Video Length = 2:51

When we got home, there was a package waiting for Mac from Oma & Opa.  We also recorded him opening that, since they didn’t get to see it in person!

Video Length = 1:38

Video Length =

These videos are taking a really long time to complete, especially when I make stupid mistakes like I did yesterday (wasted about 10 hours on it, mostly of waiting time), so while I really do hope to have them all uploaded by the end of the week, I can’t make any promises. Each 5 minute video takes about 30 minutes to an hour to edit, another 30 minutes or so to convert into a movie, then about 5-7 hours (yes, HOURS) to upload to the Blip.tv website. And I can’t do much else with my computer, nor can we do much else with our internet connection at home, while they are uploading. I’m doing my best!

October 29, 2008 — Mac is starting to balance on his feet without holding on.  I caught just a few moments of his playtime.

Video Length = 3:56

December 17, 2008 — Better balancing and playing in the living room and kitchen - this has some good moments of “cruising” (moving along the furniture while holding on).

Video Length = 5:07

We started on the Sunday before Christmas with the Elfering Christmas party, hosted by one of Jeremy’s aunts this year. They were all delighted to see Mac - many of them hadn’t seen him since he was a couple months old. It was great to see everyone again, especially Jeremy’s cousin Chris, who is back from Iraq safely and is here to stay as far as we know.

Right after that party we had our annual Dice Game event, this time at our house! It was loads of fun as always, and even Mac got in on the action. He pooped out early, which made it even nicer to be at our house where he could go to bed while we kept playing.

The next day, our family went with Roxi and Mathew to visit Jeremy’s grandma in Sauk Centre. Mac was really well-behaved and had lots of smiles for his great grandma. We met for lunch then had some play time at Grandma’s apartment.

We had a more relaxing Tuesday. Jeremy had to work, but Mac and I had a great day. I managed to get a lot done while he was napping, and Jo came over to watch him while I had my last children’s choir rehearsal.

Wednesday, Christmas Eve, we headed to Roxi’s with plans to then go to Jeremy’s aunt’s, but Mac needed a nap, so we put that off and ended up missing it because by the time he woke up it was time to get to church! I had to be there early for the kids. Jane and Jo’s families met us at church too, since Steph was singing in my choir. It was nice to finally be all together on Christmas Eve (in previous years the other kids ha their own programs). The children sang beautifully - I was so proud! After church we went back to Roxi’s for our traditional seafood/movie/gift gathering. Mac got some cool new toys and clothes! We put him down for bed there and proceeded to continue our evening opening gifts, finishing our movie, then playing Guitar Hero World Tour that Mathew got… until almost midnight!

Christmas morning, Mac woke around 8, and we let him crawl into the living room to see that Santa had moved the gate from around the tree and had left presents for him! He opened a couple, with some encouragement from us (he doesn’t quite get excited about the gifts yet, until he sees what they are). Then it was time for some breakfast, then a couple more presents, and then the little guy was ready for a nap! Later in the afternoon, my sisters’ families and Jeremy’s came over for a relaxing day of food and movies. Mathew made yummy enchiladas! Everyone left by Mac’s bedtime, then we had to get ready for our trip to Madison (and state up late to finally get caught up on Survivor).

I’ll continue about those adventures in my next post and add pictures and some video soon!

Mac has apparently been “eating out of house and home” his daycare provider.  What can we say, the kid likes to eat!  We are using the baby food and cereal less and less and have not yet found anything he doesn’t like.   On his ten-month birthday, we went out to dinner.  I asked for some crackers for him to start, but instead of making cereal and baby food at the table, we decided to order him a meal, since they had half a grilled cheese sandwich on the kids’ menu.  I also asked to substitute a banana for his fries, since I knew he wouldn’t eat them all and he likes bananas, and it’s good for him.  Jo made fun of me, but I was glad I did it!  He inhaled the banana, first in pieces I had cut up, then Jo said to try giving him the other half to hold and bite.  He did fine with that, except that he shoved more in his mouth than he could “chew” and ended up “losing” some of it when it slid back out of his mouth!  It was hilarious!  He also ate about half of the half-sandwich and a couple fries (those are difficult for him to bite), and he had a couple spoon-fuls of my shake as well as his water.  And when we got home and got him ready for bed, he STILL took almost a whole 8-oz. bottle!  Growth spurt?!

Mac has been on a bit of a different sleeping schedule lately too.  He’s been napping only an hour or so at daycare, and he goes down for another nap between 3 and 4 where he sleeps about 3 hours - sometimes more!  We’ve had to wake him after 4 hours some nights so we can make him eat dinner before he goes down for the night.  And we allow this to continue, since it appears he needs his sleep, and he still sleeps through the night!  We may have to make a slight adjustment if he continues this through Christmas vacation, though, because the bad part is he’s sleeping for most of the time we’re home with him!

He hasn’t had too many big developments this month.  He continues to work on balancing and getting ready to walk, but he’s not there yet.  He finally holds his own bottle consistently - I’m surprised it took this long.  I think he might be starting to learn our signs, though we still need to be much more consistent with them.  I swear he was doing the sign for “milk” a couple of times when I’ve given him a bottle.  We are also working on “more please” and “all done” at meal times.  He does also respond to us saying, “no,” when he gets into something he shouldn’t, but he hardly ever stops…  We’re still waiting for those top teeth too!

Mac seems to be pretty excited about all the new things in the house for Christmas, especially the lights.  We did get a real tree this year but heeded the advice of many and also purchased a “play yard” gate to put around it.  Though he doesn’t seem to bother the one at Jo’s too badly when we’re there, so we might have been ok.  He likes it when we pick him up and let him touch the ornaments, but he doesn’t go by the tree much on his own.

We are very excited for his first Christmas morning!

We had a very busy, and wonderful, long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  Jeremy and Mathew planned all of the meal and did all the cooking (except a few things I wanted to do).  Jeremy prepared the turkey on Wednesday night while I baked what ended up being THREE apple pies.  I had cut up too many apples and had extra crust dough after rolling what I needed for 2 pies, so I made a third apple dessert with a crumble topping that was yummy too!

Thursday morning, Jeremy got up early to make sticky rolls (a tradition from his grandmother) - yum!  My parents arrived from Madison around 11:15, just after Mac went down for a nap and as we were starting on each of our stuffing recipes (we each have a preference for the one we grew up with).  Jo and her family showed up soon after, and she jumped in to help also.  Jeremy also had dinner rolls rising and had prepared some appetizers for those who came early to watch football.  Mathew came over a little later with a squash pie and started on the potatoes, gravy for warming the turkey, and vegetables.  Roxi and Rick came over too, then Jane and Tim arrived, and she started on the big batch of gravy.  I was impressed that dinner was served only 15 minutes later than the boys had planned!  We borrowed card tables and chairs and separated into two rooms to eat, though in hindsight we could have fit everyone in the living room.  Beyond that, we only needed to borrow silverware for our big group.  Unfortunately, we were not graced with the presence of the Richfield firefighters… maybe next time!  Mac napped quite a bit that day but seemed to enjoy the activity around the house!  He certainly wasn’t lacking for attention.  He enjoyed his turkey, dressing, roll and veggies but was very tired and went for another nap before we were finished with dinner.  I completely forgot to take pictures during dinner, but between what I did take and what my mom took, there are some good snapshots of the weekend on Flickr.

