also too cute

Otto now refuses to keep bibs on and is very interested in taking off his clothes. He knows that shirts go over you head. This one is a onesie, good luck with that.

The latest in hair design

I would like to start tonight by saying how comfortable I am. Eric brought home a mac laptop to work on iMovie on. I have stolen it so I can blog from the comfort of the couch. It is quite luxurious.
Today we had quite the day. One Monday a month is the day where we have to go and pick up our co-op order. We get bulk things like organic foods that you can't get around here etc.. Since most of my friends also order things we usually have some sort of babysitting exchange that happens. I almost always have to be there when the truck comes since I am usually the collator for the order. This month I did not do the order and did not HAVE to be there. So instead of me dropping Otto off, I took on one of his buddies while Megan went and picked up our orders. This was not how poor Leo thought the day should go down and we had a complete meltdown on his part. I felt so bad for him. Nothing I could do for him was making him happy. Not Johnny and the Sprites, not Sesame Street, not snacks, not books. Not even Otto giving him a hug and patting him, a true sign of love from Otto. It worked out fine, Megan wasn't gone that long and once she was home he recovered well enough to think I was worthy of sharing toys with. Poor little guy. He didn't have a good morning nap which i know with Otto is enough to send him in a downward spiral. We decided the best way to recover was to pack the kids in one car (which means moving car seats) and go out to lunch. Funny how we thought that would be a simple solution. There was a method to our madness, on friday I left Otto's jacket at the restaurant and we needed to retrieve it. We managed a very civilized lunch considering we were eating with 2 one year olds. All in all it was quite lovely. After lunch we headed a little south of town to scope out some land that is for sale for the school we are trying to start. Megan and I are both on the board of directors of a school that has started and is trying to expand in the area. Wow, when you put it like that it really sounds official. Anyway, there was some land to look at outside of town that you needed an SUV to access which made our car the one to choose for the trip. After taking the kids on our adventure we headed home just in time for nap time. Actually both of them fell asleep in the car after lunch. Usually for Otto this means he won't nap anymore, even if he only slept for 5 minutes, but somehow I got him back to sleep when we got home. A small miracle no doubt.
Just to complete our crazy day, after dinner we headed out to our last music class of the season. Since Leo's carseat was still in our car we went together. It was a fun day all round.
So, on with the title... Otto has taken to wiping his hands in his hair while he is eating. Bananas and blueberry muffins seem to work the best. If anyone is looking for a natural hair gel, Otto can help you out. He rocks the look quite well I think...

New Look, Again

What can I say, it is starting to really feel like spring here and I am cleaning house. If I spend too much time looking at anything lately I have to clean it. That explains why I decided to repaint all the trim in the kitchen on a whim the other day. For those who haven't seen our kitchen, that is no small task. Anyway, hope you like the new look.

Where is Otto?

My mom was shopping at Target not too long ago and scored Otto some great new clothes. One of the things she got him was a pair of pants that look JUST like a pair that eric has. She couldn't resist them. Not planned they were both wearing their matching pants on the same day so I had to get some pictures. Otto thinks that my curtains make the best peek-a-boo game. He thinks he is totally hidden when he stands behind them. That may have something to do with the fact that when he does we look all around saying "where is Otto?", maybe.

Building block towers is serious business.

best seat cont...

Poor Grendel, someone is always trying to steal her good sleeping spots. First Otto saw she was sleeping in the stroller and decided to try and snuggle there as well,

Then Schmelig discovered it and tried as well. This was as close as she would
let him sleep to her amazing new bed.

Otto's Town

When eric's dad and Dee were in North Carolina this week they saw this sign and took a picture. Looks pretty nice to me...

My Trike

So Otto has finally mastered swinging his leg over the seat of his trike and is working on going forwards, as opposed to backwards his main movement so far. He is also starting to not like having clothes on. This outfit is a happy medium between what he wants, naked, and what I want, clothes, shoes and socks, our house is still cold! He has a longsleeve shirt with a t-shirt over it, he can't seem to get them off. Then he has on BabyLegs with a G-Diaper. The socks and shoes were taken off faster than I could find them to put them on. Silly me, I had him in cotton pants, he took those right off...
Somehow Otto learned that when you see a flash you should smile. I don't know where he got this since we never ask him to smile for pictures. Just in case you were wondering, this is his version of "saying cheese".

The best seat in the house

Grendel has decided this stroller is where she will sleep every afternoon. I can even push her around and she doesn't move.

