email address was off from mine by 1 letter.  So I kinda feel..... watched, copied....

Things have been busy for me lately.  Mark and I have been doing a lot of gardening and yardwork.  Primarily Mark, when he's home.  He can spend hours outside every day.  I just help out here and there when I'm not busy with the boy.  So when Mark's out of town and I have to pick up his responsibilities to keep the garden booming and the flowers alive, life quickly becomes exhausting.  Typically, the laundry takes about a week to get folded, dishes sit in the sink for days on end, the dogs stay outside the majority of the day, my blog gets lonely, and the weekly housecleaning is postponed.

Mark's parent's typically step in and take the dogs from me, which is nice on multiple levels.  I feel sorry for the dogs because I just don't have the energy or desire to pay attention to them and give them the love they need when Mark's not around.  When he is home, he generally takes care of them so that my priorities can go something like

1) keep Roscoe alive

2) make sure food makes it to the table

3) laundry

4) cleaning

Those are just 4 simple things that go under a general category of mine titled "Make home a happy place for Mark."

So when Mark is gone, said category doesn't really exist anymore.  (Sidenote: when he's home, the weeds are pretty well behaved.  But when he's gone, they're like "WOOOO HOOOOOO!!!! PARTAAAAY!!!!!!!)  So my new priority list ends up looking something like

1) keep Roscoe alive

2) keep the garden alive so that I can

3) eat something (probably while I'm in the garden tending) (oh, and so that "Make home a happy place for Mark" priority #2 can still happen when he comes home)

4) dogs?  we have dogs?

5) laundr--- oops, Roscoe needs to eat again

6) keep the garden alive

7) lau--Roscoe just woke up

8) oh hey, I should sleep some...

Yeah, I go from organized, super-wifey to a fumbling mess.  But hey, Roscoe's happy, I'm eating, the garden's alive, and the dogs are being picked up by grampa tomorrow.

I had a video from my phone of Roscoe to put up, but I'm encountering problems with uploading it.  It's not in the right format and I can only go so far in trying to figure it out.  I'll post it as soon as I can

test

This is just a test to see if my blog is working.  It's linked to my email through google.  My email was seriously hacked last Thursday and we haven't been able to fix it since.  I'm not receiving emails and all my contacts were erased.  Gmail support hasn't been much help.  I'm pretty upset about this as it appears that I'll have to just delete my email and create a new account (and then re-route all the important bills etc to the new address).  I'd love to know what the satisfaction is in hacking someone's account....

Oh, and forgive me if you received the "Awful Trip" email.  Though from what I hear, if you received it you knew from looking at the first sentence that it wasn't me who sent it.