Fitz and Other Things

Fitz hit his 6 month mark at the end of September. It’s so cliché to say, but the time really has just flown by. The lives of my children are blurs in my memory.

Fitz had his 6 month checkup three weeks ago and was pronounced healthy and strong. He grabbed the doctor’s stethoscope and did not want to let go. Since Fitz frequently is grabbing my hair, my glasses, my shirt, etc. I can attest to the fact that once he has his hands on something, it is not easy to get his hands off that something. The stats from the appointment:

Head circumference: 18 inches, 90th percentile
Length: 29 inches, above 95th percentile
Weight: 20 lbs., 12 oz., between 90th and 95th percentile

This is not a small kid. The stats explain why he is wearing 12 month size clothes.

Fitz is doing well. He army crawls all over the house, has started crawling on hands and knees, frequently is up on both hands and feet, can hold his own bottle, gets himself into a sitting position, has started pulling himself to standing and is generally hitting all the physical milestones early. He continues to be a happy baby, but is crying a lot more these days, since he is falling over and bumping into things more. He is fascinated by the one brick high hearth in front of our fireplace, which he recently figured out how to crawl up onto. As a little girl I once spent 12 days in traction and a couple of months in a cast because of the damage a brick hearth can do. I’m not thrilled with Fitz’s obsession.


We started Fitz out on rice cereal and at first he hated it. He would eat it, but only because I forced the spoon in his mouth. He would keep turning his head and making faces every time I'd try to feed him. He seems to have gotten used to the rice cereal though and now we've added green beans to his diet. He likes them better than the rice cereal. He's super adorable when he eats and very patient. He's completely happy waiting for me to feed him and hasn't attempted to grab the spoon out of my hand. Since our dining room is carpeted, I appreciate that greatly.

First taste of rice cereal. Can you see the love?

As for the other things:

There is a lot going on. The move to the new house went just okay. There is a ton of stuff to do – organizing, taking even more to DI (why do we have so many stupid things?), putting pictures up on walls, buying appliances, cleaning up the yard and house exterior. Yikes. I hate moving. I might have to live in this 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1000 square foot home for the rest of my days. I really hate moving.

Alek was suspended from school a few weeks ago because he got in a fight with a few kids that were verbally bullying him and his friends. Alek has impulse control issues and a bad temper. Not a good combination. So Alek did a lot of chores. He even did chores over at grandma and grandpa’s. He did a pretty good job of taking his punishment and not complaining – not a perfect job, but a pretty good job. Since then, he’s been doing much better at school; I think he actually took this incident to heart and understands he needs to change. He started cello a few weeks ago in an afterschool program and he really loves it. He wants to play a sport, too, but I have decided that I have a one-activity-besides-scouts-at-a-time rule. I don’t want to become one of those families that is constantly running from here to there because their kids are involved in 5 million things and then we end up never seeing each other. Sports will have to wait until the summer.

I love Alek.

Katie is a weirdo. Josh hates it when I say that, but I don’t mean it in a bad way. She’s just very silly and different. She’s also sassy and stubborn and a drama queen and a tree climbing, shark lover. She’s basically everything you could possibly love in a little girl. I love all my kids a ton and I am perfectly happy to have three sons. But I thank my lucky stars every day that I have a daughter and that that daughter is Katie. She is so fun and brings a totally different and amazing energy to our home. And her new thing is to say, “too either,” like, “Mommy, I have to go to the store, too either.” It’s very cute and funny. She also recently discovered a hand-me-down “ballerina” dress among her things. Once she had it on, she didn’t want to take it off. She danced all over the house and kept playing with the skirt. When she put it on, she ran to Alek and said, “Alek, look! I’m so pretty!” Seriously love this kid.



Charlie is doing well. He is saying more words all the time, although I still have a lot of trouble figuring most of them out. His therapies are going well and he is enjoying them. He’s doing a better job of communicating and is actually putting sentences together, although he still doesn’t necessarily direct his communication to anyone and he is hard to understand. But he’s coming along and it’s great to see his progress. He’s playing with toys a lot more and is spending more time stacking blocks and putting together connecting toys. He also is enjoying having a yard, although he still loves to put everything in his mouth and will swallow just about any object (we did find a coin in his diaper the other day – first kid in our family to do that). When he was playing outside over the weekend, I had to keep going outside to keep him from eating mud, rocks, sticks, fuzzy plant things – basically everything. Oh Charlie!

See the mud?

He also escaped from the backyard. He somehow managed to get the fence open and he went across the street and was in the neighbor's yard. Josh had just come inside for a minute and when he went back out, Charlie was gone. It was pretty terrifying. Fortunately, Charlie was fine, but Josh did some work on the fence that day that will prevent that from happening again.

This is a big deal.

I think Charlie's favorite thing about our new house is his bedroom. In the townhouse, his bedroom was upstairs and we didn't usually let him go up to his room to play; it was too hard to supervise him and make sure he wasn't getting into anything. Now that we're on one story, he'll just run into his room and hang out in there for a long time, looking at books, jumping on Katie's bed, getting every single toy out of the toy box. He loves it.

Josh and I are both doing okay, but we are busy. Josh got the horror comic job I posted about. Word is that the people involved in the project can’t stop talking about Josh’s pic, which he inked last week and they think the inked version is amazing too. They originally proposed to pay him one rate, but after seeing his inked version of the picture, they’re going to pay him a little more than they originally offered. He got the first script this week and is starting to work on the pages. Besides this job, he is still a full-time dad, the cook, working on his own project and doing all the organizing around the house I should be doing. He’s pretty amazing! Last week, he made a special dinner just for me (he made something else for the rest of the family) that was hot and waiting for me when I came home from Young Women’s. He’s the most considerate person on the planet.

The inked version

I am still actively involved in Young Women’s at church and somehow got talked into heading up the Young Women in Excellence event – which is a carnival, so you know, hardly any work involved. Fortunately, I have a lot of dependable leaders to delegate stuff to and who have amazing ideas for how to make the event a success. Hooray! I also got roped into chairing the Halloween festivities for our floor at work. I am also taking a community college course, but it’s online and it’s totally easy. Not a lot of stress associated with it, just one more time sucker. Work was extraordinarily stressful and lame last week. Everyone is going a wee bit crazy and taking frustrations out on each other. It’s awesome. On the other hand, I met with the big boss the other day and she said I was doing a great job. Also, my company is getting me a cell phone. WHA? So now I am important enough that I warrant a cell phone paid for by my company? Weird. I felt like I entered the Twilight Zone when she told me I was getting one.

Did I mention there are a ton of chickens in our neighborhood? They love to roam wherever and are frequently in our yard. See?

One of many that were in our front yard that day.

Anyway, that's part of the update. Check back soon for more cute pictures and video from the primary talent show.