Fall Fun with Mason

Mason turned 9 months nearly 4 weeks ago, and so began our fall. We have been enjoying this beautiful weather change as well as all the changes in the Greene house! Mason at 9 months became extremely mobile and even attempted a couple steps unassisted before plopping onto his bottom, but he is still not yet ready to walk. He started holding his arm out when you would tell him to say bye-bye and since then has really gotten the hang of waving at people. At 9 months he started saying bye-bye but would only say it occasionally depending on his mood and when he'd say bye, it was well after the moment had passed. Since his last update at 8 months he has gotten another tooth in that makes 3 on the bottom and one on top. We also took Mason on his first trip to the Zoo this past month on the 1st of October. Neither Landon or I have been since probably out middle school days to the best of our recollection. It was a celebration of our 3 year wedding anniversary and we couldn't think of anything better than a fun filled day at the Asheboro Zoo, just the 3 of us. Mason had the absolute best time, he has always had a love for animals and fish. He was so interested in all there was to see and I'd like to think he gets that fascination from both Landon and I. All 3 of us had a blast, the weather couldn't have been anymore perfect and it was by far one of the most enjoyable days i have ever had. Spending time with mason and Landon together is the greatest gift i could have ever asked for and the Zoo was just so much fun! Mason's 9 month old birthday started off kind of rocky after Mason had a night of crying and sleeplessness to which we woke up the next morning to find he had busted blood vessels all over his entire face. It was absolutely horrible looking and although he seemed to be feeling fine we thought it was best to have the doctor take a look at it. I took him to the doctor that morning and we were horrified to find out that she thought it could be a serious issue with his blood clotting properly, so she sent mason and i directly to Presbyterian children's hospital for blood work to be done. Mason and i waited for hours for someone to take his blood but when they finally drew his blood mason did amazingly well, he didn't even cry, just a little flinch while he sucked on his paci and played with his lucky green care bare that the hospital staff gave him. It was so nice to see such friendly and caring people concerned for my sweet boy. Mason seemed very pleased with his new care bear and it was really ironic that his care bear had a lucky clover on it! We were truly blessed with "luck" and were so relieved when masons test scores came back normal and the doctor told us the pitikia was just from mason straining during his crying fit. He was back at the Dr the next morning for his 9 month stats where he weighed 17 lbs 11 oz and measured 29 inches long. His doctor said it was time for Mason to start on more solid foods and that we should begin to introduce more table foods, textures, and a sippy cup. We started giving mason stage 3 foods and over the last month, he has began eating some soft table foods like mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and mashed bananas. He was not crazy over the new textures and would sometimes gag a little but has quickly come around and is now loving table foods and stage 3's. He also took right to his nubby sippy cup and now drinks all his formula from the sippy cup. We are basically bottle free at this point. Luckily Mason's face cleared up almost completely in 3 days which was just in time for our fall pictures. The month of October with Mason has been great! We have really enjoyed Mason's first fall and kicked off the month of October with fall pictures at the pumpkin patch in York. Mason was 9 months and 2 days old the day we visited the patch for pictures and fun! Mason loved the chickens and thought the pigs were funny at first until one pig nipped his hand which made him cry. We had a great time though and Kim took some amazing pics of us as a family and some of mason at the patch too. A couple days later my mom and i took mason to a cute little pumpkin stand near the house to look at their pumpkins. They gave us a cute little wagon for mason to ride in and we put him a blanket in it and pulled him around while we looked. he absolutely loved riding in the wagon, it was his first time riding in one and we took some adorable pics of him in the wagon and with all the beautiful pumpkins and mums. mom bought mason an adorable little mini pumpkin with a silly face painted on it and mason loved playing with it! The weekend before Halloween we took mason and his cousins to a boo bash festival where they dressed up and enjoyed painting pumpkins, eating cotton candy, and playing games. We also took the three of them to our church carnival the day before Halloween, where mason had a great time riding in his stroller while smiling and laughing at all the other kids at the carnival. The girls played lots of fun games and took home a bag full of candy they won. Mason really enjoyed watching his cousins ride the spinning swings, he thought that was very funny!! We wrapped up our Halloween with trick or treating on Sunday with me, Landon, my mom, brother, and sister in law, as well as my nieces molly and Madison!! it was a super fun night and i couldn't get over how much fun mason had trick or treating!! yes, mason did trick or treat, he loved it, he is such a social fella and loves to meet new people and smiling faces. when we weren't carrying him, he would ride in his stroller with his candy bucket clipped onto it and Landon would push him in his stroller up to the door with his cousins! Sometimes he would pick out his own candy out of the bowl and hold onto it for dear life. he wasn't sure what it was but he liked holding it and didn't want anyone to take it away!! He would laugh and squeal in delight and loved being pushed around in his stroller, kicking his legs and flailing his arms around in excitement!! He loved seeing all the other kids out trick or treating too!! We really had an amazing Halloween and i cant believe that this was the first of many more memorable Halloween's to come!! Now we are looking forward to Mason turning 10 months in less than a week and we are looking forward to our first thanksgiving with mason as a family!! We have so much to be thankful for this year!! I'm greatly looking forward to this holiday season!!

