James the 9-monther

Whosa biggee boy? You are! You are!

I've been thinking this week that baby James has lived as long outside as he was inside. In other words, I had my pregnancy-fountain-of-spit for as long as my baby has been alive. So. Much. Spit. He drools a fair amount, but that's acceptable.

Sweet Baby James weighed 22 pounds 11 ounces at his 9 month checkup on Friday, and he's 29 3/4 inches long.

He giggles and babbles and looks for me in the room if I'm not holding him. He does the same thing for JB in the mornings when I'm at KSL. He likes to be tucked in daddy's arm on the couch playing with something while JB types with the other hand.

He has two teeth on the bottom and one on top that's quickly shooting out and making him look like Nanny McPhee. But there are three other red swollen buds with a bit of white you can just see hovering there. He hasn't been very happy about it.

He's eating much better -- though not the "three solid meals and two snacks" that the pediatrician said he could be doing by now. He just prefers to nurse and I allow it, day and night. I can't help myself, he's my bay-bee.

He likes the puffs he can pick up and eat, and Saturday afternoon when he came on a date with JB and me, he LOVED the creamy warm lobster bisque at Zupas (he was grumpy teething, I felt bad leaving him with the 12-year-old babysitter who had to handle 3 other rambunctious boys).  

He squeaked and babbled in the movie until he fell asleep. He didn't appreciate the finer points of "The Book Thief." But it was a matinee at the dollar theater so I don't feel too bad about bringing him along.

Saturday morning he played with cousin Kate, visiting from Idaho. She's 6 months old and can sit alongside him like a champ.

Buuuuut....she can crawl. Very well. And our baby is like a beached whale on his tummy. I wasn't too worried about it, until I heard his other baby girl cousin Kaylee is also crawling....and the pediatrician mentioned something about "early intervention physical therapy" if he doesn't start to push up better on his hands and knees, or pull up to standing in the next month.

Look at those older brothers trying their hardest to encourage James to "Come on! "COME ON!"

Then they asked me, "But cousin Phin doesn't crawl yet, right? So that's good. And we are winning the teeth war against the other babies." They are very competitive with this baby brother.

About a boy named Andrew

Observe my silly 3-year-old Andrew. Imagine him saying his signature "Eh!" as he scrunches his face.

This could be like one of those blogs where the gal is dressed in an outfit and tells you where everything came from.

Doggy-eared baby hat -- a gift, belonged first to a baby Max, should now be for baby James.
Dinosaur jammies -- Costco? Carters? belonged first to a toddler Benny
Fireman Boots - Costco, belonged first to a toddler Benny (see here)
Bib on the floor -- a gift, given to a baby Andrew

In these pictures, he shows how he likes to snuggle baby James.

He wants to be buddies with him, like Max and Benny are buddies.

Andrew also still wears diapers -- size 4. Incidentally, baby James also wears size 4 diapers.  And, yes, that's underwear Andrew is wearing OVER his diaper.  No, potty-training isn't going well, why do you ask?

Now to my favorite picture in recent memory:

Isn't that pink tongue to die for?  JB emailed it to me this at work, with the message, "Which do you think he likes more, the waffles or the syrup?"  I was on the phone lining up an interview for a story when the email came in. I clicked to open the picture, and burst out laughing. The person on the phone was not amused.

Chill-axin'

Some mornings -- like no-school holidays when I still have to be on the radio reallllyyyy early, or Sundays when JB has Bishopbric meetings really early and we don't have church til the afternoon -- our four sons hang out in their jammies with the other parent for a while.

The hope is they will stay nice and chill and relaxed and calm and just mosey through the morning.  Maybe even sleep in a little.

Ha. Hahaha.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sigh, that was funny.

I think the big boys slept in til 8 once. A couple of times I have set their clock behind as much as a half-hour to keep them inside their room a little longer after a late night. Max, Ben and Andrew are all in the same room downstairs, and they know not to come out til they see a 7 on the clock.

Benny and Max are allowed to watch a TV show in the morning.  Benny loves sports so so much, as soon as he saw a 7 on his clock last Sunday, he shot out of that room and left the other two sleeping. He turned on the channel he knows to be Root Sports.....but it was a vacuum infomercial. He told me later that he kept waiting and waiting for the "really long vacuum commercial" to end and for sports to come on. I think he sat through the whole half-hour.

He also told me our vacuum doesn't work very well and we could do much better.

Dressing up

Sometimes, we go out on the town. Well, to a church activity with a photo booth.

We could be royals.

And sometimes, JB sends me pictures like these of my baby boy wearing a breast cancer awareness headband from the U.

Gotta represent.

The highs and lows of radio reporting

It's been a back-and-forth, high-and-low, up-and-down kind of week in my job.  I don't blog about it much here, but I thought I'd run through just some of the stories I did this week (I do around 3 a day).

Monday
My green coat and I showed up in several Deseret News photographs as I covered a protest at the Governor's office. There were more reporters/photographers there than protestors.

I was there for hours, and any time someone new came to talk to the protestors we huddled up around them again. I kept getting shoved into a cameraman's armpit, or had a reporter breathe down my neck as we scrunched together.

