Tag Archives: 30

Who’s the Ruler of All Pumpkins?

10/23/2014 R.C. Liley 3 Comments

Avery, of course.

This past weekend was actually a lovely 4 day weekend for Going Mom and we had a wonderful time together!

On Saturday, G-ma came over to watch Avery as I took Kelley to Martin House Brewery for her 30th birthday, the same place I went for my 30th. We love our little girl, but it sure was nice with just the two of us; big thanks to my mom for watching our increasingly crazy girl!

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We are lightweights when it comes to drinking (not ashamed), and the 3 full glasses we each had with the tour had us slightly numb in the face with, ummmm, happiness! I also blame the beer on my over-determination to take a good selfie of us; I swear I was hitting that button!

After we returned home and G-ma left, we were sluggish the rest of the day and ready for bed. Geez, being 30 is rough! But we still had a cute little girl to care for and get to bed before we could do the same. Luckily, we had a giant box for Kelley and I to play around in with Avery and get her energy out.

Best free thing I took from a neighbor’s curbside in a looonnngg time!

The next day, Kelley’s actual birthday, I made chocolate French toast and coffee along with this fine presentation….

She gave my good beer for my 30th, and I returned the favor, plus Chimay cheese, also a great beer! Needless to say, we’re fans of good beer. I normally hand write my cards to her, but since I finally installed the printer we bought several months ago, I figured I’d use it instead.

My mom, G-ma, came back up to take Kelley out shopping as I stayed home with Avery. Basically just another day for our baby and me, but Kelley had a great time shopping with my mom and I was happy to stay at home. Shopping for clothes is not my strong suit (ha ha, get it?), and when I do, it’s online. Plus, Avery and I had some more cardboard box playing to tend to.

On Monday, we made plans to go to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden to see the pumpkin exhibit and take pictures. The drive ended up taking longer than we anticipated and we left later than we should’ve, but Avery had a nap and we enjoyed our time together surrounded by a beautiful landscape.

We wondered around taking in the scenes, and yes, we were a little lost too since we really wanted to find the pumpkin patch. Turns out, if you just follow the pumpkins lining the paths, it leads right to the patch. Go figure!

Avery kept pretty well-behaved as we took turns posing with her and taking dozens of pumpkin packed pictures.

Obviously, you MUST raise your arms when posing for pictures or the Pumpkin Ruler (aka Avery) will turn you into a pumpkin. Note the field of previous violators behind us..

Many pictures and poses later, Avery started to get fussy and we were about ready to head out to make the trek back home. But first, we had to shamelessly ask an innocent bystander to take our picture in front of this cool “squash house”.

I mean, c’mon, who wouldn’t want their picture with this gorgeous gourd home?! Okay, probably Avery, but she didn’t get a say.

Going Mom and I enjoyed the family trip, but we both agreed it will be a while until we drive back out to Dallas for something like this. Once Avery is older and can run around and talk, we’ll look into it again, but there are plenty of similar things closer to us and that’s good enough!

Our 4 days of togetherness were fun-filled and now we are both parents in our 30’s…..uh oh…getting older!! Avery stood on her own several times making us think she would take her first steps, but still won’t do it! I thought it would be a cool birthday present, but Avery thought otherwise. Maybe it’ll just be a little belated?

Have you ever been to a pumpkin patch or something similar?

How long did your little one go from standing on their own to actually walking?

Monthly List, Parenting

7 Memories from my 7th Month Since “Going Dad”

06/16/2014 R.C. Liley 6 Comments

Really? Another month already?!

Geez, who needs a time machine for the future when becoming a parent “apparently” yields the same effect? Avery is now over the half-year mark and is becoming more active (and vocal!) every day.

On my 6 Memories post, I anticipated that one of my 7 memories for her 7th month would include her crawling, but it hasn’t happened yet. Seriously, the 8 month post is sure to have a memory of her crawling!

I think I'll just stay in this position and do nothing else. — I think I’ll just stay in this position and do nothing else.

Scooting, military crawling, and forward thrusting while on her hands and knees are all there and fool us into thinking “this is it” every time. Soon, baby, soon.

With my 30th birthday and first Father’s Day behind us now, hopefully the rest of June will be a bit calmer and we can focus on our little girl crawling. Oh, and she’ll be helping me clean up our neighborhood too.

If you haven’t entered to win an awesome Outback baby carrier from Onya Baby, click here and do it now! I wear Avery in our Onya everyday and it allows us both to get quality father-daughter bonding time.

Okay, lets get started…

1. Most of our nights now have us in the living room before your bath time where we play on the floor. Depending on how the day went, you can be really fussy or a happy baby. When you’re happy, I will hold you in the air and let you jump on my stomach or just try to entertain you with toys.

As it gets later, or you just had a rough day, getting on the floor with you does nothing for your temperament. This is when we break out the laser and get Lou (the fat black cat) involved to help us keep you calm. It works well, and “Fatty” gets some exercise.

Don't move, you might scare it off! — Don’t move, you might scare it off!

2. Just recently, you have started grabbing at my face while I’m trying to feed you a bottle. I start to make weird noises and act like I’m going to eat your hand and you laugh every time. It’s cute, and no matter how ridiculously annoyed I am that you won’t take the bottle, I forget all of my frustrations and just give you a kiss on the head.

As an aside, you also grab at anything and everything in your sight; other people’s faces included. You may or may not have grabbed a bottle of beer as mommy was trying to take a drink and spilled it on the both of you. But don’t worry, the beer was safe!

Daddy's face can be boring, I'll grab at Paul's. — Daddy’s face can be boring, I’ll grab at Paul’s.

