2009: It's been a busy year

I thought I would post a recap of our 2009. It won't be near as funny as Dave Berry's Year in Review (thanks to Steve for tweeting with the link to that, it's hilarious!! If you haven't read it yet, take the time to do so.)

January through March we stayed busy switching rooms around for the new baby that we were expecting. We had to completely get rid of an entire bedroom full of stuff. Our guest room had also become a catch-all for things we had no other spot for. It was really interesting finding space for some things and getting rid of others. Garrett made the transition to his new room with little problem.

February 2 we found out we were having baby boy #2! I wasn't really surprised because I had felt I was having another boy and actually hoped for another boy. But that moment where the technician tells you for sure what gender the baby is, it's surprising either way.

April 7 was the night that sent me to the hospital hemorrhaging. It was a very scary experience, especially being 7 and a 1/2 months pregnant. That day marked the one year anniversary of Angie Smith's loss of her daughter, Audrey. After reading her blog that day where she shared what she was feeling, and then to end up in the hospital that night, I had her and her family on my heart and mind even more heavily than before. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to lose a baby and I wasn't sure if God was going to take my baby then, but Praise Him everything was ok and they had no idea what had caused the bleeding in the first place.

May was spent with baby showers, getting the room ready, and buying last minute things we would need for the baby. So much excitement goes into washing those baby clothes for the first time, installing the carseat, getting bottles prepared. Too bad that excitement doesn't carry itself to when the baby is 6 months old and you've washed the same bib for the thousandth time, and heaved around a carseat with a 17 pound baby in it, and made yet another bottle in the never ending bottle cycle.

I wish his room still looked this nicely organized.

At my final doctor's appointment on June 15, I was scheduled for an induction on the 17th. However at 12:45 am on June 17th, I woke up in the middle of the night (even though I had taken 2 Tylenol PM in order to feel rested for the big day), after rolling over (which takes lots of effort when you're 9 months pregnant) I felt my water break. So instead of getting to sleep in until 6 am, we got a couple hours of sleep and were off to the hospital. At 9:30 am, Cooper Gage was born weighing 7 lbs 10 oz.

The months of July and August were basically a blur of middle of the night feedings, thousands of diaper changes and lots of spit-up. Mix in Keith's birthday in July and Garrett's 4th birthday in August and that pretty much sums up those months in our family. In September, Garrett started his 3rd year of attending Mother's Day Out twice a week at our church. It was heavenly to switch from having 2 kids to just one on those days. Mid-September we took our first family vacation in a long time. We went to Galveston for a long weekend, played on the beach, visited with my brother and sister in law and just generally had a fun time. RIP nice, new, navy blue tennis shoes for we hardly knew ye. A stupid neighborhood dog drug one off, never to be seen or heard from again.

October included our first family of 4 picture session, which turned out wonderfully, Cooper eating baby food for the first time, and Halloween with Buzz Lightyear and Woody.

November was our first long trip with Cooper when we drove 14 hours one way to see my family for Thanksgiving/Christmas for a week. It was a great visit and the trip went really well with a 4 year old and a 5 month old. My legs are permanently shorter from having to sit in the middle of the backseat in order to be in-car entertainment, but that's better than going deaf from the screams.

December was a mad scramble to get everything purchased for Christmas, my attempts to forget the fact that I'm now 31, and enjoying Cooper's first Christmas and Garrett's love of the holiday and everything about it.

High-5 for Christmas!

It's been a crazy year for our family, but a great one. It's hard to believe that we won't have a year quite like this one again, but we're anticipating bigger and better.

So 2010, we're ready for you.

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas

Well, we came thisclose to getting a White Christmas here in north Texas. On Christmas Eve, the flakes started coming down pretty thick, but by Christmas morning, everything was gone except for the cold weather. Oh well, we were still pretty excited to see snow on Christmas Eve.

Christmas '09 went down like this:

Keith had to work up until the day before Christmas Eve, so we were basically business as usual. Garrett didn't have school any the week of Christmas, so his class party was the Thursday before. He had a great time, we made ornaments (which was a bit tricky since Cooper was with me, but I needed to help Garrett with a few parts. Thankfully several of the other moms were really helpful.) We ate kid food, which consists of PB&J (though Garrett does not like those), rolled up lunchmeat (which he loves), cheese cubes, and of course the prerequisite veggie tray which all moms force their child to eat a few pieces from before they can have a Christmas cookie or cupcake. Garrett said he absolutely hates broccoli (who knew?) but I managed to get him to choke down a few carrots before he moved on to dessert. The gift exchange required that each child bring a $5 gift for a boy or a girl. We found a nice nerf gun for $5 to give to someone, but unfortunately Garrett got in return a remote control car that didn't work for even a second out of the box. Too bad he couldn't have ended up with his own gift. But, such is life when a lot of toys nowadays are cheaply made.

We went to church and watched the Christmas musical that Sunday, which was really good. And then I spent the days leading up to Christmas trying to keep Garrett out of the presents. On Christmas Eve, we spent the day at Keith's parents' house where we exchanged gifts with his family. It was a fun day, especially with the snow I mentioned earlier. When we got home that night, we put the boys to bed and then started assembly. Garrett's big gift was a 2 wheel bike with training wheels and Cooper got a "Busy Ball Popper". We only assembled those 2 gifts, put out the stocking stuffers and then went to bed.

Both boys were up at 6am, but thankfully are still young enough that we got them into our bed and we all slept until 7:30. (I know this was probably the last year that will happen, at least for awhile.) Of course we couldn't just run into the living room and start opening presents because for some crazy reason, 6 month old babies tend to insist on eating before anything else happens for the day. So we all had a quick breakfast and then moved on to stockings.

One thing that our family does, that my family did growing up, is that we take turns opening presents. None of this, free-for-all ripping into presents with wrapping paper flying everywhere and you're done in less than 30 minutes. Growing up in a family of 5 kids, the present-unwrapping festivities lasted a good 2 hours. Which we loved because it drug out the anticipation. We went around the room, each person opening one gift and we took turns who got to go first with each round. It was really fun, so that's what we do at our house now. It's nice to be able to see my child's reaction with each gift they open rather than ask them after the fact what they thought because the unwrapping was too chaotic.

Garrett's new bike that he found 2 weeks before Christmas in the box in my closet. He immediately told me "I don't know what that bike is in your closet." Thankfully he never mentioned it again and he seemed surprised on Christmas morning, so who knows.

With the several presents that Garrett opened, he proclaimed 2 of them to be exactly what he wanted. (Though he's liked all of them so far.) One of which I bought on a whim a few days before Christmas. He had never even mentioned Gator Golf, wanting it or otherwise, but I saw it was on sale and thought he might like it since he's currently into golf. Turns out that was one of his favorite gifts. That and the kid sized Snuggie that he got. He's been dying for one for quite awhile now.

Cooper seems to love the ball popper and a driving toy that we bought him.

For Christmas this year I got, the Wii fit, another Wii game, several photo albums, a Shark sweeper (which I've been wanting for a long time and I'm loving it!), a few books (Eat This Not That! is one of them and it's a great book! If you've never read it, you should! So interesting.), and a calendar. It was a great Christmas! We had a nice, relaxing day being at home, just the 4 of us. We've been doing this ever since we got married and I'm so glad we're able to spend Christmas at home with just our family. I fixed a ham for dinner along with the usual side dishes and we had plenty to eat.

The day after Christmas was spent doing some major cleaning. My closet got a big overhaul, the bathrooms were cleaned, floors swept (with my new sweeper, of course!), laundry done and put away, bedsheets changed, and all my Christmas decorations boxed up and ready for the attic. I know that seems early, and it is. But with all the baby equipment in our living room this year, I was getting tired of feeling cluttered. The tree was taking the spot where I've had the Jumperoo, so it's been floating around the living room and the Exersaucer always stays in the middle of the floor, so it was driving me a little crazy to feel like things were out of place. Next year it will be much better because this equipment will be gone and it will just be toys like always. I feel a little bit like the Grinch putting everything away the day after Christmas, but it's nice to feel like my living room is a bit more organized.

