The (eventual) project that started the whole idea of having a Calvin & Hobbes themed nursery was the idea of having a mural – one where both Calvin and Hobbes are sitting, asleep, up in a tree.  Aaron had dreamed of having this for his little boy’s room … long before I ever got pregnant and found out we were even having a boy!  And even though it wasn’t my dream, I was totally on board with it and thought it would be a super cute thing to have in our nursery.

We had grand plans of having the whole nursery set up and decorated before Kolby was born, but the very best we could do (well, mostly Aaron – since all I had energy to do for most of my pregnancy was to sleep!) was get the room completed (which will have to be another post … building the nursery from our master ‘retreat’) and getting all the baby gear in place!

At any rate, when things had settled down a little bit, several months after Kolby was born, we looked more seriously into doing a mural for his room.  We found a lot of examples online of other people who had created some version of a Calvin & Hobbes mural for their nursery, but none really jumped out at me.  In fact, the more we looked, the more I found myself disliking the true idea of a ‘mural’ – having some big picture painted directly on the wall.

So after Aaron talked me out of ditching the project altogether, we came to a pretty dang good compromise.  We would paint the mural onto a big, big board.  That way, it would still be very mural-like but wouldn’t be painted directly on the wall – and (added bonus!) we could take it with us if/when we move out of our house!

And boy am I glad we went through with this project.  It is our absolute pride and joy of the nursery.  It turned out perfect.  In every way.

Stage 1: Buy the board.  A big 4′ x 6′ oak board.  Yes, that is a 4 foot by 6 foot board!

Stage 2: Buy the paint.  A whole lot of paint.  12 colors, as a matter of fact.  For all but the off-white background color, we had The Home Depot mix up their sample containers of the colors we needed – and they worked perfectly!

Stage 3: Paint the board off-white for the background color.

Stage 4: We borrowed my mother-in-law’s projector and projected the image that best represented what we wanted the end result to look like onto the board.

Stage 5: Trace the image onto the board.

Stage 6: Paint.  And then paint some more.

Stage 7: To finish it off, Aaron built a frame out of 1 1/4″ corner trim, attached it with finishing nails, and I painted it black.

We are both so happy with how it turned out!  Seeing it all finished, it makes us even more happy that we chose to go the big board route instead of the painted-on-the-wall route because it would be really sad to leave behind what we worked so hard on!

And what makes this project that much more special to both Aaron and I is anticipating Kolby totally loving it!

Outside of the obvious purpose of documenting life’s awesomeness, this post is primarly for anyone (yes, even perfect strangers out there on the interwebs) who happens upon this post in desparation of finding anything cool and crafty they can do for a Calvin & Hobbes themed room!

If you’re anything like me, you’ll come to find out you can’t buy anything (legally, at least) Calvin & Hobbes related (with the exception of the comic books, of course) to decorate a room with.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll come to find out your only hope for getting ideas will be to scour the internet for any website/blog/flicker account/image that might resemble something cool to put in a room.

And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be intimidated beyond belief with what you find because any project will require you to create something crafty completely from scratch! … all while assuming you are crafty to begin with and have artistic abilities way beyond what you think you have!

Well, I also know that if you really are anything like me, you’ll be elated to have come across this post to find out that if I (somebody!) can put together a fun project like this, so can you!

May I present the first project that Aaron and I put together for our little boy’s room …

Calvin’s Many Faces

After looking for hours online to find anything cool that we could do to put in our boy’s Calvin & Hobbes themed room (that had nothing Calvin & Hobbes themed in it at the time!), I came across somebody else’s blog post that had a picture of a project showing the many different faces of Calvin.  I thought it would be so cute to do, but was a little discouraged when all I could find was that photo – no instructions or any indication of how to create such a fun piece.  So, I did what any devoted mother would do – contemplated changing themes to something I could purchase decorations for!  Just kidding – I pulled up my big-girl panties and figured out how to do it on my own!

Step 1:  Look online for an image of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip that shows Calvin’s many different expressions.

Step 2:  Gather your materials!  (This should probably be step one … but I think I needed a little inspiration while figuring out everything I needed to buy!)  You’ll need 10 (or however many faces you decide to do) white 5″ x 5″ stretched canvases (purchased online or at any local craft store).  You’ll also need to select two colors to paint your canvases with (I chose Terra Cotta and Straw), whatever painting brush/sponge will work best for you, and a black, medium-point, oil-based paint pen (the Sharpie branded paint pen worked great for me!).  The last things you’ll need are graphite paper (unless your drawing skills are far superior to mine and you can simply draw the images onto the canvases!) and a pencil.

Step 3:  Open up the comic strip image in Photoshop and crop each expression you want to use into a 5″ x 5″ square.  Then print each image and trim the excess paper off.

Step 4:  Paint 5 of the canvases one color and 5 of the canvases the other color – and let them dry completely!

Step 5:  (I didn’t get any pictures of this – shucks!)  Once the canvases are dry, lay your graphite paper (dark side down) onto the painted canvas with an individual expression cut out on top.  Make sure to gauge where the edges are so the image is as centered as you want it to be.  Then trace out the image onto the canvas with your pencil.

Step 6:  (Again, no pictures – sorry!) Take your paint pen and draw over the lines you just traced with the graphite paper.

At some point, you will need to decide how you want to mount your canvases, if at all.  You certainly don’t need to do what I did or use the materials I used, but I’ll explain what I did and you can follow as many steps as you choose.

Step 7:  (This is where I made use of my husband’s awesome handy-man skills!)  We used cabinet-grade oak plywood and cut out a piece big enough to allow for 1 1/2″ around all canvases and 1 1/4″ corner trim. The measurements are something close to 36″ x 17″.

Step 8:  Sand down the board to make sure there are no sticky-outy-prickly pieces.

Step 9:  Stain/paint your board.  We chose to stain our board to match the crib and other pieces in the nursery.

Step 10:  (I don’t think I could have done this part without my husbands help!)  We decided we wanted a frame for our board.  So, we purchased a long piece of 1 1/4″ corner trim, cut it into 4 pieces (measure twice, cut once!) with angled ends to allow for perfectly mitered corners, and nailed it to the board with finishing nails.  It makes the perfect custom frame!

Step 11:  Put painters tape along the inside of the frame (on the stained piece, which is now dry!) and paint the frame black.

Step 12:  I then layed all the pieces on the board in the exact places I wanted them and made a little ‘jig’ out of regular old card stock to make sure the spacing stayed as perfectly as it could.  For our board, each canvas has 1 1/2″ of space on all four sides.

Step 13:  Heat up your favorite glue gun (nothing special here!) and glue each canvas to the board.

And tada!  You’ve now got a finished, fairly simple, unique, and totally awesome decoration for your Calvin & Hobbes themed nursery!  Well, at least we do!

It’s amazing how often I think about sitting down to blog … and it just doesn’t happen!  Life seems to be flying by these days and the last thing I want to do – or feel like I have time to do – is sit down at this computer to write stuff!

But, no matter how little I update this blog, my little man continues to grow and grow!

All these pictures were taken right around his 1 year birthday.  And it’s amazing how much he has changed in just the 2 1/2 months since!

Kolby is still the awesomest little boy this mamma and daddy could ask for!  He started walking right around his birthday and has only gotten better and quicker with time.  He prefers to walk with his shoes off so he can curl his (super long) toes, which looks pretty funny but offers him the right amount of balancing he needs.  Without his shoes, he’s gotten pretty close to running these days.  He is such a boy – he loves anything to do with balls and anything with wheels!  He’ll loves playing fetch – where Aaron and/or I will throw one of his balls, he will walk/run to go get it, and then bring it back to us just to have us throw it again.  What makes this even cuter is that when we throw the ball, he will put his hands out and say, ‘Where did it go?’ … which sounds more like ‘wheyigo?’  And once he has found it, he’ll say, ‘Right there!’ … which sounds more like ‘rythere!’  He has skipped right over the single words like mamma, daddy, ball, car … and has gone straight to sentences!  He will sit and play with his cars by himself for tens of minutes … which is like eternity in toddler time!  He has a big bucket with cars and he loves climbing in, sitting on top of the cars, and playing with them in, on, or around the bucket and himself!  He even has a cute little sound for cars, which spurred from one of the times Aaron was playing cars with him.  I don’t know if I can explain it very well – but it is kind of like two little hums that sound like an engine revving, with emphasis on the second hum.  As it turns out, I’m not very good at it because whenever Aaron does the sound, Kolby mimics it right away – and when I try and do it, I kind of get the deer in the headlights look from Kolby with an expression like I have no idea what I’m doing!  But if he wants to play cars or sees a car lying around, he will make this noise – which is pretty adorable, if I do say so myself!

