Tragus/Labret Earrings FTW

I have a bunch of holes in my ears- three on the left, four on the right to be specific.  I can’t tell you the last time I wore earrings on a regular basis though (besides the hoop in my cartilage.  As an adult I developed a sensitivity to earrings- anything other than gold would cause my earlobes to become  itchy, oozing, messes. So I wore earrings on special occasions.  Even so, I never wore my earrings overnight because the posts had a tendency to poke me in the head. I told Matt that all I wanted was some gold posted tiny stud earrings that I could wear in each of my piercings- which wouldn’t be inexpensive.

18 Gauge 1/4″ 2MM Labret stud from Amazon.com

I was talking with a coworker one day and she showed me the tragus/labret style piercing earrings that she had.  They had a flat back and the fronts screwed in place.  I wasn’t sure if the surgical steel would irritate my ears. I ordered a few types and lengths to try.  Surprisingly my ears didn’t react. I love them. They stay in 24/7 and I have had zero discomfort.  18 Gauge is similar to regular earrings.  I found that for the non-cartilage piercings the 1/4″ inch is perfect.  I am able to fit a much shorter length (5/32″) for my cartilage.

From top top to bottom:

• 3/8″ 18 gauge ball (too long for me)
• 1/4″ 18 gauge cubic zirconia (larger disc on back)
• 1/4″ 18 gauge cubic zirconia (smaller disc on back)
• 5/32″ 18 gauge cubic zirconia (smaller disc on back)

So with a little thinking out of the box I am wearing earrings again. YAY!

Sometimes it is the little things really.

*note- often times these types of earrings are sold individually instead of in pairs. Read each listing carefully.

Levi at Nine, Ten, and Eleven Months

Reposted from Parker Haus Grows
Whoops! A whole quarter of a year has passed between formal updates!  We’ve been too busy loving and living life!

Nine Months

This month really started out crummy, it felt like you (and we) were constantly sick.  Couple that with some teething and Wonder Week fussy periods and things were a bit overwhelming. As you got over your illnesses and emerged from your Wonder Week we were rewarded with so much advancement and new abilities.  You started crawling and quickly started to pull up on things.  You started saying Dada and Maaaaa.  The later usually when you are upset and want to nurse!  At the end of this month you got your first top tooth (lateral incisor) and we can see the whites of 2 more.  You are so excited to be able to chase the kitty and you love to shower Hugo with hugs (tackles) and kisses (eating of fur)!

Ten Months

Imagine our surprise when you crawled through the pet door on your baby gate! You watched Hugo go through it, thought about it for a minute and then very skillfully put your head through, only getting stuck at the hips. You quickly figured out how to turn your hips to slip through.  You attacked the stairs similarly. You watched Hugo run up a couple of stairs, thought about it and then started climbing to chase him. He would go up a few stairs and wait for you to catch up then go up a few more.  You observe and then execute. I think we are going to have to watch out for you!  This month you started to join us in the kitchen while cooking (you can go through the pet door so there is no keeping you out).  You love to pull down nesting bowls of all shapes and sizes.  You especially like the metal mesh strainers.  We put the strainers over our faces and sing “I’m a baby (or mama) beekeeper. Buzzz Buzzz Buzzz”.  You also love the magnets on our filing cabinet- specifically you like a Chinese mask magnet that a coworker gave me years ago.  You started swim lessons this month.  You love the pool and we have had so much fun alternating which one of us gets in the pool with you.  You aren’t a fan of floating on your back and you twist and turn in our arms every time we try to float you on your back.  You don’t mind getting your head wet or putting your face in the water.

Daycare told us that you are a pacifier thief! You crawl around and take pacifiers out of the mouths of the younger babies and promptly put the paci in your mouth. Strange since you haven’t been interested in a paci for months! You are also very interested in hair.  You find your own hair (which is slowly growing) fascinating as well as other people’s hair. Poor Emily at daycare sometimes gets her hair pulled because she has so much more of it than you and you can’t keep your hands off it. 😦

You are eating everything and anything.  I don’t think you have met a food that you don’t like.  As a result you often don’t finish all 3 of your bottles at daycare.  You tried sushi for the first time and you love it!  You are also a big fan of Korean food.  This month we also worked on drinking from a straw cup in preparation for moving up to the waddler class at daycare.  This month your two front teeth came in bringing your total tooth count to 5.  We can see a fourth tooth on top but it doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly.

