I’m Still Here…Just Not…Here

So I think my last post was about starting a new site and having everything over there. I did!

www.brewrites.com

Even have a new baby post up!

This site will still be up, but everything has been transferred over to the new site.  So you’ll have to re-subscribe to be updated, or just check back from time to time, the baby stuff is right on the front page.

🙂

– bre

 

It’s Kinda Sorta Easy Being Green

a lot of the girls in the bump group mention that they make their own baby food.  i have neither the know-how nor the will to actually go through this process.  it wasn’t something i ever wanted to do anyway.  me and gerber are cool with each other as is.  and addy likes everything.  but now she’s ready for stage 2 foods (they’re a thicker/chunkier texture and mixed flavors) and the girls were talking about giving their babies mangos and papaya and watermelon.  what?! my target doesn’t have those gerber cans!

but it’s because they were making it themselves.  either that or serving them cut up and through a mesh feeder.  yeaaaaa i’m not cleaning that. i’m not steaming anything.  and the most exotic thing i saw from gerber was mixed vegetables.

so i opted to try some organic food.  i’ve seen some fairly granola-type moms squirting the food out of the pouches onto spoons and into baby’s mouth (picture capri sun).  and they’re pricey. jeezus.  but target was having this awesome baby sale AND i had a coupon so i went ahead and gave it a try.  i went with Happy Baby. on sale at target it was 98 cents per 3.5oz pouch. plus $1 off the total when i bought 4.  i figured it wasn’t TOO bad cause we weren’t going all organic. but just for comparison sake the gerber stage 2 foods are $1.09 for two 3.5 oz tubs.

we tried the Bananas, Beets, and Blueberries first.  yes all in one pouch.  i unscrewed the top and squirted the food out into her bowl.  then i was all “oooooh that’s what’s cool about just squirting it onto the spoon” cause there’s not the dipping back and forth into the container and you don’t have to worry about germs getting in the uneaten food and you can save some for later. ooooh. (they even sell little spoon spout attachments).  it was a massive success.  actually addy hasn’t refused anything i’ve given her, some stuff she just demands i feed her faster.

i also bought Spinach, Mango, & Pear. so we’ll try that out next.  then i went to a fancy HEB (with On The Run) on my lunch break to fill up on free samples and stopped in their baby aisle to see what they had.  come to find out the Happy Baby was 88 cents regular price! and they had gerber organics in a bajillonty different combos that are just as fancy and organic as the Happy Baby.  HAPPY MOMMY! i mean some of them even had granola and yogurt smoothie blends.  lur lur! so i will be going to HEB for more baby food (and free samples). AND i got an email that gerber is going to pouches.  so that means a gang of stage 2 foods in jars are on clearance at target ret now! ahhh! but now that we’re doing some organic foods and i’m all keeping my re-usable grocery bags in the car i feel some need to start recycling.  not in an OCD kind of way but i can at least recycle the baby food and finally get rid of that stack of magazines that has been sitting in the corner since we moved here 2 years ago.  the pile gets pretty high when there are 5 magazine subscriptions in the house.  i just don’t know exactly where to go. at work when i’m done with my little yogurt cup i rinse it and throw it in the recycle can.  but do i want to haul trash piece by piece from my house to work to the recycle can? brownlee will make me.  i need to find a center.  ok i know where one is but i mean i need to actually load up the car and go.  it’s in west u so maybe i can treat myself to Benjy’s afterwards for being such a good citizen.  or Ruggle’s Green! ha!

while YaYa was feeding addy a few spoonfulls she noticed addy would mmmmmmmmmm after each bite.  and when she told me i was kinda like oops i do that when i’m feeding her so she thinks (crummy) vegetables are good. ha! and also uhoh.

and me, gabby, and addy had a great brunch on the patio at Coco’s Crepes Sunday.  addy look fabulous in her gabby inspired Gap summery hat.  but she also really really wanted some of mommy’s crepe.  so i pulled out some of the strawberries and let her try them.  she really really liked them but couldn’t quite figure out what to do when i put some in her hand.  she knew something was in there and knew it was supposed to go in her mouth but didn’t get to the part where she needed to open her hand to get it out.  so i’m gonna get some of those little baby snacks that dissolve as soon as they get in the kids mouth.  for practice.  of course they come organic and they come with whatever gerber makes them as so we’ll so what decision i make in the store.

and speaking of practice i also want to get her on the cup.  not for everything because i’m still not big on giving her juice (that’s a treat for YaYa’s house) but i’m going to let her start drinking out the sippy cup, but without the valve that stops the spillage.  so yeah we’ll just be doing water for a while.  i read something about babies having sippy cup dependency issues and some parents skipping it and going right to regular cups.  i’m not ready for that big of a leap now but we’ll see how we progress.

she mostly just bites on it anyway.  like she does everything else.

 

still  no teeth.

yummy!

 

Another Program Note

so i’ve been dabbling with the idea of having a website.  my own for reals .com. not for monetary purposes or anything (that i can think of right now) but somewhere to have everything in one place. baby blog. personal blog. reviews (remember way back in 2009 when i saw a bajillion movies and wrote reviews on them?!). nanowrimo attempts. all that jazz. in one nice little .com.

so i’m gonna do it.  i like to blog and i assume every once in a while someone likes to read it. so i’m gonna count up my pennies and hit coinstar and fund me a year of webhosting somewhere.  it will still be powered by wordpress so whatever logins you use to comment now will be used there, you just have to change your bookmark or email subscription or whatever cause everything will be at the new place.  brownlee’s working on a little logo for me. how fancy is that?! and once i put to use what little i know about web anything i will be posting things whenever i please. word is that wordpress for personal sites is very user friendly (thanks Tottums for the advice!)

anyway that’s about all i got on that for now and plan to work on it this weekend then i’ll report back with my findings.

 

Saturday Morning Family Fun

apparently if you have kids then the thing to do is go to the park on a saturday morning.  i had been thinking it was time to take addy out into the open and since 86 degrees is a dramatic change from how hot it was 3 weeks ago, we loaded up Coop and went to the park.

couldn't care less face

since it was my idea i was in charge of finding park.  so im all yeah there’s a park over my Jordan’s apartment.  it is more of a track and open area.  so we went to the little park down the trail on the side of the “river” (read: bayou).  remember that time me and jenni took addy to take pictures and she couldn’t care less about being in the park? well this time the park was a big success.  she got in the swing and watched the big kids play.  we climbed up the jungle gym deal and had more fun looking down and crawling around and being up high.  we even went down the slide.  then we laid the blanket out for a little bit and she sat in the shade and played with some toys and tried to eat some leaves and rocks.  then we took another stroll around to look at some people’s dogs (while mommy eyed their big kid strollers) and looked at the trees and bushes. and then we realized it was 1035a and football started in 20 minutes and mommy is too out of shape to quickly walk the quarter-mile back to the car so if we wanted to catch kick-off we better get to going.  plus addy hadn’t had her morning nap yet so she was quickly tuckered out.

tuckered out

the park is awesome! i can’t wait until she’s climbing through things on her own and i’m just sitting at the bench watching her and getting up to repeatedly push the swing.

anyway i know you just want to see pictures. so here they go:

 

 

and i even took a quick video clip (i hate my voice on the camera)

 

Yo Crappa Crappa

DJ Lance (ficky ficky)

 

Yo Gabba Gabba.

Have you seen this?  Have you heard of this?

Apparently it’s not a new show but I’m a new mom so now I’m blogging about it.  I’ve seen approximately 2 episodes of this show and it’s amazing that I am here today to type this and did not bore my eyes out with the nearest spoon.  but Addy was mesmerized.

Yo Gabba Trance

from what i gather DJ Lance is a DJ.  and he has these robots that live in his radio.  and they sing the crappiest songs about don’t run with scissors or be nice to your friends (my friends should hear this song) or whatever other lesson kids should learn.  they mostly drive me crazy because they don’t rhyme.  maybe i’m not cool enough to care about things that don’t rhyme but how else am i supposed to remember the words?

and it’s not just the shitty songs that kill me.  it’s the random spazzy transitions of kids dancing really really hard for about 10 seconds.  ok that’s hilarious because i mean have you seen a kid dance? but it’s incredibly odd.  and sometimes the transition isn’t even a kid dancing.  sometimes it’s a kid riding a stick broom across the screen.  just a quick shot of a 5 year old going across your tv screen.  is that not odd to anyone else?

then in true hipster fashion there will be a celeb music guest singing an even more crappier song about sharing toys or being polite to your parents or something. one episode i saw had MGMT singing about art.  ?uestlove keeps tweeting about an episode he was on.  and i’m all “wait, i kinda like that one MGMT song that comes on my Pandora station sometimes when i don’t skip it.  is this a show that i should be liking?” cause you know how sometimes things are advertised for kids but are really for adults.  like maybe somehow Yo Gabba Gabba was supposed to be for AdultSwim and accidentally ended up on NickJr (insert trumpet sound). especially when on that MGMT song Andy Samberg came out to teach the kids a dance.  Andy Samberg?! Andy “Dick in a Box” Samberg on a kids show? this has to be for beatnik hipsters and my jeans just are skinny enough to get the joke right?

i tried it.  i just can’t drink the kool-aid.  hopefully in a few years this will not exist and some other crap tv show will invade my kids brain.  and hopefully by then i will have bought some BOSE noise cancellation headphones for myself so i can not hear the aforementioned crap show.

for now the kid will get her tv learnin from Sesame Street. just like i did.

and SportsCenter. just like her dad does.

watch this friends.  if you can stand it.