I feel like a broken record on this one, but he still an amazing sleeper!  He is now down to one to two naps a day, depending on how long his first nap is.  There are some days where he’ll get cranky but is not tired enough for a second (or third) nap so we’ll put him in his crib (with his blanket, binkie and lights out) and he’ll lay there for a half hour or so.  But he won’t fall asleep.  When we go to get him out, he is happy again and ready to play!  It’s almost like he just needed a little quiet time to refresh – seriously, what baby does this!?  Despite how many naps he takes, his bed time is right around 6:30 p.m. and he will sleep through the night until 6:30 a.m. / 7:00 a.m.  I continue to feel so blessed that I have a baby who loves his sleep as much as we do!

He now has 6 teeth (4 uppers and his 2 bottom teeth) that all look like they’re coming in straight!  And, in my own humble opinion, they sure make for a super cute smile!

He absolutely loves to laugh!  This is, without a doubt, one of my most absolutely favorite things about him!  He will laugh at anything – funny faces, funny sounds, jumping out in front of his face (scaring him, essentially), chasing after him, just about anything.  If he’s not smiling or laughing, you know he’s either tired or hungry!

This kid can find a beat to anything!  Aaron and I do not know where on earth he picked up his rhythm – especially at such a young age – but it is just so darn cute!  He will dance to music (whatever is playing on iTunes, radio, TV show theme songs, commercials, toys), anybody singing, toes tapping, feet stomping, hands banging the table … seriously, just about anything!  He pretty much stops what he’s doing to bounce up and down (either standing up or sitting down) and smiles.  Lately, he has started to wave his arms back and forth … but has yet to master bouncing and waving his arms at the same time!

A few weeks back, we welcomed our first ear infection!  I swear his whole face was leaking – his mouth (as always!), his nose, his eyes – and he starting spiking a low-grade fever so we took him into the doctor and discovered he had an ear infection in his right ear.  No big deal at all.  They put him on antibiotics, which he loved, and it cleared up right away!  Unfortunately, 3 days after we stopped his antibiotics (10 days worth), he got a fever again and started to become very attached and not want to play, which was weird (for him). I took him to the urgent care and they couldn’t find anything wrong, so I brought him home to ‘watch and wait’.  That night ended up being the worst night of his little, short life – he wouldn’t go to crib at any time I tried to put him down (which is very, very weird for him) so I brought him into bed to lay with me and throughout the entire night he would go through about 1/2 hour cycles of his nose getting clogged, which lead to coughing, which lead to wheezing, which lead to having a hard time catching his breath, then I’d finally get him settled back down and the cycle would start again – all the while he would whimper each time he exhaled (even when he was sleeping!).  So, I took him into his pediatrician the next day and after watching his little body move with such force to get air into his lungs, listening to his lungs long and hard and having us get a chest x-ray, they discovered that he had pneumonia.  Yes, pneumonia!  Such a scary word!  They put him on a different antibiotic from what he had been on for his ear infection and had us start breathing treatments.  If the symptoms got any worse, the doctor directed us to go straight to the ER.  Fortunately, as soon as Kolby took his first dose of antibiotics along with his first breathing treatment, he started doing so much better.  He slept through the night (outside of having to have breathing treatments every 4-6 hours) and was ready to play when he got up the next morning. His wheezing disappeared almost completely a couple of days after starting the breathing treatments – and after his second follow-up appointment with the doctor (the first was the day after his first visit, just to make sure everything was progressing positively!), they lowered his breathing treatments to twice a day instead of every 4-6 hours.  As of today, we’re still doing his breathing treatments and we’ve got one more day of antibiotics to go.  The trick now is to make sure his fever doesn’t come back!  So, we’re crossing our fingers that his little body transitions well once we stop the antibiotics tomorrow!  We are so fortunate that he has been in such good hands (we love his doctor!) and he bounced back so quickly!

Other than that, life just seems to be flying by!  We’re not doing anything crazy these days, in fact life is pretty similar from one week to the next – but these days, they just turn so quickly turn into weeks, and then weeks turn into months, and I’m just doing my best to hold on and enjoy as much of it as I can!

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My future self would be so disappointed to only have memories of Kolby’s first cake that I made, so here are some pictures from his first birthday:

I was so hoping for total distruction of his cake top, but the only mess he cared to make was from the few Oreo crumbles that fell on his lap after he delicately picked up a couple of the ‘dirt’ pieces and put them in his mouth!

Aaron and I noticed right from the very first few weeks of Kolby’s life that he did not love being on his back.  He did not like laying down on his back while awake, he didn’t like being in his swing reclined (or at all!), he didn’t like sleeping on his back, and he sure as heck didn’t like being held like a baby – you know – the way everybody loves to hold a baby, the way babies are suppossed to like being held.  Because it keeps them close to you, all snuggled tight in your arms, and most often rocking back and forth.  Because snuggling solves all the baby-world problems for little dudes, right?

Not for the anti-snuggler.

And, even a year later, Kolby has stuck to his guns on this one!

In fact, last night was the perfect example of this very phenomenon …

Kolby typically goes to bed between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. nowadays – and some nights, depending on what he has eaten throughout the day, Aaron or I will feed him a bottle sometime before we go to bed.  Kolby doesn’t ever wake up – we’ll pick him up out of the crib, feed him his bottle, put the binkie back in his mouth, and put him back in the crib … where he typically rolls around just long enough to position his blanket over his face!  (I did not know the blanket over the face thing was an inheritable trait!)

And some nights, like last night, I get this crazy idea that maybe he’ll let me snuggle him – hoping he won’t realize what’s really happening!

So, I did just that – I fed him the bottle, put the binkie back in his mouth, and pulled him in close.

And he started squirming.  Eyes still shut.

So I rolled him onto my chest, with him laying on his stomach, and pulled the blanket up to his face.

That only solicited more squirming. Eyes still shut.

So I let him roll around as we were reclined in the recliner, hoping he would finally settle into a spot comfortable enough to peacefully rest.

And he started to cry.  Yes, with his eyes still shut.

At which point I gave up, put him back in the crib, and before I was out the door he was back in his happy place.

Which was, quite obviously, not my arms!

I started this posted when Kolby was nine months old … because that’s when you’re supposed to give an update, right?  And seeing how he is now 10 months old and I still have yet to publish a post, I thought it might be better one month late than not at all!

So, here are a few snippets of life as a 10 month old in the Durda household:

(I’ve at least provided lots of photos to keep things entertaining!)

– He is still an amazing sleeper.  I do not know how we have been so blessed to have a baby who loves to sleep as much as we do!  He takes 2 to 3 naps a day that range anywhere from 1 to 3 hours.  For the most part, we can put him in the crib with his pacifier and a blanket when it’s time to take a nap and he will nod off to sleep within just a few minutes.  Of course, he has certainly been known to fight taking a nap a time or two – sometimes because he’s made a mess in his diaper, sometimes because he wants more food, and sometimes just because he isn’t tired enough!  When this happens, we will get him up, fix the problem, and try again a little while later.  Bed time is even easier … always has been.  We’ll put him down and he will roll himself to sleep … sometimes in 5 minutes, sometimes in 30 minutes.  But I can’t remember the last time he actually cried while falling asleep for the night.  He is usually asleep by 7:30 p.m. / 8:00 p.m. and will typically wake up right around 6:30 a.m.  I’ll catch myself complaining how it would be so nice to have him sleep until at least 7:00 a.m. … but then I’ll remind myself that my little man has been sleeping 10+ hours a night for 8 months already.  Perhaps I’ll just keep my mouth shut from now on!

(It’s a good thing Kolby isn’t phased by the flash of my iPhone going off while he’s trying to sleep … because I do it often!

