Eleven months

Only another month until Noel's first birthday! Wow. Here he is at eleven months. I really had a hard time getting these pictures tonight. Apparently Noel thinks it's funny when I'm trying to take his picture and he won't stay still. (I'll upload more of my attempts to the Picasa account.) He made up a new game where he sits up, immediately falls backward and laughs hysterically. He did this on the bed, so he had a soft landing.

This morning, after Dominick had meltdowns at soccer and the farmer's market, we all went to the local fire station's open house. We averted another meltdown by heading straight for the hot dogs. After we ate, Dominick got to sit in a helicopter. He was disappointed he couldn't ride in it. Later, the helicopter took off, so of course everybody gathered around to watch. Nobody anticipated the dust storm that the helicopter created, and we were all covered in dirt. It was a little humorous.

Ten months

These pictures are getting harder and harder to take! Noel laughed and mocked at my attempts to keep him seated on the chair. He should thank me for preventing him from going off it head first! That's part of my hand in the third picture as I went to rescue Noel yet again.

Noel has finally started to sit up unassisted. Just like his brother, he crawled a month before sitting. Bathtime will be so much more fun now!

Nine months

Here's our little guy at nine months. His checkup is Wednesday afternoon, so we'll find out how he's doing weightwise. Noel seems heavier to me, but he's still a skinny little thing.

I've been lazy about writing lately, not even finding the time when I took the boys to Joplin for a week. It was nice for us to get away and Mike to make some progress on the basement. He still thinks there's a possibility he'll finish by September 25, when Halo 3 comes out (you know I can't wait). Yeah, and Dom will be toilet-trained by September 10! But back to Joplin, or Doklin as Dom calls it. We had a lovely time, ate lots of good food, met some cousins who are very close in age to the boys, swam in a friend's pool (my mom's friend, actually), and I got some physical activity! I went to Pilates and rode a bike for the first time in about 100 years. My first ride was pretty ambitious at 7.5 miles, including some tough (for me) hills. The second ride was nostalgic. Dad and I rode to North Middle School, where I attended from 1985-87, and back to Columbia Elementary, 1980-85. Both have appeared in my ridiculously active dream life. The girls' locker room at North looked oddly familar!

We also spent large amounts of time with Dom sitting on the toilet. I'm sorry to say he's no closer to leaving diapers behind than he was the last time I posted. The good news is that he asks to go to the toilet now, and today he even got himself situated without any help. He just has his timing all wrong.

That's it for tonight. I'm feeling a little funky, so photos from our trip will have to wait. Oh yeah, it's World Breastfeeding Week, so celebrate and support nursing moms everywhere!

Time for Noel's monthly photo. As expected, he wasn't content to sit still and leave the sign alone, but I managed to get some good shots. (That's drool on the chair, by the way.) Overall, it went better than his session earlier today at JCPenney. He was getting tired--their fault for being 30 minutes late starting--and clearly constipated, not to mention teething, so it wasn't a good combination. But again, he couldn't help giving us some good pictures, just not as many as before.

Seven months

Yet another month has gone by. It's a little distressing how quickly the time is flying. Noel won't be a baby much longer. Here he is at seven months:

Mmmm, toes.

When I did these photos with Dominick, they started out fairly easy, but as he got older, he refused to stay still or keep his hands off the paper. The same thing is beginning to happen with Noel. Here's another photo from tonight's session:

I took Noel to the pediatrician today for his weight check. He's gained eleven ounces since last month and now weighs 15 pounds, 1 ounce. The nurse said he looked great. Before weighing him, she said he looks bigger. I think so too, but I see him every day, so I may not be the best judge of that. But his thighs seem ever so slightly chunkier.

It's always the roast beef

We have reached a blissfully quiet end to a long, miserable 24 hours (give or take). I now know why I got sick, after both Mike and Dominick began vomiting within about ten minutes of each other last night. We all ate the offending roast beef for dinner on Thursday, but for some reason it affected me first, and in the meantime, they ate it again and paid a much steeper price. (They probably threw up 35 times combined. Sorry if that's too much information, but now you know just how bad it was.) I had recovered sufficiently to assume the caretaker role, which meant starting the first of several loads of laundry, cleaning Dominick up as much as possible, and getting him back to sleep for a few minutes before the next bout of sickness. I stayed in his room all night, running back upstairs twice to feed Noel, who chose the worst possible night to wake up an additional time. Then Dominick decided he was ready to get up at 5:50 am. Needless to say, I got absolutely no sleep last night. Fortunately, the boys and I took a nice long nap this afternoon, which is why I'm able to function at all tonight. Dom seems to feel better and even ate a couple of small, bland meals today. Mike may stay home from work again tomorrow. When he gets sick, he gets really sick. This happened last fall when he ate some suspect roast beef at the cafeteria.

I called Sam's Club this morning to report the bad beef they had sold, and the woman in the meat department basically blew me off with a chipper "Oh, okay!" that really said, "And you're telling me because...?" When I asked about getting our money back, she snapped "You'll have to ask customer service about that." That was not exactly the response I was hoping for, so I called again and got the meat manager, who at least seemed to care somewhat and promised we would get a refund. He also said that there hadn't been any other complaints. Tomorrow, I will contact the county health department. If anyone else got sick, I hope they report it, too.

In the midst of the drama today, I did manage to feed Noel some rice cereal, which he seemed to like. Either that or he liked chomping on the spoon. Regardless, he ate all that I gave him. And later, I took his monthly photo. He'd been crying a minute before but gave me this great smile: