Our Little Dude is Bulking Up for Fall

Tomorrow, Wyatt will be 4 months old. He'll start eating cereal with a spoon. I had to stop by Target today to buy spoons and plastic bowls, because somehow that age just seemed so far away... I didn't even prep for it. And yet, here we are. And of course, he isn't just getting older; he's getting bigger. At his 4 month appointment today, he weighed in at 17lb 7oz and measured 27" tall. That's still 90th percentile for weight and a whopping 95th percentile for height.

Here's my theory: Wyatt's obsessed with football, because he could hear his momma watching both NCAA and NFL games through a good chunk of her pregnancy. It soaked into his very DNA. And he will, of course, be justified in his goal come the end of this month. Football season is almost here again!!! Yea! Pure heaven for me and my little linebacker. I do, after all, watch more football than my husband, even though he used to play.

Here's Wyatt working out for fall:

Post Traumatic Vacation Disorder

We're home! Mammoth was fun and exhausting and adventurous and funny. And as with so many vacation experiences, it's the old "I need a vacation to recover from my vacation" scenario. I don't really know where to start, so I'll just sort of jump right in.

First, I have to fess up. We didn't make it a week in the trailer. :) We stayed in it for 3 nights. Then, on Wednesday, after a fun, long day at the ghost town Bodie (a baby name we actually like a lot, by the way) and to the sound of the wails of a teething (more on that in a second) cranky baby, Ryan suggested that perhaps we should finish out our vacation at the Westin. Now you're talkin'. We did, after all, want to get a little relaxation into our vacation, and Ryan and I tend to find luxury very relaxing. :) Granted, we still had an infant with us, so it wasn't quite as relaxing as it would have been with a sitter, ha ha, but it definitely took the edge off! I know what you're thinking. How spoiled are you? You can't handle a week in a perfectly good trailer? Plenty of people go tent camping all the time, and they don't complain! They like it! It's fun! And hey, people even do it with babies and have a good time. Well... yeah... I don't know what to tell you. I do have a better understanding of why people enjoy camping now, but I still kind of like a soft, king size bed and daily maid service better. I'm a nut like that. Normally, one of my favorite things would be the pool and two hot tubs. I'm still, however, widdling away at the 64 pounds I gained with my pregnancy (I know, gasp!). So I just couldn't bring myself to pack a swimsuit. I'm happy to report that I didn't gain any weight on vacation, at least. So there's that.

There's no rhyme or reason to how I'm writing this blog, so hey, let's start a new paragraph, shall we? (She's a writer?) We had a few obstacles on our vacation, as I hinted at earlier. I'll start with the teething baby. My son isn't even 4 months old yet, but he's already starting to get a tooth. You can just make out a tiny white spot, but it's there. What an overachiever. I guess he figures if he's as big as an 8 month-old, he might as well prep himself to eat steak and potatoes like a man. With that discomfort, plus a ravenous appetite from what we assume is another growth spurt, (because our child clearly wants to catch up with Shaq's kids), we had some moments of pure delight in the trailer. One night, Wyatt screamed for about 2 hours straight. It was insane, and let's just say I did my share of crying that night, too. And it didn't help, obviously, that I'd just found out that day that my grandpa had passed away. I was a little, shall we say, fragile. I'm sure that contributed to Ryan's decision to treat us to the Westin.

Wow, that got somber. But we also had a lot of fun on this trip. Mammoth is a very cool place, and we enjoyed spending time with Ryan's family. Wyatt was in hold-the-baby heaven. He also really gets a kick out of his cousins. Babies seem to really enjoy other little people. :)

Okay, I'm going to change the subject. Wyatt is almost 4 months old. He has his 4 month appt. on Thursday, so we'll find out just how big our little dude has gotten. Despite some little frustrations like teething and growth spurts, he's actually amazingly fun right now. He smiles and laughs all the time. He's also obsessed with his hands, tongue and feet (in that order). If he could spend hours chewing on one hand, using the other one to pull a foot in front of his face, and experimenting with new ways to stick his tongue out and make new sounds, he'd be in heaven. (And let's face it, that's basically exactly what he gets to do for good chunks of the day, which may explain why he's always smiling and laughing.) He also thinks he can already walk. If you hold him steady and stand him up, he'll lift each foot and try to take a stroll. Again, this is a child who wants to grow up too fast! I figure he ought to roll over, sit on his own and crawl before he walks, but what do I know?

Here's more about our little dude. Let's talk binks. (Those are pacifiers, by the way.) Wyatt pretty much only uses a bink when he's sleeping or in the car (when his parents want him to be sleeping). There's a pretty strong sleep association there, so we're big fans of the bink. Well, Mr. Curious has now figured out how to pull the bink out with his hand and look at it as he's drifting off to sleep. This would be awesome if he were skilled at putting it back in his mouth. But the boy is notorious now for going down for his nap with a bink in his mouth, pulling it out to investigate it as he drifts off, but not fully falling asleep because he can't figure out how to get it back into his mouth. He's also good at spitting it out accidentally because he wants to play with his aforementioned tongue. We don't plan on letting him have the bink past a year old, but we weren't expecting it to have complications by 3 1/2 months! Oh well. It'll just be a race to see if he learns how to sleep without it, or how to put it back in his mouth first. Honestly, I'm okay either way at this stage.