It's really hard to believe that Christmas is over! I feel like this year, more than any other year, it just snuck up on us all of the sudden and then flew by without any warning. I hope next year I'll be able to savor it a bit more. I also can't believe that by next Christmas, Cooper will be 18 months old! Definitely no longer a baby.

December Miscellaneous

• It's 2 days before Christmas and I am done! One more present to wrap and that's it. I should be wrapping it now rather than blogging, but I just don't have the energy. I've shopped, I've wrapped, I've baked, I've taken many pictures of the boys by the tree, now it's time for Christmas to begin.
• Garrett has had many and varied items that he has requested from Santa. I'm not even sure I've bought most of the things he's mentioned. He goes from asking for a skateboard (how he even knows what they are is beyond me) to asking for a new Buzz Lightyear. The one he has is a bit worn, but still completely functioning so I don't think we'll see Buzz under the tree this year. (The new Buzz Lightyears that are out in anticipation for Toy Story 3 next summer are upwards of $50! That's a lot to spend on a toy that he could outgrow at anytime.)
• For the first time ever, I had to make sure that the gift count for the boys was even. Now, before you roast me for even buying Cooper many things seeing as how he's only 6 months old, he needs several things so I just bought what he's needing and wrapped it up. I figured it was easier to do that than to explain to Garrett why Cooper had nothing under the tree.
• I really appreciate our household appliances for deciding to all go on strike at this time of year. Well, not all, but our stove blew up (pretty much literally) and our kitchen faucet went down the drain (har har). So we had 2 expenses we weren't planning on in this, the most expensive time of the year.
• Stove story: One morning last week, I turned on the stove to heat up pigs in a blanket for breakfast. This in itself is unusual for me. During the week, we're cold cereal and the occasional piece of toast kind of people. But for whatever reason I thought pigs sounded good. The stove had already preheated and I had stuck the pan in the oven. Keith was about to walk out the door when he said something was on fire in the stove. So I told him to turn it off thinking maybe the foil I covered the pan with had fallen onto the heating element. Turning off the stove did nothing for the fire (and no foil had fallen onto the element.) So Keith grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed it in the stove. It did absolutely nothing to that fire, but it did make a total mess all over the kitchen. At this point we kind of felt a bit panicked. Here was a fire in the stove that was not phased by the fire extinguisher. Keith grabbed the stove, yanked it away from the wall, unplugged it and started dragging it to the garage. His plan was to just haul it into the yard and let it burn down, but thankfully by the time he got it to the garage, it had quit. A piece of the heating element had completely split open and the fire was following around the element as if it was a lighted fuse. Weird and scary. Thankfully a new element and a good cleaning (from the extinguisher mess) was all the stove needed. I was thankful I had a weird craving for pigs that morning because under normal circumstances, I would have had the stove on when Keith wasn't home. So I'm not sure how all of that would have gone down if it had been up to me to keep our house from burning down.
• While Keith replaced our kitchen sink and faucet all by himself, he wouldn't recommend anyone else trying it. It was a rough couple of days at our house. But I love my new stainless steel sink and faucet. The ones that came with our house were very cheap, basic white ones that we haven't liked since day 1.
• So for those of you keeping count we've had to completely replace our a/c unit, dryer, kitchen faucet and repair our dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator, all within the past year. The only appliance left standing with all its original parts is the microwave. Please don't quit on me now baby. That's where all the real cooking in this house takes place.
• Garrett is now a commercial afficionado. He told me the other day that I need "Bump-It hair". How awesome that even my 4 year old recognizes my lack of hair volume. (If you have no idea what a Bump-It is, just google it. Southern women like big hair and that's supposed to help you out.)
• I'm feeling weird because I'm actually looking forward to my new eating and exercising lifestyle. My plan is to start this on January 4, so I'm thinking I will try to do a weekly progress report. That will help me to feel as if I have someone keeping tabs on my success/failure so I will maybe feel motivated to keep it up. I WON'T be posting my weight, but I will share losses or gains weekly. So we'll see how it goes. 5 pounds a month is my goal.
• I hope all my wonderful friends and family have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you have snow in your area, enjoy yourself! We don't see much of it down here.

Happy Half-Birthday!

Dear Cooper,
Today you are 6 months old! I can't believe we're halfway to your birthday. I guess I should start thinking about birthday party themes...

You absolutely love your dad and your big brother. (I think you're pretty fond of me too..) If Garrett is around and doing anything the least bit entertaining, your eyes are glued on him and you're squealing and talking, trying hard to get his attention. When Daddy gets home in the evenings, you don't take your eyes off of him until he finally picks you up. If I'm holding you at this time (and I usually am), your body gets all tensed up as if to say "Pick me! Pick me!" And of course he always picks you up as soon as he can.

So, what are you up to at this 6 month mark?
*You're still practicing your sitting up skills. You sit up very well when propped, but with your attempts to pick up and play with toys all the time, if you sit up independently, you're not upright for long.
*You love your toys, especially the ones you can chew on or the ones that light up or make sounds.
*You hold your pacifier really well and can put it back in your own mouth. You even throw it sometimes. I've found several outside of your crib on the floor, and since you have a bumper pad in the crib, I know they didn't just fall out.
*You LOVE veggies. All veggies. It doesn't matter what vegetable it is, I can feed it to you and you will almost always eat the whole jar.
*You're learning to tolerate fruit. But you still haven't eaten more than half a jar at one sitting. And it has to be a mixed fruit, you don't want one solo fruit in the jar.
*I started giving you baby yogurt this week and you seem to like that well. Better than cereal anyway. You will eat about half of a cup and then you're done.
*You still love your sippy cup and have even tried giving yourself drinks from it.
*You're starting to notice some of Garrett's cartoons on the TV.
*You scoot backwards a lot now. I have to watch you when you're on the floor because you've ended up underneath the couch when I wasn't watching. (That's the negative to having hardwood floors, a scooting baby, and a couch that sits off the ground several inches.)
*Getting on your hands and knees is second nature for you now. You even do it in your crib when you're fighting sleep. You also rock back and forth when you're on them too, so I'm guessing crawling is in our near future.
*You sleep well at night, going to bed around 7:30 and waking up about 6:30 (then I bring you in my bed for half an hour because I just can't bring myself to get up at 6:30). Some nights you wake up during the night for one reason or another. Lately it's been because you're cold.
*You still don't take great naps and they're very inconsistent with how long you go. One morning, you'll sleep for an hour and a half, the next morning you only sleep for 30 minutes. This drives me slightly bonkers because I can't get anything done when you're napping! I never know how long you'll stay down, so of course on the days you sleep a long time, I end up getting nothing done because I think you're going to wake up any minute now.
*You don't have any teeth yet. I really thought you would have your first one now with all the drool, crankiness, chewing on things, etc. But nothing's there. I can feel a spot on your gums, but apparently we still have a ways to go.
*You went to the church nursery for the first time 2 Sundays ago. They said you did really well and all the ladies in there had Garrett when he was a baby, so they are excited to watch you now.

I'm really looking forward to your first Christmas next week! I hope you'll enjoy attempting to open presents, or at least eating the wrapping paper.

16 things you probably didn't know about me

In honor of the fact that I turn 31 today, I thought I would share 16 things you don't know about me. Unless you're a close family member, then you probably do. This wouldn't be a hard list to make except for the fact that I'm pretty much an open book, so if I haven't shared something, it's because I'm not going to. As the old woman on "Titanic" said, "A woman's heart is as deep as the ocean..." And that's all I can remember of her remark, but she was basically saying that there's always things you don't tell anyone. Not necessarily advocating that philosophy, but I think most of us have one thing or another that no one will ever know about us.
So the first thing you probably didn't know about me is that I tend to get sidetracked. Or you probably did know that.

1. My sister, Grace, and I used to play house when we were little. We both had 14 kids and each child had a first and middle name. I actually had those names written down and kept them under the top bunk of our bunkbeds. Becase all good mothers do this. I keep Garrett and Cooper's names on the back of my hand, just in case. Our stuffed raccoons were our husbands. And I didn't use one single name off that list to name our boys. The only names I actually remember were an imaginary son named Nathan and an imaginary daughter named Belinda. And did I mention that I was around the age of 12 when we played this?

2. Anytime my parents left me in charge while they went out, I always made my siblings clean the house. I helped too, but I wanted to keep everyone busy doing something so they were all assigned different chores and had to do them before our parents got home. And they truly loved me for that.

3. When I was 8 months pregnant with Cooper, I mentioned going to the doctor for something on my leg. What I didn't tell you was that it was a staph infection. People tend to freak out when they hear that, so I kept that information to myself. It's healed, but I can still see where it was. My doctor said it will leave a scar or will atleast be noticeable for a long time. This is why I did not get my tubes tied right after delivery.

4. I'm a huge fan of David Cook, the winner of season 7's American Idol. I love his music and his voice. I haven't been this big of a fan of anyone since New Kids on the Block. And no, I'm not a groupie. I've only seen him in concert twice, have never met him, never tried to meet him, and don't care about meeting him. I just love his singing and song-writing abilities.

5. In highschool, I babysat once for a family that could have qualified to be on that show "Hoarders". I was so grossed out about their living conditions, that I called them halfway through the evening at the restaurant (pre-cell phone days) and said I wasn't feeling well. They paid me $5 for my time. And I watched a 6 month old baby and a 2 year old who kept trying to eat dog food all night. Not to mention the thousands of animals living in the house. Needless to say, they never asked me to sit for them again and I would have said no anyway.

6. I don't really like Mexican food much. I'll eat it and have some dishes that I like, and even make it occasionally, but if given the choice I will choose something different.

7. There are some days that I don't think I can be a stay at home mom for another minute and would happily return to work if I found a job somewhere. But I won't. Some days are just really really hard.

8. I am very grossed out when people trash the inside of their cars. It's hard for me to even sit in the seat when someone's vehicle is dirty on the inside because I don't know what I may be sitting on. I'm not talking about a pile of clothes or toys, I'm talking about actual trash everywhere. My SUV is cluttered with toys, jackets, a stroller, diaper bag, etc. But if we eat in the car, I always pull out our trash and throw it away when we get home.

9. I am very critical of myself.

10. I don't keep an immaculate house. If you showed up at my home right now, you would see dirty dishes from yesterday on the kitchen counter, unswept floors, toys all over the living room, and a pile of laundry on the couch that needs to be folded. Not to mention unmade beds and clutter in the bedrooms. I don't like it that way, but some days I get absolutely nothing done because of a certain baby. And I RARELY dust.

11. I am extremely competitive when it comes to basketball. One time, I was at my sister's highschool b'ball game and I gave one of the refs a terrible time because he was doing a horrible job. After the game, I was making comments when he was in earshot and he said that it was basketball rules in Texas. (I may have said something like he wouldn't ever make it as a ref for b'ball up north...) One comment led to another and I discovered he was good friends with my former b'ball coach in Illinois. And he was reffing in southeast Texas. I'm sure Mr. Berg was really proud of me when this guy called him up and told him I was being mouthy throughout the game. This is why I have promised myself that I will NEVER coach my kids in any sort of basketball. Actually I won't ever coach or help with any basketball. I'll sit on the sidelines with a muzzle and just clap.

12. One time I accidentally body slammed a girl during a basketball game. We were lined up for free throws and she kept linking her arm into mine as if to keep me from getting the rebound, so when the ball came up, I shook her off, which resulted in her kind of flipping to the ground. Nothing was called on me, but Mr Berg thought it was pretty funny. My dad too. He was the head coach at the time.

13. When we lived in Illinois, our church had a softball team and they were pretty good. I'm NOT a softball player, but I did keep the book for them sometimes. For some of the games, they would have me and another girl or two, video the game from the score booth. I'm sure they asked us for the additional entertainment factor because I always forgot about that stinking video camera and would divulge ridiculous, high school girl information. One time I said, while the camera was rolling, that I really liked one guy on the team (who did not go to our church, but of course watched the video later on) and I really disliked another guy on the team. I think my exact words about him were "I don't like him and he doesn't like me and that's the way it's going to be." I'm sure he loved hearing that conversation. Later on, when he joined the church (because all PK's insult potential church-members...) I shook his hand and apologized for my comments. Thankfully my mouth didn't keep him from joining the church.

14. For my very first basketball game that I ever played, I was picked to be the first sub to go into the game for one of the starters. Of course our coach had never gone over the "subbing in" routine. So as soon as he told me who I was supposed to sub in for, I ran out on the court to tell her. Apparently you're supposed to go to the book keeper, tell them, and then wait for the refs to signal you in.

15. In that same game, the first time someone threw the ball to me, I immediately went to make a basket. And I missed. Which was a good thing because it was the other team's basket.

16. Starting next month, I will be dieting and exercising, hopefully with more will power and determination than I've had in the past. My initial, tentative goal is to lose 30 pounds by June. So that's only 5 pounds a month. If I was competing on Biggest Loser, I would go home right away. But hopefully doing it like this will make it really work this time.
I still can't believe that I'm now "in my 30's". Where the heck did my 20's go? If you find them, will you let me know?

Garrett stories

The scene:
This afternoon in the living room, playing with our Fisher Price Nativity Set.

I heard Garrett yell "Baby Jesus!!!" So I looked over and Baby Jesus had fallen off the cliff (aka entertainment cabinet) and the camel was watching and yelling for help. The angel swooped down and rescued Jesus, returning him to Mary's anxious arms. Mary said "Thank you sir for rescuing Baby Jesus." Then one of the wise men fell off the cliff and got buried in a pillow avalanche. The angel swooped down to rescue him accompanied by Mary. Either Garrett thinks this wise man is actually Joseph or this wise man is Mary's dad, not sure which, but Mary was hollaring "Daddy!! Where are you? We found Baby Jesus."

The scene:
A few days ago in the car, pulling into the garage after picking Garrett up from school.

Out of the blue, Garrett says "Momma, we need to build Daddy a new house." I asked him why. He said "This house isn't big enough. This is a Momma-size house. Daddy needs a Daddy-size house. So he can fit in the shower." (I should explain that he can fit in the shower just fine. He's 6'5", but the ceilings in our bathroom are 20 feet tall, so there's no problem there.) Garrett was very insistant that we needed to do it and it should be a surprise. I'm sure he would be very surprised.

The scene:
This morning in the car as we were pulling into the Walmart parking lot.

Garrett said "Yay! Walmart! Finally!" I said, "You love Walmart don't you?" He said "No. I love Nana and Pawpaw." He's missing them a lot since we saw them at Thanksgiving.

*Sorry it's been forever since a post. I'm very much behind this year with my Christmas shopping, plus Cooper has been beyond clingy lately, so that leaves me with little blogging time. In fact I'm holding him right now as I type this. Which is loads of fun.
The plus is that everyone outside of our family is bought for (except for a few small gifts) so I just have Keith and the boys to finish. I ordered Garrett's big present this afternoon. Toys R Us is having Free Shipping right now! So I could not pass up getting his new 2 wheel bike with training wheels shipped to our house rather than the hassle of going to the store and lugging it out to the car. I have a few ideas for Keith and have bought him some things already and Cooper could get by on what I've bought him so far. He won't care what he gets. I'm leaving early this Saturday morning and hope to get everything else purchased in one shopping trip. I've never actually done that before because I've always been able to do a little here and there, but that has not really happened this year, so one big trip it is. I promise to post at least a couple more times between now and Christmas. I have a birthday and Cooper has a half-birthday in the next week, so there will be plenty of material. So long as I can get a moment with my hands free...