– I managed to keep up with pumping breast milk until he was 9 months old.  At that point, he was eating around 25 oz of formula and 5 oz of breastmilk every day.  Then I got sick.  And convincing myself to pump became a pretty insurmountable task.  Especially when formula is just so easy to mix up!  So one day went by without pumping.  Which turned into two days.  Then three days came and went.  And then I figured I had pumped my last pump without even knowing it!  Strangely,  when I finally realized I was finished with pumping, the feeling was a little bitter sweet.  I can’t truly explain why it was, but it didn’t take long for the sweet feelings to far outweigh the bitter ones!  Kolby is still on the slender side so I have kept up the formula intake (around 30 oz a day) along with anything else he wants to eat.  I made my own baby food until he was 9 months old and then started buying store-bought pureed foods for him – mainly to simplify my life!  He is not a big fan of bananas (pureed or whole), green beans (he will eat green beans off my plate but won’t eat the pureed green beans) or peas (again, he will eat them off my plate but won’t eat the pureed ones).  But he hasn’t turned down much of anything else!  He will often get a taste of whatever is on our plates … which has led to a terrible habit of him begging for food whenever we sit down to eat!

– He absolutely loves looking at himself in a mirror or at pictures of himself.  He can be screaming, tears streaming, red-faced mad and if you show him a picture of himself, his face lights right up!  This picture happens to be his very favorite picture of himself (taken over Canadian Thanksgiving weekend when he was 6 months old) …

– Speaking of screaming, tears streaming, red-faced mad … oh man, does he have a mad cry!  Fortunately, it doesn’t happen too often.  And even when it does happen, there is often a pretty easy solution … being held by his Mamma.  Sadly, for Kolby at least, it can sometimes be hard not to laugh when he cries his mad cry because it is quite obvious that he pushes out the tears and pushes out the scream.  I can only imagine how well this will translate when he’s big enough to throw a real fit …

– Often times, if Aaron and/or I walk out of a room that all three of us are in, Kolby will fuss because he wants to go with whoever just left.  But, when he wants to, he can turn into a pretty big Mamma’s boy and act as if nothing in his life is going right until I pick him up!

– He started walking around on and with things right around the 9 month mark.  He has gotten faster and more stable but has yet to venture out on his own.

– He talks all the time and loves to hear all the different noises he can make!  Not much has changed there!  And, for some reason, he still goes mute in front of other people!

– He thinks it’s pretty awesome to bang things together … and make a huge racket! It seems the louder it is, the more fun he has!

– He loves watching little kids play or interact with him.

– He is such a great walking companion.  He loves being in his stroller, being outside, and looking at all the cool stuff along the way!

– He absolutely loves bath time!  He loves splashing the water, playing with the toys and laying down on his back (water covering his ears) listening to us talk to him.  Whenever he’s having a crabby or restless evening, we’ll often try and remedy the situation with a warm bath.  It’s his happy place!

– He got his first little cold a couple of weeks back.  His nose got real stuffy and he had a pretty hearty cough.  We did the best we could to keep the humidifier running and keep his nose cleaned out but the only thing we could really do was wait it out.  But, even through his sicky days, it only affected his night-time sleeping once.  And, even then, it only took 10 minutes to get him to fall back asleep.

– Everything goes in his mouth.  Aboslutely everything!  Toys, blankets, phones, cords, loose pieces of carpet, cat food, soapy wash clothes, rocks, leaves – even the lemon slice I’ll give him from my glass when we’re out at restaurants!  And often times, he’ll be too lazy to pick up whatever it is he wants to put in his mouth and simply bends down or stretches his neck out to get it in his mouth – hands free!

– So far, three teeth have come in and he’s actively working on his fourth!  Just like his bottom teeth, his first upper front tooth came through no problem and his second one seems to be causing a little more discomfort … and by discomfort, I do mean grumpiness/clingyness!

– And I can’t mention his teeth without mentioning his incessant need to grind them!  In fact, the first indication of him cutting his first upper tooth was hearing him grind it together with his bottom teeth!

(It seems he can be a little picky about his grass … and this grass just wasn’t cutting it!)