Tuesday
Fun stories on the 3 Utah women ski jumpers in their first Olympics, and on Joss Christensen, the Utahn who won Gold in the Ski Slopestyle.

Wednesday
I worked for a long time to put together a longer, indepth report to run Thursday on heroin overdose deaths in Utah. Many families had called us after Philip Seymour Hoffman's death.

Thursday
Two assaults at the University of Utah. When I got to work at 4 AM, my executive producer said to me, "Go up to campus soon and find people to talk about it."  !

Friday
A police chase and crash; then a viewing party for Utah's Noelle Pikus-Pace in the Olympic skeleton race. I saw the live feed that morning with hundreds of her really nice family, friends and supporters in a movie theater. I reported live during her final race with all the cheering around me. That was really fun.

Conclusion
So you see the crime and grime and heartbreak mixed in with more upbeat stories.  It's been a couple weeks of this. I covered the funeral last week for officer shot and killed in Utah County, did a story on the 5 new apps your teens are using, and had follow-up stories to the school where lunches were thrown away. 

Some days I think, "It's early, it's dark, it's cold, and this is a depressing story." But the next day it's, "I think I'm making a difference with this story" or, "This story is so awesome, I really hope people hear it."

James at 8 months

(James pre-haircut a couple weeks ago, reigning in the chair)

Before James was born, a neighbor was giving away furniture that belonged to her late grandmother, Gloria. The most comfy, squishy blue recliner rocking chair was among the group.

Sometimes I think of Gloria when I sit there -- I think of her eternal optimism, of her twinkling eyes and that her favorite color was yellow.

The chair is perfect for nursing sweet baby James, and for grabbing a little more sleep during middle of the night feedings (yes, my baby still has a middle of the night feeding at 8 months old).

It's also a perfect chair for sitting him up like a big boy. JB will send me pictures while I'm at KSL, around 7 or 8 AM, right around the time he gets the baby dressed for the day.

Though it's awfully fun to just keep him un-dressed for a while. Because.....mmmmm nom nom nom. Nom.

On the morning of the 6th JB sent me these, because our baby is now 8 months old.

"Hello!"

"Hiya,"

"Wait, what's on my tummy?"

"Yeah, I'm going to have to eat that."

In fact now starts the age of putting everything into the mouth.  It's a good thing he's not mobile yet, because despite our strict instructions, little Legos and Rainbow Loom bands sometimes show up on the living room floor. We found out Andrew was carrying them around, not the older boys. He'll hold up a block and say, "See my alligator?" Sure, sure.....

Baby James is showing no sign of wanting to crawl or scoot yet. His day consists of Exersaucer-lap-living room floor-crib-highchair-hip-baby carrier-kitchen floor-lap-hip-crib-queen bed.

He loves to grab faces and bite chins and pat cheeks and smack stuff and splash. 

He's getting better at eating solid food. He likes the baby food puffs. And so does Andrew. "My 'nack!" yelled Andrew when I took them away from him yesterday.

His 3 older brothers love to hold him. Andrew doesn't weigh much more than him but really wants to hold him on his lap. James arches his back and squeals. Max and Ben like to carry him around, which sometimes makes me nervous, but it is very convenient to have those extra arms. And I am trying harder to say yes when they ask to hold him. I realize he doesn't belong only to me, he's their baby brother, too. 

As mentioned, he doesn't sleep through the night yet. But, I think other babies are going to bed at 9 or 10 when their normal parents do. I have to put all the boys down by 7:30 so I can go to bed. So he gets hungry again before the night is over, and I'm a big softie, and I like to nurse James before I leave. But I know he could do better. He wakes up early for JB sometimes, too.  JB and I are tired.  Almost always tired.

During the day while nursing, he gets distracted easily by a noise or the sight of a brother. So I've been going into his room to feed him in the blue chair in the hopes that he'll get nice and full. But the boys come in. They need me, too, I know. And Andrew climbs onto my knees with a book from the nearby basket and I read it to him with my free hand. Another reason why I love the blue chair.

James's first haircut

This sweet baby boy was born with a ton of hair, and didn't lose any of it like my other babies. Despite it getting in his eyes and curling over his ears, I have been in denial of him needing a hair cut for a while.

JB: The time has come to talk about...
Mary: Ssssshhhhhhhh. Other babies are jealous of this amazing hair.

A few weeks later, he would try again.

JB: Don't you think James is looking a little like a baby hobo?
Mary: Wha? Nooooooo.

And again.


JB: I think we should get baby J a trim-up.
Mary: WHY DO YOU HATE OUR BABY?

Finally, when rice cereal was getting stuck to his hair and then in his eyes, I gave in.

We went to the barber shop and he sat on my lap like such a big boy.

He was very curious about what was going on around him.  Andrew was curious about what was in his nose:

She started to trim away. And I started the ugly cry.

Ok, stop it Mary, it's not an operation, just a trim!  I mean, look how much better he is looking already:

At one point James tried to turn around and nurse. "Since we are sitting here, momma....."

Starting to feel like he's done with this:

Done!

Cuter!

Stronger!

And still my baby, even with shorter hair.