We’ve had a few warm days here in Port Perry, so we’re making the most of our delicious back yard!  Oscar was lucky enough to get some naked time, and we all know there’s nothing better for a baby butt than some diaper-free action!  At Oscar’s request, the images have been kept modest.

Hanging onto a naked baby is not an easy task!

Oscar-Daddy time.

Oscar loves cameras.  I can rarely catch him doing something organic.  When he sees the camera he is mesmerized!

GQ modeling shot.

Camera time again!

I want to get outside and enjoy the weather, but getting Oscar outside and keeping him out of the sun all the time seems like an impossible task.  The last thing I want is a burnt baby, but we need to get out there and get some sun!  So the compromise seems to be minimal shaded time outside, mostly covered.  Who knew you could still get rays in the shade, but you can, and babies even need to be covered in the shade!

I have dubbed soccer time “Oscar-Daddy” time.  So when soccer is on, I get to shower! Oscar seems to be quite interested in sports.  He’s an avid tennis, soccer, and hockey playoff aficionado.

Oscar is wearing: babylegs, a Flip diaper cover, and a Canada T-shirt from The Children’s Place.

I took Oscar to Oshawa today to “Stars and Strollers.”  We saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and Oscar was a little Angel!  Naturally, it meant that we hit up Carters and The Children’s Place, and Oscar got a new hat that he loved tolerated me putting on him.

The only place Oscar has found his feet is when he’s sitting in his Bumbo.  Otherwise, they don’t exist!  I wave them in front of him while he’s laying down, even, and he’s completely dis-interested.  I’m sure he’ll be eating them soon enough.

By the end of it he started getting a little excited and was caught in the act of:

Caught in the act of chair-dancing.

The only way Oscar seems to enjoy tummy time is when he’s watching TV.  Today it was the Vancouver game.  Oscar is a fan!

He was resting his chin on his teething toy and watching intently.

Oscar has rolled over a few times but nothing consistent yet.  I think he’s going to get there soon!  For now he stays where I put him

I wanted to get one of these chairs, but totally refused to pay $60 plus tax to get one.  And just when I was happy with my decision, we took the dogs for a walk the other night and I saw one in the window at our local consignment shop!  I tried the door, but it was locked.  We had just missed closing time!  Thankfully, the girl took pity on me and let me in and I scored a Bumbo for $25!  Yay!  It was perfect timing because he’s just learning to sit up.

Oscar sitting next to my Mother’s Day flowers

His first time in the Bumbo was so much fun for him!  He’s just got to get a little more practice before we take the show on the road, but I’m hoping this will make going out for dinner a whole lot easier.

p.s. Oscar’s got game.

Getting Oscar to bed lately has been incredibly rough.  Some nights he would go to bed without crying at all, but on other nights he would cry for hours.  It was time to make a bedtime routine for him and stick to it every single night.  No more staying up until 11pm!  His new bedtime routine starts at 7pm.

Oscar’s Bedtime Routine:

– Turn on Sleep Sheep
– Change Diaper (sing sleepy Oscar time song)
– Put on body cream/massage
– Wash face and hands
– Put on pajamas
– Read books
– Nursing (no sleeping!)
– Burping (sleepy Oscar time song)
– Bedtime

Last night was the first time I went through this new bedtime routine and it went really well!  He even seemed to pay attention when I read him his bedtime stories.  I think my biggest mistake had been letting him fall asleep while nursing.  Apparently, if you let them fall asleep it’s like a catnap and they can then stay up for hours because they feel energized.  I discovered that coughing scares the crap out of Oscar when he’s starting to fall asleep, so it’s my new secret weapon.

He still cried when he realized he was going in his crib, but I put him in his sleep sac and gave him his giraffe blankie to chew on.  Not even 5 minutes after I closed his door the little man was asleep and he slept for 8 hours straight! However, since he’s not used to getting so much rest, he was wide eyed and ready to get up at 4am.  I just left him in his crib, hoped for the best, and he fell back asleep until 6am.  I was so not ready to get up so I brought him into my bed for a cuddle…

Hopefully it goes this well every night!

