Six Month Stats

It was a doctor-going-to month this month, and so here's the requisite at-the-doctor photos. I'm glad I started that tradition, though it was totally random the first time. Now I make sure I bring along my camera so that after we strip him down and weigh/measure him and the RN leaves and we're waiting for the doctor, I snap a few shots.

First at-the-doctor sitting picture:

LOL

I was there too:

Here's Malcolm's stats:

Weight: 17.38 lbs (48%)
Length: 27 in (71%)
Head: 17.7 in (82%)

The Doc was a bit concerned with his weight, but all else checked out very well. He still has tiny ear canals too, in case you were wondering. :)
The Dr's concern was that his weight went from the 68th percentile, to the 60th percentile, to the 48th percentile. He's only mildly concerned and just wants me to make sure he eats well. He says he sees it more in breastfed infants in their second 6 months because they are more easily distracted. They interrupt their feedings and sometimes don't finish. It's not a big problem with formula fed infants because they get the same milk beginning or end of a feeding. But from the breast, the calories come mainly at the end.
So the plan is to feed him in a less interrupt-able spot, and make sure he empties the breast. As well as feed him as much of other stuff as he wants. I've only been doing solids twice a day. We'll be going to three times a day after this.
I have to admit, it's definitely my fault he's not gaining. I often don't push him to eat because it's not convenient for me to sit down and feed him, or because I don't want him to associate food with things like comfort and boredom. Like if he's screaming, I make sure he really is hungry and not something else before I feed him.

Most other things to update about Malcolm have pretty much been covered in other posts. He has two teeth and can roll over. He does it more and more consistently as we go along.
Foods Malcolm eats are: rice cereal, oatmeal, green beans, sweet potatoes, bananas, and pears. All pureed style of course.
I'm OCD in my feeding of him, and if the last food we tried was a fruit the next is a vegetable, etc. So far he doesn't hate anything and will eat anything we put in his face. He's such a champ. For a while I didn't think he had a "done" button either. He'd just keep taking spoonful after spoonful. Later after I started preparing larger portions, he will get to the point that he won't open his mouth anymore.

Malcolm can sit unassisted for a long time. He can even sit while flapping his arms and reaching for/playing with things. He smiles all the time and is always happy. Really, unless he's tired or hungry he is smiling and flapping his arms. He has the sweetest disposition. Malcolm HATES loud noises and loud places and often startles at family dinners at my mom's house. (He and his daddy share that trait. Not the startling. The hating loud noises, I mean). He sleeps 12-13 hours a night and takes at least two 30-70 minute naps a day.

He sucks on his shirts, blankets, hands rather noisily sometimes. He can make clacking noises with his tongue. He squeals with delight and laughes. He can anticipate coming tickles ("mousey from barney to housey...." I don't expect anyone to know what I mean by that but my family). He makes many consonant sounds, and blows raspberries.

Seriously, there's nothing to complain about. He's awesome! We are just loving being his parents!

6 Months Old

Malcolm Ryan Green is officially six months old!
Hard to believe, I know.

To commemorate his 6 month birthday, I took him outside for an impromptu photo shoot.
It's hard to photograph babies, did you know? They move so much! You see something cute and snap the picture as fast as you can, and.... he moved. I tried taking them in quick succession, but my good camera is in the shop, and my point and shoot can only get do so well.
I liked some of the outcome though.

It was bright outside, so he's more squinty than usual, but here's a lovely smattering of the many faces of Malcolm:

(This one looks like he's talking. "Yeah, so I was out in my stroller one day...")

( LOVE this next one, it's so Mal.)

Finally, after lots of struggling, we got daddy to come out and make him smile some more.

Aw... love him!

Day Via Camera Phone

I thought I'd do another installment of "Today Via Camera Phone", but since I never do it on "today" I put just day. This was yesterday. After doing it, I realized it ended up very similar to the last one I did. Hey, when you're documenting every day things, it's kind of the same every day.
I'm still struggling with how to format this thing. I'm sure printed in a blog book it'll be weird.
9 am: Trialing Auntie Brenna's Diaper Covers. Brenna has made some diaper covers to use with her new little one due in March (c-section scheduled for March 28th!) and wanted me to try them on Malcolm to see how they work.


10 am: Breakfast. Blueberries in oatmeal. What's better?

1pm: Wake up from naptime. It was pretty cute, I don't know how long he was awake before I heard him making little noises and talking to himself. He was just in there playing in his blankets and kicking off his socks.
He's slept through Ryan's lunch time two days in a row now. Today Ryan said, "It's like I don't even have a child". Nice that he likes Malcolm so much and misses seeing him.


2 pm: a very windy and rainy run. Some people would say that to go running on a day like yesterday would be stupid. But I say they're just mispronouncing Hard Core.
I thought I'd leave my hair down so I could salvage my hair for the day without a kink from a ponytail. Yeah... not so much.
3 pm: snack time. It sure would be nice if he could use that thing himself.
(Go Utes)





6:30 pm: Laura and Andrew come over for "family night". We played Rumikub and ate treats. It was fun. I heart Rumikub.





