Houston, we have a...biter?

14 months

No mom wants to have the 'biter' at school or daycare. I used to think the 'biters' must be bad kids. The moms must either spoil them or does not pay enough attention to them. Something had to be wrong with the parenting skills in that situation. Ah, yet another foot in mouth moment of a new mom. You think so many things about parenting BEFORE you have kids. And then you have them and BAM, all your little 'ideas' of what's right and wrong kind of go out the window!

Such is the lesson we learned yesterday when I got a text from our daycare provider saying Brock had taken up the habit of biting the other kids. Just walking up to them and biting! No provoking. I, of course, panic and call Nick. I didn't know if we should just go pick him up so he didn't hurt any of the kids or what we should do. My logical next step is to start Googling like crazy! But everything I was finding was saying how many toddlers and kids bite out of frustration, and that just didn't seem like the case. He wasn't upset or angry, he was just biting!

After talking it over with Cynthia, we think the main problem was he was super tired and has some more teeth coming through. He was fussier than normal over the weekend, but since we are blessed with a baby who doesn't drool when he's teething, we can never really tell when his teeth are hurting. Other than being fussy (which is very rare for him), he doesn't pull at his ears, stick his fingers in his mouth or drool like they say babies do while teething so it's hard to tell what's bothering the poor guy! Keep your fingers crossed for us that it was an isolated incident!!

Along the line of teeth, Brock's new favorite thing at home is brushing his teeth. We don't do it every night, usually every other night or so. But he LOVES it. If he's in the bathroom he'll start saying teeth (sounds like tee) and wants to brush them! I'll usually tackle his 5 little teeth and gums, and then let him play around and do it himself. He just loves it! Like his love of the bath, I'm sure this won't last when he's older, but we enjoy watching him light up now!

We took him to the Prairie Village pool for the first time this weekend and could totally kick ourselves for not going sooner. He had a blast. They have the perfect 'baby' pool. It's not like the shallow, pee-filled baby pools of my day. It was this big 'beach style entry' pool that at it's deepest only comes up to Brock's waist. There are low chairs for parents to sit and watch the kids, fountains of water coming out of the pool and little areas of shade. He walked around the pool for probably an hour and a half. At first he was a little hesitant and just sat with his toys but before long, he was off! If it wasn't going to be as hot as the surface of the sun here this weekend, we'd totally be going back!

I'll leave you with one final nugget from the weekend. We are having a garage sale this week and in preparation, we're cleaning out the house. Well, Brock found one of my old t-shirts and Daddy put it on him. Total blackmail material but also so cute and hilarious!

Shoe fetish

13 months, 4 weeks

If you know Nick and I, you know it's no secret that we both LOVE shoes. Nick used to wait in line for HOURS for the newest pair of Jordans that came out. For a curvy girl like me, shoes are the only wardrobe necessity that always fit and look cute no matter what!

Knowing all of that, it shouldn't be surprising (yet somehow it still is) that Brock is OBSESSED with shoes. It started a couple of weeks ago when he first noticed the shoes in his closet. He quickly learned how to say 'shoes' and would start bringing them to us to put on his feet. And then it upgraded to wanting you to change the shoes already on his feet, to yet another pair he would bring to you. One night, I think we went through 3 pairs of shoes!

At first, we were hesitant to put them on very often since he was just really starting to walk at the time. He was still wobbly barefoot and we wanted him to really get comfortable walking before we threw shoes into the mix. Well, he mastered walking within a week or so and it just felt 'right' for him to have shoes. We were more comfortable letting him walk outside as he became more stable, so it was time to find him some shoes that fit! I bought a cheap little pair with soft soles from Target to get him used to walking with shoes on.

About a month ago, we had him measured and he was a 4. Most of the shoes we already had were either too big or too small. Now that he's a walking machine and wants his shoes on all the time, we decided he needed a pair to wear to daycare each day so we hit the mall last night to find him a new pair of kicks.

Little did we know the shoe fetish would be in full force! We stopped at a couple of shoe stores and he was in HEAVEN!! He would see walls of shoes and just say 'shoes? shoes? shoes?'. We'd pick up a pair and inspect them and if they weren't put on his feet, he was NOT a happy camper!!

We had his feet measured again and he was at a solid size 5. Yes, you're reading that right, in less than a month, his feet grew at least an entire shoe size (so we thought). We found a pair we liked and handed them to the store clerk to get his size. Cue the meltdown about taking the shoes away from him! When the clerk came back with the shoes, the size 5 was almost too small so we had to go with a size 6! Brock was so excited about his 'new' shoes, he was pointing to his old shoes to be taken off and holding his new ones up to be put on. He even puts his foot in the air so you can put his shoes on.

