babies!

Merry Christmas from the Davis family babies!

L-R: Clara, Ruth, Calvin, Liam, Teddy

Happy Birthday!

Tiny Master Yin celebrated his first birthday the week before Christmas.

He wasn't even kind of interested in the cake sitting on the floor next to him, but once he got a bite of it, he became very serious about shoveling in as much as possible as quickly as possible. And unlike dinner food, not one bite ended up tucked behind his leg on his seat.

The resulting sugar rush was hilarious to behold.

This little man has brought us so much joy. We fondly remember our days before he joined our family, but wouldn't trade him for the world.

Happy birthday my sweet boy!

no fun

My angel baby is sick.

The only nice thing about it is he curls up in my arms and falls asleep--he literally did it all day long.

Let's hope he's back to his happy, active and healthy self tomorrow.

Christmas help

Hello friends.

If you read this blog I assume we know each other and that we're friends since I'm not famous and don't do awesome giveaways. Since we're friends, I'd like to send you a Christmas card.

Can you help a sista out and send me your address (via email: canne [dot] yin [at] gmail [dot] com)? Unless you know for sure I already have it; meaning you've received something from me in the mail in the past year. Erica, you don't count. You must send your address. JS, as always you beat me to the punch, so you're golden.

Also, for the lad's birthday (next week!) we're expanding his board book library, and I'm looking for your favorite recommendations. His current favorites are

My First Book of Animals

My First Book of Words

Piggies

ABC--the board book version, not the one linked here

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

A to Z

The Very Busy Spider

Canada 123

Suggestions? We have a list we're considering, but would love to hear what you have to say.

Happy Merry Joy!

Random fact: The woman who works in the office at our apartment complex is named Merry.

melting

Everyone said it would happen, I just didn't think it would happen so fast.

It kind of breaks my heart a little.

get out the vote

As many of you know, my dad is a political cartoonist/artist-of-all-trades.

He currently has a clever t-shirt design up for vote on Threadless.

With Threadless people vote on the designs

by scoring them a "0" through "5". "5" being the highest.

The more votes, and the higher the ranking, the more likely it is to be printed.

So vote! and vote high! so we can see my dad's design on t-shirts.

Just click on the little preview below and it'll take you right there.

Wouldn't it be awesome to see a random someone wearing it?!

Eleventh mesaversary

Eleven months old. That means this is our last mesaversary post, because next month he'll be a whole year old! I can't believe he's been with us this long, but I also can't imagine him not being part of our little family.

This is the little bundle of joy who made me a mom; these past few months have been the most challenging and rewarding of my life. I've been brought to tears in heartache and frustration for this little guy, and my heart has soared higher with more joy than I've ever known possible, all because of him.

Oh but wait! This is about him, his eleven months of learning and growing!

His biggest development is the crawling. It might be the cutest crawl you've ever seen, it's slow and steady and very deliberate, often with his tongue sticking out. He's like the little ox cart that could. Sometimes when he's tired his body goes faster than his arms and he face plants. But mostly he's awesome at it. He's starting to pull up on things, mostly my legs. I'm so incredibly happy he waited until we were in our own apartment to become so mobile.

He does follow me around, but by the time he makes it to where I am, I'm usually headed back to where we started. And so he has to pivot and redirect. He never seems to tire of it! He's a very determined little guy.

This little mobile man is more than content to sit and play with his toys. I can't tell you how many times I'm washing dishes or cooking and he's playing around the corner, and it gets pretty quiet and I'm sure he's found something he shouldn't have, I go check on him and he's reading his books. Just sitting there on the floor, flipping the pages. It melts my heart every time.

So, yes, he loves books. All books. He loves, loves, loves to turn pages on books.

He's recently acquired some cars and trucks and trains and seems pretty enthralled by them. And he loves his books about things that go. He's very much a boy.

Our little man had some serious sleep regression after we moved upstairs thanks to Hurricane Irene, and so with moving to our new apartment, we all got to enjoy the glories of sleep training. It's been challenging, but we've seen some serious improvement. He's sleeping through the night again (hallelujah!) and sleeping at least one nap in his bed. He's never been a great napper, preferring snack-naps and Ergo rides as opposed to napping in bed. I do hope he'll always be able to nap in the Ergo because that allows for naps on the go. But we'll see!

