Gobble Gobble

 

Happy Thanksgiving!  We hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends.  Ours was great!  This year was at Uncle Chris and Auntie Kathryn's house.  As always we ate way too much food.  Landon definitely enjoyed all the food.  He loves turkey!  The night ended much earlier than it normally does for us.  We usually are up playing poker with the family until pretty late, but this year ended early with putting our son to bed.  And even still it was on the later side for him.  However, just like every other year, we have so much to be thankful for.  We are so grateful for the love and support we receive from family and friends, the love we have for each other, jobs we love, a place to call home, and most of all Jesus.  We are truly blessed!

Auntie Kathryn's first turkey!

Landon playing with Bud's cane

Thanksgiving Hosts: Uncle Chris and Auntie Kathryn

How'd you see our house if Google Earth had taken the picture on Saturday

9 Months

 

Landon's now been on the outside for as long as he was brewing on the inside.  Our little man turned 9 months last week.  As always, how the time flies.  He is weighing in at 20 lbs 2 oz but definitely slowing down.  Although he's such a baby still, he is getting to be so big.  He loves crawling everywhere and standing along anything he can pull himself up on.  Getting down from standing had been the issue for a bit, but now he's mastered that as well.  When he wakes up from naps and during the night (yes he's doing this frequently still) we find him standing at the end of the crib staring at the door.  After naps he's usually talking and happy so it's cute when we open up the door to his greetings.  Sometimes he'll even attempt a mini jump while holding onto the crib.  We think the crib needs to get lowered one more because one of these times he might jump and fly over the edge. 

Landon loves Mochi

 

 

Landon fell asleep reading books with Daddy

So cozy and warm

Fall leaves

As for food, he's been eating meat more frequently now.  Chicken, beef, and pork.  We chop it up for him pretty good and he will feed himself, although most of it still ends up on the floor.  He also likes his plain yogurt (from goat's milk) with either apples or pears.  We aren't planning on raising him dairy-free but we are definitely going to minimize his intake of cow's milk/products.  If we can easily replace with goat's milk we will.  Hopefully we can find a local person who can provide us with real goat's milk and maybe one day have one of our own.  That's Shani's far-fetched dream (no matter how much work it would be).  We tried peas but he doesn't seem to care too much for them, so we'll give it another try in a little bit.  He just loves his winter squash so much and with our wonderful farmers markets around here we can't help but continue to make that for him.  Most of the time when he's eating, we'll take a bite for ourselves.  Homemade food is much more appetizing than the jarred stuff--there is no comparison!

As most of you know, we've been struggling to get more sleep.  It's starting to wear us pretty thin.  Between getting up every 2 hours, sometimes being up for an hour, and then getting up early for work, we are going a little bonkers.  If we are feeling this crazy, we can only imagine how our little guy must feel.  We (Shani hopes) continue to feel that it's his teeth.  He got his bottom two over 2 months ago now and has really been working on his top ones.  Well finally, on Friday, his left top one poked through.  We pray that now things start changing and we get some longer stretches.  Until then we are continually praying for patience.

Landon had a play-date with his fellow Cal Poly friends.  Well, at least us moms are Cal Poly friends...we all secretly hope our kids will be too??  We had a great time hanging out at the park.  The big boys loved all the stuff they could play on and the little ones loved crawling around the squishy ground.  The swings were a big hit as well.  We love all getting together, but sometimes is hard to do with all of our crazy work schedules.  Soon the score will be even with three boys and three girls, but until Kallie has her little one it was the 2 big boys, Landon, and his 2 girlfriends.

Sophia and Landon

Sophia, Lucas, and Colton

Sophia

Claire

 

Colton and Lucas

Landon loves the swings

 

Claire, Lucas, Sophia, Colton, Landon

Lastly, our little Lando had his first official cold.  He's had little sniffles in the past, but this time it was definitely a "real" cold.  Thankfully no fever, but he looked so sad.  His eyes were watering, nose was snotty, runny, and stuffy, and he had a cough.  Sleep has been even worse because he couldn't breathe and would wake himself up.  Poor little guy.  Anyway, not that you want to see it, but we figured we'd give you a wonderful, snotty Landon picture for you to enjoy!

Happy Halloween

 Landon was a frog for his first Halloween.  We weren't sure what he should be and didn't really want to purchase a costume since he wouldn't be able to stay up.  We ended up borrowing one (thanks Dawn and Tamal) that fit him just perfectly.  He was able to wear it for a group picture at Shani's work-out class with other mommies and then for a quick bit on Halloween night.  Sure enough he was asleep before the first trick-or-treater's arrived.  Mochi was a little unsure of him crawling around in the costume.  We think she finally realized it was Landon, but for a bit she was running from him.  He did have a cute Halloween outfit he wore for the day including an owl hat and orange socks that Nonni got to go with it.  Next year will definitely be a different story we're sure.  

