Bubbles, Cheerios, and Snot-Sucking

Mornings have been better since Monday, thank goodness. I think that the car naps and our extra activities with visitors were what did us in last weekend. This week I've made it a point to be home for every nap, and he's been napping a little bit better each day. Now, of course, he has his 3rd cold, but so far it doesn't seem as bad as the last one was. His middle two teeth are also coming through (bringing his total to 6), but they don't seem to be bothering him as much as the fangs did.

Here he is the other morning while Kevin and I were loosely supervising him (Parents of the Year)...he got into the recycling which was/still is overflowing onto the floor. He really loves bottles. He rolled this one around for a while and put it in his mouth (as he does with everything).

 Chug, Chug, Chug

Just the other day I gave him a bubble bath for the first time, and he loved it! He loved to try to eat the bubbles off of his fingers, and I loved to make fun bubble sculptures on his unsuspecting head.

 Do I have something in my teeth?

Yesterday we went to JoAnn's (twice) for their 25% friends and family sale, and I picked up enough supplies to keep me busy for a while. I have material for Christmas stockings, curtains for the laundry room, and a few cross-stitching projects (one small, one medium). Now if I can just figure out a way to work on things while watching Lewis. There's always naptime.

Here he is, asleep after we got home from our second (late afternoon) trip. You can't really see it, but he had a little snot bubble under his left nostril. Poor buddy.

This was him a little later, during the Cheerio course, as I was preparing his dinner. He moved before I snapped the picture, but I'm posting it because I think he looks so much like Kevin here. I mean, you might say, Duh, he always looks like Kevin, but his expression in his eyes/nose and mouth/jaw area, especially, freaks me out. It's just like Kevin. And look at that shaggy hair!

Here is the smiley, chatty, and snotty monster enjoying his new favorite food: Cheerios! Sometimes it seems like he could eat them as his entire meal and be perfectly happy. His tray-to-hand-to-mouth success rate has improved quite a bit this week. I give him 5-10 minutes of Cheerio Time in the evenings before dinner while I get the rest of his meal ready. Last night, too, we added smashed peas.

DANGER! DANGER! on this next one. Peter lets out a big bark around the 1:01 mark, and you might pee your pants (like Lewis probably did) if you aren't expecting it.

We've started closing the hallway doors to keep the wandering beast contained a bit more upstairs. I was trying to get some video of him racing down the hall, discovering (again and again) that the doors were all closed, then turning around and crawling back to me, then going back down the hall and doing it all over again, but he was too fast! This was a still I got of an 'Uhhhh' look--like, Mama, what am I supposed to do with this current situation?

Yesterday we also went to Babies R Us to look for any sort of cold relief products that we don't already have. I found that Johnson's has a vapor-y baby bath made for babies with colds (with eucalyptus, rosemary, and menthol), so I got some of that. We tried it out this morning--it smelled like a spa. Yum. And again, bubble art. I'm not sure if the vapors helped or not--he did have a couple of really snotty sneezes during his bath, so maybe??

A Shark Fin

I also went on Amazon (after calling Whole Foods, Target, Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart with no luck) and ordered a Nosefrida for him because apparently he is traumatized by the bulb syringe from our last bouts of snot-sucking--so far, so good! I had it overnighted because I was afraid we were in for a long weekend of snot-sucking and didn't want to wait until Monday. 

He still cries, anticipating anything to do with his nose, but it a) doesn't go into his nostril far at all and b) you do the sucking and can get out the goobers much more efficiently (and I still use the saline spray to soften things up beforehand). And there is totally a filter, so it is totally impossible to suck any of his snot out of the collection tube (and into your mouth--gross). A new must-have! Thank you, Swedes, for both the Nosefrida and IKEA. I love you.

Now I am off to get a much-needed haircut because a) it is wild, as always, and b) so that Lewis can't get ahold of it and pull it out by the fistful! Happy weekend!