8 pm: Skyping the Greens in AK. Ryan's parents called while we were playing games. It was Ryan's dad's birthday, so we skyped for a while before they went off to dinner. Happy Birthday Brad!
Eesh. Our computer closet needs some help. It gets neglected cuz I can just shut the doors and it all goes away...




Laura's Bump. Look how cute! That little girlie is getting so big. Laura can feel her moving all the time now. It's fun to feel her little prego belly.

Snowy Outings

My Dad gave us some tickets to the U of U basketball game on Saturday. They haven't been playing well, but it's still fun to go to games. It was also an experiment to see how Malcolm would handle it.
It was raining when we left our house, and by the time we were to the U is was snowing giant globs of snowflakes! We parked at the stadium and rode Trax to the Huntsman Center. I thought we were pretty prepared, but it was a TON of snow! It was a good thing we didn't have far to go.

We covered Malcolm in both his blanket, and then his carseat cover.

We walked into the arena and Malcolm was just stunned. What is this place??

He startled every time there was cheering and every time the buzzer blew.
After a while he acclimated though, and even got to smiling and playing.

What are you doing mom? Why are you always taking pictures!

Halftime snack

The Utes won, but looked terrible. Honestly, I hardly watched. I was doing too much baby duty.

Waiting for Trax back to our car

We headed home to get Malcolm a nap, then shortly after headed right back up to the U again for a Concert from the Salt Lake Symphony. Our neighbor plays violin in the symphony and they invited us and got us tickets. It was a kid themed symphony, so Malcolm could come.

We had a hard time getting our car out of it's parking spot after the show. We were stuck between a parked car and a curb out over the gutter and couldn't get enough traction in either direction with the allotted space. Luckily, the car in front of us was at the concert too and after they pulled out we were free!

It was a fun Saturday. Nice to finally have snow!

Oh Afro, You Shouldn't have!

No, seriously, you shouldn't have.
Get these nasty things off my patio, please.

Carseat Covers and Great Grandpas

I've only started using Malcolm's carseat cover since it's gotten cold. Now that Malcolm has much better control over his hands and is so mouthy, we often end up with this: Almost the second I put it down over him he grabs it and sticks it in his mouth.

At least his upper half is safe from the fridged breeze.

A few weeks ago Laura and I went up to my Grandpa and Grandma McAllister's house to help Grandma take down her Christmas decorations. It wasn't the first time that they have seen Malcolm, but it was the first time it wasn't during a big party. So Grandpa spent a good hour holding and talking to and playing with Mal while the rest of us worked. Grandpa loves babies. He kept asking Malcolm, "Do you know who we are? Do you know how much we love you? Are you going to come and visit me again soon?"

Lots of Grandpa's love babies I've decided. It's always cute old men that step out of the line at Costco to come see Mal in his carseat, etc. I don't mind. I don't think, "Ooh, creepy old guy." I think, "Aw, just like my Grandpa who misses little grandchildren now that his are all grown."

The day we went to Grandma's, Laura had stepped on my scale in my bathroom and said that it was showing that she was heavier than her scale says at her house. Then we stepped on Grandma's scale to see how it compared. I only bring this up to say that since that weigh in I've lost 6 pounds! Bringing the total number I need to still lose to be my pre-pregnancy weight to 8 lbs!

I've been doing it by watching what I eat. That is, I try to drink a glass of water before I eat anything, and try to eat something healthy before eating something unhealthy. I've also started "running". The quotations are because I still mostly walk and I'm slowly adding on more running time. I started at walk 4 min/run 1 min, then to walk 4/run 2, and I've just this week gone to run 3/walk 3. I also do Classical Stretch which I have DVR'd on KBYU pretty much every day. I've been taking it slow so my poow widdow IT band won't be mean to me. Malcolm is soon to be 6 months and then I can start taking him to the kids care at the rec center and start adding weights to my routine.

So hooray to that! And hooray for everything else.

Pain in My [Sungl]ass

I have a horrible habit of losing/breaking my sunglasses regularly. I never buy sunglasses that cost more than $20. Less than $10 if I can help it.

Recently my horrible habit has had a bit of an exacerbation. I found a pair of sunglasses I really liked before we went to Grand Junction.

Pictured here:

Soon after, I lost them. Since I liked them so well, I bought another identical pair.

Here are those ones (I promise, they're not the same):

(Target, Men's) Those fell victim to my particularly heavy throwdown of my breast pump into the passenger seat.

I did wear them after their accident on my run on Monday:

(I kept these in my car as back up since I can still "wear" them.)

Which leads me to these little beauties. Yes, the third pair of identical sunglasses since Thanksgiving.