Here's Pics from the Zoo Mason is 8 mon. 2 weeks

Halloween Day Pics Mason is 9 months 2 weeks

HGBC Fall Fest Mason 9 months 2 wks with his grandma

Madison 7 years 10 months, Molly 4 years 11 months

Mason on his rocking horse 9 months 1 day

Pumpkin Stand with Grandma and Mom Mason is 9 months 3 days

Mason at the Pumpkin Patch in York with Mom & Dad
9 Months 2 days Pictures by Kimberly Wyatt

8 Months has come and gone

Another month has come and gone, and I find it all the more difficult to scratch up the time to update this blog on what's happening in our lives!! Mason is now 8 months & 11 days old, and he is doing so much these days!! His crawling skills have improved immensely and he is incredibly fast. You can set him down and as soon as you turn around, you will hear his little hands and feet slapping the tile as he chases you across the house!! He can go anywhere and get into anything, and he takes full advantage of this. He loves to stand up, he will grab anything he can get especially the backs of your pant legs to pull himself up. Now he has begun to let go and stand on his own for a few seconds before plopping onto his butt, or even better, lowering himself slowly to the floor. He has learned to control his sitting and will patiently lower his bottom down to the floor with his arms out in front for balance! He is creeping from one object/piece of furniture to the next. He gets into everything now, he loves to pull up on the recliner, couch, coffee table, fish tank, toilets, trash can and kitchen cabinets. He can also stand up using flat surfaces like the wall or window. He still likes his walker but is not so crazy over the bouncer anymore. He has a new fascination with his alphabet pal caterpillar, his sesame street activity table, and his push car, but other than those he mostly spends his time crawling & exploring every crack and crevice in our home, and standing up as much as possible. We have caught him in the kitchen opening the drawers and chewing on the handles, so we have started baby proofing the house over the last few days! We installed a baby gate across the doorway in his room and we also invested in a large living room carpet earlier this month. The rug was a great invetment because it gives him a huge area he can crawl and play on within the living room, and the adults have enjoyed it too because we can now sit on the floor as well. Other challenges have been keeping his and ling's toys separate, he loves her toys and she loves his, which is a bad combination because they both slobber all over their toys and they both put them into their mouths! I hate germs and I hate dog hair getting on mason and the thought of it going in his mouth, is too much for me!! We also are now dealing with the fact that mason understands food & eating and he will no longer let us sit through a meal peacefully without him having a bottle or food of his own. This has been tough because Landon and i are not on a 4 hour schedule like mason and we are still only feeding him organic foods with no added salt or sugar. Mason, along with everyone else, cannot understand why he cant have some of our foods, it's not just an issue over eating organic, everyone fails to consider the fact that Mason cannot handle textures yet and that we are trying to prevent food allergies. This is very frustrating and has caused some major "Mason Meltdowns" in several restaraunts! He can however snack on the puffs now and does try to pick them up between his fingers and feed himself, which he is successful at about 3 out of 10 times. It is pretty adorable to watch him feed himself. We don't have any height or weight stats yet because his next Dr appointment is not until next month, but he is still eating 6 oz bottles 4 times a day and is eating fruit and sometimes cereal for breakfast and a veggie and a fruit at night. He has started eating the puffs for babies and has done really well with them. He has also started drinking some juice, we finally found a flavor he likes... grape! He still doesn't want to drink out of the sippy cups, just plays with them and gets mad when they leak. He is about to outgrow his car seat, he is so long that his feet hangout and so heavy, hardly anyone can carry him in the car seat. Because of the hassle of the carseat, we have