Ridenour Ranch: Ready or not here we go

Today is one of those days I just need to tell someone what is going on here at the Ridenour Ranch...and Gil is actually back to work, so here it goes...Oh my goodness! Jude started crawling last Wednesday. It was pretty wobbly at first and he still didn't get anywhere too quickly. Well today is Monday and I never knew how many cords, lamps, phones, papers, and other items we had that were prime bait for the beginning crawler who now feels unlimited in his movement capabilities! The first thing he decided to do this morning was crawl over to daddy's guitars and knock down the music stand (thank goodness it wasn't the guitar!). So I moved them upstairs to the spare room. The next adventure was to cross the room and go for the phone cords. We took down Christmas yesterday just in the nick of time and I bought the plastic thingys for the outlets, but I'm beginning to think that's not nearly enough! After the cords it was the bottom shelf of the DVDs (as pictured below). My solution was to move the chair in front of it and since this picture have also had to add one of our heavy duty couch pillows. After that it was a standing lamp that he has previously knocked down twice before. He got little lesson in the word "NO" that time and the lamp got moved behind the blockading chair. Next, it was his closet door he wanted to open. Then it was pulling the lamp cord from behind Gil's dresser out and crawling under my lamp stand to do the same, wanting to open our bedroom door and on and on. That has been my day. Wow, we need to do some major baby-proofing! Luckily he hasn't found the wood burning stove or much in the kitchen yet.

This would seem to be enough for one day (although it is early afternoon!), but probably one of the funniest moments I've had with Jude happened this morning as well. We have old vents in the floor that allow heat to go to the upstairs. Jude loves to crawl to these of course too and taste them (yuck!). So today he found the one in his room and I went downstairs in the kitchen right under it to wave to him and say hello. He smiled and thought it was pretty cool to see mommy through the floor. Well, as I'm standing directly under the vent down comes some wet chunky liquid...yes spit up! Somehow I barely managed to escape the puddle of puke that eventually found its way to the kitchen floor. Gross! But I'm glad I still have quick reflexes!

Finally, here is a video of Jude crawling this morning (if I can get it to load...otherwise it is still to come). At first we needed the phone or something really fun to entice him to crawl, but almost anything will do it now:) Here we go!