You've Come a Long Way Baby

It took us 11 months, but we made it. This weekend Hunter started crawling and pulling up. We're still in the early stages - he just moves his legs like twice before going into commando crawl mode - but I know he'll be ready to enter a marathon in a few short weeks. In literally 2 days, our sweet boy has become mobile! And he is soooo excited. . . okay mostly I am soooo excited.

I can't believe that this screaming little baby...

has finally become this smily little boy...

(Okay so he's not smily here. I totally had a video of him crawling, but I can't figure out how to save it to my computer to upload. This is the only picture I have of him in quadriped, so you'll have to use your imagination.)

This new set of skills is going to open up a world of possiblities for Hunter. Now when he's playing with a toy and it's out of reach, he just gets down on his tummy and slides/crawls to it. This is HUGE y'all. We don't have to put him on his tummy anymore. He does it ALL. BY. HIMSELF. Who can belive that?! And without screaming! Or crying! I cannot begin to describe how excited and proud I am about this. Remember that as you read on. I am not complaining, but I should have known with so much good you have to expect some bad, right? It's more than a fair trade.


What am I talking about? The effect that Hunter's mobility had on my day today. My son is an amazing sleeper. I have been sure to vocalize my thankfulness for this at least weekly. I understand how lucky I am. There is never any doubt that Hunter will lay down around 2 and sleep for 1 1/2 - 2 hours everyday. So today when I got home from work, we raced to the nursery to pick out some flowers that I was going to plant in our pitiful flower beds during Hunter's naptime. I knew I'd have a couple of hours, so this would be no problem. Right.

I bought like 20 flowers y'all. And for those of you who don't do yardwork (aka, me until about a month ago), that takes a LONG time. So we come home and I feed Hunter and put him down in his crib. I get all of my gardening gear out in the front yard and plug the monitor in outside. After about 20 minutes of listening to Hunter "talk", the screaming starts. I ignore it at first, but once it gets to the point where I'm positive one of my neighbors will call CPS on me, I have no choice but to give in. This is how I find Hunter...



Ultimately I ended up taking him outside with me to plant flowers. After about 20 minutes, he started showing serious signs of boredom and thankfully a little fatigue, so I took him back inside and laid him down. Another 20 minutes later there are ear piercing screams coming through the monitor, so I run inside again (sigh) and find him like this...


All I could do was smile. We went back outside together again where Hunter began to play and eventually ended up on his tummy with a smile on his face, and that, my friends, is beautiful.

Don't go away! It's still me!

I'm trying on this new template to see how it fits. Of course last night after I made the changes I laid in bed for like 20 crazy minutes obssessing over whether I should get up and change it back, but ultimately I decided to leave it and wait to see how I felt today. (Good thing I'm moderately scared of the dark. You'd be surprised how often it counteracts my obsessive nature.)

Today I'm still not sure how I feel about the new colors. Sometimes I really love the blue and blue. Why you ask? You guessed it, Kappa Kappa Gamma - that's what I ama! (So many of you are rolling your eyes at me right now, but I gotta give a shout out to my sistas. Are you out there sistas?) I digress. What am I even talking about right now? The template. Right. Blue and blue. Love that. The burning that my eyes sometimes feel after looking at the new background. Don't love that. We'll see how it goes.

I can't really think of an adequate transitional statement here, so on a completely different note, my friend Julie had her baby yesterday. Julie's a CL specialist that works with me, so when I got off work at 12, my friend Heather and I went over to see her at big Baylor since it's just across the street. How do I describe Julie? Picture the happiest, smiliest person you know and double it. That's Julie. (Actually that's every CLS that works with me. Hmmmm. A pattern. Interesting.) This is Julie's second baby. For the first, she had a perfect, smily pregnancy and pretty good delivery (well as good as they get), so for the second we thought she had it coming. Guess what? Same thing. Happy and smily the entire way through. When Heather and I got into the room, Julie jumped up and hugged us. Heather and I had the same response. WHAT are you doing? and more importantly HOW are you doing it?!! We could both barely even move after giving birth. And Julie didn't have a small baby. We're talking over 8 pounds here.

This got me to thinking that maybe Julie didn't have the 2 best pregnancies and deliveries of all time. Maybe I'm just a complete baby. And for one second I felt this urge to toughen up. Then I realized I am who I am. And when I hurt, I hurt. Physical pain is not my thing. So people like Julie are true inspirations to me. I am in awe of a woman who can push out an 8+ pound baby without one single tear (okay I realize you can read this 2 ways - I mean tear as in like a rip, not tear as in water coming out of your eyes. . . but either interpretation works here) and jump to her feet the next day. This is what I'll be striving for the next time you see me like this...
Well that and less swelling.

A Different Kind of Stink

So today we finally replaced the dog pee carpet. I am feeling so excited about this that I've decided to share a spontaneous poem* addressed to the old inhabitants of Hunter's room.

We've finally been rid of your carpet full of pee.