5 Months

Dear Cooper,

You have been BUSY this month. You're learning a lot of new things all at once. I absolutely love this stage! It's so much fun!

Here's what you're up to at 5 months:

You are consistently sleeping 11 1/2 to 12 hours every night with one to zero times waking me up during the night! I'm so proud of you that you're doing such a great job with the sleeping thing! (Consistently, as in, most of the time. Last night would be the exception, of course, when you woke up 2 or 3 times and then ended up in my bed. But we'll just blame that on the tooth that is just about in.)

Your naps are getting more and more consistent now. You typically take a nap from around 9am-10am every morning, another one around 12:30 or 1:00 until 3ish and occasionally a catnap around 5pm for 20-30 minutes. I can always tell you're ready for nap because you start getting fussy and even with me holding you, you don't really quiet down. Our nap routine is to go into your room, turn on your sound machine, sing "Jesus Loves Me", and then I lay you on your side, give you your paci and stuffed cow that you've come to love and you either lay there and play with the cow for a minute before going to sleep, or you push the cow out of the way, roll onto your stomach and go to sleep. Sometimes, if you're having trouble falling asleep, I will cover you up with a light blanket and pat your bottom and that puts you right out.

When Garrett was a baby, I put 2-3 small stuffed animals in the corners of his crib to see if he would be interested in any of them being a "lovey" of sorts. He never was and really didn't care if they were in there or not. I've done the same with you and that is what has resulted with your love for the beanie baby cow. Sometimes I can go in your room before or after a nap and see that cow waving around in the air as you're playing with it. It's so funny!

Physically you can:

Roll both directions, but you haven't figured out that rolling can take you places. Though you do roll all over your crib, you haven't done this on the floor yet.

Do a big push-up where you're entire upper body is off the floor. It's so funny to walk into your room when you're doing this in the crib because your entire head is peaking over the side of the crib (when the rail is down).I would think you're sitting with the way you look, but you're just pushing yourself really high off the mattress.

When you're in the middle of doing something, I can rarely get you to smile...

You have started pushing yourself up onto your hands and knees. I'm still a little surprised by this because it seems early to be doing it, but you do it a lot now that you've figured out you can. I can actually fit my arm underneath your stomach because you have it lifted completely off the ground. Garrett army crawled for at least a month before crawling on his hands and knees. I will be interested to see if you do the same, or if you figure out the hands and knees crawling really quickly.

You've actually gotten onto your knees a little better than in this picture, but I don't always have the camera out when you're playing on the floor.

Sometimes when you're pushing yourself up onto your knees, you end up scooting backwards. You've gone from being in the middle of the blanket I laid for you on the floor, to being with your bottom half completely off of it.

You're able to sit independently for good stretches now and you love it! You've already sat in a restaurant highchair a couple of times and loved that too! (We have a Floppy Seat that covers the entire sitting area of a highchair and a shopping cart, so you're not touching any bit of the germy surface.)

You are very funny when it comes to baby food. You've let it be known that you do NOT like any baby cereals and you also have decided you don't like any fruits either. But you LOVE veggies and will eat an entire jar in one sitting, whereas you only take 4 or 5 bites of the others and start crying and turning your head after that. I'm betting you'll enjoy "big people" food once that time comes. I'm thinking in another month or so we will try baby yogurt and see what you think of that.
This was after eating almost an entire jar of peas. You loved every bite!

You LOVE LOVE LOVE drinking from a sippy cup. After every meal of baby food, I always give you a sip from a cup and you have taken to that real well. After 3-4 swallows of water, I have to take it away or you would probably drink it all. But I don't want you filling up on water, so we'll just stick with it being practice and the chance for you to "cleanse your pallette" after eating.

You are definitely cutting your first tooth. I have found a "rough, raised" spot in the front on your lower gum. Assuming this tooth breaks through before you're 7 months, you will have cut your first tooth before Garrett. And I'm praying it breaks through before then. You are very clingy right now and our house is a disaster because of it.

Bottle feeding you has become a lesson in flexibility. Sometimes you're very intense and take the entire 8 ounce bottle (or close to it) pretty quickly without any playing around. But other times, you'll drink a few ounces, then sit up, look around, take a few more ounces, sit up, then I'll just attempt to feed you the rest of it with you sitting up.

You love your crib mobile and I'm so sad that I will have to take it down soon. But once you're sitting up well, it's only a matter of time until you figure out how to sit up on your own, so that means the mobile can't be in your crib anymore. It has become the spot to put you while I'm making your bottle. It runs just long enough that I can: get a bottle made, run to the restroom, and sometimes do something quick for Garrett. Hopefully you'll still be good with hanging out in the crib during that time even without the mobile because our system works really well.
This really doesn't have anything to do with the above paragraph (though you can see the bottom of the mobile at the top of the pic), I just had to include it because I thought this was funny. I came in his room to get him up after a nap and found his arm outside the crib. He wasn't crying about it, he was just laying there. The above pic of him and the cow in his crib is what he looked like inside the crib while his arm was outside.

Your tear-duct is still blocked in your right eye. I don't know how many people have asked me if you're sick, have a cold, have pinkeye, etc because your eye is watery and sometimes mucousy. It's getting very old. I've started being very blunt and telling them that you have a blocked tear duct and eventually will have to have surgery where they will shove a metal wire in your eye to unblock it. That usually shuts them right up. I'm still hoping that it will unstop on it's own.

We're now approaching the half-way point!! This weekend we went a 1st birthday party for your cousin Michael so I was able to refresh my memory as to what 1 year old looks like. It's hard to comprehend how much you'll be doing over the next several months, but I'm going to love every bit of the time leading up to the point where you hit the tantrum throwing stage. Then it's downhill from there.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten that I have another child!! I will post what Garrett's been up to lately, real soon!

Veterans Day (and a few other things)

I think it's so important to recognize our veterans as well as those who are actively serving in the military. In today's time, the anti-war movement is very vocal and unfortunately, this can translate into anti-servicemen and women. If you know someone who has served or is currently serving, take a minute out of your day to say thank you. It means more to them than you know.

Keith's grandpa is a WW2 veteran. From the sound of it, he's one of the few still living. He's in his 80's and has been in poor health ever since I've known him. He still has shrapnel in his leg from the war. He has survived cancer and a whole host of other physical ailments. During one of his month-long hospitalizations about 5 years ago, he met with a pastor and, after listening to what he had to say about salvation, he accepted Jesus in his heart. He's never publicly told the family this, we only know because his wife was there and she has told us. I can't imagine exactly what it would do to someone to go to another country at the tender age of 18 and watch virtually everyone else in your squadron get killed along with doing plenty of killing of your own. He's never been one to talk about his experiences in Germany. I do know he brought back a few interesting things from his time there.

When I was student teaching, I lived with Keith's grandparents for 4 months. One evening the movie "Thin, Red Line" came on TV. Keith's grandpa asked me if I wanted to watch it with him, so I said yes. I hadn't seen it before, but I had seen "Saving Private Ryan" and I think they both came out around the same time. Keith's grandpa is a man of few words (much like his only grandson), but every now and then, he would comment on what we were seeing in the movie. He would say things like "That's very close to what actually happened over there." Or he would point out errors they made. To say it was an interesting experience would be an understatement. To be honest, I wish I would have had a video camera rolling somewhere because I know his 2 sons and 3 grandkids would have loved to hear all of that.

One of my biggest fears, being the mom of 2 boys, is that in 14 years or more, our country will be in or will go into a war that will require one or both of my boys to be drafted. I do understand the need for the draft, but when it comes down to contemplating the idea of one of MY sons being drafted, then I have a harder time with it. If one or both of them were to make the decision to enlist, then I wouldn't try to stop them, but the draft would be much more difficult to accept.

I will never forget when I was 8 months pregnant with Garrett, our pastor showed the video for the song "Letters From War" by Mark Schultz in a Sunday morning service. I sobbed through the whole thing.



If for some reason that video isn't showing up then here's the direct link.

On a completely different subject, I can't believe Christmas will be here in about 6 weeks!! I've already seen a few Christmas lights up on peoples' houses and of course I've seen the Christmas displays and heard the Christmas music when I'm out doing my grocery shopping. I'm excited to see what Cooper thinks of the Christmas tree. Garrett's first Christmas, he was barely 4 months old, so I don't think he really knew what was going on. Cooper will be 6 months old this Christmas, so hopefully the tree will mesmerize him (during those times I'm needing him to be mesmerized rather than crying to be held) and maybe I'll get some good shots of him and Garrett around the tree.

I've been able to get some of my Christmas shopping done. I've bought several things online. It's just so much easier to do that, especially when you either find really great deals that make the shipping worth it, or you get free shipping. If you're looking for something to get for that "hard to buy for" person, check out this site. I LOVE her stuff. I bought one for my parents for their anniversary this summer and I've bought a couple more for different people for Christmas this year. And for the locals, she's from Mt Pleasant, Texas, so she's kind of a local herself. I personally like buying from locals. I don't know her, so I'm getting nothing for advertising for her!! Just thought I would pass on an idea if you're wracking your brain, trying to figure out a gift. Just know you probably would want to order from her by early December in order to get it in time for Christmas. But I will say that when I ordered back in May for my parents' anniversary, I literally received it in a week, so she's really fast if she's not really busy. I've already placed my Christmas order to try and avoid the rush.

Are you ready for the race that will begin in a couple of weeks? At least, that's what it feels like to me. The race of the holidays and the end of the year. I love it, but it sure does get hectic at times. Good luck to all of you with your Christmas shopping and attempt to avoid gaining any weight between now and New Year's. Just give it up, we all know that 3-5 pounds (or more!) is inevitable.

My Weekend Without Kids...Well, Kinda

This weekend was pretty full (for me anyway) of activities that aren't the norm around our house. It wasn't my intention to pack everything into one weekend, it's just the way it turned out. (And apparently I had much more to say about the weekend than I realized. So this is long.)

On Saturday morning, after getting breakfast for everyone and getting the boys dressed, I left to get my hair cut/colored. It had been atleast a couple of months so my hair was feeling desperate. I love my stylist. She always does a great job with my hair and we have fun chatting (not one bit of gossiping!!!) while she does her best to make me look presentable. Which we all know is a tough task, but she takes it on rather well. I usually can't get out of there in under an hour and a half when I have everything done, so Keith had a lot of fun with the boys at home. (Well, it would have been fun had Cooper taken a nap that lasted longer than 20 minutes...)

When I got home, Keith's parents were at our house, ready to spend the rest of the day with the boys so we could get out of the house. Excluding an evening when Cooper was 2 weeks old, this was our first time to leave him for an extended period of time. Not that I have a problem doing this, we just don't have any babysitting options in our immediate area (scratch that, we do have options, but I save them for emergencies. I have a problem with asking my friends with kids to take on my 2 kids just so we can go see a movie. Especially when one of my kids is still too little to run off and play with the others. So I save calling these friends for if/when something comes up that I desperately need their help.)

Keith and I had accumulated several things that needed to be returned at a variety of places. I loathe making returns and exchanges at stores. It is such a pain, but everything needed to be returned. One was a vacuum cleaner where the on/off switch was completely broken off while it was still new in the box. So we made our rounds with the returns, while also buying Christmas presents here and there if something caught our eye. We ate lunch at Texas Roadhouse, which is our go-to restaurant. We love it! Then we went to see "Couples Retreat". Hilarious!! We love Vince Vaughn and he was really good in this movie. Again, not the cleanest movie, so no official endorsement from me. But it was still funny.

After the movie we went to Best Buy and bought a few more Christmas presents, then went to Cavenders. This is a western clothing shop, for those of you who have never heard of the place. Keith had a pair of pants given to him for his birthday (in JULY!) that were bought there and he needed to return them because they were the wrong size. He found a shirt to replace them and then insisted that I buy a pair of cowboy boots. I've never owned any in my entire life and ever since we've known each other, Keith has always wanted me to get a pair (along with a John Deere t-shirt and a cowboy hat, but let's take this one step at a time.) I dug through the boots on clearance (I refuse to pay $300 for a pair of boots I will only wear occasionally) and found some that I really like. So I'm now an owner of a pair of cowboy boots after almost 31 years of life on this Earth. *And all the Texans gasped in horror at that statement.*

We then headed to the place we dreaded going, but knew it was unavoidable if we were going to make an attempt at more Christmas shopping. Toys R Us. This is NOT the place to go on a Saturday night. Apparently everyone with kids and nothing else better to do goes there and lets their kids run wild and play with all the toys in the store. I'm pretty sure it's a STORE and not a playground, but whatever. We had balls bouncing all around us down the aisles. Insanity. We did find a couple of things for Garrett for Christmas and checked out a few more, so I don't feel as if this was a trip wasted.

By this point, it was 6:00 pm. I hadn't given Keith's parents any bedtime instructions for the boys and since Cooper typically starts his bedtime routine around 7pm, we figured we should head on home. Thankfully the boys did well for their grandparents, so that was a plus.

Sunday morning, we went to church and had great services and Sunday school time. We picked up Sonic burgers and came home to eat and straighten up around the house a little. From lunchtime until 4:00, I stayed busy getting laundry done, making the rest of Cooper's bottles for the evening, starting supper, and laying out pj's. Because at 4:00, I was headed out of the house for the rest of the evening, leaving Keith to tend to the boys. He's certainly taken care of them by himself many times, but he had never put them to bed by himself. Bedtime in itself is not a big deal, it's the hour or two leading up to it that can be chaotic. Mostly with Cooper.

My reason for abandoning my husband to do bedtime alone was because my friend, Kelli, and I had tickets to a David Cook concert in Dallas. I met her at her house at 4:30 and then we headed to Dallas. We found the concert venue and then drove around downtown to find a good place to eat supper. We decided on an Italian restaurant and had a hilarious time trying to find it again. We parked in a parking garage right on the same block as the restaurant and were totally confused when we came out of the garage that we ended up walking around the entire block before we finally found the restaurant again. I don't think Dallas is necessarily unsafe, but I don't want to make it a habit of walking around downtown after dark. After we finished eating, we managed to find the parking garage without rewalking the whole block, but then we couldn't figure out where the stairs or elevator were, so we just walked up the garage in the driving lane. We're morons.

Let me just add that if you smell urine while walking in a parking garage, be sure to watch your step. Keith said he has seen much worse than that in the parking garage he parks in every day. That's just disgusting. If I'm a homeless person (and I'm assuming it's homeless people doing this. At least I hope it is...), then I would rather find a patch of grass to take care of business than in a parking garage! That's, of course, assuming I was unable to find a public restroom or a shelter's restroom to use.

We managed to find our way back to the concert venue and somehow the line waiting at the door had tripled in length. Thankfully the doors opened pretty soon after getting in line and we moved through all the check points quickly and got about 8 rows from the stage. This venue is standing room only, so it was basically first come first serve as far as your "seat" goes. I haven't been to a lot of concerts in my lifetime. It wasn't something we could afford growing up, then when I was in college, I was more concerned with paying my college tuition and affording food without accumulating a huge amount of student loans that I never went to any concerts. So the majority of the concerts I've been to have been ones that my youth group went to at different times over the years.

So I say all that to say that I had never attended a standing room only concert. First off, it's a very frustrating experience for a person who likes order, like myself. Nobody really has an assigned area. While you would like to think that people would respect your space, they don't. I saw many people push and shove their way through the crowd and they weren't doing it to get back to their friends. Things like that make me so mad! When there was about 20 minutes left in the concert, the lady next to me, shoved her daughter about 2 people in front of me. The same daughter had been hitting me with her purse all night, so while I was irritated that she got in front of me, I was happy to be done with getting beaten up.