Mochi unsure of who/what Landon is

 

Babies at Shani's workout class

Best buds- August and Landon

Landon playing with the goodies for the treat-or-treaters.  Shani refused to give out candy

Grandpa Mac flew out to join Grandma Mac for the rest of her stay in Sac.  It had been since Landon was 2 weeks old since Landon had seen Grandpa.  He didn't seem to mind though, he was laughing with him just like it was the other day that he saw him.  We were so happy that they both were out.  Unfortunately it probably won't be until Landon's first birthday that we see them again.  We'll definitely have to get on facetime to show how much he's changed.

Grandma and Grandpa Mac

Speaking of changes, that is constantly what Landon is up to.  He continues to crawl like a champ, but he's now into pulling himself up onto EVERYTHING!  If it's possible for him to stand he will.  He's starting to learn how to sit back down as well.  For awhile he would pull himself up to stand then get "stuck" and not know what to do.  He's discovered that it isn't too far to just plop down.  We think he's said mumm and dada.  Mumm-mumm-mumm comes when he either wants Shani or to nurse and dadada usually is when he's a little upset.  He did crawl up to John's legs and said dadadada last week so maybe.  Maybe wishful thinking that he's said his first words??  He also recently had his 2nd haircut.  Yes, second haircut and he's only 8.5 months old.  This one was a little shorter, but maybe it will last us a bit longer.  It could still thicken up a bit but it grows so quickly.  We think he looks more like John with his spikey hair.  That's about it for now.  Next will hopefully be news that he cut his top teeth, but until then we'll pray for better sleep!

Tough guy

Yummy...wild raw elk liver from a 6-point that Grandpa Mac brought for Landon

Wearing Daddy's hat now that it's getting chilly in the house

8 Months

8 months old

Landon is now 8 months old!  He's staying pretty steady at 19lbs 12oz.  Not sure of his length...we'll have to get that measurement soon because it seems like he really stretched out.  He is a crawling machine and will follow us around the house.  It's cute because he starts huffing and puffing if it's been a long travel.  He's pulling himself up onto things as well.  We are trying to encourage the crawling for as long as possible (Mommy is really big into the cross-crawl patterning--it helps nervous system develop) and hoping to hold off walking for a few months at least.  His favorite crawling destinations (to our endless frustration) is a plant in our living room, trashcan near our desk, and Mochi's water and food bowls.  We haven't really baby-proofed our house at all but definitely need to make a few more changes for him.  We love watching his little brain work and figure things out.  Such a cute age.  

We think he's also trying to get his upper teeth in as he's chewing on everything again.  His sleep continues to be broken up making life a little difficult on us.  We are trying to keep with the mantra "this too shall pass."  We are keeping our fingers crossed!  Food is going much better.  He's taking in much more at each meal.  His favorites are sweet potato, zucchini, and pears.  He  loves his apple sauce and prunes too.  We usually mix both in with liver to help him get it down.  We don't promote/agree with rice cereal nor fortified iron products so we are giving him the real deal to get his iron.  Yes, we are bad and haven't eaten the liver ourselves, but when it's mixed with his apple sauce and prunes or sweet potatoes he gives us an open mouth for another spoonful!  Maybe we'll each take the bullet sometime and try for the sake of supporting our son.

One day he'll have is own set of real binoculars

Yummy carrot

We took a family getaway to Mendocino a couple weekends ago.  This was a birthday present for Shani from John because she loves visiting the North Coast area.  Although Landon has been pretty good in his carseat, we were pushing it with the 4+ hour drive.  He would arch his back and scream loudly, driving us nuts.  We stayed at this B&B (minus the second B in our minds) which was walking distance from the cute downtown area.  The sky was beautiful and clear when we walked down to get coffee and breakfast, then when we walked out of the coffee shop it was foggy and stayed that way for the rest of the weekend.  The last time we were there it was breezy, but absolutely beautiful.  This was a bummer, but we still had a great time.  John was excited that "Shani's birthday weekend" allowed for him to hit North Coast Brewing Co, Anderson Valley Brewing Co, and Russian River Brewing Co.  He also "allowed" one stop at a winery for Shani :-)  John quickly tasted some heavy beers and was quite displeased with the winding roads/Shani's driving-- he was almost as unhappy as Landon to be in the car!  Although we had a wonderful trip, it made the weekend go by much too quickly and we felt we could have used another day to recover.

Fan blowing Lando's hair

Sword fight

First taste of ice cream (he won't have more for a long while!)

Big boy sitting at the bar

Anderson Vally Brewing Company

We made another Apple Hill trip with John's family this past weekend.  The weather was very warm, much warmer than we like while up there.  We enjoy the brisk weather at Apple Hill to help get us in the fall mood.  It was a very beautiful day though and we bumped it to some favorite friends of ours which was a lot of fun.  Can anyone go to Apple Hill during the peak season and not see someone they know?  What a fun place!

Landon, Morgan, and Grandma Mac

 

 

Landon and Grandma Mac