LMAO on the comments someone asks “Can I still bite my enemies then?”

 

 

Houston…We Have a Crawler

one time Brownlee thought it would be funny to use his million dollar Call of Duty remote control car that i bought for christmas to tease addy with.  well she never forgot.(exuse the shoddy camera work but she was crawling for the car)

so i’m all “fluke” and reset her on the sheet for a do-over.

i think it’s official.

 

 

Is there a Doctor in the House?

It’s been a while since I’ve done a guest baby blog, but I’m back, I already know you all missed me.  Over the weekend, Addy turned 6 months old, of course she thinks she’s grown now, but that’s not what this blog is about.  Today Addy had her 6 month checkup and got her ears pierced.  For some reason, every time I think of getting ears pierced I think of the episode of the Cosby Show when Theo got his ear pierced and it got infected.  Hope my Addy is not like him.  Well here is how it really went down.

First of all, gender roles are VERY present in a pediatrician’s office.  By this I mean I was the ONLY guy in there that was not employed by Texas Children’s Hospital.   As if that wasn’t enough, the nurse calls for us and as I grab our stuff to head to the back, she politely asks “Oh, where’s mom, the moms usually mark the ears?”, so I replied “She’s at work, so the role of mom & dad will be played by me today.”  Maybe I read to much into it, but I don’t think so.  Are dads really not capable of being a parent?  I mean I used to joke when Addy was about 6 weeks old, that I’m not qualified to be left alone with her, but I keep her everyday while mom is away….I think I got it down now (even though I forgot to feed myself before we left for the doctor’s office).   I wasn’t offended by the nurse’s comments, because like I said, there were no other guys in the waiting area with their kids, but don’t make it sound like I’m not capable of successfully taking my kid to see the doctor.

Now that I’m done ranting about being the BEST DAD EVER, here is how the actual visit went.  The nurse told me to mark her ears, which was followed by me giving her a blank stare, so she did one ear to show me.  I erased her mark because I felt it was little high, but Addy wouldn’t cooperate…at all.  She wanted to see the marker and did not want to be held down.  So once the doctor came in, I still hadn’t marked her, so he called in a nurse to help.  She marked while I held her down…if any of you have ever met Addy, you know she does NOT like to be held down against her own will, so she fought it.  We got her marked up, then the doc was concerned that she’d wipe off the markers, so decided to do the piercing first.  The first stud they tried was too little for the gun or something because it didn’t stay, so we went up a size and tried it again.  So I had to hold her down yet again, then we did the right ear, SUCCESS!  Now the problem came into play on the left ear because I had marked it, then the nurse had marked it, so he was having a bit of trouble spotting the correct mark.  At this point, I was holding Addy’s’ body, a nurse was holding her head, the doctor was holding her ear, then he called in another nurse to hold a light.  Yup, all that for a feisty 6 month old girl.  It felt like we were trying to subdue a rowdy prisoner or something, but then we got the other earring in.  She cried a cry that I’ve NEVER heard before, but it was hard to tell if it was from pain or the fact that she was PISSED from being held down or if it was a combination of all of the above plus the fact that she was sleepy.  2-3 minutes later, she was sleep on my chest as we had to wait about 5 mins for the next nurse to come in and give Addy what she actually came to the doctor for….her shots.   She got 2 shots, an oral vaccine, and a flu shot, which woke her up of course, which also pissed her off to a new extreme.  Then I got her dressed and by that time she was somewhat calm, so I carried her out the office until we got to the car to put her in her seat.

I’m not going to lie, I almost called it all off when the doctor messed up the first try.  I couldn’t take it…she was crying so hard.  I almost shed a tear with her, but of course, I’m the tough dad.  Overall, I know she’s exhausted, because she was sleep before we got out the parking lot.  I told her being pretty is painful, but I don’t think she understood me.  She’s still out as I type this blog, so we’ll see how she feels when she wakes up.

Thanks for tuning in…..

BROWNLEE

PS:  Here is the first picture of her with holes in her ears!

She's wore out!

