Visit from Grandpa Ken & Fighting a Cold

The past several days, Fischer has been fighting a cold--I'm guessing that his future teething times will include colds as his first two bouts with teeth have. Bummer--at least we can go through each episode knowing we'll have the "reward" of teeth. Since he's a very healthy boy otherwise, it's only been with teething so far that Fischer's not felt like himself. I guess it will be better to endure teething and colds simultaneously instead of more tough times enduring teething and illness separately!

Now that his appetite is returning, we can continue our adventures in feeding. Meals are almost always very messy! In the pic below, Fischer's sucking on his top gums where his newest tooth is emerging--a habit he's gotten into :) It looks like he's got puffy lips, because he folds his bottom lip down. He's kind of a comic--wonder who he got that from?!
On Thursday we finally celebrated Christmas with Grandpa Ken and his friend Grace when they came for a visit. It wasn't long after they arrived that they insisted we dig into the gifts. Fischer opened his presents with a little help, and lots of chewing on giftwrap :) His favorite present was an interactive puppy that sings, talks, counts, plays music--you name it--when you press different body parts. Even with all of that to offer, Fischer still searched the puppy for its tag, and spent most of his time with it chewing on it. It looks silly when he does, because the tag happens to be on the puppy's bottom :)
Grandpa Ken and Fischer were excited to see each other. It took Fischer just a couple minutes to soak it all in, and it wasn't long before he was loving being the center of Grandpa and Grace's attention. Even though he was a little tired and restless from being sick and all the excitement of the visit, Fischer was good company as usual. We all really enjoyed the visit.

Now that he can sit up nicely in a shopping cart, it's easy--with a little planning and timing--to bring Fischer out to the store. We wanted to get out of the house the other night, so Daddy sent us to Menards for a couple things. Fischer was such a good boy that I got him his first kickball. When I put it in the cart next to him, he patted it and spent the rest of our shopping trip rubbing it with his fingers--it's got a dimpled surface. He likes to bounce his hands on it and try and mouth it. With as much as he's been drooling, it doesn't take long to make almost the entire surface wet with his slobber :) He really likes the ball. It's a treat when Fischer gets to take a bath with Joe these days, because Joe often works past Fischer's bedtime. When we're all home and one of us takes a bath with Fischer, the other stays on standby, ready to dry, diaper and pajama him. When Joe bathes with him, I'll check on them after what I think is plenty of time to get pruney, but they're not even washed yet because they've been playing!
When we hold him, Fischer is constantly wiggling. He likes to 'stand' and even tries to wriggle up our fronts when we hold him--something kind of like a humping motion that I can't help laughing at. It just means he's getting ready to turn our house upside down when he starts scooting and crawling--it won't be long before I'm blogging about that!

In the meanwhile, we're all trying to make the most of these long winter weeks. Soon the groundhog will tell us what's in store.