Dude

This morning I was sitting our landing (right when you walk in the door) watching Carter play. It's a little patch of carpet and then has a step down into the living room. I was sitting on the step. Carter's puffs were next to me. We made eye contact and he was smiling and then his eyes shifted to my right. Puffs spotted! Homeboy made a beeline for where I was sitting, huffing and puffing his way over to me.

I scooted over a little and moved the puffs a little further back to see what he would do. Um, dude climbed up that step like he's been doing it for years. Yep, no big deal. Of course I had to give him a puff as a reward.

Then I wanted to see how he'd get himself off the step. He went with the faceplant technique. Not my first choice (nor did it seem to be his afterwards) but it worked. Thankfully we're fully carpeted and he didn't get hurt, just surprised that there was no floor under him when he tried to crawl off the step. Guess we're gonna have to teach him how to get down a little more gracefully.

Dude is way busy learning things these days. His sitter said he ate a whole cracker yesterday and didn't have any crumbs. No clue where he got that from. There are always remnants of my food when I eat in bed. Tiny little crumbs you can't see but you can definitely feel against the soft sheets. And Chris is no better. He's always sweeping food off his chest.

Oh, and yes I know that photo above has nothing to do with anything in this post. I just thought it was cute.

Hayleigh's Story

My stepfather has been diabetic since he was young. Growing up, it didn't really occur to me that he was "different." I was used to seeing him inject his insulin into his belly. It was normal for us to go into a restaurant before him so he could sit in the car and do his injection. I didn't blink when he would prick his calloused fingers several times a day to check his sugar. It was all normal to me.

It really wasn't until I "met" Kris that I realized that living with diabetes is not so easy; Brian just made it seem that way. Her daughter Hayleigh is diabetic. She's a sweet, funny, and strong girl and this is her story:

This morning

I snapped this picture this morning from inside my car. I just thought it was so cute. Carter's in the stroller so you can't see him, but the kids were headed off to the park as soon as we got there. They were all waiting for him in the driveway and jumped when they saw me pull up because they were so excited to go to the park now that Carter was there.

I love how the little ones hold on to the stroller and "help" Shaista. It makes them feel important and keeps them close.

Oh, and the kid in the prison suit? The biter.

A Few Firsts

My mom asked me the other day if I'd found Carter sitting up in his crib yet. Nope, not yet but thanks for asking (and jinxing it). Sure enough, this morning I heard him making some noises but then it got quiet again so I figured he fell back to sleep. I went out into the living room to put his daycare bag by the front door, looked toward his room, and saw his head move in the slight darkness. That's odd, I thought, his head looks higher than it should be. I turned on the light and there he was, sitting up and grinning from ear to ear. I called Chris in to see him (he was home because he had a doctor's appointment this morning) and we both laughed and smiled and chatted with the little dude.

He likes to play with his Bumbo on the floor so I leave it down there for him. He's been interested in bracing his hands on the back and pulling himself up, but if I'm not there to hold down the front it just topples over and he can't do it. Last night we were playing on the floor and he went for it and got himself in an upside-down "L" position; hands on the back of the Bumbo and legs straight. He was so proud of himself. Next attempt I'm sure will be the coffee table.

Speaking of his Bumbo, I'm sure glad we stopped using it for feeding him. He climbed completely out of it last night. Silly kid.

And I think the last thing I keep meaning to post about is his discovery of the letter B. Instead of dadadadada all the time, sometimes he'll yell out BABABABBAAAABO. No "mama" yet. Not even close.

Imagination

Apparently, Carter likes feeding himself so much, he eats imaginary food!

Root Canal

They say you lose one tooth for every pregnancy. Yesterday, #19 went down.

I had gone a year and a half between cleanings, and when I showed up for an appointment a few months ago, I was told I'd need a root canal. What??!! I instantly started crying. What a wuss. I made the appointment and then rescheduled it. I was tempted to reschedule it again but I figured I'd just go and get it over with. Plus it was a good opportunity for my mom to get some good Carter time in.

The second I sat down in that chair, I started crying again. I was so terrified. When I got that tooth filled (it had a big nasty cavity several years ago), the dentist didn't get me numb enough and it was horribly painful. I can remember that feeling so clearly and it traumatized me. The assistant was so nice and explained to me in detail what was going to happen and why, with pictures and everything. I was grateful for that. I'm the kind of person that likes to know too much. Chris thinks I oversaturated myself with information while I was pregnant. I don't think so...I was just very prepared.