More pics from Mammoth (in the trailer) of the boy:

Vacation, Kuhns Style

Those of you who know me, know that I'm not a camper. I love the mountains, but prefer to experience them in a cozy cabin with all of the amenities of home and plenty of room to stretch out. Especially a cabin with a cleaning service. When we were kids, our family had a nice cabin up at Huntington Lake. Vacation was laying out on the deck getting a tan while reading about 5 new novels and watching sailboats. There were a couple hikes, maybe a day on the lake in a houseboat, and possibly a couple hours of light fishing. Most of these were just alternate ways to work on my tan. We'd make s'mores in the pot bellied stove in the cabin, or down at the country store fire pit. To me, that's a vacation in the mountains. I like the smell of the woods and nice views of a lake. But I've never understood the point of purposely roughing it. Let's pretend we're homeless! Not you style...? Okay, well step it up. Let's pretend we live in a trailer park! I guess I've just never quite understood the appeal.



This week, we're heading off for a vacation, Kuhns style. We're going to Mammoth. We're staying in our trailer (more on that in a second) and will be spending the week doing activities with various members of Ryan's immediate an extended family. And, we'll have Wyatt with us on this adventure, of course. I really want this to be fun. I especially want it, because I know Ryan is totally excited about the trip. I like it when Ryan's happy. And there are certainly aspects of the trip that I'm looking forward to. It'll be cool to see the whole family. I like Ryan's family. They're an entertaining bunch. I also know there will be more hands than usual to hold Wyatt, which is always a plus to a new mom. He'll get to meet his new second cousin (who is only like a two weeks younger than him) Elliott, too. Ryan will hopefully not be working (on job work, project work, or any other work -- crossing fingers), so he shouldn't be overly stressed out or tired. At least I hope that's the case, because I think that's the whole point of being on vacation, right? The air will be clean. The weather should be nice. I've also heard that Mammoth is a pretty cool town. So good stuff, right? Yeah, mostly...



I do have some concerns, however. One, of course, is staying in the trailer. I know, I know. What a princess I am. But as a long-time insomniac, new mom, and general relaxer during vacations, I foresee a few discomforts and inconveniences that in the past, I have never associated with vacation. First is the trailer itself. It's nice enough for what we paid for it, but you know, it's no Ritz-Carlton. The premise for our purchase of said-trailer was for "if sh!t hits the fan". My husband was doing the very responsible thing of protecting his family in case of natural disaster, societal breakdown, or great depression. It's good to have a "just in case" trailer. I could have sworn that was why I was okay with getting a trailer, when for other reasons...like I don't know...vacationing... hadn't convinced me prior to that. So I'm mildly bummed to be vacationing in our "if sh!t hits the fan" trailer after all. Maybe that makes me a spoiled brat, but there it is. I'm also not stoked about the general lack of room when we have so much needed baby gear. And of course, to be perfectly honest, I have protested the very idea of camper/trailer/RV vacations from the moment I met Ryan, because as my grandmother always said "If mom has to take her chores with her on vacation, it's not a vacation for mom". And so... yeah... a few concerns. To Ryan's credit, though, the positives should outweigh the negatives. So there's that.



The truth is, I think we'll have fun, for the most part. That's what I'm hoping. My goal is to be positive and embrace the new vacation standard. I mean, otherwise it's a losing battle. After all, my last name is Kuhns now. It's just one of the many changes I've encountered now that I'm married. I'll let you know if I succeed with my goal to enjoy myself... :)

Ghetto Fabulous, Sorta...

This has been a seriously amusing week. I'll start with an update on Sleep Watch '08. Wyatt is now definitely a child who sleeps through the night. He now sleeps anywhere from 8-10 hours in a block. (The pic is actually of Wyatt after he fell aseep while playing, but it fit the sleep theme, so go with it, okay?) My husband has been telling people about how he suddenly has his wife back. It's true. I didn't even realize just how much my energy and mood was still being affected by the daily broken sleep until I started getting normal, full nights again. All of a sudden, things that have felt overwhelming and difficult since Wyatt was born (like cooking meals that actually require recipes and running more than one errand at a time with the baby in tow) seem totally doable. Sleep. Dude, it's a powerful thing.

While we're on the subject of my adorable little monster, I'll switch to a topic that's less about celebration and more about imperfection. The term is "original sin" when a baby starts to show his flawed humanity - when flashes of rebellion, manipulation and general pissed-off-ness start to replace basic survival reasons to cry. Wyatt turned 3 months old on Tuesday, and he definitely turned that corner. He gets impatient, even when he knows he's about to be fed, and screams to get his way faster. It's no longer "I'm hungry; feed me mama." It's "Speed it up, woman! The prince does not wait for his meal!" My son has learned how to be a brat. Tsk tsk. To his credit, he's also learned other social behaviors like smiling and laughing. And there's a lot more of that than the bratty fits, so I'm not suggesting I have an evil child. I'm just saying, you know, he's learning way too early that there's a system to be worked...

Onward to other things: I got new 20" Denali wheels and a new Denali grill for my Yukon! Needless to say, I don't actually have the Denali model. But the Yukon I have is the fully loaded, nicest non-Denali you can buy. Pretty much, the only differences are the wheels and the grill. Do you see where I'm going here? I basically just upgraded my vehicle for a fraction of the cost of buying it that way, without getting all flashy and ghetto. (No offense to the ghetto-fabulous owners of spinners and super-bling rhinestone grills, but that wasn't quite the look I was going for in the mommy-mobile.) It looks pretty stinkin' good, I think. I haven't gotten a picture of the new grill yet, so I'll have to get back to ya on that, but you can see the new wheels, which are pretty awesome. I also realize that a good percentage of the people I know read this blog could care less about the diameter of wheels, the shine of rims, or the line of a grill on a car. But I've always been a car nut, so I have to be true to my motor-trend reading heritage... :)

I also got paid on one of my latest freelance jobs. There's nothing like a check in your mailbox to brighten up your week. So basically, all of this is just to say that it's been a good week. Whaaat, whaaat.