Friday was slated as a baking day for Jane, Jo and me.  We usually schedule about four days between Thanksgiving and Christmas to get them all done.  Mom had never been here for one of our baking days, so that was extra fun!  Jo came over early, and we got started around 10:30 a.m., melting lots and lots of chocolate.  With Mom and the dishwasher to help keep up with dishes, we were like mad-women in what ended up being a cookie-baking marathon!  We were finishing with frosting the last of the cookies around 8:30 p.m.!!  It was a great day.  We usually only last 3-4 hours and make about 3-4 recipes in one day, but I think we got about 8 done on Friday.  And now that we have a working freezer in our garage (thank you, Mathew!), we were able to leave them all at our house.  Mac was well taken care of by someone at different points throughout the day - usually Nana and/or Papa - I don’t know, I didn’t see much of him…

What I didn’t get done on the beautiful day on Friday was putting Christmas lights up outside our house.  I debated whether I even wanted to bother, but the closer we get to Christmas and the more I see around our neighborhood, the more I wanted to do it.  Unfortunately, this week I pulled out the Christmas boxes, and we don’t have as many lights as I thought.  We’re going to wait for the after-Christmas sales and stock up for next year instead.

Saturday we headed to Jo’s for breakfast and to play.  But Mac was being cranky and not napping, which he seems to have trouble with at Jo’s for some reason (I think he doesn’t want to miss out on the fun.)  Jo and I went to run some errands to get ready for dinner Saturday and our Packer party Sunday while Mom tried to put Mac down, but when we got back he was still awake.  Stinker.  I ended up taking him back home when I had to go get ready for church.  Mom and Dad stayed with Mac, and he didn’t go to sleep until 5:00!  After church, almost everyone came over for dinner.  Then Mom and I started on making turkey soup from our Thanksgiving turkey!  We had to wake Mac for his dinner later, but he didn’t last long before he was out for the night.

Sunday we woke to snow, and Mom and Dad woke to changes for their travel plans.  They originally were going to leave at halftime of the Packer game to catch as much of the game - and daylight - as they could.  But with the snow here, and more falling at their destination, they decided it would be safer to stay another night.  We were all thrilled!!  We started all the Thanksgiving leftovers warming in crock pots - seven in all - for our halftime meal.  It was a terrible ending to the game, but it was great to have everyone together for such a long time.

Mac got to spend some real quality time with his Nana and Papa over the long weekend.  Papa even gave him his bedtime bottle and put him to bed on Saturday night!  Is it any wonder that of all the nights they were there, THAT was the one when he slept the best?  It’s a nice break for me too, that they like to get up with him in the morning (they’re usually up early anyway) and let me and Jeremy sleep in a bit.   We try to give them every opportunity they want with Mac and fill in only when needed, but we try also ask if they’d like to feed him, put him to bed, etc., instead of assuming.  The answer is usually a resounding YES!

I spent a ton of time in my kitchen over the 4-day weekend.  Good thing I like it!  I have to admit, though, that my mom was a huge help in keeping the kitchen clean.  She says she likes to do it (I can’t see how anyone would), but it was nice just to have company while working - especially with the enormous volume of cleaning and meal preparation we did!  I ran the dishwasher three times on Thursday and at least two more on Friday.  And that’s not even counting the big pots and pans, and crock pots, that were hand-washed after the dishwasher was filled.  Can’t wait to see that water bill. 

This photo is of a walking toy a friend from work gave us.  We were asking around ever since he was playing in the nursery at BT and was walking behind a chair.  He loves playing with it now, but not for the reasons we thought - right now he loves just playing with and opening all the doors in the front and playing with the pieces!  It has an adjustable wheel that we can allow it to go slow now but faster as he gets better at it.

We’re looking forward to hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, and now I’m off to bake a couple of pies.  Jeremy and Mathew are taking over most of the meal, with my only requirements to fill in things I specifically want.  Watch for pictures on Flickr!!

Mac continues to work on his balance.  He’ll still pull himself up on just about anything he can reach, and he spends more time sitting on his knees more now too, which we think shows an improvement in balance. Once in a while he’ll let go, but we haven’t seen as much of that this week.  He hasn’t shown us any new tricks yet this week, but there’s no telling what he’s up to at daycare!

When my mom was here last week, Mac started to imitate the clicking sound she was making! I caught some video on our digital camera. I didn’t bother editing it since it’s not too long.  Listen carefully!

