Link: http://childtorture.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/babydosdonts.jpeg

Things have been hopping in our household since before our son was born, and in many ways the rush of "to-dos" seemed to snowball time and again with necessary project after desired lifestyle change, etc!

Axel is 7 1/2 months old now, and in that time since he was born we have (in rough order):

...

• ordered and received Axel's birth certificate and had his passport made just in time
• travelled to the UK for a wedding
• (continued to try and heal post-surgery!)
• reorganized the layout of the condo (yet again!) for the sake of the nursery, including redoing the closet
• gotten Axel all of his vaccinations on schedule to date
• had a lovely calm Christmas with whopping numbers of baby gifts
• introduced Axel to swimming
• looked at two homes, made an offer on one and got it!
• arranged renos and painting and electrical work in the new (old) home
• packed up the townhouse and moved
• had a major health scare with Ritchie and cellulitis involving hospital Emergency and 8 days as an at-home IV outpatient
• continued to see renos go forward and be finished
• started some more serious unpacking and furniture arranging
• continued condo renos (all done ourselves with the help of my parents) with a baby on my hip
• finally relaxed enough (after a whole week of cleaning and organizing!) to have friends over for a barbeque on what turned out to be a very nice day. :D

I can still get pretty gimpy from healing/rebuilding abdominal muscles, but interestingly enough in the last two weeks to a month, I have suddenly been aware of some significant improvements in this regard. How did she do it folks? Moving house and doing reno while keeping a large and growing baby in her arms! ;) Seriously though-- Axel continues to be *huge*, so Ritchie and I have had to be meticulous about carrying him properly for the sake of our backs, spelling each other off when we are out and about, etc.

Still almost exclusively breastfeeding, although Axel has started finger feeding himself baby crackers and cheerios and the like, seemed to actually like chewing on a pickle on one occasion (shock! and yes... of *course* we give him tiny tastes of weird things just for our entertainment value), likes bananas and strawberries, loves honeydew melon and cooked pieces of potato... Overall, I have to say that when I stop and think about it, I am deeply surprised at how breastfeeding is all that this now 25+ lb, 2'4" tall infant needs for his hunger and thirst. Yowza! Things promise to be interesting in this regard the next few months as Axel now actively wants whatever we are drinking, and is starting to want to take bits of food from us too. His baby hands love the format of the french fry (great fun to try and grab off a plate!), so we are going to start giving him a variety of lightly cooked veggies in the form of strings and strips. :)

Axel is also officially a crawler-- off and running and pursuing little dogs that are not yet completely catching on that this baby's range has suddenly increased! lol! We have decided that the Maltese is developing a masochistic streak in that if he puts himself in harm's way, we will rescue him and give him additional attention for having had his ears/whiskers/tail/legs yanked. Oy!

But Ritchie and I have certainly been growing as parents, and continue to figure things out and put routines and solutions together that work for us. :)

Hence the graphic that this post title is linked to! :D (You might want to click there to see the whole thing better, some skins in this blog are narrow and you might only see the first two out of four columns...) I had previously seen a version of the "Checking Baby's Diaper" (one of my favs), but the others were new to me as of this morning-- *laugh!*