13 Months 1 Week 2 Days - First Steps!

CHRISTOPHER'S WALKING!!! He took his first steps a week ago today (Wednesday, January 17) while in the nursery at church. He only took about 2 steps, but that was enough for me! Shad missed it since he wasn't at church with us (he'd normally be up in the sanctuary anyway). Not to worry, though...he got to see it on Thursday evening. Christopher still prefers to crawl, but each day, he gets a little better. We've been working with him a little each evening. He can now take about 6-8 steps before falling down. He's too funny...the last few evenings when trying to walk, he has to flap his arms like he's going to fly! He does it everytime he starts walking!

I'm sure it won't be too much longer before he's running around here keeping me busy! I've already had to start closing our bedroom, bathroom and his bedroom door to keep him out of trouble. He likes to go into his room and open his dresser drawers and pull out all the clothes. It's aggravating having to re-fold clothes and put them away all the time, but my main concern is that he keeps pinching his fingers in the drawers. With the exception of his bookshelf, most all of his toys are in the living room, so he doesn't need anything out of the other rooms. I've put a few books in his toy bin, so he can choose from those.

Christopher finally finished the antibiotics a couple of weeks ago! Also gone are the NASTY diapers and the yeast rash! YAY! It took a few extra days after stopping the antibiotics and using Nystatin to clear up the rash, but it's pretty much gone now. He woke up yesterday morning with another runny nose! I just hope it doesn't start the whole cycle over again!!!

A few more teeth have popped through. He now has a total of (at least) 10 teeth. I'm not sure if #11 and #12 have broken through yet, but they will soon. The most recent ones to come through were his molars.

He's eating more regular table foods nowadays. He still eats flavored rice cereal for breakfast, but always wants some of my cereal, too. He's at that age where he wants whatever we're eating. With the exception of a few meal items (spicy foods), we let him have anything he wants that's on our plates. I've switched him over to the Gerber Graduate meals, which are his primary meals for lunch and dinner. So far, I've found that he LOVES pasta and anything with cheese. He also really likes applesauce and pretty much anything in marinara sauce. A few weeks ago, for the Wednesday night meal at church, we started ordering Christopher his own plate. Two weeks ago, when we had barbeque chicken, he at the ENTIRE plate of food! It took him forever (Shad had to skip church), but he ate the whole chicken leg, all the white beans and all of the cornbread! He doesn't normally have that big of an appetite, so that took us by surprise. Tonight, we're having creamy chicken on rice. He had a similar meal yesterday for lunch and he didn't take to it too well. Hopefully, he'll like it better tonight.

Today, I started working in the church nursery on Wednesday mornings. It's for a Women's Bible Study. We only had 2 little girls about 3 years old and Christopher. There's supposed to be 4 kids plus Christopher. We typically don't provide childcare unless there are at least 4 kids, so hopefully, a few more will be there next week. Afterward, I spoke to the director of the weekday preschool program about working and entering Christopher this Fall. There's supposed to be a couple of job openings, so hopefully, it'll work out. I told Shad about it on IM and the first thing he said was that we can't afford it. He didn't even ask details first. With me working, we'll get a 50% discount, so it should only cost us $65/month instead of $130. I don't know how much I'll be making, but I'm sure I'll bring home more than $65/month! Christopher really needs this as much as I do. He needs to be around other kids his age. He'll be about 20 or 21 months when it starts. He would be in a different class that I'm in, so that'll be good for him, too. Registration starts in March, so I should learn more soon.

I thought I had a lead on a part-time babysitting job, but nothing's come from it yet. It was supposed to be for a little boy who's about 2 months younger than Christopher (his birthday is in February) and would be 2 days a week. I was told that they had someone for a little while longer, so I'm hoping that's why I haven't heard back from them. It would work out great for us to have someone Christoher's age and only 2 days a week!

We've got Cheryl's laptop on a trial basis for now. When we first got it, it ran like crap, so we installed Windows XP (it came with Windows 98). That worked like a charm and it's doing much better now! Shad set up the wireless network pretty quickly, so that's been nice to have. He just figured out how to network the printer and is working on figuring out security to set up networking with our desktop. The laptop is nothing fancy...not much space on it at all. So, it'll be nice to be networked to the desktop to have access to pictures and other files.

Well, off to get ready for church now...and to deal with a WHINING child!