(Why, women, would you bring your purse into a standing room only concert where you're only going to have to hold it for 4+ hours???? I put my cell phone, ID (not that I needed it, it was just in case), credit card and some cash into my pockets and hid my purse in the car. If you really think you need to bring makeup in order to touch it up during the concert then I have to call you a moron. It's dark in there. Not to mention the fact that if you're doing it to attempt to impress the singer, as some do, he doesn't give a flying flip about you other than the fact that you paid money to come see him perform. He won't notice your stunning makeup in the midst of an audience of hundreds and think that he needs to meet you. So ditch the purse.)

Back to my story, after the mom shoved her daughter in front of me (and the daughter was at least 21 because she had a drinking wristband on), the mom made a move as if she was going to stand in front of me. All 6 feet tall of her in front of 5'5" me. I used a good placed elbow to keep that from happening. She kept looking down at me as if she was going to intimidate me into moving out of her way. She finally realized that I wasn't intimated by her ridiculous tattoos and moved in front of someone else. RUDE!!

The concert itself was really good. There were 2 opening bands: Green River Ordinance-a band who is from DFW and had lots of local fans in the audience, so that was cool, and The Script-a band from Ireland who actually opened for Paul McCartney when he played at the new Cowboys stadium. I was surprised they would be opening for David Cook after a gig like that, but I certainly don't claim to know how that kind of thing works. Both bands were good, though The Script was probably a little less my style. David Cook and his band were also great. He played quite a few songs off his current record along with 2 songs from before he won American Idol and then he covered "I Just Died in Your Arms" from the 80's.

After the concert, Kelli and I drove around downtown because we were both confused as to how to get back to the road we needed to get to her house. You certainly would not have thought that she drives in Dallas on a regular basis or that I'm somewhat familiar with the city. I should have brought our GPS but it never occured to me. Needless to say, don't ask either of us for directions. And definitely don't let me drive you around Dallas. Unless you need to get to a mall or Keith's office. Those are the only places I'm sure of where I'm going and how to get there.

It was really a fun and busy weekend. I'm sure it will be awhile before I have another one like it, but that's ok. My body needs to recover from the concert.

I promise this post isn't all about my kids. This time anyway...

The boys were Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story for Halloween this year.

So I apparently took a break from blogging without even realizing it. I can't believe it's been over 2 weeks since I've posted anything. 2 kids definitely keep you busier than 1. You would think they would also afford me with plenty of things to blog about, and they do, but my mental capacity is all but obliterated, so even when I think "I should totally blog about this." I forget about it approximately 10 minutes later. So here are a few things from off the top of my head.

• Cooper's 4 month check up was yesterday. Everything went well! He weighs 16 1/2 pounds and is 26 1/2 inches long. I looked back in Garrett's baby book and Cooper outweighs him by 1 1/2 pounds at this age, but they're the exact same length. Cooper may be our Linebacker and Garrett our b'ball Center. haha Keith and I have no aspirations for them to play sports, but if they want to, then they can.
• On that note, Garrett and I went to our church's fall festival on Saturday night. We worked a booth for the first part and then made our way around to the rest of the booths after our shift was over. One of the booths was a basketball throw. It was exactly like one you would find at an arcade. The kids got 3 chances to make a basket (and got candy either way, so that part didn't really matter.) The boy in front of Garrett was at least in 2nd or 3rd grade, maybe older. He missed all 3 shots, no big deal, it's a tough shot to make. Garrett steps up and totally misses the first 2 shots, then makes the 3rd. I was really surprised! I think the guys manning the booth were too. There were high-5's all around. And Garrett couldn't have been prouder. He's very competitive right now, so I wasn't sure how he would react to missing all 3 shots. Thankfully we didn't have to find that out.
• Back to Cooper's doctor visit, (because I love to switch topics at the drop of a hat) everything was really good. The doctor said Cooper is the picture of health, advanced with his physical abilities, and very ready for more baby food. haha So he's now eating cereal in the mornings and a veggie in the evening. Sometimes he only wants 4 or 5 bites, which is perfectly fine with me. But he loves trying it out and he always has to stick out his tongue and barely taste what's on the spoon before he will open his mouth to take the first bite. Just to be sure I'm not trying to trick him I guess.
• Garrett has become a marketer's dream. He loves quoting commercials to us. Just this morning when we were at Walmart, he kept saying "Look better. Walmart" That's their new slogan and he loves repeating it. While I was writing this, I forgot the slogan (see? My mental abilities are shot...) so I said "Garrett, it's Walmart what?" That's all I said and he said "Look better. Walmart." Then he pointed out a light bulb that's burnt out in the kitchen and said "We need to go back to Walmart and buy a new one." He also recognizes the Target logo even though we rarely go to Target. He said they have the good toys. And I shared this on Facebook awhile back but I'll reshare here too. Recently I handed him the Toys R Us catalog and told him to pick out what he wanted. This is the first year where I've really thought he would understand what I was asking and really pick out things he wants. Well of course he wants everything! Minus the girl toys. Which I found funny because we've never said "No you can't have that, it's a girl toy." In fact, he's accidentally been given the "girl toy" in his McDonald's happy meal and he loved it (My Little Pony). But he does not want any girl toys for Christmas. He does, however, want Cooper to own all baby-related toys in the catalog too. When I pointed out a few of the baby toys that he had circled and asked about them he said "They're not for me, they're for Cooper." Good looking out for the baby brother.
• This Saturday will be Cooper's first time to be kept by someone other than me or Keith since he was 2 weeks old and my parents kept the boys so we could go out one evening. Keith's parents are coming up to spend the day with them while we go Christmas shopping and hopefully squeeze in dinner and a movie. Maybe Cooper will be cooperative for them.
• I know some of you are thinking "Christmas shopping? Already?!" And that would be a big yes. Once I got to looking at the calendar I realized that it's either this Saturday or the Saturday before Christmas. All the Saturdays in between are full with a variety of other activities. And we are homebodies so you have to know that these are for real activities that we have to be involved in or else we'd totally skip them and sit at home in our pj's. And yes, I am a stay at home mom so as everyone thinks "I have plenty of time to go Christmas shopping during the week!" hahahaha Not really. I cannot even look at something I'm considering for Garrett if he's around. The kid is sharp and has called me out on that a few times already. And while it sounds like I could just go shopping with Cooper while Garrett is at school, those of you who actually think that, have never had a 4 month old baby. I could shop for maybe an hour and then the meltdowns would start. From both of us.
• I don't think I will be able to listen to Steven Curtis Chapman's new CD anytime soon. In case you weren't aware, his new CD is almost completely full of songs he's written since the death of his young daughter. I can't begin to imagine how sad I will be just listening to the songs. Even if the songs themselves aren't sad. I love SCC and have always appreciated his music. I'll bet 50% of the married people reading this blog had his song "I Will Be Here" played and/or sung at your wedding. It was played at mine, sung at my sister's. I even sang it at a friend's wedding. Of course he has many, many other great songs. I love that he has consciously made the decision to keep living his life and share with the world the emotions he's dealt with since Maria died. I think it would be way too easy, in that situation, to just curl up into a ball and cry all day. That would be my first instinct anyway.
• We recently watched "Yes Man" and I have many ideas floating in my head that I want to jot down about that movie. I'm not going to attempt to do that now, but I will say that I think this was one of Jim Carrey's first movies to actually have a point that made sense and even made me take a hard look at myself. Now, I'm not going to outright tell you to go out and rent this movie. It is, after all, Jim Carrey. So that means there's most definitely inappropriate language and at least one downright crude scene. So, should you decide to check this movie out, you've been warned. I hate that too because the message of the movie really was a good one, in my opinion.
• We also recently watched "The Proposal" and it was really cute! I love Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds is always funny. There's something about his line delivery that I love. I think he's probably a pretty sarcastic person in real life. And I heart sarcasm. Big Time.

And I think that's all my current mental abilities are capable of. You're welcome for this wonderful post of mediocrity. Now you have a snapshot of what goes on inside my brain.

4 Months

Dear Cooper,
Today you are 4 months old! It's hard to believe that we are one-third of the way to your first birthday!

