Happy Halloween part 2

Happy Halloween everyone! Tonight while to ghouls and goblins are out so will a cute little puppy Trick or Treating for his 2nd official Halloween, hopefully he'll stay awake for this one. This weekend Shawn, Oliver and I carved his pumpkin out in the garage. This pumpkin Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Dave grew especially for him. It was just his size, not to big and not to small.

Since he helped carve one at Grandpa Chuck's and Grandma Shirley's house last week, he's a pro at it and could tell by this picture that he was so excited!

He wasn't scared to dig into into the pumpkin guts and didn't even like it when I stuck my hand into it to help.



And, while I was busy cleaning out the pumpkin and Shawn taking pictures, Oliver sneaked a piece of the pumpkin into his mouth for a taste. Well it mustn't have tasted bad because he did it again a few minutes later. Hope raw pumpkin isn't bad for him! At least Shawn got a picture of it.

This is our way of carving a pumpkin, with a jigsaw. (I think that is what Shawn called it)


New game for Oliver called take the lid off the pumpkin and try and put it back on.


Here's Oliver's two pumpkins. I love how in the picture without the flash you can see the smoke from the candles coming out of the pumpkin's eyes.



HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Halloween fun part 1

The end of last week Oliver had some early Halloween fun at Julie's - his daycare, and with Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Shirley.

As you can tell Oliver is going to be a cute little dalmatian puppy for Halloween. Oliver has a fascination with puppies. He hears the neighbors dogs barking or sees them outside and he just starts giggling. It really is adorable so we thought it was fitting to be a puppy this year and thanks to Grandma Shirley for making it happen by making the costume.

We had to work up to putting the rest of the costume on by first trying the hat on to see if he would keep it on.

After that he posed for the camera in his costume. Look at his cute little floppy ears and tail!

Oliver carved his first pumpkin at Grandma and Grandpa's last Thursday and they said that he actually helped pull the guts out. I'm sure knowing my son and his curious little mind that he dug right into it and then didn't know what to think after he touched it but he did grab a big handful of the pumpkin guts.



I think he liked using the wooden spoon better than his hand.


The pumpkin turned out great and Oliver and Grandpa and Grandma did a great job.

Then the very next day, Oliver had a Halloween party at daycare. All of his little friends dressed up in their costumes and made some frosted Halloween sugar cookies and a homemade Halloween snow globe.

More Halloween fun to come as we carve our pumpkin this weekend and actually do a little trick or treating around the neighborhood on Monday.

Video updates

So I haven't written a blog in a while so I thought I'd show you some videos of Oliver to update you on what he's up to now.

He has been doing this for a few weeks but just thought now to get it on video because he's so adorable when he does it. His vocabulary is getting bigger and bigger now but not a lot of words or actions he says or does are actually in context except "uh oh" and "no".

The next video is of Oliver pushing the swing on our porch. He's up and cruising around furniture now and just today while I was swinging on our porch swing he came up and started pushing me.

Other things he's doing now is drinking fully out of a sippy cup. He's also cruising like I said but doing so while pushing his shopping cart, high chair, or bouncing bike around with him walking behind them. His hemaglobin has never been better either since we left the NICU over a year ago. It was 11 in August and 10.5 in September. It seems like the month of September went by so fast with me working 5 days a week but I'm back to my regular schedule of 3 days a week 12 hour days now. Shawn bought another Oliver tractor this month but this time it is a bit newer - a 1966 (if you call that new). There I think you're all updated on what's new with the Peterman's now.

New room for a big boy

So lately bedtime and nap time at our house has been rough on all of us because Oliver learned to pull himself up to stand in his crib. We were so proud of him at first until we realized that he didn't know now to lay back down and go to sleep. So after he screamed his head off for a few minutse we'd get up and lay him back down. This went on numerous times a night even sometimes at 4:30 in the morning. Now he can lay back down he just refuses to because he can see us sitting in the living room and screams even louder for us. This meant that this past week Shawn and I went to bed most nights around 8pm too. The little stinker would stand there and laugh and us then his pacifier would fall out of his mouth so then all we heard was "UH OH" repeated over and over again until we didn't come put it back in his mouth then he'd scream. That's right he's learned to say that too now. So vocabulary is now up to momma, dada, duck, quack, and uh oh. It seems like he's saying other things at times but not in context yet.

Oliver's room this morning

We realized that it was time to move him upstairs and away from seeing us to help his sleeping we hope. This process started last weekend with Shawn and I cleaning out one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. Now today, we took apart his crib and moved everything upstairs.

Oliver's new big boy room

Stay tuned on how tonight goes for both Oliver and us. I think momma will have a harder time than Oliver with the move. Time to use the baby monitor again.

Favorite spot

One of Oliver's favorite spots in under the side table in our living room. He crawls under there and when he sits up he's the perfect height, for now, to fit under there. He can't sit up tall though anymore because he hits his head.

The first time he did this he got stuck under there because he didn't know he had to crawl back out and lower his head down. He threw a tantrum but now is a pro at going in and out of it! It's actually really good for us because he picks things up off the floor for us that he most likely dropped down there anyway.

Wagon ride

My parents gave Oliver a wagon for his first birthday and now he loves it. Whenever we're in the garage and he sees it he squeals with excitement. And if you put him in it you better go for a long walk, not just around the house or he'll throw a tantrum if you take him out too soon. Now, if you've been to our house, you know we live in the middle of a big hill and let me tell you, it is hard to pull that wagon up the hill even with him being only 20 pounds! So we took advantage of the warm few days we had and went outside for pictures and a wagon ride

Hang on tightly!

I think he likes it!

Smarty pants

Just wanted to share a few stories about Oliver because he's so smart and cute! It's amazing how their little brains work and how he remembers things already.

The other day Oliver and I were playing out on our porch with his cement mixer. We put blocks in the back of his cement mixer because #1 they don't roll like the balls that came with it, and #2 we can't seem to find the balls because of #1. So Oliver was pulling the lever down on the cement mixer but there was only one block in it. He saw another block by the door so he crawled over to the block, picked it up and showed it to me, then crawled back to the cement mixer with the block in his hand and put it in the back of the mixer. Now he pulled the green lever down again making it go around and around and he laughed and laughed because it works so much better with 2 blocks than 1.


Next story happened this morning when I was making his breakfast of oatmeal. I had set out some cheerios for him while we waited for the oatmeal and this is what he was doing.

He would pick up the cheerios from the middle of the tray and put them in the cup holder of his tray. I would take them back out and put them in the middle because he can't pick them out of the cup holder to eat them because he can't see them so they just end up on the floor. This went on for almost 5 minutes eating a cheerio every once in a while but mostly moving them to the cup holder and me putting them in the middle.

And one more story because he's so smart! Last night we ate supper at my parents for Grandparents Day today and Oliver was crawling around like usual. You can't contain him now, he's always on the move and watch out because he is fast. Anyway, my parents have a portable air conditioner like we do and we let him play with the remote at our house because he is always trying to get remotes, phones, calculators, etc (I think it's the buttons). So he crawled up to the air conditioner and grabbed the remote from it (it fits into the unit itself to when stored). He started playing with it and then tried putting it back in the slot but he wasn't quite tall enough to snap it back into its place.