He's on the Move

Little Lord Steed is on the move, so watch out!

Today he went from the middle of the living room, to the middle of the dining room all on his own. He was not crawling,exactly, but just pulling his body along with his arms, pushing with his legs and using his six month old determination, to get to each and every interesting toy spread out on the floor between the two rooms. While it is exciting to see him developing a new skill, I am not looking forward to the adventures that he will be having now that he can move around.

Watch out, here he comes!

Um, looking at Little Lord Steed's face, it would appear that I need to do some vacuuming.

Gave Blood, Eased Guilt

I gave blood for the first time recently (Saturday Feb 13 to be exact). And I must say that it was nice to have the guilt, that I have been carrying around for not giving blood the last ten years, lifted.

My ward had a blood drive and I decided it was high time I gave blood. I attempted it one other time, back in college. I wanted to do it, but was afraid of the needle. I was pretty queasy around needles at that time. My roommates and I got ourselves all pumped up to do it, walked over to the blood drive, saw the HUGE line, waited for about thirty minutes and then left. Waiting for so long made us all chicken out. If we had been able to just walk right up and get the process started I think we would have all given blood that day, but that was not how it went. I wonder how many of them have given blood since that experience? Ever since then I have been carrying around a lot of guilt about not giving blood. I have had other opportunities to give blood but never have. I have been feeling guilty about not giving blood for over ten years now. It was definitely time to get rid of this guilt and give some blood.

I was still a bit nervous. Over ten years later. But since my first attempt I have given birth to three children and been poked with plenty of needles during those pregnancies and lived through the pokings. I told myself that I should be fine.

I had not actually signed up to give blood, but Theric just assumed that I would be giving blood without ever asking me about it, so he got the kids all packed in the car and I hopped in and off we went.

We got there and while it did not look like there were a lot of people ahead of me it still took quite a while to get to the actual point where they took my blood. There was a booklet to read, then lots of waiting, then an interview along with blood pressure readings and a finger prick so they could check my hemoglobin count, then a questionnaire and more waiting. During all this I learned that the pool of people cleared to give blood is not as huge as I had always assumed. They are always updating the list of things that make you ineligible to give blood. Apparently good, clean blood can be hard to get. But in the end I had it! I made it through the screening process and my blood was deemed acceptable. So, over an hour after arriving I was finally instructed to lie on a table, relax and had a vein in my right arm tapped for the blood within. About fifteen minutes later I was done! The technician said I had good flow, so my pint bag filled pretty quickly, a bandage was wrapped around my arm and I was instructed to go sit in a chair at the refreshment table, relax and eat some OREOS. Yum.

Blood given, guilt lifted and, hopefully, a stranger's life saved.

Little Lord Steed:Six Months Old

At six months of age Little Lord Steed has become rather adept at moving around on his belly, rolling all directions, pivoting on his belly, and doing whatever else he can think of to reach an object on the floor that is just out of his reach and that he has just got to put in his mouth. I will admit that I have not spent a whole lot of time observing Little Lord Steed closely when I put him down on the floor. But I do know that when I put him down one place on his back, then leave the room and come back a few minutes later, he has usually moved well off his blanket and is facing the opposite direction from which he was placed and is now on his belly. And quite often all of this movement has been in a grand effort to reach some small scrap of paper, which he is then sucking/chewing on. This kid loves to put paper in his mouth--maybe he needs more fiber in his diet? (Or maybe I need to take the scissors away from his brothers?)

Speaking of diet, we have started to give him rice cereal every now and then, when we remember to, and while he seems very interested in putting the spoon in his mouth, he does not seem to enjoy the rice cereal all that much. He's more interested in trying to grab stuff off our plates and mouthing that stuff, rather than actually eating it. He did have a very small piece of sweet potato the other night and did actually eat most of it, though I think he found the flavor too exciting. At least the faces he pulled were exciting for us to watch.

He is getting close to crawling. A number of times today he got on his belly then pulled his legs under him, then started rocking back and forth. It is fun to watch him develop and reach milestones, but this is one that I am not looking forward to. A moving baby is a dangerous baby.

Jan 22 we moved him out of our room and into the crib in the boy's room. This move has been a good one. Good for me and good for him. It was rough the first few nights and he still usually wakes up once at night to eat, but overall he is sleeping well. In fact, just this week he has been going down around 8pm(!) waking up once to eat, and waking up for the morning around 7am. Though on Tuesday he slept all the way from 8pm to 7am with out waking up once! Amazing! I hope this pattern continues. The other good thing about the move is that he seems to be learning that being put in the crib means, 'go to sleep'. It used to be that we would put him in the crib for bed and he would scream for 45 minutes or more and then fall asleep, even though he was already tired, but now we put him in , and he settles right down and falls asleep with little to no crying.

Little Lord Steed has developed a most horrible high-pitched scream. A scream that pierces my ears and causes them to ring, and pierces my soul and causes it to bleed. It is that awful.

After me (if I walk by and don't pick him up he screams), Little Lord Steed's favorite person is still the Big O. The Big O can get a laugh out this baby every time.

He still loves to bounce on his legs and flap his arms. He is now much more interested in his toys. He loves to put anything in his mouth and then explore it. He still drools a lot. Is getting more hair. Can almost sit up without support. When he masters this skill I think he will be a much happier baby: He will be able keep his toys closer to his body for longer periods of time. Right now, he'll have a toy, drop it and then have to struggle to get to wherever it has rolled off to, which he often gets very frustrated by.

Today Little Lord Steed was not at all happy, so picture-taking did not go well. I got very few smiles and lots of crying. I commented to Theric that I think Little Lord Steed is the least smiley of all our children. I think this has always been true. Getting him to smile is difficult. And he also seems to be more fussy than the other two were: he always wants to be held. I remember the Big O and Large S being content lying or sitting, playing with a toy while I prepared dinner or performed some other task. But not Little Lord Steed. He wants your constant attention.

My how time flies!

Little Lord Steed, I can hardly believe that today you are halfway through your first year of life on earth.

100 Days of School

Today is the Big O's 100th day of school.

They had a special homework assignments to commemorate this special day. They needed to either gather up 100 of the same items, 10 groups of ten items, or 100 different items laid out in some sort of patterns. The Big O choose to gather up 10 groups of 10 different items from my pantry and then Theric helped the Big O paste them onto the sheet in a pattern. I really like the way it turned out. Especially how it goes from large to small, mostly.

Those first 100 days of school went by very quickly.

I wonder how many more hundreds of days are ahead of him? I suppose I could figure this out but I will refrain as I am afraid of the mixed emotions this number will stir up.

Happy 100 days Big O!