And all I can say is "Yipee Yipee!"

I will not miss it one little bit.

And no longer think of you when I sit on it.

Okay that wasn't great, maybe I'm better at Haikus.

Goodbye stinky pee.

Hunter will smell you no more.

And neither will I.

Okay so I suck at that too. I'll just stick to blogging -

James got to stay home from work today because of the "holiday." (It's days like this that my memories of working as a school speech therapist aren't so bad). I knew the carpet was coming today, so I was pretty excited - 1. because I no longer have to smell that stank and 2. because I didn't have to deal with the dudes installing it (my paranoia doesn't mix well with strangers in my house).

On the way home I called James. Here is a recap of our conversation.

James: hello (extremely irritated)

Carole: what's wrong?

James: I'm just a little stressed.

Carole: why?

James: Hunter has thrown up 2 times today. After I changed his clothes the second time, I sat him in the living room while I started putting his furniture back in his room. I walked in to check on him and something smelled. BAD. I picked him up to change him and my hand got wet because he had DIARRHEAED ALL OVER THE PLACE. It was like he wasn't even wearing a diaper! I had to put him in the bathtub and throw away the pajamas he was wearing. He screamed at the top of his lungs the entire time.
Carole: (cracking up on the inside) I'm (hahaha) so (snort) sorry (can'tcontainthelaughteranymore)

James: It might stink a little when you walk in the house because I haven't had a chance to finish cleaning up.

Carole: I'll clean it when I get home (not laughing anymore)

(This conversation in no way prepared me for the stink that I experienced when I walked in the door. It knocked me over. The dog pee smelled like flowers compared to this. Barf.)

So we took Hunter to the doctor only to see some other doctor that's not ours because ours wasn't in due to the "holiday". She spent approximately 6.2 minutes with us and basically said "He's got a virus. There's nothing I can do to help you. Keep him hydrated." Good use of $20 there.

Although I am a psycho picture taker I thought I would spare Hunter today since he didn't feel well. But, if I had taken pics, this is what he would've looked like at home:

and this would've been him in the doctor's office:

Thanks Hunter. Way to make our story beliveable.

*If anyone can tell me what awesome movie "spontaneous poem" is in reference to, I will make you my favorite person of the day.

Let's see how many pictures we can include in one post. . .

Let me tell y'all about my son - he always comes through when I need him to. I was totally stressed because I have like a million things to do today. I was ready to have a melt down. I put him down for his afternoon nap and he's been sleeping for almost 2 hours now. I've been so productive. You've got to love that kid.

Anyway, my friend, Taylor, came by and took some great pictures of Hunter so I've been wanting to share some of them with y'all. And since Hunter is so awesome at knowing when to sleep extra long for his mommy, now I have the chance. Enjoy!

On another note, does anyone remember my constant complaining when I was pregnant about Hunter loving to snuggle up into my ribs? And then the unfortunate plagiocephaly resulting from it? Well this is how he sleeps now. He's been doing it for about 3 or 4 months. That sweet baby just loves to snuggle, whether it's in your arms, your ribs or his crib bumpers.

Beautiful Babies

All I have to say is, how can you not choose these two cuties to be in your calendar? Thanks for voting if you did! I know it was a long time ago, so if you can't remember what I'm talking about go here. If you want to see the babies who made it, here's the calendar. Some of them are pretty dang cute, but for sure not as cute as ours!

Eat. Drink. Be Married.

Isn't that so cute? James and I went to Houston this weekend for the wedding of my high school friend, Dr. Brian. That was what they had on their napkins.

I was really anxious about leaving because it was the first time I was going to be away from Hunter overnight and HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY SURVIVE THE NIGHT WITHOUT ME IN THE SAME HOUSE AS HIM!

I was stressed all week leading up to it, but I'm really proud of how well I handled myself (and of how well he did for Nana. Thanks Mom - we appreciate you!). I had a really great time with James and my friends and did not obsess at all or even hold a single inappropriate one-sided conversation about my son at the wedding. I did pass my camera around the table to show everyone how cute he is, which some considered a party foul (Matt and Emily. . ahem), but how could I not share the cuteness with people who've been deprived of the privelage to witness it in person? Plus these people have known me for like 13 years or something, so if they haven't seen a party foul from me at this point then they just haven't been paying close enough attention.

The wedding was gorgeous, as was the bride. Unfortnateuly you'll have to trust me on this because I didn't get a picture of her. But I did get lots of other ones. . .
Marcy, me and Amy - two of my very best girlfriends from Gtown. (Laura, here's your preggo pic of Amy!)

Dr. Brian (the groom) and me - excuse our chins, that picture is seriously close. I feel like I'm invading my own personal space just looking at it.

I think this is all of the high school friends that were there - Matt, Brian, Jeff, Cassidy, me, Corey, Todd, Dustin, Amy, Marcy, Danielle.

And finally, the aforementioned social etiquette experts :) - Matt and Emily with me and James