When you were born, I really expected things with you to be similar to the way things were when Garrett was a baby. Mostly because I planned to do things the same way. However, you are definitely your own person and want to do things your own way regardless of my attempts to do them my way.

Ever since you were born, most people have told us many times that you look just like Daddy. I didn't really see the resemblence and didn't really know who you looked like. Until I saw Daddy's baby pictures last weekend. You look a lot like him as a baby, minus the hair color and eye color. And you definitely get your ears from him. :) As Daddy said, "Well, atleast we know he'll eventually grow into them."

At 4 months old you are:

-rolling over, mostly from stomach to back, though you have gone from back to stomach once so far. You mainly want to roll at night in your crib. And then during the day lay on your stomach on the floor and cry because you want to roll over, but can't figure it out.

-sitting up really well with support. I can put the boppy pillow around you and you can sit for atleast 5 minutes before you have trouble staying upright.

-beginning to play with toys. You hold them in your hand and sometimes wave them around. You also try to put them in your mouth. Your current favorite toy is an Elmo radio that plays a few different songs when you push the button. You've hit yourself on the head with a rattle a couple of times now and don't like that very much.

-loving to sit in the Exersaucer and Jumperoo. You jump some in the jumper and enjoy the toys in the Exersaucer.

-starting to enjoy cereal. You've had it a few times now and definitely prefer it mixed with cold apple juice. You eat quite a bit before I can tell that you're tired of sitting in the highchair.

-doing better about sitting in your car seat. You haven't had a total meltdown in it since our trip to the beach, so that's been a nice change.

-squealing a lot. You love to talk to us and squealing is your current choice of communication.

-loving the time on your changing table. Weird, but true. Anytime I lay you there to change your diaper or clothes you start smiling and laughing and seem so happy to be there. Even pulling your arms and head through shirts doesn't bother you. You think it's funny and laugh. The exception to this is first thing in the morning. You want your bottle immediately and don't appreciate the time taken for a quick diaper change.

Naps are finally becoming more predictable and we're down to about 3 a day. Sometimes more on the days Garrett goes to school because you go down for a nap and about 45 minutes later we have to leave to pick up Garrett, so you finish the nap when we get home. Eventually I hope to move that nap to after we pick up Garrett, but I know you're not ready to go that long between naps, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing.

You're down to 4 bottles a day and take 6-7 ounces with each feeding. That's been a very nice change!

You go to bed between 7:00 and 7:30 each night. You usually sleep really well until 4 am, then you start stirring and rolling over and searching for your pacifier. So from then until 7 ish, I'm up and down getting you settled again. Sometimes, if I'm really tired, I'll just bring you into our bed. But I know that needs to stop. We will begin crying it out to get past this hump soon. I'm sure you're excited about that.

I know the next 4 months hold a lot of new things for us. Assuming you do things roughly the same as Garrett did (and who knows about that), then you'll begin sitting up on your own, crawling, and pulling up during this time frame. It will be a busy time for us, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to it!!

And here are a few recent pictures I've taken of you.

First bites of cereal

Even though you do look a lot like Daddy, you remind me of Aunt Grace's baby pictures in this shot. I guess it's the expression on your face.

But in this picture you really look like Daddy...

One Year

One year ago today, I found out I was pregnant.

It's crazy how fast time goes by.

I remember taking the pregnancy test and it was positive. Keith was at work, so I called him and asked him when he was going to be home (this was early afternoon, so obviously it wasn't going to be anytime soon.) I had sworn to myself that I wasn't going to tell him on the phone, but he asked me if I needed him home early and I said I had something to tell him. He said "Is it the something we've been waiting on?" And I said yes, hoping we were on the same page.

Then I proceeded to call my parents to let them know. I was excited to call my sister Grace because she was pregnant at that time too.

When Keith got home that night, he acted as if it was just another day. After about 30 minutes, I finally broke down and asked him if he understood what I was telling him on the phone earlier. He said "You're pregnant, right?" OK, don't get too excited... But then he went on to call his family and let them know, so I guess he was more excited than he let on.

This was a better experience than when I told him I was pregnant with Garrett. He paced the floor for a better part of the evening after that announcement.

Signs That You Live In a House With Boys

-You see this when you go to the bathroom.


Because all men need to take a potty break when they're in the middle of using the chain saw. Then they wander the house wondering where their chain saw is. Umm, you left it hanging on the bathroom door.

-You also open the bathroom drawer to get out toothpaste and find a gun.

You thought I meant a real gun, didn't you? We do have those around here too, but they're safely locked up in the gun safe.

You actually see a lot of things when you go to the bathroom in a house with boys. I refrained from taking pictures of the toilet seat left up or the puddles on the seat (that wasn't lifted prior to pottying) or the puddles on the floor. I was informed that since I'm in the minority I should put the seat up when I'm done in the bathroom. I politely said no.

But I do refrain from any toilet seat nagging. It's not a big deal to check to be sure the seat is in the down position before sitting. I grew up with 2 brothers so it's second nature.

-Toy Story reenactments are routine. Especially after seeing Toy Story 1 & 2 in the theater last week. In 3D. (Woody #1's pull-string broke. When Garrett got money for his birthday, he immediately requested to buy Woody #2. I was impressed with his dedication to the movie that he would rather buy a new toy to replace a broken one than to just buy something entirely different.)

-You do photo shoots with a Tonka truck. And evoke the ire of big brother who was "Using that! And he better not slobber or poop on it!!"

-Bugs and other creatures are pretty regular around here. Garrett found this (dead) butterfly in the garage. He told Keith it was sick so Keith told him to bring it inside and show me. He brought it in and I said "I'm sorry your butterfly is sick." He said "It's not sick! It's dead! You ran over it in the car." OK.

-We are pretty clueless when it comes to girl movie characters. Garrett insists that Tinkerbell is actually called Jingle Bell. And he won't be persuaded otherwise.

-Burps and farts are a huge crowd pleaser. If you want to get a laugh out of someone in a house with boys, you do one or the other and everyone laughs. Unless the person doing one of these is a girl. It's apparently gross when a girl burps or farts, but hilarious when it's a boy. Hello double standard.

-Bedtime prayers can be amusing. Here are a few of Garrett's recent prayers:
"God, thank you for going to the beach. We played golf, but not baseball. I hope we can play baseball next time."
"God, I need more sand for my sand box."
"God, can we please not have more rain? I want to play on my swingset and ride on my mower." (It's not a tractor, it's a mower. I've been informed of this correction many times.)
"God, thank you for Thomas." (the train.)

I know that I will only have many many more things to share the older that my boys get. But that's what is fun about raising boys. They're hilarious, sweet, fun, energetic, exciting, exhausting, loveable, and crazy. Plus many many more adjectives. (And yes, I know girls are the same...)

Customer Service

There's nothing like a good experience with a customer service rep to make your day a little better. Just like there's nothing worse than a bad experience to make you want to strangle someone. I've had an experience on both sides of the coin recently.

Let's start with the good, shall we?

A month ago, I drug out the massive stroller that is compatible with my infant car seat. The positive to saving everything from one child to the next is the cost-savings, the negative is the mice that chew a hole in the basket under the stroller that's been sitting in the garage for a couple of years without being used. The hole was big enough that I would have felt a little white trash taking it out in public, so Keith did what all self-respecting red necks do. He pulled out his pocket knife and cut off all the fabric from the basket unit. It looked better, but now I had a huge empty space under my stroller and no place to put packages.

I started looking online to see if I could find a replacement basket. The first place I went to was Graco's website. How fun it was to see that my pattern that I bought 4 years ago is now discontinued! But surely they had replacement parts for this somewhere, so I called their customer service line. Thankfully the mice hadn't chewed off the model # sticker, so I was able to give the rep the correct info on my stroller rather than say "Well, I bought it 4 years ago, from Babies R Us, it's grey and blue plaid..." After a short amount of time on hold, the guy came back and told me that they didn't have that exact basket, but he had one that was similar and it should fit. He told me it would cost $5 to ship it, so when I went to give him my credit card information, he also told me they only take Visa or Mastercard. Umm, I only have Discover. Rather than telling me to call back later when my husband was home with his Mastercard, he said he was just going to send it to me for free. He wasn't positive it would work and he felt bad charging me for something that might not even fit. I told him I would be happy to either send it back if it didn't work or mail a check if it did, but he told me not to do that.

Within 3 weeks, the basket arrived. It's not an exact match, pattern-wise, but it's pretty darn close. And it fit just fine. Besides, who really looks at the basket under the stroller? If you're doing your shopping right, it's full of purchases anyway. (I'm cracking myself up here. I'm not much of a shopper, especially if it requires hauling my children along for the ride and requiring a stroller to be present.)

I was amazed that, not only would Graco send me a replacement part for a 4 year old stroller rather than just tell me to go buy a new one. But they sent it to me for free with no hassle on my part! I would understand doing this if some part had been defective, but this was totally my fault for storing the stroller in the garage. And I was very upfront about that. So if you're looking for a company to purchase baby gear from, I highly recommend Graco. We've always used their products anyway, but now I feel even better about buying from them.

And the flip side...

I always hate going to the post office. Especially if I have a child or two with me. It's just a pain to go there and stand in line while trying to keep the older child out of the boxes and packages they have on display for sale or trying to keep the younger child from screaming and thus causing everyone else in line to give you dirty looks. On this particular trip, I only had Cooper with me. But I was mailing a couple of packages, plus a couple of heavy envelopes that needed to be weighed for postage. So I kept Cooper in his infant seat to carry in so I could have both hands free to juggle my things once we got inside. His seat could just sit on the floor in front of me and I would jiggle it with my foot in hopes of keeping him quiet.

Yeah right.

Luckily, the time of day we were at our local post office, there was only two people in front of me, both being helped by the 2 employees working the front desk. One of the customers left, but I didn't automatically walk up to the available employee. I've learned my lesson the hard way with that. You walk up to them, only for them to completely ignore you and walk out of the room, then you stand there not sure if they're coming back or if you should go back to the line and wait for the other worker to be available. By this point, you don't feel as if you can go back to the head of the line because one or two customers have cycled through the other employee, so you trudge to the back of the line ready to go postal. (I could totally understand if that saying had come from a post office customer going off rather than a postal worker.)

On this particular day, I waited at the head of the line until I was told he was ready for me. He never really said anything, but he made some weird gesture in my general direction and after having done it a couple of times, I tentatively assumed that he was meaning for me to come to his counter. I walked up, placed my packages on the counter and explained to him what I was needing. Cooper started crying, so I bent down to give him his pacifier and try to appease him. The employee asked me how I wanted to mail the packages so I asked him what the price differences were. As he was going through them for me, I bent down again to try and stop Cooper's crying. The counters at this post office are pretty tall, so I don't know if he knew that I was bending down to take care of a baby, but at this point, there is only one other customer and they don't have a baby. He looks at me and says very rudely "Are you listening to me?" I almost recited back everything he had just said because OF COURSE I WAS LISTENING! I can listen to you ramble off some postage prices while also bending down to take care of my child. It's not as if, just because I'm out of your line of vision I also can no longer hear you. I just looked at him and very flatly said, "Of course I'm listening." And then told him which option I wanted. Then he proceeded to ring me up without the book of stamps I asked for! I almost repeated to him "Weren't you listening to me?"

I've since been back to mail another package and buy another book of stamps. The process went a little smoother than last time, but he still didn't hear me ask for the stamps! And the Postal Service wonders why they're losing money...

The flu or not the flu, that is the question...

Last Wednesday, Garrett's nose started sounding stuffy. By the end of the day he said his head, throat and stomach hurt and he was running a 101 degree fever. During the night, he woke up saying his throat hurt really bad and his fever was up to 102. So I gave him more Tylenol, water, and throat spray. By Thursday morning, the fever was gone without any meds. He seemed to be basically himself, besides saying that his head, throat and stomach still hurt. But none of those kept him from playing like normal and eating like normal so I held off taking him to the doctor. Early that evening, his temp went back up to 101. I told myself the next day I would take him to the doctor, but he slept just fine that night and woke up on Friday without a fever and hasn't had one since. He still occasionally says his throat or stomach hurts and his nose is a little runny/stuffy and he now has an occasional cough. (I think the only reason why he hasn't had a cough the whole time is because of this new inhaler he's on that we're using faithfully. It's been a God-send already!)

So is this the flu or not? Obviously if I had taken him to the doctor I would have a definitive answer. But equally true would be the fact that if he didn't have the flu, he probably would have caught it from someone in the waiting room. It's a matter of fact that it's spreading exceptionally fast in our area. Every other status update of my local friends on Facebook are saying that they or their children have the flu. To be honest, I really hope this was the flu. I want to be done with it so we don't have to worry about it again. I realize the seasonal flu will probably go around at some point, but I know it won't be near as rampant as this Swine flu has been. Thankfully Cooper has seemed to be ok. He did have one grouchy day last Thursday and today his nose has been a tad runny with an occasional cough. But not one bit of fever and he's eating and sleeping fine, so I'm not going to panic and run him to the doctor where he will also catch the flu.

To be honest, I wouldn't even stress about it if it wasn't for 2 things. 1) We obviously have a baby in the house. The news and everywhere continually stresses how TERRIBLE AND AWFUL this flu is for children under 2 and especially those under 6 months old. So I don't want to worry about him catching this. (Side note: As TERRIBLE AND AWFUL as this flu is supposed to be for little ones, I find it very encouraging that none of the deaths that I'm hearing about are children in this age range. The closest one has been the very first US death in Houston of a 23 month old. It's strange how hard it's hitting the school-aged kids.) 2) All the deaths of the school-aged kids in our area! I know that there are deaths from the seasonal flu every year, but I don't think they involve kids this young! Every week, I'm hearing on the news about a different student who has passed away from this. Even though I try very hard not to be a worry-wart, that sort of news rattles me a bit. They're always talking about how some of them have underlying medical conditions. As far as I know, they consider asthma one of those conditions and Garrett has that, so it really doesn't help me any to hear them attempt to explain away the death of a 16 year old, or a 14 year old, or a 12 year old, etc.

Finally: my thoughts on the vaccine. I am highly against this swine flu vaccine. I would honestly rather stress out about my kids having the swine flu and keeping a very close eye on them throughout the sickness, than to give them a vaccine that's been thrown together over the course of a few months with little testing having been done. That scares me much more. I really and truly hope that a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, we don't start hearing about different conditions and problems that have arisen in those who got this vaccine. I'm sure you've heard of the complications that came frome the last swine flu vaccine about 30 years ago. While I know they would have learned from those mistakes, who knows what new ones could come up. Why not spend the billions being spent on a vaccine, to ramping up more production of Tamiflu products instead? They don't really know the outcome of the vaccine, but they do know that Tamiflu seems to be helping the flu some, yet it's in a major short supply right now. Why aren't they fixing this problem as well?!

In order to prepare for the upcoming flu/cold season (regardless of whether or not we've actually had the Swine flu), I've stocked up on some supplies today just in case: Pedialyte (I really hope we don't need this, but it's not something I want to run to the store for when it is needed), disposable thermometer covers for Cooper's thermometer as well as some for the ear thermometer I use for Garrett, Keith, and myself, Tylenol, Kleenex, and anti-bacterial gel (we have quite a bit of this right now. A container in Keith's truck, one in my SUV, one in the kitchen for those moments I can't wash my hands, but need to santize them and also for Garrett to use if he can't wash his hands for some reason, one in my purse, and one in the diaper bag. We now have 2 extra containers for when these run out. Am I OCD? Yes.)

I normally love this time of year, but I'm not loving it right now. I'm already looking forward to next year when I won't have the "baby factor" to stress about.