– This little update wouldn’t be complete without mentioning just how happy he is!  He loves to smile.  He loves to laugh.  He loves it when we do silly things to make him laugh – like creep up on him while he’s sitting on the bed and pounce just in front of him!  He loves getting startled!  He wakes up happy … just as long as I don’t leave him in his crib too long, leading him to believe the only way I’ll come get him is if he yells for me!  If you smile at him, he will smile right back at you.  He’s such a happy, handsome, little man!  The only thing that can make that more awesome is knowing that he’s my happy, handsome, little man!

Since we’re on the topic of catching up and milestones, it should be noted that Kolby started crawling in true form yesterday and he cut is first tooth today!

This is going to be a long one … brace yourself …

Before Kolby was born I had these grand plans of printing out a picture of him from every month and listing all of his accomplishments over the image – in a very artsy/cutesy way – so I would be able to remember all of his cuteness for years to come … and one day catch myself reminiscing in days of old when he’s all grown up and out of the house!

Well, not only do I not have cutesy pictures with words all over them, I don’t even have much of an update written down in a baby book or here on this blog!

So – let’s see if I can play a little catch up and mention some pieces of his life as we know it now!

– It was a great day in the Durda household when Kolby finally figured out how to confidently sit up on his own!  He mastered this just a little while ago.  He’s never been one to love being on his back … which meant someone almost always needed to be with him to either hold him or help him sit/stand up.  Now that he sits up, he loves sitting with toys all around him, banging them together and putting them in his mouth.

– He wasn’t sitting up for very long before he progressed into the early stages of crawling!  He would lean forward to get up on all fours and rock back and forth.  It was so fun to watch!  He was just so proud of himself!  He has now since advanced a little bit and can scoot himself across the floor by doing a modified worm … he’ll pull himself up, flop forward, and then do it again and again.  It seems he will move the quickest when he’s chasing after an empty water bottle!  Forget about all the purpose-made toys!

– He is still an amazing sleeper!  I consider this to be a huge blessing!  He takes three 1 1/2 – 2 hour naps every day (I rarely let him sleep longer than 2 hours).  Depending on his nap schedule, he may even take a fourth nap that can range from 30 mins to an hour.  We typically put him to bed between 7:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. (depending on whether or not he took that fourth nap) and he’ll sleep until 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m.  It was super important for me, right from the get go, to have Kolby learn to fall asleep on his own.  Early on (we tried before 7 weeks but it didn’t really click until he was 7 weeks old), we implemented an Eat, Wake, Sleep routine and it has worked great for us! (I’ll have to write a separate post on his sleeping routine as I do have quite the opinion of how we made things work!  Imagine that!?)  When it’s time for a nap or bed time, we lay him down in his crib with a blanket and a pacifier.  He may roll around and talk to himself for a little bit (he’ll do this more so at night time – which is just so cute!) but rarely cries.  When he does fuss, we help him out by putting the pacifier back in his mouth.  If he still fusses, usually gentle pats on the bum with ‘shh’ sounds seems to do the trick.  If he’s just not having it and won’t settle for a nap, we’ll get him up and try again in a half hour or so.  And – the best part – he almost always wakes up with a smile on his face!  Once he hears my or Aaron’s voice, his face lights right up … even if his eyes haven’t fully opened yet!

– Speaking of pacifiers – we love the MAM binkies!

– And then there are days when he throws all caution to the wind and declares a 40 minute nap is the answer to all of life’s questions.  Fortunately, he typically follows those naps up with a pretty solid, good nap.

– Kolby is a tummy sleeper.  Eeek!  I know.  But it’s true.  And he has been since we transferred him to his crib from sleeping in his bouncy seat next to our bed (somewhere between 5 and 7 weeks).  There are several things that led to us making this decision, which I’d be happy to discuss with anybody interested.  Even now that Kolby can roll himself from one end of the crib to the other, he always ends up on his tummy.  Just like his mom, that’s where he’s most comfortable!

– He still doesn’t snuggle.  Even when he is at that point when he’s beyond tired and is fussing because of it, there is no holding him in your arms or rocking him to sleep.  In fact, that only makes him more grumpy!  The closest we have gotten to snuggling as of late is right before bed time – after bath time, after his night bottle, he’s obviously tired and ready to go to bed – he will lay reclined against my side while we watch TV in bed.

