Garage Sale Finds and Some Good Food

Yesterday, after the rain, Nick and I went to several Garage Sales in the area, looking for baby toys and clothes. It was fun, because all of the people having the garage sales liked helping Nick pick out toys. One little girl, about four or five, was being a great saleswoman and showing me what all of the toys would do. She spoke to Nicholas as if he had the purchasing power. "Now, baby, don't you want a drum that sings to you? See, isn't it cool? And it only costs $3--today only!" I told the girl's mom that she had a career as a high-powered saleswoman someday. Then I bought the baby drum, because I am a sucker. Also because the girl had free chocolate chip cookies for buyers.

I ended up spending less than $10, and here's what Nick got. You can see from the picture that he's rather pleased with my purchases. I took them all out on the grass and cleaned/sanitized everything thoroughly before I let him play.

His favorite toy so far is probably the xylophone, with the drum a close second. I've decided to go out next Friday and try to find more toys. Nick gets so interested when he has something new to play with, and buying used toys makes me feel better about spoiling my litttle man. My strategy will be to rotate the toys every few days so they'll seem new.

Greg and I took Nick to Maggiano's for lunch today. I know that some people don't like the idea of taking babies to fancy restaurants, but it was lunchtime and Nicholas is usually pretty well behaved. Plus, I had a gift card and we had a taste for Italian food. Since Nick is almost 8 months now, I've been giving him tiny bites of table food, and he really likes this. So far I haven't seen him refuse any foods. Today we tried Italian sausage with onion and red pepper sauce. He loved the sauce and ate some teeny pieces of sausage and red pepper. It was pretty garlicky, but Nick seemed to savor the flavor. He also got to try a little bit of garlic shrimp, tomato pasta, and (his favorite) strawberry shortcake. He really liked the cream and strawberries.

Behavior-wise, he was great, except that he was practicing using his loud voice in the middle of dinner. It wasn't exactly screaming, just loud yells and giggles. Only a teething biscuit would quiet him down. He totally charmed the guy filling the water glasses, too. The guy kept coming back and making faces, getting Nick to giggle at him.

Then we went to Grandma Toni's (Greg's mother) for dinner. She's going to Hawaii (lucky lady!) and won't be around for the next few weeks, so she had to get her "Nick Fix." I should have taken a picture of her with him today. We walked in the forest preserve and she had lots of snuggle time. Toni always looks so content holding him.

I did get a few pictures of Nick with his Aunt Sarah tonight. She had fun playing with him and even fed him his dinner. He was actually using his knees to crawl backwards a few inches today. This is one of the first times I've seen him get up on both hands and knees. He's so close to full out crawling.

Here is Nick having some fruit. Aunt Sarah had fun feeding him, even though he made quite a mess. There are two messy issues when feeding Nick:

1. He keeps grabbing the food and the spoon. Then he wipes the food all over himself.

2. He likes to take his messy face and try to bite knees, feet, and arms. It's a good thing he is still toothless.

Weekends are always nice because we get time to be a family. I'm going to leave you with a picture of Nick all snuggled up with me right before we left Grandma Toni's. This is one of my favorite times with him. At bedtime, he snuggles right in on top of me. I love the way his hair smells, and the sound of him snoring lightly. I know that there's only a few short years where he'll be snuggly like this with his mommy, and I want to enjoy it while it lasts.