started using my cart covers that i made, and letting him ride in the grocery carts like a big kid. He also sits in the high chairs at restaurants now too with the cover. He says mama, dada, gaga, baba, luh, and the newest word "geh" which is egg. We gave him plastic eggs to play with the other day and he became all about the word "geh" "gig" and once in a while we actually heard "egg" but now, he mostly uses "geh". He loves to talk and babble, and has really started to hone in on his own little personality. He will give me kisses on the mouth, he hasn't yet gave them to anyone else except Madison once. He is still very much a mommas boy and wants me to hold him and play with him all the time! We have had some changes in our schedule since i started back to school, Mason now goes to Landon's cousin Lisa's house on Wednesdays while i am in school, and he loves it! He loves her little boy Logan,so much and i can tell he really loves being around other children! Landon keeps mason on Mondays while I'm in school and that works out great, because they get their own special time together, which is hard to get with Landon's busy work schedule. I love how well this has worked out this semester!! I feel completely comfortable leaving him on those two days a week and i never thought i would be able to do it, but it's totally working and i am so happy to be making strides towards graduating!! Another new activity that we have added to our schedule is story time at our local library on Tuesday mornings. Mason loves to play, crawl and interact with the other babies but has little interest in the books and songs! He seems way too independent to sit in my lap for half an hour when there is so much to explore in that great big room. Landon and i try to read to him from his books in is room and he enjoys the pictures and listening to us talk but gets frustrated when we don't let him rip the pages and eat the books. I'm sure it will improve as he gets older. I hope that mason will learn to have a love for books and reading!! As of today we have more exciting news, i just discovered Masons newest tooth, on the top in the front! That makes 3 all together now! We also have our 3 year wedding anniversary coming up on Wednesday the 29th. I was hoping for a family trip, just the 3 of us, to the mountains but I'm not sure yet if that will work out for us!! The time is slipping by and we have so much to look forward to, masons first Halloween is just around the corner, then thanksgiving, and Christmas, then Masons first birthday will be upon us!!

8 month pics

Playing with dada

Love Bath time

Raptor Center with Mom & Dad

Labor Day Parade with Ga-Ga at Matthews Alive

Playing with cousin Leah

Silly Boy Today!

Making the Switch to Cloth Diapers

Well our new cloth diapers finally arrived, the day before yesterday. I ordered them two weeks ago when we decided to try and make the switch from disposables to cloth. I decided to go with a pocket style diaper, which has the convenience of disposables, you simply stick an absorbent insert into a pocket within the diaper. Pocket diapers are nice because you can adjust the absorbency by using as many inserts as you need at night time or for naps or long trips. I have always been somewhat interested in cloth diapering for many reasons and when i would see some of the modern cloth diapers it looked appealing. During my pregnancy Landon and I discussed the option of using cloth diapers on our future baby but after watching an episode of "dirty jobs with mike row" where he worked for a cloth diaper laundry service, we were both a little grossed out to say the least. The final nail in the coffin came once we priced these modern marvels they call cloth diapers and we were blown away by the price. One diaper ranged between $18-$30, and i could no longer see how this was going to save us money, and even if it would in the long run it was going to cost us so much to get started that we just couldn't see a way to swing it. I have kept up my reading on cloth diapers and from time to time i still checkout others blogs and message board posts, and recently came across some reviews on sunbaby diapers. I read that they were an economical choice because they claimed to fit from birth to potty training by adjusting the rows of snaps.

