Desmond likes avacados. While I don’t mind them, I don’t normally buy them, because I also don’t love them. He also likes Guacamole, so when we were grocery shopping we found a small package of Guacamole, with two packages of it in it and picked it up for him. Desmond also likes feeding himself, but still isn’t a huge fan of forks or spoons, so he tends to get a wee bit messy. Anyways here are some pictures of Desmond after his before bed snack of Guacamole.

Sitting in my high chair banging my spoons! Anyways talking of climbing, we recently reset Desmond’s chair. We took off the baby bar, but still use the straps, we also lowered the seat, since it was starting to be to high, and put the bottom piece back on. This means Desmond can now climb into his chair and sit down. Here are a couple of pictures of him doing just that last night. We keep his chair now down on it’s back so he can’t climb up on it and get into trouble.

Desmond is finally tall enough he can climb onto my computer chair, he can also climb onto Dan’s chair, with the help of the two boxes we keep over there to keep him out of the corner where Dan’s computer is. Here are a couple of pictures Dan took when he saw that Desmond could climb onto my chair.

So we love Gymboree level 4. It is working out so well, we are really glad we’ve moved up, Desmond is participating a lot more now and the class fits him so much better. Anyways here are a bunch of pictures I took at Gymboree on Saturday.

On Thursday of last week we went to the farmers market. We bought sugar snap peas, bread, jam and apples. While Dan was putting things away Desmond decided to try an apple, at which point we learned that he can eat apples without us having to slice them. They have been a huge hit with him, he loves eating an apple and carting it around with him till he is finished. After he is done, K-line is nice enough to eat the other half, apparently the dog likes apples too.

Last week we decided to play with the paint and crayons and playdoh some. So here are some more pictures of the artist as a young man.

So I went through the cameras today and pulled off all the various pictures of Desmond that I haven’t put up on the blog yet, so there are a lot of pictures coming, you have been warned. I’m going to try to go oldest to newest, but no promises.

First up are pictures of Desmond making a mess, shocking isn’t it? We aren’t closing the gate that often anymore so he has run of the house, he mainly likes to pull things out of drawers in the kitchen. Here is what I found him doing the other day, pulling all the plastic bags out of their boxes. As you can tell he is quite proud of himself.

He was just running around with one sock on playing with packages of microwave popcorn.

Now he is playing with Dan’s computer, after climbing up into his chair, still with just one sock on.

So Desmond is in Gymboree we go once or twice a week, we have a lot of make sessions that lets us get that second session in, he has been going since he was 4 months old or so and in level 1, we moved to level 2 at 5 months and level 3 at 8 months (normally it is level 1: newborn to 6 months, level 2: 6 to 10 months, level 3: 10 to 16 months) anyways we are moving up to level 4 at 14 months. The class he is in is really crowded and he is past the level they are at, and we have had a bunch of new babies in the class so the class is now skewed towards the younger end of the age range, which changes the dynamics a lot, since he is no where near the lower end of the spectrum in the class.

For instance today’s activities focused on walking. Desmond has been walking well for the past 4 months, so it was kind of pointless. Plus he really isn’t fond of having between 12 and 15 other kids in the class, we prefer about 8 in the class. I talked to his teacher today and she agreed that he is ready, so tomorrow we’re going to try out the level 4 Gymboree class and see if what we think, we’ll probably move up, though I am not sure if we’re going to do the Friday 10:30 class or the Tuesday 10:30 class, I know we aren’t going to the 9:30 classes since he is barely awake then, just need to decide if Tuesday or Friday works better for us overall.

So we are moving up in the world and in Gymboree, it should be fun.

So at Desmond’s 12 month well baby check up we went ahead and let him get his DTaP, he is on a delayed vaccination schedule, because we really don’t want to be putting a ton of toxin’s in his body every time he is due for shots so we don’t do more then 2 shots a visit, 1 if it is a combo shot like the DTaP. So he got his 6 month DTaP at 12 months (the third on in the series). It had a hard bump and swelled up the next day, which we didn’t worry too much about, since it is a listed side effect of the shot, and when I get my DTP I get the same reaction. However, we were a bit concerned when after a month we noticed the hard spot in his thigh was still there. Anyways yesterday 2 months after the shot we noticed it had a raised bump at the injection site again.

Okay that just doesn’t seem right, we’ll call the doctor’s office on Monday. So Dan called today, apparently nope it is still just a minor side effect of the shot, the lump can linger in the leg for months and up to a year even. Okay call me crazy, but a hard lump in my son’s thigh as a reaction to a shot for over 2 months and that can potentially linger for a year just doesn’t seem like a “minor side effect” to me.

I am not sure I really want to get him the next shot in the series after this, we probably will because it was one of the shots on our original list of important shots, but you know the whole 2 months to a year before the lump goes away thing really makes me kind of leery of giving him the next shot in the series, since what happens if he has a more severe reaction, because a lump in the leg for 2+ months just doesn’t seem minor to me. On the plus side I don’t have to worry about it for his July appointment since we are doing the Polio and Prevnar shots then which will catch him up to 12 months, but I will need to decide what I want to do by October when he has his 18 month check up since that would be when he would get the 15 month DTaP since we would be basically caught up then with the shots we are getting him and not delaying or refusing.

I am not really happy with the whole minor reaction is a lump in his thigh that can linger for months.