Mountain Climber

Shortly after Jimi figured out crawling he discovered he could climb to a standing position on just about any and every surface. And he does on EVERYTHING.... the couch, his crib, his changing table, our bed, boxes of soda, chairs, and even his diaper champ.

Annoyed I distracted him from his mission

Getting into position

And he's up... now he doesn't really know what to do with himself

Got the baby gate up just in time... That's about 15 stairs on the other side of the gate.

We love that Jimi is developing so quickly and is exploring all new areas of the house. Now it would be great if he could figure out how to sit himself back down again when he's ready to move on to the next target. For now though there is a lot of tumbles and a few head bumps while he figures it out.

Jimi had his first trip to the zoo this last Saturday. Jimi and I (James was out of town with 20 Riverside) took the trip with my sister Stephanie, her husband, and son John. Jimi seemed to enjoy himself. Out of all of the great animals they have at the zoo, he pretty much only paid attention to the crows walking around. Thankfully kids under 2 are free because I could have showed him those in our yard.

Our monkey made a new monkey friend

This was the start of a lion fight... not kidding. It was crazy.

For my first Mother's Day, James brought me breakfast in bed, roses, a venti coffee, earrings, and a diaper bag I had asked for. The three of us (James, Jimi, and I) went to Redhook for a brewery tour and dinner. It was a fabulous day. Thank you James!

In other news:

Jimi is now in his big car seat

He seems to enjoy it even though he doesn't have toys to play with anymore. We certainly enjoy not having to carry around the extra weight.

Jimi is eating more and more every day and Penny has figured out the best spot in the house during meal times.



9 Months!

It's hard to believe but Jimi turned 9 months old today! I can tell that doing his monthly photo shoot is going to continue to be more and more difficult to accomplish. Jimi is on the move and he doesn't want to slow down, especially for me to take pictures of him. Here some of the best that I was able to get:

Are you really going to make me do this again, Mom?

I went and sat on the deck to try to keep his attention... it didn't work very well.

Between weddings, James' gigs, Mariner's games, birthday celebrations, and Father's Day festivities this last month was a pretty busy one. Jimi (and James) went to three Mariner's games this month! If he keeps up at this rate he might actually notice what's going on at the game by the end of the summer.

Sleepy boy at the game on Father's Day

Jimi is still crawling and climbing everywhere! He's also pretty good a figuring out how to manipulate things, such as, opening and closing drawers, flushing the toilet, opening his diaper champ and putting clean diapers in to it (we'll give him the bill for those ones when he's older). We now have locks on nearly all of our cabinets and drawers. We left the one full of pot holders open for him so he can feel like he's getting away with something. He's not walking yet but he is able to stand unassisted for several seconds at a time now.

Trying to fit himself into one of the storage baskets from his changing table

This month he got to chow down on his first real strawberry, orange slice and pickles. If we cut it up into pieces for him to eat he's not interested but he'll put the whole thing in his mouth. He absolutely loves pickles! I think the rubbery feeling feels good on his gums. He just gnaws on them whole and sucks the juice out. He is not a fan of sourdough bread. I'm going to work on giving him more "real" finger foods this month as Jimi is becoming less and less interested in us feeding him and more and more interested in trying to eat our food.

Mmmm Pickles

Eating a strawberry

In the great tooth watch of 2011, Jimi still has nothing! He has been chomping down hard and gummy on everything for the last 6 months but yet he still has nothing to show for his hard work and pain. I did just learn that James did not get any teeth until he was a few years old and they say it's hereditary. I really hope not for Jimi's sake! Jimi is now sleeping through the night pretty regularly. He goes to bed around 8 and sleeps until 5 or 6, drinks a bottle and then goes back to sleep for another hour or so. He is also FINALLY napping in his crib. It's great to be able to get stuff done while he's napping now.

Jimi had a cold that lasted almost two weeks this month. Poor little guy was wheezy, coughing, and full of snot. We took him into the clinic twice to have him looked at. His pediatrician is amazing and very understanding of worried first time parents. He has a 9month check up with more shots but not until July 11th, so I'll post and update after that.

Jimi and his friend Miles

Jimi and his friend Carmen

High chair sleepin'

8 Months!

On Monday Jimi turned 8 months old...

His monthly photo shoot did not go so well. He was quite aware that there was a sticker on his onesie and spent the entire time trying to and eating the sticker. Oh well, you can get the gist of how big he is.

Jimi is still quite the explorer. We have to keep a close eye on him or before we know it he's into some kind of trouble... putting something in his mouth he shouldn't be, getting himself stuck somewhere, pulling something on top of himself, etc. He is not a fan of laying still for diaper changes. He loves to feed himself. He is constantly "talking" up a storm. James is convinced he is going to say a real word any day, I know it'll be a while. Jimi has a little bit of separation anxiety when meeting new people. He'll give 'high fives' but usually only to me. He is still not sleeping through the night consistently but the last week he's done pretty good. Sleeping from 8:30pm-6:30am.

Hanging out with his Grampy for a Memorial Day bbq





Trouble maker

Jimi was helping unroll the toilet paper for us

He figured out how to flush the toilet





7 Months Old

Jimi is now a lean, mean (well actually pretty sweet), crawling 7 month machine!



Our little crawler man





He just wanted to roll over and I kept calling his name... he was not amused.



Jimi went from just barely being able to crawl to getting anywhere he wanted very fast. It was amazing to watch the transition in just a matter of hours. He still does a combo of army crawling on his belly and crawling up on all four. So far he is most interested in crawling towards Penny or any of her toys. We're very fortunate (and surprised) that she is being very patient with him.

We've also started giving Jimi a few finger foods (Gerber yogurt melts and puffs are delicious) to let him get practice feeding himself. He loves it! He also loves drinking out of cup. He hasn't quite gotten the hang of using a sippy cup though, he just chews on the mouth piece. 

Feeding himself a rice rusk



His little personality has been coming out more and more. He is quite the little ham and loves to laugh. Jimi has been "talking" since he was just a few weeks old, but now he's really making different sounds and "words". He most commonly makes different 'b' sounds when he's happy and 'ma' sounds when he's upset. I think his first word may be 'Hi' because he frequently tries to imitate that. Speaking of which, we're working on teaching him to wave hi and bye. He's done it a few times but doesn't really seem to understand why he's doing it.





Almost crawling

I posted this on my facebook but I know that some of you who read this don't have a facebook account (i.e. you dad), so here it is again.

My guess is that Jimi will have crawling down within the next few days. A trip to Babies r Us is probably in order this weekend to get baby gates and other baby proofing necessities.