– He is such a happy baby!  It is so easy to make him smile!  And he’s super ticklish!

– Kolby is not much of a crier.  Yay!  Even when he does cry, it is rarely for no reason.  And even then, the only reason that really gets him crying is if he is hungry and we’re taking too long to get him a bottle!  But when he does cry, he cries!  With a super angry, my-world-is-collapsing-all-around-me cry!  And he pulls out the biggest alligator tears within milliseconds!  Sometimes we laugh because it can be quite funny – but, most of the time we do our best to stop the crying … or, even better yet, prevent it from even happening!  (It should be noted that we haven’t always known what this cry was for … so, until we figured it out, it was pretty stressful trying to find ways to help him settle!)

– Kolby has been a great eater right from the beginning … which is great!  Except that he is and has always been a terribly lazy nurser … which is not so great!  I know the breastmilk vs. formula debate can become a very heated one among many mothers and professionals – which has lead me to form the opinion, now that I am on the flip side of this mothering gig, that a happy mamma means a happy baby.  However that looks to you and your little one is no business of mine – as long as you are both happy.  For me, I wanted to exclusively breastfeed Kolby until he was 6 months old.  And since he decided early on that nursing was just not his thing, my only other option was to pump if I wanted to give him breastmilk only.  So that is what I did.  We made it by with a nursing/pumping combo until he was 2 1/2 to 3 months old and at that point I made the decision to become an exclusive pumper.  (My life as an exclusive pumper will need to be a separate post all its own!)  All that matters – to me, at least – is that I made it to 6 months!  We have now since started supplementing with formula (so I can decrease my daily pumping sessions from 6 to 4 … which has been a huge relief physically and emotionally!) and also solids.  I plan to keep pumping until he is a year old – I just won’t be his only source of nourishment anymore.  So far we have tried avocado (his first meal), banana, sweet potatoes, pears, rice cereal and oatmeal cereal.  The only dishes that he has consumed more than he has spit back out are the sweet potatoes and pears.  He even gagged down the first 2 ounces of formula that we gave him.  Little stinker!  But, then again, when you’ve only had liquid gold all your life, can anything else really compare!?

– Kolby now tolerates his car seat!  And will even fall asleep in his car seat!  Hallelujah!  There was a time when all he would do was cry and get angry when we put him in his car seat.  And by a ‘time’, I do mean the first 3 months of his life!  We took our first road trip over Canadian Thanksgiving weekend – up to Las Vegas to be with my family – and I was dreading being in the car for so long.  But he did amazing!  I really can’t remember him even crying – he slept, ate and/or hung out.  What more could you ask for!?

– He still loves his baths!  He now sits up like a big boy in a bathtub full of toys.  And – I don’t know any other baby who does this – when we pour water over his head/face, he smiles and giggles!  Silly, silly boy!

– He loves to hear himself talk!  The older he gets, the more dramatic his babble stories get!  But when we tell people this, they often find it hard to believe as Kolby tends to go mute whenever we’re around other people.  It will be interesting to see how this manifests itself when he’s a little bit older …

– He lights up when a his eyes catch one of the kitties or if/when he gets close to them.  He isn’t super aggressive yet so the cats have tolerated his touches – for the most part.

– He slobbers like crazy!  And he always has!  I guess I’ll need to rely on him becoming uber cranky to notice signs of teething!  And, for some reason, I’ve always been anti-bib … who knows why …

– His hair is really quite pitiful.  He was born with darkish brown hair that lightly covered parts of his head.  He wasn’t bald but he certainly didn’t have a full head of hair either.  The hair on the top of his head has since fallen out and new hair has grown in that seems to be much lighter – almost blond sometimes – and much longer than anywhere else on his head.  He is still rocking the bald spot – which is almost like a bald horseshoe as it spreads from the back to the sides of his head.  And sometimes, depending on the light, it looks like he may have some red in his hair.  Especially in his eyebrows.  I really have no idea what color it will end up as.  At this point, I’m just hoping we start getting some better coverage!  And soon!

– His eyes have lightened up a little bit and are a greyish, blueish awesome color!

– He has the best gummy smile that makes my heart melt every time I see it! And he has kept his little dimple in his right cheek!