Complete with UV sticker still attached.

(Made the same face, ya know, for consistency)

Good thing Target hasn't changed selection in a while... :) They haven't even gone on sale!

Malcolm's Got Muscle

We were sitting and eating dinner with Malcolm beside us in his little BebePod seat and he started doing this funny thing with his arms. He'd lift them straight up and then he'd contract all the muscles in his arms. It was almost like he was stretching. Then he kept doing it over and over. Enough times to get it on video.

Silly little Mal.

Malcolm Rolls Over

Yes, it's true, today all that frustrating tummy time has paid off!

I set Malcolm down on his tummy, then walked over to the mirror in our living room to finish braiding my hair. Ryan came in and cheered him on a little, since he was fussing a bit, then left the room. When he returned he exclaimed, "Did you do it??!"

I looked over, and sure enough Mal was on his back about a body's width from where he was before.

"Make him do it again!" I said.

We propped him up and he immediately set in to whimpering. Like he was saying, hey! I just got OFF of this side! Pretty soon he got himself tipped sideways and I grabbed the video just in time to catch the [2nd] time Malcolm rolled over ever.

We're such nerds. But proud nerds. I even brought my camera to work so I could show all my coworkers what had happened only minutes before I left. It made me happy all night long to watch the video of our growing boy hitting his milestone.

Remember The Little Things For Someday They Will Be The Big Things III

Malcolm was fussy, getting tired. But not to the ready-for-bed point. So I say, let's read a book!

Let's read our new book, Skippy Jon Jones we just got from the bookstore today! Let's read it with Daddy. Let's make Daddy read it!

So we sit on the couch with Mal on my lap facing Ryan with the book. This book is fun, with lots of funny words like Achupitchu and guacamole, and opportunities to speak in a Mexican accent. Soon I notice that Malcolm doesn't care at all about the pictures or the book. He's just enraptured with Daddy. Just staring, half smiling, and completely engrossed. His hands clasped together halfway up to his mouth.

He sat that way watching his dad for the whole book. Sometimes smiling or startling and blinking, but always happy and so sweet.

I thought to myself how much I wanted to take that moment and bottle it up. I prayed that some angel somewhere had my life's video recorder on. Because I want to see this one again.

Blah-uary

Well, the holidays are over, and so starts the longest part of winter until March which usually brings a break up of the snow and ice and is also my birthday and our anniversary month. That's my excuse for no blogging.

I've also been hard at work trying to get my new system down I'm trying. I still haven't gotten into a perfect groove with it yet, so blogging has gotten a little neglected. I have an actual paper calendar (as opposed to my iPhone one) up in the kitchen with color coded scheduling. I've set up chores for each day (new order from last year), scheduled my exercise, put in the actual activities we're doing for YW (instead of just "YW activity"), and then of course my work schedule. I've got a system for marking when I start a new food with Malcolm, and when he poops (ya know, so I can lay off the rice and do pears or prunes). So far it's be working out well!

I'm such a list nerd. I love a list and marking stuff off of it. I've even been known to add to a list something I've already done so I can cross it off. :) I make lists at work, and have a running list of the year's projects on my phone notepad. It's a bit of a handicap though. I seriously can't remember anything unless I wrote it down somewhere. Actually, I don't know whether the list writing is handicapping me from remembering on my own, or a remedy for my can't-remember-anything handicap. I choose the latter, as I've written lists and had a planner of some sort since forever.

Anyhoo... like I've said life's bit usual at the moment, so not much blog-worthy. Fear not though, I've got plenty a picture of our little Mal to post.

Like this one:

He was soon to have a bath, so I just put a shirt on him with his diaper and some totally awesome socks that look like boots. The whole ensemble made me giggle.

On New Years Eve, we went on our last walk of 2012. It was such a nice day, very clear, sunny, and warm. We've been having a weird winter. Very mild. It's been 48 degrees during the day and December was the driest December ever recorded in Utah. I've really missed the snow.

Here's pictures from our walk:

How sweet is this one?

And this:

Aw.....

We also had a date afternoon last Saturday. We sadly, have started to have a "usual" date night. It makes me think of the movie Date Night, where they always go to the same place and eat the same thing and do the same thing. For at least 3 date nights (not in a row), we have gone to Joe's Crab Shack and then seen a movie. I don't think it's a rut, I think it's just a good time! Besides, have you seen Date Night? Look what happened to them when they went out of the ordinary. :)
So we ate crab legs, shrimp, and crab dip (yummmmmm), and saw Sherlock Holmes #2. It was a good movie. I liked it, but Ryan thought it was too over the top. While I was thinking they had taken the stuff they did in the first one and gone just a little further but not too much. Oh well, I think I liked the first one more than he did when we saw it too.

That's about all we've been up to lately. I'm sure to be busier coming up, as I've picked up a bunch of extra shifts to help pay for our car repairs and so I can repair our camera.