I know he may not always love to have shoes on, and quite frankly we're pretty shocked he has this great love of them as he was a sock removing ninja last winter, but it's the cutest little phase. He was so proud of his new shoes last night, we let him wear them out of the store. It was a little later in the evening and the mall was pretty quiet so we let him walk by himself down the mall. You could tell he felt so proud of his new shoes and so independent to be walking on his own! We even took him to Build A Bear and got a little bear made for him. I swear, he was more excited about the shoes than the bear!! 


In other news - we had our first little 'bout of pink eye this weekend. As usual, he was a total champ about it. Never got fussy or upset. However, he HATES the eye drops we have to give him. Seriously - who knew kids eye muscles were so strong? Once he clamps them shut, it takes all my strength to pry them open! We took him to the Children's Mercy Urgent care on Saturday night and in true Barbosa form, they recognized us from the last time we were there! In our defense, we've only been there twice and both times were AFTER his first birthday. 


I feel like I say this in every blog, but this kid's vocabulary is crazy! He repeats so much and easily says more than most kids at this age. I would say we are easily over 30 words at this point.


We also now have 4.5 teeth! Both front top and bottom teeth and as of yesterday, one of the top side teeth is poking through. 

Aspiring nudist?

13 months, 3 weeks

Ladies and gents, we have a future streaker on our hands! Since it's been sooooo ridiculously hot here lately, we've been letting Brock sleep in just his diaper. Full on white-trash baby style! Our house is old and has terrible insulation so his room gets so hot! We keep a fan on him at night, but to make sure he can sleep comfortably, we've let the pj's take a little summer vacay. So far, it hasn't been a problem at all. Until Saturday night. We put him down as normal, all seemed fine. I went in to peek at the monitor and just check on him and saw a nice full moon!! His sweet little naked booty, straight up in the air! Nick and I went in and couldn't help but laugh at his little naked body laying ON TOP of his diaper. We finally composed ourselves and got his diaper back on. We thought it was a one time occurrence until this morning when we woke up to those sweet little cheeks again! Lesson learned - we'll be putting shorts on over the diapers from now on. But I gotta say - that little booty is the cutest thing I've ever seen!

He has been walking more and more and every day he gets a little better. We had 2 birthday parties this weekend and the first was at an indoor place that had lots of those blow up bouncy houses. Ok, in our day they were just blue/yellow/red squares of death with mesh walls. Now, they have these amazing, HUGE contraptions for kids (and adults) of all ages! I'm talking pirate ships and princess castles, huge obstacle courses, etc. They had one small one for Brock's age group, along with a little plastic house. Nick took him in to a couple of the bigger ones and he had fun. But I think what he loved most was the rubber floor. He took full advantage to practice the walking skills! The floor was hard enough for him to get good balance, but soft enough for any crash landings. He had a blast walking around, watching the other kiddos and eating almost an entire cupcake and getting icing all over his face! (See below)

He learned some fun new words this past week:
'party' - he's had lots of parties to go to lately and now he can say it!
'water' - when he sees a water bottle
'cheese' sounds more like 'eeeee' - he understands that it goes with the camera, but doesn't quite realize you say it when the camera is pointing AT you. Sometimes he waits until the camera is already gone to say it.
'pee pee' - yup, he's a boy, bet you can guess what that one is for
'more' - when he wants more (this weekend specifically it was spaghetti)


I've started 'menu planning' our meals every week. I read it was helpful for saving $$ on groceries (totally true) but it's also helped me organize my brain for meals. Being a full time working mama, if I don't have dinner planned out at least the day before, I'm scrambling. And then I'm usually missing half the stuff I need for the meal. This way, I have everything planned out (weekend lunches and dinners included) and so when I hit the store, I get ONLY what I need for that week. It's saved money not only from not just hap-hazardly buying random things at the store and hoping they make a full meal, but also on keeping us from going out to eat so much on weekends.

An added bonus I didn't plan on with it, was eating healthier. I'm still on Weight Watchers to lose the last 20 or so pounds of baby weight (and hopefully more)  so I have to find meals that are relatively healthy. Well, it's rubbed off not only on us, but even on Brock! I've been trying to feed him as healthily as possible anyway, but now eating at home more and having more fresh produce around from making weekly trips to the store, helps him get full balanced meals. I love the feeling of seeing him eat as many fresh, non-processed and healthy foods as possible! One day, I won't have much of a say in what he likes so while I still get to pick what he eats, I plan on keeping it as healthy as I can!