7 months! and a general update

baby J caught his second cold :(  we had a few rough days listening to J cough, cough, cough, gag, and throw-up.  i have to say that only babies would be turning bright red and gasping for breath, vomit up their milk, and then give momma a great big smile and bounce around as if nothing had happened :P  fortunately our 6 month check-up coincided with the early onset of his cold, and the dr. confirmed it was "just a cold". our (very) solid 19.3 lb baby is just fine :)

i was looking back at gabe's development at 7 months, and i was just recovering from strep throat. seems like history repeats itself, as i just had strep throat again :P  ironic.

baby J's got a toothy smile :-)  his bottom 2 teeth popped out, and he's a biter :P not so nice times ahead for me.  shortly after he turned 6 months, i decided to sit him on the playmat, and much to my surprise, he sat there.  but not for long.  about a week later, he realized he could fall over onto his tummy, roll around, and now he's been rolling and sliding around the condo. now i'm constantly rescuing him from under ottomans, table chairs, and removing computer cables from his little fists.  being confined to a bouncy chair or exersaucer isn't much of an option anymore...baby J is on the move!

as for food...we're still not in the groove yet.  he still likes his rice cereal, and i mix that with all of his fruits and veggies.  he's also not into texture, so everything is still mashed up really well.  i tried rice and well-cooked broccoli florets, and he spat it out at me.  congee went ok, but definitely needs to be combined with something sweeter for his liking :P i've had a few nights out recently, and left chris with frozen milk and a bottle, and J refuses to drink it.  fortunately i'm not out terribly late, and can still nurse J to sleep. 

it's been another busy month in our household.  with the early start of summer break and the cancellation of summer session, i've been trying to decide what to do with G this summer.  he has swim lessons 2x/week for july, and i'll sign him up for one more set before he turns 6.  i also wanted him to go to a camp program for a week, but after giving it some thought and picking my battles, i'm going to withdraw from it.  so to maintain his educational skillz, G will be sleeping over once (maybe twice depending on everyone's schedules) a week at my parents house and spending some quality time (printing/journaling, reading, piano, etc.), and fun time with them. 

the biggest commitment we made is to start G in Kumon.  i had inquired about the math program last fall when he started kindergarten, but making the commitment with a newborn was too tricky for our schedule.  so he started math a month ago, and by math i mean printing numbers to 100.  the focus of kumon is repetition, efficiency and gaining confidence.  the first few weeks was tough...G had trouble sitting down to focus on his numbers and found the repetition boring, and would take up to 45 minutes to do his 10 worksheets.  but one day at class, he walked out after only 25 minutes.  that day my eyes popped out of my head and i was a proud momma!  cue confident G!  after that our homework at home shortened and became a test of how quickly AND correctly he could do his worksheets. after a few short weeks, he has already progressed to the addition portion of his learning.  when he came out of class and told me he could ADD, the smile on his face was Ri-Di-Cu-Lous!  we celebrated with a McHappy meal :-)  we seem to be on a rollercoaster ride with kumon...he's now back to 40-45 minutes to accomplish homework that he can totally do in less than 30 minutes.  grrr.

i've been having some little issues with gabriel, some sibling jealousy is starting to pop-up.  so to nip some of our issues in the bud, i downloaded a chore app for him. for accomplished task, he gets a checkmark and each checkmark is worth 10 minutes on the ipad.  our list of tasks isn't too extensive, especially since some "chores" have been bundled together, so he ultimately ends up with about an hour of gadget time.  one of the "tasks" is to put his comfort towel away from morning to night, which actually got us the side bonus of no thumbsucking since those went hand-in-hand (or mouth).  another task is to read aloud at least 2 books (for 1 checkmark), and then i told him if he read more books, he would get bonus points...so now he's a reading machine :-)  and with his chores keeping him busy, and updating the ipad with checkmarks, we have a bit more peace in the house :-)