3. We were in our first race together and won 1st place! Sure it was a small race with very unenthusiastic competition, but we rocked it, baby! Thanks to G-Ma, Paul, and Mommy, we had the best spectators out there, and they made the day even more special.

Besides it being our first race, we’ll never forget this day because of how much we stood out from the rest of the cheerful attendees. 🙂

4. You got to experience your first trip to a brewery! The same day we won the 5k, we went with G-Ma, Paul, and Mommy to the Martin House Brewery in Fort Worth as part of my 30th birthday celebration. I had more than my fair share of good beer, and luckily mommy drove us home safely. I did help direct her out of our tight parking spot though!

As you can see, you were thrilled to be there! Even with live music and clusters of people drinking and talking all around you, you managed to sleep quite well.

Actually, when live music stopped is when you seemed to wake up; coincidence? We’ll never know!

5. You had been to Nana and Papa’s pool before, but this past month was your official first dip in the pool. Mommy, You, and I all walked down to our neighborhood pool where you happily splashed around in the baby pool just like it was your own giant bathtub.

You must’ve really enjoyed yourself playing, because you were out before we made the walk back home.

We brought you back again on my birthday and you still loved the water like before. I have a feeling we’ll be making many trips to the pool since you obviously enjoy each time we go; even if you’re “too cool for pool”.

6. Avery, caffeine and you don’t make for good times……ever! Along with all of the other firsts the same day as our race and trip to the brewery, mommy had more than one cup of coffee for the first time since pregnancy and it became apparent that night. Caffeinated boobs are lethal!

You woke up crying more times than you had in a long time, and despite mommy’s many attempts, you wouldn’t stay asleep very long. This, in turn, resulted in starting my birthday earlier than any of us had planned (or wanted), but the day ended up being great. I even got to try out your crib with you in it for the first time.

Since then, mommy has been keeping her coffee consumption to one cup or less per day. Phew!

7. You ate your first solid food! We started to introduce you to solids through baby-led weaning, and at first we felt like you’d never eat what we gave you.

But after several encouraging commenters on the blog, we kept at it and eventually you took your first bites. You also gagged a little, but that was expected, and you didn’t let that bother you a bit!

As I write this, we are waiting on a hair chair mommy ordered since what we were using wasn’t working out, so hopefully we’ll have the new one soon and start feeding you healthy foods once more.

Okay, so I’ve exhausted my “7 things”, but I must add one more thing. You are becoming more vocal about EVERYTHING! Yes, if we so much as think about stepping on foot out of your sight, you’ll turn into hysterics and scream as loud as humanly possible. The sound resembles that of a cat screeching when you step on its tail mixed with a very frustrated baby bear trying to growl. Not a pretty sound.

From what I gather, this isn’t ending soon, so I guess we’ll just deal with it as it comes.

We are hopeful to see some crawling action before the 8th month rolls around, so we’ll keep working with that laser!

At what age did your kid(s) start crawling?

What about when they found their loud voice?

Life, Parenting

Co-Sleeping in the Crib and Learning to Crawl with Lasers

06/12/2014 R.C. Liley 4 Comments

Would you believe I’m still not done covering my birthday weekend? I guess I am more wordy than I realize. Sorry but not sorry, if you know what I mean. 🙂

After opening my tasty gifts from Going Mom and Avery, we hung around the kitchen to have breakfast and more coffee (for me, at least). It had been a few hours since Avery was awake, and surprise, she started showing signs of sleepiness!

Face rubbing, ear scratching, constantly squirming, and let us not forget, fussing, were all happening with Avery. So, Kelley gathered our little fuss box and brought her in the nursery to attempt getting her to sleep. Avery went fairly easily and slept without much resistance.

And then she kept sleeping. Finally, we were ready to bring her out to the pool, so after almost 3 hours, it was time for us to wake her! But first, I had to try something…

Co-sleeping in the crib! Sure, we did co-sleeping in our room when Avery was younger, but what about the crib? Besides the wood creaking in protest at a heavy adult climbing into it, Avery stayed asleep…..for 30 seconds.

I’ve seen other pictures of dads doing this, so I had to give it a shot. I’ll call it a success, and I think Avery didn’t mind, she was just a little confused.

Since she was finally awake, we gathered our pool gear (which is really nothing but swimsuits) and walked down to our neighborhood pool. Avery had been one time before this trip and enjoyed the water, so we expected the same again.

Our expectations were right on as she had a blast, and we even brought her in the big pool!

Kelley and Avery_Pool_B-day — Too cool for drool

She wears her shades with pride; just like her mommy!

After getting our fill of the water, we journeyed back home to spend the rest of my 30th relaxing. We’ve been laying a blanket out in our living room for Avery to roll and attempt to crawl around on, and we figured we would try and teach her to crawl. This meant laser pointer time!

Yep, fun for Lou (the fat cat) and Avery! Abby, our Golden, wasn’t too impressed. We would hold the red dot in front of Avery and marvel at her raising both arms in the air as she lunged forward into crawl position.

Each time, we’d hold our breath and think “This is it!”, but then she’d fall over or just sit back up.

Oh well, we’ll keep trying because she is very close to figuring this out, and lasers will help get us there! As night drew near, Kelley and I shared one of the awesome beers she got for me and had a cheers to a great weekend.

I was still feeling it from the day before at the brewery, so splitting this hefty beer was plenty.

Avery slept a little better that night and so did we. It’s never fun saying goodbye to the weekend, especially when it’s your birthday, but I had a wonderful time with my mom, Paul, Kelley, and Avery. Thank you all for the great 30th; love you!

How did/would you train your baby to crawl, or did they do it on their own?

Ever try sleeping in a crib?