Eleven Months

This month you really seem like a little boy and not a baby anymore.  You surf on everything and you are getting to where you can stand without holding something for support.  You learned that you can climb under things this month and you learned how to climb into (and out of) an empty bath tub.  You are starting to express your displeasure at things vocally- yelling at us if we try to take something from you that you aren’t supposed to have (like eating cat food).  Similarly you are having conversations with us, you answer our questions and you tell us stories complete with lots of hand gestures- we just don’t understand your words yet.  You have been signing “fan” for a long time but we think you are also starting to sign “all done”. You most definitely understand the following signs:

• “nursing”
• “all done”
• “cat”
• “light”
• “momma”
• “dada”
• “silly”
• “fan”

At different times we have heard you say the following words very clearly (but not consistently):

• “all done”
• “yeah”
• “kitty”
• “cat”
• “light”

You have a couple distinctive “Levi words”. We aren’t sure what they mean but you say them often and with purpose. The one you use the most is “Adat”- I think this means “cat”.

You finished up swim lessons this month. You are a little more tolerant of being on your back, but still not a fan. You love going under water and jumping off the side of the pool into our arms. Your daycare class started going outside on nice days and you love it! You pitch a fit when you have to come in though! Your daycare teachers are bursting to tell us all the silly things that you did that day, like crawling in one of the bins that goes under the cribs and putting yourself under the crib.  They tell us that you are very loving and affectionate with your classmates.  You like to stroke their cheeks and hair (an improvement from pulling hair last month).  You look at the teachers to make sure it is ok before continuing.  However, you like to lean in for kisses too!  With one eye on your teacher you open your mouth wide and lean in for a “kiss”- a quick shake of the head tells you that you shouldn’t be doing that. Persistent boy that you are-you wait a few minutes before trying again.   You also love to hug (aka tackle) your friends at school.  Usually they “hug” you back but if you upset them you usually burst into tears along with them.

The fourth top tooth finally broke through at the end of this month. You were working on that tooth for a long time!  Unfortunately we think you are starting to work on your molars.  Teething is the pits!

One more month to 1 year.  I cannot believe time has passed so quickly.

Levi at Eight Months

This is cross-posted from Parker Haus Grows

This month didn’t bring a whole lot of sleep, but it did bring another tooth (number 2) and lots of mobility. You are all over the place! You have no trouble getting where you want to go even though you aren’t crawling in the traditional sense. You spin, and creep, and worm your way all over. You also can get up to sitting from laying down. You roll to your belly. Pull your knees up under yourself, push up with your arms and push yourself back onto your bottom. You started to do this in your crib, giving me a heart attack! You love to play on your playmat, taking toys out of a bin and putting them back in. You love to eat books and hug your stuffed animals. You give mommy and daddy big hugs and sloppy kisses.
Towards the end of this month Grandma and Grandpa came to visit. Mommy went on a 4 day business trip and Grandma and Grandpa helped Daddy take care of you. This was the first time that you had to take bottles overnight. Dad was a little nervous about night time as you are accustomed to nursing to sleep but you did awesome. You slept long stretches for Daddy and he became a pro at putting you to bed. He taught Mommy some things when she got home. Overall you enjoyed lots of Grandma and Grandpa snuggles during their visit.
You also started to get really good at eating AND swallowing your food this month. We had to hook up the diaper sprayer, as we no longer enjoy easy to clean breastfed diapers. You love drinking ice water out of a regular cup at dinner and think that spoons are the most fun!
It is amazing to watch you learn and grow. Each month just keeps getting better and better- if that is even possible.

Love you lots!
Momma and Daddy

Levi at Seven Months (Belated)

This post is a cross-post from Parker Haus Grows

A bit late, but here is a look back at your 7th month. At the end of your 7th month your first tooth popped through. We knew it wouldn’t be long because the whole month was filled with lots of drool, fussing, and everything.goes.in.the.mouth. Your Granddude was certain a tooth wasn’t far away when he visited for Thanksgiving. You had so much fun with Granddude, showing him how you try to crawl and move around. You also showed him what a great eater you are, both at home and at restaurants. You had turkey for Thanksgiving dinner as well as green beans and potatoes.
You and Hugo are really becoming friends. You love to pet him “gentle” and every once in a while you will tackle him, Richard Sherman style. He is usually surprised, as are you, and he escapes unharmed. You both have an affection for a certain soft throw blanket and love to snuggle up with it.
You continue to enjoy cheering the Seahawks on every Sunday in your Marshawn Lynch jersey (momma has a matching one). Seahawks football is the only TV you are allowed to watch.
You really are a joyful and sweet baby boy. We are such lucky parents.

xoxo,
momma and daddy

Christmas in the Haus

Hey there! *brushes dust off blog*

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas while I am at it!  As you might infer from the radio silence on the blog, we are busy enjoying life with our active baby boy!  This Christmas was so much fun and an absolute blessing.