 

6 Months

how is my tiny baby 6 months already? (the pic is up on the Monthly Pictures Page)

the doctors appt is in a couple days so i will have the height and weight stats then. i think she’s gaining some weight because her 6 month clothes are actually kinda fitting. what! not like they’re snug, just the fact that she can get into them and they swallow her whole. the only real problem is that clothing companies think that it’s time for fall when in fact it was 109 degrees yesterday so these cute long sleeved onesies are of no use to me right now. i’m pretty sure she can still fit them when the weather gets decent though.

we went ahead to the ImageShots in the mall to get her pictures taken.  it was a fairly simple process and very cheap. and then i found out about this super awesome program to “photoshop” my pictures.  Adobe Lightroom is fantastic. i had been telling brownlee that i wanted him to photoshop them and he would just stare at me.  i wanted the fancy lighting and different tones and hues and etc and he just kinda stared at me and said he could airbrush makeup on. what?! come to find out he had the program all along and now i’m going to spend even more time messing with the kids pics.  but at least i don’t need the fancy camera…yet. woo!

go have a peek at what i’ve done so far

 

she is a super pro at sitting up. she likes to use you as leverage to stand just because. still not exactly a crawler but she is very very mobile.  lordy.she is also more…vocal? she will just giggle when things are exactly funny but she just wants to make a noise or get your attention.  and sometimes she kind of just mumbles to herself.  which is a nice change from the screeching i hear when i attempt to comb her hair.

how did we get here so fast?!

edit: i did some research and figured out how to embed the photo slideshow!!!

 

See What I’m Talking Bout

remember when i was going on about addy and the tags?

feast your eyes on this crappy video shot with my Blackberry. (any background noise is Looney Tunes). the object is one of those keep the paci clipped to the baby thingies.

 

 

The Baby Toy Racket

so remember way back forever ago when i was pregnant and brownlee was all “you don’t need a changing table” and “you don’t need that many blahblahs”? ok well what we really don’t need ever is baby toys.

ever.

addy’s current interest is in tags.  not like high dollar label things but the actual tags on things.  toys, blankets, you name it.

you're next

hand her a plush toy and she turns it over until she finds the care tag that sticks out the back. and then she gnaws on it.  and i’m on the innanet talking to the other mommy bloggers and baby bumpers and asking them what’s the what about the tags.  then i hear tale of taggie blankets that super crafty mommies make that are just a piece of cloth with different tags on the ends.  so what do i do? google tag blankets.  and learn that they sell them in target.  how awesome! an actual reason to go to target! (as if i ever needed one). but then as i sit addy on my bed to fold some laundry, i come up with the brilliant idea to just give addy a tshirt to chew on. it has a tag! its cotton and can soak up drool! i’m pretty much the smartest mom ever in life! and addy loved it.  she pulled it over her face.  chewed on the tag.  examined the shirt.  ate up the tag.  then took it out her mouth, leaned over, and spit up all over my comforter.  then i realized it was my Buc-ee’s t-shirt.  double dose of fail.

then i was in target and looked for the taggie blanket thing and they were sold out. and of course i’m thinking “oh this must be awesome i have to have a taggies blanket…for addy i mean”. but i found these plush blocks. and one had taggies! and one makes crinkly noise! and one has letters on it! and one has a rattle inside” (ok there are only 4 blocks but i mean they have lots of sides). i bring it home and whip them out for addy to play. look addy! look how awesome!

thanks for these dumb blocks mom!

she got the one block with a for real regular ass care tag on it and ate it.

here’s other things she likes to eat and play with.

but i'd rather eat your yoga pants

and the wipes box is the coolest

also i wised up and give her a baby hooded blanket or just a cloth diaper to chew on instead of my own shirts to catch the drool.  and speaking of chewing on, that’s all addy does.  everyone has been saying that she’s been teething since like may. and i coulda sworn a tooth was going to pop out overnight but i still don’t even feel anything.  and my hands are in her mouth all the time (against my will).

Naynee got some teething rings when we went to visit and addy just never cared for them but i actually read the directions and they say to put them in the fridge not the freezer. and she loves them! who woulda thought reading directions would make something work right. and who woulda thought teethers came with directions.  ha! i mostly think that she’s just better with her hands nowand wants to chew on things so that’s why they work.  Either way they will work until she eyes something else that is NOT a toy for babies and is actually a functioning items for adults like cell phones or remotes and things of that nature.  i’m going to have to do something about the coffee table because she keeps eyeing the wrought iron curved legs.  instead of baby-proofing i might just get rid of everything in the living room. it’s just easier

 

 

and cheaper.