bath in the sink....

donovan loves bathtime and has since his first one. we use to put him in a tub in the sink, but he started splashing so much he got everything in the kitchen wet so we started putting him in his bathtub in our bathtub. this is labor intensive with the whole putting the tub in the tub and gathering all his things together...and lifting him in and out...and sitting on my old knees, so one day i got lazy and thought it would be easier to put him in the kitchen sink tub-less.........

long story short dan came home to a kitchen floor covered in wet towels. he soaked things i cannot believe that water reached, and once it got started there was nothing i could do to stop it except grab the camera for all to enjoy!

quest for the perfect holiday card picture

we spent friday after thanksgiving trying to capture a holiday card picture while we had grandaddy and his sweet camera in town. there were lots of great pics so enjoy!

thanksgiving

over the past few years dan and i have hosted thanksgiving at our house. we love doing this because it means no travel and a laid back event. we have my parents, granny, lisa and gordon, and our friend aaron. everyone has requests for certain food favorites and so that makes for an easy delegation. dan fries a turkey and we get a honey baked ham and voila...thanksgiving!

for dan part of thanksgiving is making sure to have room for a turkey sandwich in the evening which means we snack beginning at noon...eat at 2 o'clock...which really means 3:30, and then that means timing is perfect for a late night turkey sandwich. we are thankful to be with the family that we celebrate with, but miss the family that cannot be with us.

our tradition stretches into friday where i decorate the inside of the house and dan hangs the lights outside for christmas, and of course we take advantage of our company to get this done :)

donovan was a trooper this thanksgiving and stayed right on schedule to allow us to sit and enjoy the meal! he also had his first taste of turkey.....and was not impressed.

7 months

we have had a big month with lots of changes......

• donovan transitioned from sleeping swaddled to sleeping in a sleep sack
• he also started becoming attached to a blanket....we have this routine where we put him in his sleep sack, put his nuk in, hand him his blanket and he snuggles it to his face and rolls over on his side....this happens almost every night....precious
• he sat up on his own, and seemed to get the hang of it immediatly .
• the day after sitting up on his own he found himself on all fours in the crawling position. since then he is a pro at taking the "plank position" and crawling backwards.
• he has sprouted 2 bottom teeth. we have been told he was teething since 4 months but had not seen any teeth. one day i was checking his mouth for thrush...that is another story...when i noticed 2 tiny teeth!
• he is wearing 9-12 month clothes
• he is wearing size 3 diapers
• he is very scheduled. he eats at 9am, 12am, 3pm, 6pm......he eats 3 meals a day complete with 2-3oz. veg/ 2-3oz. fruit/ 1oz protein and 6 oz. bottles......he would eat more but we had to intervene when he got up to eating 10 oz. solid food one day (average at this age is 4oz.)!!!
• he has been practicing feeding himself with bread, yogurt bits, and o's.
• some new foods have been black beans, lentils, quinoa, hummus, chicken, bread and wait for it.......egg.......i do not suggest this
• he loves to drink from a glass. when he sees others drinking he screams and shakes with pure excitement....very cute
• his favorite toy right now are blocks and his car that he likes to ride in in the driveway....his favorite off limit toys are computers, cell phones and the remote

granpa & grandma comes to visit

donovan's grampa and grandma murphy just came for a visit. we had beautiful weather for the weekend and were able to grill some steaks and sightsee around the area. they had not seen donovan since this past july so they were pleased to see a quickly growing boy. he was in a great mood and hammed it up all week. he showed off his "moves" while trying to crawl. donovan and i were able to take walks with grandma and donovan talked the whole time. dan and i will not be visiting new york this holiday season so it was nice to see the murphy's as a kick off to the holiday season.

solid food

donovan began the world of solid foods when he turned 4 months. he has worked himself up to starting protein and finger foods this past week after turning 6 months. i have found that the ins and outs of solid foods are like brain surgery for me.