They were also less than $5 per diaper including the inserts. So after much consideration and reading many different reviews on these diapers, Landon and i decided to give them a try. We ordered 10 diapers, which should be enough for one day along with the 3 other cloth diapers that we have owned as back up diapers and never really used. It has taken two full weeks for my diapers to come and in the mean time i have been doing tons of research on cloth diapers and I'm very excited to give this new adventure a try. Yesterday when my diapers arrived i prepped them by washing twice on a hot/cold cycle with Charlies Soap (a special laundry detergent recommended for cloth diapers) then i stripped the 3 older diapers we already had, because i had been washing them with regular detergent and didn't realize that i was causing detergent build up in the diapers that would cause absorbency issues. Regular detergent is not great for cloth diapers, there are brands that are better than others, and using about 1/4 the amount of detergent that you would normally use in your laundry can also help prevent problems. The Charlies detergent was $17 for a small 2.64 lbs bag, which made me apprehensive to buy it but it claims to do 80 washes and you only use a tablespoon per wash, so in that case it should last me about 5 months, since I'll be washing my diapers every other day.

We started out with 10 diapers just to give this brand a shot, but we are going to be purchasing 10 more soon so that we will have 23 diapers total and will only have to do laundry every other day. I will update more about our new experiences with the CD but so far we have had great success!! I'm excited that i don't have to worry about chemicals and carcinogens on my baby's butt anymore, that I'm not going to be contributing 6,000 diapers per child to the land fills, that he'll be more likely to potty train quicker, and that these diapers seem to fit masons legs better and so far have had fewer leaks. We typically leak out the legs of every disposable diaper multiple times a day and i am so tired of getting peed on!! lol! It's still early for us to tell how this is going to workout in the long term, but so far so good. A lot of people don't think they can handle the poo diapers, and that was honestly my biggest concern, but now that mason has started solids his poops really aren't that messy and it comes off of the diapers easily. I bought some heavy duty cleaning gloves just in case i need to use them, but so far i have just used a wipe to pick up the poop and bag it (then i put the bag in the diaper genie), some people shake it off into the toilet and some people buy a sprayer to spray it off into the toilet, any method works fine and then I have a separate laundry pail just for his diapers. As far as going out, i just pack the diapers in his diaper bag and i also take small plastic diaper bags from the dollar store and a small waterproof zippered pouch. When i change him i just roll up the dirty diaper and bag it in a small plastic bag, tie it shut, and toss it into the zippered pouch. When i get home in the evenings i take the zippered pouch to the bathroom, get rid of any poop, and throw all the diapers into the laundry pail. I plan to wash them every other day, it's only about 1/3 of a regular size load, and i use a half cup of white vinegar in the rinse cycle, the use of vinegar comes highly recommended by other cloth diaper moms to help with the smell, stains, and bacteria, and it keeps the diapers bright. We machine dry the inserts and hang the diaper shell to dry (because they dry quickly and we dont want the heat to damage the waterproof PUL lining) a lot of people machine dry both, but we dont want to take any chances so landon put this adorable octopus (from ikea) thing up over our dryer for me to clip the diaper covers on. Anyone else cloth diaper or plan to cloth diaper their babies?? I'll update more about our cloth diapering experiences soon!! Here are some pics of his super cute diapers, i love all the colors!!

our stack

you can see the white inserts on the machine and our drying octopus

Ch-ch-changes!