So he numbed me up and started drilling. I was squeezing a stress ball so hard that my fingertips were in pain. I was making little noises and every muscle in my body was tight. I just couldn't relax, anticipating that horrible feeling from the last time. I started to feel the beginnings of it so I stopped him and he gave me another shot in a different place. I felt that shot going in, so it definitely wasn't my imagination that I wasn't numb enough!

After that it was pretty much smooth sailing. I felt him (pressure, not pain) scraping the pulp and root out. It was like that little brush that comes with Dr. Brown's bottles to get little device that goes inside clean. I'm sure that made sense to at least three of you. Anyway, he asked me if I felt anything and I said no and he said that if I wasn't feeling that, I wouldn't feel anything. Woot! Home free. So I relaxed and just let him do his job.

Towards the end I started to get a little bit of sensation back but it wasn't enough to stop him and make him numb me more. I could deal with it.

It took almost 2 hours and my jaw is still really sore from being open for that long. I was in a little bit of discomfort last night but I took a Tylenol 3 to combat it, and it seemed to work like a charm. So well, in fact, that I started feeling a little relaxed on our way to dinner (I took it right before we left). We were about a mile from the restaurant when I started noticing a little effect. We parked and I got out of the car and opened the back door to get Carter out, fished in my pocket for the key so I could lock the door, and realized the key was still in the ignition and the car was running. Doh. So I handed my keys off to my mom so she could drive home. :-)

The procedure wasn't as bad as I had built it up in my mind, but it's definitely not something I'd like to have done again. Obviously.

Once Bitten

Carter got bitten by another kid at daycare yesterday. His sitter turned her back to get everyone's sippy cups and when she turned back around, JK had Carter's leg in his mouth. She quickly stopped him and thankfully it didn't break the skin. However, you can definitely see clearly defined red teeth marks in his leg. I tried to take a picture last night but couldn't get it to show up. The flash on the camera made it disappear when I could actually get him to sit still long enough to get a pic.

The kid who bit him is only like 18 months old. He roughhouses with his older brother a lot and sometimes bites him, so Shaista tries to keep him away from Carter or closely supervised as much as she can.

I'm not angry. I'm actually just looking at it as a rite of passage. Every kid gets bitten at some point. Right?

8 Months

Carter turned 8 months old yesterday. It seems like every day he's doing something new and wonderful. He's growing up so quickly.

He's improving very quickly with his crawling. And now he can get himself to a sitting position from crawling mode. That makes him very happy. He's starting to eat some "real" foods...puffs, bits of cracker, bread, etc. He looks so proud when he feeds himself. It really only took me a few times of showing him what to do before he got it. Each day he gets better and better at getting the food into his mouth.



We're working on teaching him how to clap, which I think will be the first step to teaching him signs. I do the sign for "more" a lot and he seems to maybe understand what I'm saying, but he's not doing it back yet. Shaista (his sitter) says they do clapping a lot so hopefully he'll get it soon. They also must sing the ABC song a lot because as soon as I start singing it, he stops his whining (or whatever he's doing at that moment the prompts me to start singing) and watches me intently, smiling.

He seems to be on a fairly good schedule these days. He wakes up once a night, usually around 4 or 5, but goes right back to sleep after I nurse him. He gets up for good by 8:00 and then takes a mid-morning nap for about 45 minutes. He takes a (usually) longer nap mid-afternoon and then another at 5:30 when we get home from work/daycare. If he's not up on his own, I wake him up at 7:00 so he can play with Daddy, eat dinner, get a bath, etc before bedtime at 8:30ish. Bedtime is super easy (hope I'm not jinxing it!). We put him down and he goes to sleep. Simple as that! No binkie, no lovey, just the kid and the mattress. And sometimes his tv.

Still not saying anything other than "dada" all the time. Believe me, I'm working on it! He does like when Chris whispers to him and sometimes he'll whisper back, but it's usually some variation on "dada." He also likes to blow raspberries.

My favorite thing though? His sneezes. They are just so darn cute. And he smiles really big every time. Especially if he just sneezed in someone's face. :-)

He's crawling!

Last night Carter was in bed with us hanging out and it looked like he was getting ready to do an army crawl so we figured we'd stick him on the floor and see what happened. I grabbed the camera, we plopped him on the ground, and teased him with the remote. The following is what happened:



What's amazing is that he never "practiced." He never rocked, got up on his knees, or anything. We're so proud of him!

July 11th

Today, we would have been celebrating our baby's first birthday.