Weaning

For a while now Otto has been nursing just three times a day, a schedule he created and seemed quite happy with. Once before his morning nap, once before his afternoon nap and once before stories and bedtime. I planned on nursing him until he was one, and then seeing at that point how we should go forward. For a while I have felt like I was ready to start weaning, I haven't had garlic in over a year and I could really go for some. That isn't the real reason, but it does add to it. I started giving Otto milk (cow's milk, not mine) around his birthday. He sucked it down no problem. Great I thought, this will help weaning quite a bit. We had numerous starts and stops down the weaning road. He would drop a nursing no problem, go down for a nap fine and you would think, wow, we are really on to something here. He would wake up from his nap fine but then about 15 minutes after we came downstairs he would totally loose it. I couldn't put him down, he would scream, after marathon nursing sessions he would start to venture out of my lap but really it would take a few days to recover. Clearly not ready, that's cool, I can read your message, we'll try again in a week or so. And so it went, every few weeks I would try again only to have the same result. He seemed to do much better when I wasn't around, only problem is, I am always around. We are kind of like a team.
I was starting to think we would be nursing for some time to come, which I was actually starting to enjoy the thought of. I really like nursing Otto, it is our own special time together. If he wasn't ready to give it up, I didn't want to push it. I really did not want this to be a big deal. Then I got two HUGE headaches back to back. I can't take anything for them when I am nursing so that was really tough. I started to think again about weaning. For my birthday my mom and I planned a girls day out of shopping. We decided to go this past saturday. Pathetic as it may sound, this was going to be my first time away from Otto for more than 2 hours!! Eric was confident they would make out fine. Friday night we decided to give Otto a bottle of milk instead of nursing to see how he would take it. Otto sucked it down, went to sleep and slept the whole night through. The next morning he was happy as could be and showed no signs of regression. Eric gave him a bottle and put him down for his morning nap no problem and I headed out to meet my mom. While I was gone he took a second bottle of milk that afternoon and eric says they had a great day. He was in a wonderful mood the whole day. When I came home Otto was happy to see me, but again there was no screaming or anything. We seemed to be on a role so eric gave him a bottle that night too. On sunday I gave him a bottle of milk for his morning nap. I was sure he would want to nurse instead, but no. He drank the mild, took his NUK and went down for a nap.
Now he seemed to be doing fine but I was feeling left out. I was the one who wanted to start the whole weaning phase but I thought we would take our time with it, not go cold turkey. But since things were going so well I didn't want to back track. It is now tuesday and I haven't nursed Otto since friday afternoon. I wish I had known that might be our last nursing, it seems kind of sad now. He still loves to cuddle with me which I am doing a lot of now, I miss that bonding time. He seems to have moved forward all one his own. This is something we are learning about him, if he is not ready to do something we can't force him, but when he is ready he will do it on his own. It was the same with sleeping through the night. If only someone could explain this to my body which is still making milk to support a growing boy. If only I had more low cut shirts, they would really look good one me now!

Florida

Eric's spring break was a chance for us to travel to visit some family. First we headed down t Florida to see him mom, stepfather and grandparents. This was the first time since Otto has been walking that he was able to play outside. He had so much fun, it was amazing. Eric and I spent the whole weekend taking him to different parks and letting him have fun in the sun. It was a wonderful break from the daily grind of home. This is in eric's grandparents backyard, Otto's first taste of freedom.This is a park down the road by the Ortega River bridge...

It was a little windy

Big Otto, Little Otto and little Otto's handler

The other main attraction of the weekend was the Amelia Island Concourse (car show). I won't bore you with pictures of all the cars here, you can email me and I will send tons if you are interested. It was amazing, just to prove it, here is a Bugatti Veyron, it wasn't in the show, it was just what someone drove there.

In an attempt to not loose Otto we put the leash that friends lent us to good use. I think this photo is priceless.

Otto hit pay dirt with Ferrari gear for his birthday, here he is getting a little Ferrari car.
Otto is just for the record the most amazing traveler. Something happens when we get to the airport, he goes into saint child mode. We are really lucky. Other passengers are always commenting on how well behaved he is. I just hope it keeps up. Here he is being adorable on the way home.