Video Length = 48 seconds

While Mac has slowed some on his big accomplishments over the last couple weeks, the one most newsworthy is that last week he started to let go while standing.  He doesn’t do it often, and he doesn’t last for long, but yesterday I think he stood by himself for a little over 5 seconds!  I’m afraid the next step is, well… steps!  He’s also still babbling quite a bit, and we’re trying to encourage that to turn into words, but it’s not working so well.  We are a little more concentrated now on some simple signs, especially at meal times when we’ve noticed him whine for things on our plates (!), but he really doesn’t do any mimicking like we would have expected.  He watches and seems to listen, though, so we’ll keep up with it as much as we remember to.  To be honest, he looks like he’s thinking, “Yes, Mom, I know what you want me to do, but until I am ready to say the words correctly, I will simply look at you like you are crazy and smile.  But by all means, please keep doing that - it’s very entertaining.”  Perhaps that’s just me…

We’ve taken baby-proofing to the next level as Mac has started to discover he can move from one room to another in the house by himself now.  For the most part, doors to prohibited rooms can be closed, but we do have to make sure all the outlets and cords are covered.  Cabinets need to be locked closed, not because he isn’t allowed in them but because he uses them to pull himself up.  None of those safety measures mean we can ever leave him unattended though, with the exception of his crib, and for a short time, his high chair.  We try to let him explore and discover as much as he wants, but safely.  He doesn’t know any better than to try anything and everything, including things like sitting down on a step after he gets up onto it!  We let him try but are there to catch him if (when) he falls.  Sometimes he’s too quick for us, which has caused some bumps and bruises, but we have a tough little guy, and the tears don’t last too long in the rare times they come.

Mac still does a great job going along with whatever plans we have.  Saturday I took him with me to church (he behaves very well but can be a handful as he always wants to be up, down, looking around, etc.).  Then we all went to Blessed Trinity’s Fiesta Latina, an event where our school families of Latino heritage decorate, cook and organize a great evening of food, dancing and games.  Mac had fun with our business administrator, Ann, helping sell tickets and dancing to the music!  She has given him lots of love as she anxiously hoped for, and now awaits, her own grandchild (I guess he won’t be the favorite there much longer).  He doesn’t have any stranger anxiety yet, but that could still develop.  It’s not too likely to be bad though, with as many places and people to which he has been exposed.

No top teeth yet!  I think the fussiness in Madison was actually more like what was making me uncomfortable as my cold started - probably some sinus pressure and headaches.  It could still have been his teeth, but he is off the Tylenol at night now and is sleeping much better.  We had to do that yucky snot-sucker thing last week when he was really stuffed up.  That was NOT pleasant but we know it certainly helped him quite a bit.  I think we’re all just about done with our colds now and on the mend - time to get our flu shots before it’s too late!

Hopefully the next few weeks will be a little more relaxed, and healthy, and we can get some more video of our active little dare-devil for you.  Stay tuned!

Video Length = 4:48

This weekend has already been a welcome relaxation.  Mac and I traveled to Madison with Jo and her kids to visit Mom, Clare, Dad and Julie’s family.  Mac did very well in the car on the way but was noticeably antsy after a while.  He did take a couple of naps which helped, and we also stopped for dinner and got out for a while.  He was up too late Wednesday night, though, and I wasn’t watching the clock, so he’s been really off-schedule.  He had a rough night Wednesday but napped well yesterday for the most part - I woke him from one nap to go to Matthew’s football game.  Last night was back to a regular bedtime, but he still woke once with what seemed to be a tummy ache, after an hour went back to sleep then woke once more for an unknown reason.  Now he’s on his second nap of the day, and today I won’t wake him, following Jo’s wise advice to let him get back on schedule in hopes for a better night tonight. Jeremy joins us today and he and Mac and I will head back home Sunday with a freezer and loveseat family members are giving us.