i have an incredible amount of guilt that donovan was on that crazy hypoallergenic formula for the first months of his life, and that he is still on formula (for those of you that did not know he had a dairy allergy). breastfeeding did not come easy to me, and it did not come easy for donovan and that is where the pump comes in.....pumping is just an added thing to do in a days time while taking care of the little guy, and feeding him, and feeding myself....and on a good day taking a bathroom break and so i did it for 4 months all the time freezing the milk in hopes that he could someday drink it. 4 months in i was adding more hours at work and had freezers full all over north carolina and pumping became even more of a thorn in my side and so i stopped. the very fact that i have just spent a paragraph justifying myself shows the guilt i have that donovan is now on formula. he did finally transition into tolerating dairy and quickly the frozen milk was gone...which means he is back on formula. it is a heavy burden to carry that i produce a perfect food for donovan and i chose to quit, but alas here we are...and so i try to transfer all that guilt into making his solid food.

i go all over town gathering organic foods for him to eat. i lose sleep over how to make sure that donovan is getting the perfect balance of foods, and shape him to be the healthiest boy in the whole world. and so weekends have turned into me steaming, grinding and freezing foods for donovan to eat. now my freezer is filled with frozen cubes of food that i have to choose daily and hope it is the right choice into molding my son into superman. for those of you that are worried about my sanity i will admit that i know this is ridiculous. logically i know there are millions of marathon running doctors out there that live to be 100 and were raised on similac and gerber purees, but emotionally i feel that i have stolen something from him.

this post was just supposed to be a quick few videos before i felt the need to pour my heart out...so here are somewhere near a million long videos of donovan trying different foods. he is incredibly cute and i can still feel the excitement of him trying each new food...but folks the videos really show nothing....there are very few funny faces or huge messes. what you will see is a boy who loves his food ....all food ...any food.......

grandaddy turns 60 ...and halloween!!

we headed to burnsville this weekend for a slew of exciting things ...and a few extras! we planned the trip to celebrate daddy's 60th birthday, give the preacher a thumbs up for his 36 years of service and show off donovan's halloween costume. i love halloween and have been excited about halloween from a child's perspective....or really most holidays from a child's perspective.


donovan does not travel well. he hates his carseat and can only be entertained in it for about an hour before meltdown ensues, which makes a simple trip to burnsville a nightmare. there is something about an ear piercing scream that makes me feel like i might come out of my skin. it is such a weird mix of emotions and thoughts that go through my head during these meltdowns that can range from "he is dying...i know he is dying...that is a death scream" to "he has got to shut up or i am going to save myself by jumping out of this moving car". my parents met us at the door and must have seen the glazed look on our faces because they offered to keep donovan while we went out to dinner, which was delightful!



my parents are building an addition onto their house and so day and night is spent either picking out paint/tile, or ordering around contractors. daddy requested to play golf on saturday, which is dan's favorite birthday gift to give, and mama and i tag-teamed donovan and house cleaning. we did get a surprise visit from my friend phoebe and her mom to break up the day and love up on donovan. daddy got roped into giving out pumpkins at "trunk-or-treat", which is hosted by the church, so we dressed donovan up in his skeleton outfit and took him to town. it was a neat event with all the merchants open and the town full of kids in costume. we finished up the night with daddy's birthday dinner.


sunday was a big day because it was the last time we would see mr. muri serve our home church. this is a big deal to us because he has been with the church 36 years, baptized matthew and myself, married dan and myself, buried my grandfather and dedicated donovan. the plan to get us all to church clean, dressed, fed and napped went smooth as silk up until the nap point which stretched until 12:15 that day......and for those of you non-church goers church is over at 12:00p. luckily i was able to sneak in for the last few minutes and bid farewell to the preacher while dan kept things under control at home.

our neighborhood in cornelius has a big halloween to-do and dan and i strategically planned our trip home to miss it because of our busy weekend and need to get donovan back on schedule and get ready for the week. alas...we got home during the thick of the rush....candyless. quick trip to
walgreens to get some candy...rush to cook donovan's dinner....rush to unpack car.....rush to wash clothes....rush to put donovan to bed....rush to eat dinner.....this is not what i pictured for our first halloween, but alas, i would not give it up.