8 months

Jack is 8 months old today. How the hell did that happen?!

I feel absurdly pleased with myself because yesterday Jack and I (along with my friend Abby and her daughter Calliope) went to the zoo and botanical gardens. This doesn't seem like a feat at all, but I think it was my first real mom-baby outing where we decided to go for it, took the subway, and actually made it happen. We've done plenty of driving to visit friends or walks to playgrounds and activities, but we hadn't really had a subway adventure. I didn't know how the whole stroller on the subway thing would be - turns out it was not super fun, but not that big a deal, especially since on the way back someone was kind enough to help me carry the stroller up the stairs - nice! I'm not really used to relying on the random kindness of strangers (as Abby put it) and it's a weird thing to be hanging out at the bottom of the subway stairs, waiting for everyone else to go up in front of you because you know you'll be slow, and maybe secretly thinking/hoping that someone will offer to help. I've been on the other end a thousand times, and I've helped carry some stranger's stroller up my fair of stairs, but it's weird to be the one in need of the help. But I suppose I just need to suck it up and put my most pathetic face on, because carrying a stroller up stairs sucks.

But anyway, I digress. The outing was fun, though Jack slept through most of the zoo. He did wake up long enough for the sea lion feeding, which he was pretty uninterested in, so we went to sit on the grass which he LOVED. I think he would have sat there all day pulling up grass. So there's more guilt for not having a yard for the kid to play in. Sigh.

Abby posted a video of Jack and Calliope "playing" before we went: Jack and Calliope
This is the second girl friend that Jack's entertained and the result is sadly similar. Calliope fended him off with ladylike aplomb, happily.

And here's a couple other pics from yesterday....

Enjoying(?) the sunshine at the Botanic Gardens. So much in bloom already!!

With his new favorite toy...grass.

Luck of the Irish

So I had been talking to my mom about how Jack hasn't really showed any signs of separation or stranger anxiety, which I guess they're supposed to around now. So of course, delightful cousin Caolan comes over today to watch Jack while I have to go into work (bummer) and he takes one look at her and starts wailing. Awesome. Perfect timing, little man. Luckily, he came around (especially after Caolan began feeding him - he IS a Farrell after all) and had a lovely time for himself hanging out.

In other news, Jack is officially crawling (mostly) As I'm sure I wrote, he has been doing the backwards scoot for a while now but on Friday he finally managed some forward movement. It's still not very impressive, but it's getting better every day and between rolling, scooting, and this amateur crawl, he's getting around pretty well. God help me. Nothing in my apt is childproofed.

Jack and I took a Gymboree class last weekend and while it was a little crazed (the class started late so I think the instructor was kind of rushing through everything), Jack seemed to really dig it. Makes me feel bad that our Music Together class was cancelled - we'll have to sign up for something in April; swimming? music? something else? I've been told by several people that swimming is the way to go - any thoughts?

Other than crawling, not much to report. Jack's still eating like a pro - I made a beef stew this week that he seems to be loving, which is great since he hasn't been a big meat eater up till now. I'm trying to vary the diet as much as I can, but it's tough to mix it up too much. He needs to eat more green vegetables, but he HATES peas, mildly tolerates green beans, and I haven't tried anything else. Spinach seems a little bitter, broccoli seems like maybe it's weird consistency? brussel sprouts? kale? My problem is that I'm not a big green vegetable eater myself, so it's challenging to force myself to make it...

I tried to upload a video of Jack's first crawling action, but it didn't happen. Here's a link to where I posted it on YouTube:      Jack Crawling



As ever, some pictures,

Heading out to enjoy the summer-like weather earlier this week

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Boring (in a good way)

Apologies for the delay in posting. I've been waiting for something to happen that's worth writing about but then I realized that the 5 people who "read" this blog are really just looking for pictures, so what the hell.

Things are still going great. Tooth #2 is just about to pop through. Jack continues to subsist on yogurt, squash and sweet potatoes (and occasionally some fruit) though we've added bagels into the mix and he immediately loved them.

We had a great hangout with my aunt, uncle and cousins last weekend, which was awesome. Jack even behaved himself while we ate lunch, which was very kind of him.

Other than that, not much new to report. So here's some pictures:

This morning, enjoying a bagel

 At his 7-month photo session

Visiting Aunt Nora at the NY gift show last month