Tiny Ted does "so big!" now, with his hands high over his head, and stands by himself for a few seconds. And claps for himself whenever he does something delightful. Which is a lot.

Raisins are probably his favorite food. He's been rocking a mostly fruit and veggie diet and he eats them with glee. Particularly squash and beans--perfect for Thanksgiving. He loves the freeze dried yogurt puffs, and doesn't much care for the other kind. He loves to drop his food on the floor and then stare at it down there.

He also loves to share. When he's done eating, he wants me to eat his food. I go along with it and let him feed me, he always gets a kick out of it, like I'm super talented to be able to eat out of his hand.

He loves to stuff things into his mouth like he's starving. It always cracks me up.

So that's month eleven. It's been challenging, but also awesome. We love our little man more than cranberry sauce!

big happenings

Look what our little muffin learned how to do just a few days ago!

tenth mesaversary

We made it to 10 months and beyond! Things have been a bit crazy in the Yin family for the past few weeks. But we're back. Photos were finally taken and we're ready to share what is going on with our sweet Teddy Bear during his 10th month of life.

He's such a sweet little guy. He's been doing kisses for a while now: big, open mouth kisses on your cheek. It melts my heart. When he's feeling particularly clever, he does zerbits instead and it always makes me laugh. He also does "nose kisses" where he kisses the end of my nose, not so much with the big open mouth. We've been working on understanding the word "gentle", and he responds to it about 80% of the time. (He likes to hit me when he's nursing and he's super tired, and those little fists land hard!)

He learned how to hand things over this month. If I catch him with some contraband, I put my hand out and say "give it to mama" and he does every time. (Watch, now that I said it he'll never do it again!)

The lad is learning to feed himself with a spoon. It's pretty adorable. He gets it all right except his food usually ends up in his bib and not in his mouth. That doesn't faze him, he just reaches into the bib pouch and picks it up. We're pretty much done with spoon feeding him, he now just feeds himself. Sometimes with the spoon, but mostly with his awesome pincer grasp. He eats mostly fruits and veggies because he seems to have a very delicate balance and grains and cheese tend to bind him up for over a week. Poor kid. But he eats a whole array of veggies, he's particularly fond of squash in any of it's many forms. I bet he'll love pumpkin pie!

His "not-crawl" has turned into the "super not-crawl". The boy gets where he wants to go. He frequently ends up stuck up against a wall because he can't pivot anymore. He tosses toys and then "not-crawls" after them. He's gotten really good at playing rolling catch with his basketball. Now he combines the two and pushes his ball away so he can chase after it.

One day while I was on the phone with my sister, he learned how to put things inside something else. So he now puts his toys in his bucket. And puts his food back into his bowl. I also find him trying to copy me a lot. Whether it's something I did with my hands or some sound I'm making. He's awesome. So clever.

His vocabulary really increased. He does the mama, baba, dada, and then added the "um" sound. So he does yum, gyum, tyum, byum, and then picked up the "ooo" sound. He's always sung this little song when he's nursing. Now when I sing it to him, he repeats it. I love it.

He's a curious little fellow and loves to get into everything and anything he can. Particularly if it's been deemed contraband. He always finds a way.

We love our little Edmund. He now raises his hands about his head and does "so big!". And he is just that: so big.

Oh, and he sprouted a new tooth. A very painful, week-long sprouting. It was awesome.

Happy Halloween!

random

And a bonus video link.

cute

To hold you over until we do the 10 month post.

He might have the chubbiest cheeks in all the land!

the search is over

Mr. Yin will be rejoining the working world tomorrow (and by tomorrow, I now mean today).

So we're settling here in Central Jersey for the foreseeable future. (Email me if you want our updated address. Phone numbers should stay the same and should work in the area once we get new phones.)

We found an apartment and will be moving in three weeks. Huzzah for being our own little family again!! In the two cross-country moves we've made in the past two years, we shed most of our stuff. Some of it went to brothers and sisters and some of it was sold, and a lot of it was donated to Goodwill and DI. That means we'll slowly be acquiring all new (or new-to-us) stuff. And Mr. Yin and I are excited about that. I hope to be able to upcycle some things we find on craigslist or consignment shops or Freecycle. I've always wanted to do projects like that and now we actually need stuff. So it'll be fun.

It'll mostly be fun to be a family of three again.

We're very excited for Mr. Yin to be able to put his education to good use. But we'll miss him during the day.

Huzzah!!

one through nine recap