We cut it a little close with Christmas Cards- these Tiny Prints cards (photos by Sarah Sweetman Photography) made it to their destinations just after Christmas thanks to the extreme weather the rest of the nation was “enjoying”.

This year we celebrated Christmas Eve at my Mom’s place. She made us our traditional family Meat Pie (Tourtière) which was amazing- as always.   We had a little trouble getting a fire started in her fireplace, but the process provided us with a lot of laughter.

Christmas day was a long one!  We made donuts from scratch in the morning. I got the idea from a coworker and I think it is going to be a new Christmas tradition. The donuts were YUM! Another new tradition is family Christmas PJs on Christmas morning. We always opened our Christmas gifts in our PJs and fun festive PJs make this tradition all the more special. Matt, who never wears PJs donned his green and white PJs for the occasion.

Our tree this year was a cardboard tree from IKEA. We didn’t really trust Hugo to not send it crashing to the ground and to be honest it was just one less thing to worry about. On christmas morning the gifts abounded under the tree, almost all of them for Mr Levi.

We opened gifts with Matt’s family over Skype which went surprisingly well. Levi slept through most of it and woke up in time to open a few gifts with my Mom, Matt and I. Mostly he wanted to eat the paper.

Levi was working on crawling and we gave him a lot of diaper time on Christmas to practice. Love his Christmas themed Best Bottom diaper- Mistletoe!

Levi received lots of great toys like this ring sacker from Melissa and Doug and the Busy Town Cube in the background.

Perhaps the best part of the day was hanging out with my mom. She got lots of Levi snuggle time. We ended up going to a 7PM Christmas Day mass which wasn’t too crowded. Unfortunately I was really lax with planning our meals and the timing, we didn’t end up eating Christmas dinner until nearly 10PM! WHOOPS!

Levi’s first Christmas was a success! Can’t wait for next year!

Levi at Six Months

 

This was cross post from Parker Haus Grows.
Six months is such a fun time! You are so interactive and busy all the time. Your personality is really starting to shine through. You are always smiling, very loving and affectionate, and a little bit silly. You look more and more like your dad every day.
This month we visited The Great Salt Lake with grandma and grandpa. You continue to be a great traveler, much our pleasure.
You could spend hours sitting, surrounded by toys. This month you really started to like stuffed animals. You have a musical panda from your cousin C, a soft blue Build-a-Bear from mommy’s friend H, and 2 stuffed foxes from Ikea. You love to give them kisses and hugs.
Speaking of kisses and hugs you have become very affectionate with dad and I. You love to “suck” on our faces (dad’s nose and my chin) it makes us giggle and we think it is your version of kisses.

At the end of this month you began eating solid food. Your first foods were streamed broccoli, streamed carrot, banana, and pasta. Carrot seemed to be your favorite but you also seemed to like banana. You made lots of faces eating broccoli but you kept coming back for more. You actually ate very little, but that is ok, it is more about letting you discover tastes and textures of food.

We also started using baby sign language with you. Our most consistent sign that we use is cat, but we also sign for milk, gentle, soft, light, fan, change diaper, mommy, daddy, grandma, and grandpa. The kitties are by far your favorite things the house. If you could get up and walk I think you would chase Hugo all day. You are very interested in moving but haven’t figured out this crawling business.

We had so much fun taking your photo this month. Below are some out takes that show your personality. Love you Levi!

Xoxo,
momma and daddy

Levi at Five Months

This is cross post from Parker Haus Grows.

About a month ago I went back to work. And the blog posts stopped. I promise this won’t turn into a series of monthly updates. I’m getting into the rhythm of this whole working mom thing and hopefully can crank out a few posts on the topic here soon. But for now we are celebrating 5 months with Levi.

At the start of this last month I went back to work and you started daycare.  You have so much fun at daycare and while I would love to stay home with you, I also really love my job.  Thankfully you have thrived at daycare, coming home doing all sorts of new things like sticking out your tongue and making funny faces.  You have also come home with some germs and the common cold. Oh well!

These new faces that you make crack us up! Combine your funny faces with a love of babbling and laughter and you can see why we could sit and chat with you for hours.  You really are a delight.