We’ve been walking in the forest a lot lately – one of the benefits of moving out of the city!  The trail we took on the weekend was just off Coates Road interestingly enough.  The trail starts on top of a hill which means that you can actually see all the way across Lake Ontario!  You can also see Toronto and get an idea of how far we live from it: not too close, and not too far away.

View of Lake Ontario

View of Toronto

Munchkin Oscar in his pink ERGO

I just got my ERGO carrier last week from babysteals!  It’s organic and super soft. I’ve been using a Moby wrap up until now, but I wanted another more structured carrier that I could put on my back.  I can put the ERGO on quickly. I don’t have to worry about the fabric stretching during the walk and Oscar gets a better view of his surroundings.

At some point I will attempt the back carry position but haven’t gotten around to it yet.  In the instructions you apparently just toss the kid on your back with one arm like it’s no big deal.  I tried to try that once and it didn’t go so well!  Next time I will try a different approach to get him on my back: it will involve a couch and some Matrix-style moves to complete, but I think it will work.

The Three Musketeers

The best part about getting out early is that we can let the dogs run loose.  When we went for this 2.5 hour walk we only ran into a few people right at the end.  It means they get to run around a lot more.  They like to stick close to Yuri though.

Yuri borrowed my scarf

I was hot. He was cold. Balance.

This is what happens when you pass a baby to his dad, over a dog.  Poor Laila.  All I could do was LAUGH!

r has been making leaps and bounds with his hands over the past couple of weeks.  I can now give him a toy and he’ll push it straight into his mouth.  I love watching him cup his little paws around his Sophie the Giraffe.

Talk about oral fixation.  There’s always something in this kid’s mouth.  It’s either Sophie, his hands, my hands, my sweater, his arms, a boob, something.  And if there’s nothing in his mouth, it’s because he’s trying to get something into his mouth!

His poor little hands are so chapped and eczema-like since they’re always wet with slobber.  He’s even starting to get a rash on his chin because he keeps it perma-slobbered.  And I don’t even think he’s teething yet!  What is going to happen when he starts teething?!  I am a little scared to imagine it.

To prepare for teething, Oscar has been wearing an amber necklace since he was one month old.  He was having some intestinal issues and his skin was always inflamed, so I put the necklace on him as soon as I opened the package.  Now, I don’t know if the necklace helped with those issues or if he just out-grew them, but I’m hoping the necklace thwarts off some of the unpleasant side effects of teething.  We really don’t want Oscar Dragon to rear his ugly head again.  I would be quite happy if the Dragon never returned.

Just the other day I was thinking “How will I know when to end the swaddle?” Well, Oscar let me know the answer on Saturday night in a fit of infantile rage.

I put him to bed at 7:00pm and he went straight to sleep.  Twenty minutes later he was tearing my heart out with his screams.  Five minutes went by and Daddy went in to settle him.  No sooner had he entered the door when I heard Oscar WAIL.  The dreaded “I want Mommy” cry was born.  So I went in 5 minutes later when he was still wailing and picked him up.  He instantly stopped, I held him for a few moments, and put him back down.

When I closed the door, the crying started again.  After a couple of minutes I went back in and unwrapped his arms.  I was rewarded with instant peace and quiet.  I wrapped up his body once again, closed the door, and that was that.

I think it all depends on his level of sleepiness.  When he’s the right amount of tired, he’s quite happy to flake out.  But if he’s under-tired he wants to suck on his hands, and when he’s over-tired he’s so busy freaking out that he doesn’t even know what he wants!

Nap Time

Most of the time he loves his swaddle.  He tosses and turns a bit, wiggles his arms, and stares straight into the camera as if he knows Big Brother is watching.  It’s super cute, yet a little unsettling since the monitor turns his eyes pure black like something right out of the X-files.  Yesterday he was content to chew on his hands at nap time until he started crying 45 minutes later.  I went in and wrapped him up in his burrito so he could get to sleep. Hopefully I’m not setting him up for sleep problems since I’m not being consistent, but I’m content with how things are going so far.  We’re not even a week into sleep training after all!

I’m left with a game time decision to make at nap time and night time.  Arms in or out?  I’m getting better at reading his cues, and starting to feel like I’ve pretty much got my act together as the nap Nazi, but there’s always that element of surprise that you get with dealing with a baby.  They keep life interesting.  I think he’ll let me know when to end the swaddle once and for all.