'Tis the Season

So, Thanksgiving is rapidly creeping up on us, which means that before you know it Christmas will be upon us and then my little baby boy will be a year old. 6 weeks.... 6 WEEKS! What happened to my little Crankbutt? He's turning into a bigger Crankbutt.

Wednesday we all got dressed up and Michael and I took Crankbutt to get a family picture taken for the holidays. While were were there they offered us this membership package that is good for two years where they will not charge you any sitting fees and I believe there will be a discount too. They said to sell us on it "Oh, you'll be getting his one year pictures done soon..." I about cried... he's going to be a year old.

That all being said, the pictures turned out pretty nice and we'll have them after Thanksgiving. Crankbutt, Poopbreath, Toulie and I will be heading to see family on Tuesday and Michael will be joining us when he is done with work on Wednesday.

I think we finally figured out how to get Crankbutt to sleep better at night.... a bedtime snack, other than nursing, seems to be helping. He still gets up once or twice, but he lets me put him back into the crib once he's asleep. Go figure....

There isn't much else new or exciting here... my baby boy is getting bigger and bigger and learning new and exciting things every day. He has learned that he can now take ALL the pots and pans out of the cabinets and play in the cabinet itself.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy your family and friends.

I leave you with how Crankbutt entertains himself some days.

Sleep.... who needs sleep?

Crankbutt has been keeping mommy up at night. He will go to sleep around 8:00 or 8:30 then wake up crying a little while later. I'll get him back to sleep and go to put him down and poof... up again. He also has been fighting naps during the day. There is always just so much going on (and by that I mean that he thinks there is so much going on) and he doesn't want to miss a second of it. So yesterday we tried the "cry it out" method for his morning nap. After thirty minutes... this was how he fell alseep......

Needless to say... I felt like a horrible mother. I went in to lay him down and he fussed a little. He nursed and then went back to sleep in a more horizontal position.

Well last night... after he had eaten for twenty minutes and fallen asleep I laid him down in his crib. No more than twenty minutes later he work up crying. I was going to go up to him, but daddy said let him cry. He needs to learn to put himself back to sleep. Well, after forty minutes of crying, I gave in. He ate and went back to sleep and slept until 3:30am. At that point I got up and fed him he went back to sleep and I tried to put him down.... poof awake! I put him on my shoulder, he's alseep, I lay him down... poof! he's awake. At this point, my vision is blurry and I say the heck with it and take him to our room where he can lay down on me and we can both get some sleep.

Needless to say, he's napped better today. But yesterday he also got his second dose of the flu shot, so that could have had something to do with it.

On another note, Crankbutt won a free portrait sitting with a local photographer here in Harrisburg. This was the picture I submitted.

Darn cute, he is!

So I think I will use that session to have his 1 year pictures taken. AHHH!!! He's almost a year old already. HOLY COW! Where did the last year go?

So, it had been a little bit of time since we'd done a full house cleaning... we did it Sunday. Crankbutt was put into "solitary" and by that I mean he was put into the Pack-n-Play so that he wasn't getting into everything. Toulie just wondered around the house avoiding the vacuum cleaner, but Poopbreath was afraid of it. It was funny... after we vacuumed in the living room this is where Poopbreath decided it was safe to be...

And Toulie took a page out of Poopbreath's book and decided the bouncy seat looked like a comfy/safe place to sleep.

Sunday was an exciting day for Crankbutt. He go to go to his first Hershey Bears hockey. We were lucky enough to have gotten free tickets and were in a box suite thanks to Todd Hoffman from Hoffman Ford who offered active Firefighters and Social members this opportunity. Unfortunately, the Bears lost 3 - 2. If there had been two more seconds on the clock they would have tied because they scored right after the buzzer blew!

So, we had a good time there. Crankbutt had more fun running, and I do mean running, up and down the walk way outside of the suite.

It's been a busy couple of days and hopefully things will slow down a bit and Crankbutt can get some sleep. And by that, I mean mommy can get some sleep.