Instead, I spent the morning kissing and cuddling and loving on my little boy that never would have existed had our Nugget not died. It's a happy day, just in a different way.

I'm finally at a place where I can say (albeit with tears in my eyes) that yes, it happened for a reason. Carter was meant to be our son and the pain and the grief was worth it. Every second of it.

The G word

I know, it's all you hear about these days..."going green." It's annoying. But I can't help but be swept up in it.

I watch Planet Green voraciously. I can't get enough. My only complaint about it is that it basically preaches getting rid of your old stuff and getting new, sustainable "stuff." What are you supposed to do with the old stuff?? Isn't the whole point to use what you have until you can't anymore and then do something responsible with it, like recycle it? Then, once you NEED to replace something, do it the "right" way (sustainable and ecologically-friendly).

In our home, we've made a few small changes that make me feel good about doing my part.

• I do cloth diapers. Not as much as I'd like to though. But, each cloth one I use is one less going into a landfill. Right?
• I've Freecycled all of our nasty cleaning stuff and replaced it with vinegar, water, baking soda and lemon juice.
• I try to limit my driving, even if it means staying home all day and just vegging. And if I do have errands to run, I try to do them all at once so it limits how much driving around I'm doing. Except for the great Peanut Butter Fudge Cake incident of 2008. But that's another story for another time.
• I wash most of our clothes in cold water.
• We turn the air conditioner up to 80 when we're not at home.
• Carter eats mostly organic jarred baby food or locally-grown food from the farmers' market. I'm not really stringent on that, but I like to try to adhere to a more natural diet for him than what we eat (Oreo ice cream in the freezer, I'm talking to you). I also make a lot of his food from frozen veggies and fruit. Less packaging waste and WAY cheaper than the jarred stuff. Plus, it's fun to mix and match the pretty-colored frozen cubes.

I've also been making some changes at work. I work for a title company. We shuffle a LOT of paper. When a loan closes, I used to make a copy for the borrower, a copy for our files, and then send the originals to the lender. Now?

• I scan the lender docs and save them on the computer, rather than copying 100 pages. Five files, and I've saved a ream of paper!
• I've also started collecting the stubs I rip off the checks I cut, turning them over to the blank side, and putting them together into notepads. Every time I answer the phone I write down the person's name so that when I say goodbye I can use their name. I used to use Post-its for that. What a waste.
• Instead of overnighting payoff checks to the lenders, we've started wiring them. That saves on the paper copies that we'd make of all the supporting documentation, plus the Fed Ex fees are no more. And it doesn't cost us anything extra to send the wire, so why not??
• I troll the internet looking for coupons to use on the office supplies I need to buy so that the savings can go toward recycled paper. Yesterday, I ordered two boxes of recycled paper and only spent $25! That's about a 50% savings. Sweet.
• I email as much as I can instead of faxing. Again, saves paper.

I feel good about what I've been doing and I'm hoping to find more ways to get more "green" without compromising our lifestyle or budget.

I know my brother Rick is rolling his eyes and sighing loudly (if he's even gotten this far into the post) because he's convinced there is no environmental issue. Let's all just let him live in his fantasy world, shall we?

Bizarro Carter

This kid? Don't know where he came from. All day yesterday he wasn't happy unless I was holding him. He cuddled more than he ever has. He was crabby and cranky and hardly napped.

But then last night our kid was back and cuter than ever.

Chris' work picnic

I'm a little late on this one, but better late than never. Last Friday we went to Chris' work picnic at Smokey Glen Farm. I didn't go last year because I was pregnant and it was hot and I just liked to lay around in bed in the air conditioning in those days. Ah, those were the days...

Anyway, his picnic was a lot of fun. I got to meet some new people, and see some folks again that we met at his holiday party in December.

Here's Daddy and Son holding hands. So cute!


Chris DOMINATING at Tug O' War. :-) Check out that right calf muscle!

Carter looking half drunk...cheering Daddy on. (Girl, recognize that quilt??)

At the end of the day, Chris' team didn't win, but he got a Good Sport Award. We were very proud. And, yes, he's wearing his Father's Day shirt with nekkie Carter on it. :-)

Carter was zonked out by the time the day was over.

Carter's famous in Chris' work circle. Apparently, he's an internet sensation! Hi everyone!

A new low

Somehow, someone found my blog by searching the words "flat butt." That's just embarassing. And true.

New Trick

He started blowing raspberries today. He'd been doing it to his pacifier or his arm, or even my boob, but never just a straight raspberry. He was doing it all night tonight. So funny.

Sorry the video's so dark.