You started tripoding a couple of weeks ago, which quickly progressed to sitting.  You are pretty good at keeping your balance for a while, until you fall over.  You don’t cry though, just laugh and wait for us to help you up again into sitting position.  With all of this sitting you are much less interested in rolling over though.  When you do tummy time you have started to try to propel yourself forward. Sometimes you end up pivoting on your tummy and other times you plant your face in the floor and try to drive yourself forward with your legs. Neither methods are very successful at this time but it doesn’t stop you from trying.

Some of your favorite toys at the moment are Sophie the giraffe, your wubbanub, the bright starts clack and slide activity ball, the winkle, the O ball, and your dinosaur bath toys.  But really I think your favorite toys are your hands and fingers.  You love the stare at your fingers and gently tap them together (as if plotting to take over the world). You turn your hands over and over to examine them and the are constantly in your mouth.  You use them to explore our faces (and our mouths) and I swear you could entertain yourself for hours examining your hands.

You, sir, are a complete joy.  We don’t even mind too much that you are still in your 4 month sleep regression (only sleeping 2 hours at a time at night) when you wake up you have smiles and giggles for both of us. Our lives are brighter because you are in them.

♡ You little boy!

Momma and Daddy

Levi at Four Months

Cross post from Parker Haus Grows.
This month was a big one.  It was my last month at home with you before going back to work and it was also one of your biggest developmental months thus far.  First, let’s talk about how big you are getting.  You an Hugo are about the same size now- WOW! He better watch out because you have your eye on him.  You light up when  you see him and you watch him intently.  You love to grab big fistfuls of his soft fur. So far he is a good sport about it but I think his patience may run out with your grabbing and pulling.
During this month you went through your 4th Wonder Week– which is a deceiving title as this one lasts multiple weeks.  I’ll be honest, those weeks weren’t the most fun- you started waking up at night more frequently, became more fussy (you went from happy to losing your mind in just a few seconds), and my previously chatty baby became very quiet.  You were working hard on some big developmental stuff so it is understandable.  As  you emerged from this cloudy period you were able to do so much more!

• You laugh all the time now and the sound of your laugh is music to Mommy and Daddy’s ears
• You are constantly moving- arms, legs, bootie lifts, squirm city
• You can grab things with some precision now and you pull anything and everything to your mouth in a fluid motion
• You love to examine our faces, especially our mouths- putting your hand in someone else’s mouth is second only to putting your hand in your mouth
• You talk all the time and sometimes you seem to sing- varying your tone and volume. You love to listen to yourself chatter and we are so happy to have our chatty baby back
• You love to be sung to- L.O.V.E- your favorite songs are anything from Vampire Weekend- especially “Diane Young” and the silly songs that mommy made up including “Levi James” and “Hey there Mr Magoo”

Highlights of this month included:

• Getting dressed up as Link from The Legend of Zelda for the Penny Arcade Expo.  It was a little noisy and busy for your tastes but we survived the day with use of the convention center’s Mother’s room
• Listening to David Bazan at Bumbershoot Music festival.  You love music and had a blast strolling around Seattle Center at the music festival.  We took it easy, only catching one show but next year, watch out!
• You finally started taking a bottle.  Admittedly we weren’t very aggressive in trying to give you one. Thankfully everything worked out well. It took you a while to figure out how it worked but you got there
• You started daycare the last 2 days of this month.  Napping and taking a bottle were challenging but you did well.

You have been a little personality since birth but I really feel like in month 4 your personality blossomed.  I am so grateful to have this month at home to be able to witness it first hand.  Mr Magoo/Bubba J, you bring me and your daddy so much joy.  ♡ you little boy.

Levi’s Birth Story

It is a long time coming (almost 4 months) but  finally wrote Levi’s birth story over on Parker Haus Grows.  There will be some bits of bare skin and maybe a placenta photo or two in the series- just warning you in advance.  I  loved reading detailed real life accounts of labor when I was pregnant.  Everyone’s labor experience is different and I hope you enjoy reading our unique experience.

Photo by Sarah Sweetman

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Soaking it up

Tomorrow morning Matt and I are going to drop Levi off for a trial day of day care. I plan to pick him up after about a half day. He will do another half day on Friday and again on Monday. Tuesday he starts his full time Monday through Friday schedule.

I have been trying to soak up all the snuggles and just the two of us time I can this week. I am looking forward to getting back to work and for him to be with other kids. I am even looking forward to him getting better about taking a bottle and perhaps getting on a little bit if a schedule.

I am also going to miss him. UGH. I am blessed to have been able to spend the first 4 months of his life with him 24/7.

Needless to say, my arms are going to feel a little empty tomorrow morning.