Room in progress

So Otto's room is the coolest you have ever seen, really it is. I painted the walls and ceiling green like I mentioned before, then added coat after coat of magnetic, then chalkboard paint around the bottom of all the walls for added coolness. To top it all off my mom came down and painted HUGE dinosaurs on the walls along with ferns to blend the black into the green. Because she loves to paint it was not hard to get her to agree to come help do up his room. She couldn't help herself with the cuteness and added baby dinosaurs popping out of eggs in the ferns. We moved Otto to his new room two weeks ago, after we got rid of all the ladders and paint. I am sure he would have liked it just fine with all that cool stuff to climb on but it would have made me nervous. Prior to moving him into his new room we played in there a lot in an attempt to get him used to the new space. I really thought it was going to be tough changing rooms with him. As it was it went off without a hitch. He has been sleeping great there. It has the added bonus of not being in the front of the house so the traffic noise us much less. Plus there isn't the ambient glow from the street lights so it is darker. He really seems to love his new room. Now when he goes upstairs if we say "where is Otto's room?" he goes right down the hall and pushes the door open. I will post some pictures of what it looks like finished, but here is it in the works.

The master at work

One nice reward for a hard day painting, you get to cuddle with a cute boy on the couch and read him stories, not bad.

Shindig

On the saturday after Otto's birthday we hosted a joint birthday party for Otto and three of his buddies who all have birthdays within a month of one another. It was crazy. We invited all of the playgroup kids which meant 7 kids under 13 months of age and all the parents that go along with those kids. Fortunately we divided the hosting duties among all of the birthday kids parents so it wasn't all on us. Megan brought the decorations and came early to put them up, Missy got wraps and salad while Milo and Robin got munchies and drinks. I made the cupcakes and forfeited my downstairs. Our house is set up well for lots of people roaming about and the downstairs has been Otto proofed so it works well for kids. It felt like complete chaos, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Even the kids. The cupcakes were a big hit, I thought for sure I would never get Otto to eat an applesauce sweetened muffin again, but he still likes them. This was Otto's first taste of real sugar. It went down pretty well. Since his birthday he has discovered that he really likes cookies as well. He will plow down anything in his way to beg at your side if he thinks you have a cookie, which you of course were planning on sharing with him. I can't complain though, he is a really good eater. He is very adventurous and eats well at most meals. His local, organic, homemade diet is doing him well as he continues to grow like a weed.There is nothing organic about the blue icing goodness he is smearing all over his face!

I made cupcakes that looked like bugs for everyone. I even made one for each birthday boy with their initials on it. Now I have to think of what I am going to do next year!

birthday evening

So, I am finally starting to catch up with all of the pictures I have. Here is Otto and Grandma with some of his birthday presents. He loves stacking his new blocks and also enjoys seeing how many of his toys fit down the holes meant for the balls in the hammer toy. -good thing the top comes off pretty easily!-I made a gingerbread cake with lemon icing for his birthday cake. He seemed to like it a lot. Since eric was out of town, my parents came down to help celebrate. We had a great time.

I am so sorry that I haven't been posting more lately. Since Otto's birthday it has been non-stop action here. We have been painting like crazy to finish his room, we were in Jacksonville to visit eric's family and we just got back from philadelphia visiting my family. I was going to try and get some pictures up from his birthday party before I put up vacation photos, but Blogger is having issues. It won't let me post pictures right now. So I guess that means I will have to go back to laundry, figures. Oh well, travel is done for us for now and Otto's room is also done so I should have more time this week to post pictures and stories of the last two weeks. More soon....

Birthday Morning

So certain uncles who shall not be named, but whose name begins with "B" and ends with "N", won a trip for he and Eric to go to Chicago and have a special dinner with Rick Bayless. Of course it happened to be on the Otto's first birthday. Since Eric would miss the cake and festivities of the evening, we thought it would be fun to give Otto a present from us in the morning before Eric flew to Chicago. He really is enjoying his music class that we go to once a week and loves things that shake and make noise so we got him a set of wooden instruments. They have proven to be a big hit.




One of the best parts of the instruments is the cool sticks it came with. Otto carries them everywhere. He is actually quite good at hitting the cymbals and drum parts and making music too. They also sound nice when you hit everything you pass on the way to the kitchen.

Public

So it has been a week of changing here. First a new layout, then Otto turned one, now I have decided to go public. That's right we are being traded now, no wait... Anyway, for certain uncles who shall go unnamed, and my grandmother hopefully this will make it easier to access the blog and see Otto in all his glory.
Don't worry, I have a lot of wonderful birthday pictures to put up, but right now I really have to go wash the paint out of my hair. I will have them by tomorrow night, I promise!