Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Where to Begin?

I must say, the past couple months have been particularly trying for this little Thompson family in more ways than one, which may explain the severe drop-off in blog posts recently.  However, I would like to do a bit of a summary of the past couple months in order to kick-off a plethora of new pictures and videos I have lined up to post.

At the end of July, my sister came and stayed with us for a couple weeks, which was so great!  I can't say we went and did a whole lot of activities, but we had a blast just being together.  Since I have not lived in the same house as Morgan since Sophomore year, she and I haven't really gotten to spend lots of quality time together or gotten to know one another as adults until she came down.  So, this was a special time for us, and we both really enjoyed it.  Hopefully, we can make this an annual tradition.

At the end of Morgan's time at our house, she rode back up to Illinois with Griffin and I, which was a huge blessing.  Griffin and I spent the majority of August in Illinois and Michigan visiting my family.  I look forward to that trip every year, and I'm so glad everyone was able to spend time with Griffin.  It really was a great time.  My step-mom, Cindy, was kind enough to drive back to Columbia with Griffin and I so I didn't have to do the trip on my own...whew!  That was such a relief and such a blessing!

From the end of July until now, our little family has been going through a rough season.  Along with really struggling financially, our old, lemon Jetta's transmission went out, and Griffin has been going through quite a fussy time.  First, he got 8 teeth in about 3 weeks.  Then, he had two colds in a row...poor guy.  Finally, he's been going through a very whiny streak and quite a bit of constipation, which I'm thinking are both related.  All those things combined made for frequently waking every 2 hours through the nights for feedings, crying through nap times, and whining/fussing pretty much all day long.  About a week ago, I realized that Griffin's fussiness seemed to begin around the same time that I began feeding him predominately jarred baby food.  (We were able to get on the WIC [Women with Infants and Children] program, which provides certain jarred baby foods and boxed cereals for the baby and a variety of different foods for breastfeeding moms.)  So, this week, I began to feed him homemade baby food again, almost exclusively....and WAH-LAH!....Griffin's fussiness and constipation has almost disappeared!  I plan to write a future blog post on the benefits of homemade baby food; but for now, I will simply say that the difference in him is remarkable.  I was honestly at my wit's end about a week ago, and it truly felt like I had a newborn on my hands again.  I even brought him to the pediatrician to see if he had an ear infection or something else I wasn't catching, but, alas, he was totally healthy!  After about 5 days on a predominately homemade baby food diet, he is back to normal!  No constipation, no whining, no night waking, no unexplained screaming.  It's amazing.

I cannot even recall how many developmental leaps Griffin has made in the past couple months, but I'll list some here.  He has 8 teeth and an insatiable curiosity about everything.  He now crawls, pulls himself up on everything in sight, can stand using only one hand to support himself, waves hi and bye, says mama (which I think he also uses to express his desire to nurse), baba (he also uses this for nursing), papa, lala (singing), dada, yaya, and hi, signs milk, more, eat, all done, up, and fan, and has developed the pincer grasp (using first finger and thumb)...so he can now pick up small pieces of food!  The boy is an absolute joy, and is incredibly smart and inquisitive.  He can imitate tone and pitch of our voices, our gestures, and the signs we use for him.  For example, the other day he was looking up at the fan, and I signed and said "fan" several times.  Right away, he started trying to make the sign for fan.  Now, when I ask him where the fan is and make the sign for fan, he'll look up and point to the fan!  My smart boy.

So, let this post serve as an introduction to the barrage of videos and pictures to come!

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