Well one thing is for certain, I am not so great at updating my blog lately. I cant believe my last post was Mason's 6 month update and now here i am with his 7 month update already. I think part of the problem with keeping my blog updated is the fact that there is just so much going on right now in the Greene house.We got a new SUV (to have more room for mason), we rennovated our office, our house was vandalized (someone attempted to breakin) so we had to change our locks, and one of the biggest developments is that I am getting ready to return to school next week, to try to finish up my degree and for the last several months i have been back and forth between three different schools and three different degree options, but i have finally decided that the best thing for me is to finish the quickest degree route possible. I did a lot of praying, asking God to show me the right path because I was having trouble deciding what to do and was running out of time. I had one path open up very clearly and I felt like it was my best option, it leaves me going to school two full days and one half day a week for 3 semesters, maybe less, and that gives me the most time with Mason because raising him and watching him grow is the absolute most important thing. Mason is my number one priority in life, but i also want him to have a mom he is proud of. I want him to grow up in a home where not only is his father a college graduate but his mother is as well. I have worked hard for 3 and half years on completing a degree and i have a huge amount of student loan debt to not have a degree in my hand, so i am determined to finish now, before something else gets in my way and delays me further. If i stay on track i could graduate by next December which would be a huge accomplishment and isn't very long from now.

One of our other big challenges in the Greene house has been Mason's constant need for his momma. He is becoming attached at my hip and literally wants me to hold him, play with him, and talk to him, every second of the day. When my mom holds him or Landon holds him, he will reach out for me to take him. He throws terrible tantrums if i set him down to get things done. I've tried letting him "cry it out" but needless to say it does nothing but get him hysterical and accomplishes nothing. he doesn't want to nap on his own, will only sleep if i am holding him, and as a result we get nothing accomplished these days. I read that babies this age can start to have separation anxiety and i think that is what we are dealing with. I hope that staying with Landon and my sister in law two days a week this fall will help him some.

Now that my baby boy is 7 months old, things are changing daily. He is growing so much and although i don't have his 7 month stats i can tell that he is getting taller, heavier, and stronger. In the last month Mason can sit totally unassisted without fear of a face plant, he can crawl up on all fours, he is pulling up to standing, he can stand holding onto things/people, he has two teeth, he eats all kinds of fruit and vegetable baby food twice a day and gets four bottles a day every 4 hours, he loves to play on the floor now, and can crawl, roll, and sit on his own. He has learned how to go from laying and crawling to sitting up on his own and we had to lower his crib this past month because when you go to get him up in the mornings he is sitting up in his crib. He can crawl from one side of his room to the hallway in what seems like less than 2 seconds and can no longer be trusted to stay put. he is a mover and shaker and the biggest wiggle worm. He has learned to anticipate the flash of the camera and will cheese really big and blink his eyes if you hold up a camera or phone, he is such a ham. The other day he was laying in the floor crying and having a tantrum and i pulled out the camera phone to take his picture and he stopped his crying and smiled real big, once i took the picture and set the phone down he resumed his crying. He is such a mess. He has attempted to say the word eyeball, we got "eye-ba-ba" and looked at Landon the other day and said "Dada" very plain but has never said it again. He knows he is mason, i am mama, and Landon is Dada, and he knows ling-ling by name, but still just babbles random sounds and i wouldn't say he is talking yet. As far as favorite toys this month he is loving his walker which we have been leaving at my moms house so he has something to play with and he loves anything you put on the floor for him to get, and his new favorite thing is balls. He loves balls and so does ling-ling, so she takes most of them away from him, which he thinks is so funny and laughs hysterically. We are still using the paci but he also likes to put his hands and anything else he can get into his mouth which is a constant challenge for me, because yes i am a germaphobe. We are trying to teach him to wave bye and of course to say mama, Dada, and Nani (my mom) but so far he is stubborn and won't say them for you, even though i know he can. Mason has had a busy month, he went to his cousin Leah's 1st birthday party, which was a pool party and he had a big time, he went to Jill's baby shower, he went to our friends Erica and Maclarens pool with Riley Grace to swim and play, and he also attended his very first story time at the library (which unfortunately ended up being their last class till Sept) he did amazing at story time, it was for babies up to 14 months and he was the youngest but he was so outgoing and played so well with other babies, i was surprised that he took off and crawled across the room and was so sociable with the others. I cant wait to take him back once they resume classes. It will be a special thing for us to enjoy on our days together this semester. Here are some pics of Mason this past month!

Mason loves coupons

Playing with dad before bed

Mason at the pool

Playing with his ball

Pool time with Erica and Riley Grace


Leah's Birthday Party

Mason at the YMCA

Playing with toys