We're in the last stages of weaning, which is a little bittersweet for me. I have loved breastfeeding Grant over these past 14 months. At around 11 months old, I started only breastfeeding him twice a day, first thing in the morning and last thing before he went to bed. He was getting increasingly distracted during his daytime feeding and I figured he'd just give all of them up before too long. I also had no idea how hard the transition to whole milk would be!

But now that Grant likes his whole milk and drinks it up like crazy, I've been tapering off the feedings for the past couple of weeks. I started dropping the morning feeding. That lasted for a few days, then I started feeding him every other night instead of every night. I wasn't intending to stop this quickly, but it seems to be working out okay. He will definitely take it if I offer, but he's never pulled on my shirt or acted in any way like he specifically wants it (I'm glad I haven't gotten to that point!).

I never expected that I'd do it for this long, but it is a little sad to be done with this chapter of his life. I guess it's just another one of those things that means he's getting to be a big boy and is growing up! Sniff sniff!!

Daddy's birthday!

Dean's birthday was on Saturday, and I thought I'd better write about it before I forget what we did to celebrate! I don't have any pictures uploaded yet (and I didn't take many), but hopefully I'll get to it in the next couple of days.

It's become somewhat of a tradition (if two times counts!) to go get donuts on the morning of our birthdays. Mine fell on a Saturday this year, and now Dean's did, so I guess it may be a little harder to continue when they fall during the week. But we went over to Riley's Donuts (close to our house, and very tasty!) and had breakfast.....Dean got the biggest cinnamon roll I think I've ever seen, AND a blueberry donut! I had to have one with chocolate sprinkles, and we got Grant a few donut holes (even though we brought his Kix too). He spit out the first bite of donut and made his classic scrunched up "yuck" face, but then gave it another try. He was begging for more before too long.....I think he ended up eating a few of them. That boy likes sweets!

After we got home, our 9-year-old neighbor Brynna and her friend came over to see Grant (any time Brynna has a friend over to play, she wants to show Grant to them. We've already met four or five of her friends!). Grant and I played outside with them (and Brynna's dog Wrigley) in the front yard for a few minutes. Then Dean walked outside, and Wrigley immediately ran over to the door and started jumping and barking at him! We think that Wrigley is protective of Grant, because one other time Dean went to grab Grant abruptly as he was about to fall, and Wrigley pounced towards him and started barking like crazy. So my guess is that he thinks Dean is trying to hurt Grant. Anyway, it was funny watching it all. Brynna's mom Collette ended up coming out in her robe to tell Brynna to get Wrigley in the house. Brynna was trying to pull him away, but that dog was persistent and very strong! All the while, Grant was just happily walking around in the yard without even seeming to notice what was going on!

While Grant took a nap, I made Dean's cake. One of the reasons I really like making two-layer cakes is that you can taste samples of it after taking it out of the oven.....you have to make the layers flat, you know??! Brynna came over and ate a piece, and Grant of course kept wanting more and more bites too. I hope he is not diabetic by the time he's three!

Anyway, later we went out to do a couple of errands, and Grant fell asleep in the car on the way home (which he doesn't do very often anymore). When he woke up around 4pm, we got in the car and headed straight for Texas Land and Cattle. Dean (like most guys) wanted a steak for his birthday dinner.....I will never understand boys and their extreme love of steak! Grant did okay for the first 20 minutes or so (and enjoyed playing with the crayons a little), but then his patience wore off. Once he was done eating his dinner, he wanted to be moving around. So we had to eat our meal really fast and rush out before Grant imploded on us. It was kind of disappointing to spend a lot on a meal and have to leave before you're ready, but I guess that's how it is with toddlers! The food wasn't that great, though....we'd never go back there again. And, we lost Grant's pacifier (and strap) in there too, so it was not the best experience!

We came home, put Grant to bed before too long, and ate some yummy chocolate cake. Then Dean and I watched "3:10 to Yuma." It was a really good movie.....we recommend it!

New Appliances

Soon after we moved into our house (built in 1995), we realized that the appliances would be in need of updating fairly soon. The stovetop/oven was fine, but the dishwasher and microwave were getting pretty outdated! We had replaced our dishwasher before we moved out of our old house, and we got a great GE for less than $400. In our new house, I was getting tired of rewashing a lot of bowls that didn't look so great after going through the first wash.

So we went ahead and replaced the dishwasher, microwave, and oven....we wanted to switch from white to black (to match our refrigerator) so we ended up replacing the oven too. I think the black looks good in our kitchen....we thought about getting stainless steel, but it was quite a bit more expensive. I'd also love to replace the countertops and backsplash too, but that will have to wait a couple more years! Here are some before and after pictures.

Today, Grant....

- Ate Kix for the first time and liked them! Until now, I've been giving him a bowl of sugary cereal (Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Golden Grahams), and I'll fish the cereal out of the milk and give it to him while we're eating breakfast. Then I'll use the sugary milk to put in his sippy cup, since he's had such a hard time adjusting to regular milk. But this can be a lot of work, and I know it's probably not the best for him to be eating that much sugary cereal all the time! So today I tried Kix. He actually sat on my lap to eat because he was extra clingy this morning and kept crying when I tried to put him in his highchair. And it was really cute....he'd reach into my bowl and pick out a couple of pieces of cereal from the top of my bowl, and fed them to me! It's like he just knew what was mine and what was his. And he ate up the Kix and really seemed to enjoy them! He's also done a lot better about drinking non-doctored milk lately, so I think it's good to wean him off the Cinnamon Toast Crunch before he comes to expect it every day!

- Climbed onto the coffee table, and did it a few times in a row! He's been in a climbing stage in the past week or two; he's always climbing into his toy crates and sometimes gets stuck because he's not tall enough to make it out easily! And he LOVES to put things into containers and baskets, then reach in and take them out. So he'll throw something into his bathtub, then reach in and try to retrieve it, and today he actually fell in headfirst! He's done it a couple times before so I didn't really worry, and he didn't even make a peep when he did it!


These are a couple of pictures from a couple of weeks ago; I'm still working on uploading our most recent pictures. I think he has a mouthful of biscuit in the first one. The second was when he was playing with/being tickled by Daddy on the couch. Notice that he's still just got three teeth on the bottom; he has a second tooth on the left side that's been in now for a couple of months, but there's no sign of the one on the right! Hopefully it's down there somewhere!

Like father, like son??

Dean and Grant have great fun together at the dinner table; when Grant is in an especially good mood, he'll make faces and Dean will copy him (which just makes him want to do it more!) I would say that Dean is teaching bad habits except that Grant is usually the one who starts it! Here are a few faces from dinner a couple of weeks ago:Here's his new fish face that he discovered himself a few weeks ago:
I'm not sure what this face is!
A couple more silly faces: