Sick and tired of being sick

Good Grief!

I think we have hit a world record. Carter has had the stomach bug 4 times in the last 3 weeks. It is ridiculous. We get it for 2-3 days. He is better 2 days, then we begin again. This last round has been most unpleasant. I was thrown up on twice yesterday. On a positive note, since most of it landed on me there was less carpet to scrub! We will not even talk about what happened in the diaper department. Let's just say I accidentally bought him a larger size diaper on Friday and it was a good thing it was 1 size bigger.... Poor guy. He is so miserable he can't really rest. I keep finding him in random spots of our house laying down. On a pile of laundry, on the mat on the bathroom floor and just a few minutes ago in the hall outside the laundry room.

Cute Kids

Well it has been a long time since I have blogged but seriously I do it for me so I should be the only one dissapointed right? Well for all my "fans", especially Alyson, this is for you! Life has been a whirlwind (as usual).

We went on vacation to Galveston in August just in time for tropical storm Eduard to meet us there. We also lost a dear friend the week of our vacation. We also took a 1 year old on vacation. Thus, we had some high highs and some low lows. Kailey's big highlight as always was Schlitterbahn Water Park. She is counting the days until she is 42" tall so she can ride the mega-wedgie slides. If she only knew what she was looking forward to!! Carter is my sweet man. Vacation was a big milestone. Walking at 11 months! I really think the set up of the hotel room helped him and he was off. He quickly transitioned from walking to running. And he is fast.

Kailey started another year of school- 1st grade. And I started my second year of being a 100% stay at home mom. I was not ready to return to teaching so me and Carter just hang out each day counting down the hours till we can go get sissy from school.

We survived Hurricane IKE and praise God power was restored after 15 days 17 hours and 21 minutes. Thank you Lord for electricity and A/C. Being without power and roughing it was definitely hard but also brought us many blessings. My neighbor Stacy and I brought new meaning to teamwork! We cooked, cleaned and helped each other keep it together and take care of our combined 5 children. If you are at your wits end and can't start your generator Stacy will be there to help....and add gas once you both yank on the cord 20 times with no success. (In our defence the guage said there was 1/2 a tank of gas in there!!-common sense said otherwise.) Thank you to all our friends who called faithfully everyday (Leslie) to check on us, offered access to A/C, computer etc, and who took us in at night (Johnson's and Crosby's), let us shamelessly use electricity via an extension cord from your house to ours till we blew a fuse (Vandervoorts) and to the Whitakers who took us in each evening and provided dinner and a "we got no power" support group.

I leave you with this: two beautiful children with two beautiful smiles. Thank you God for protecting us and supplying all our needs over the last 3 weeks!

What's new...

No sick kiddos for 2 weeks straight now. It is so nice when everyone is healthy and happy.
Kailey's kindergarten year is quickly coming to a close. She had a wonderful teacher and several sweet classmates that I know she will miss. She will have a little program and graduate from Kindergarten next wed the 3rd of June. Can you believe that they have to go into June... We are so proud of how she has grown and matured this year.

Carter is 9 1/2 months and everywhere. So funny. He knows the dog bowl and toilet bowl are off limits (obviously) and yet he strives to get to those 2 items all day. When he starts that way he looks back at me giggles and speeds up. He is trying oh so hard to walk. We are truly blessed with this little guy. Happy as a clam all the time and so sweet. Except when we tried to go swimming the other day... he HATED it. We were shocked-we knew he would just love it. Nope. He cried his little heart out. He would cling to you and climb up your body as you approached the pool....later when we got home we ran a bath (to clean off all the unneccesary sunblock since he sat very happily on garndpa's lap in the shade for most of the time) as soon as the water ran he giggled and kicked his legs and got very excited to take a bath. I tried to explain how this was the SAME as swimming at the pool, but he just smiled.

An unlikely inmate...

Carter decided he was NOT going to take a nap today. You would think it was the ultimate punishment. I watch him on the video monitor...after standing up forever he sat down...he got quiet and then he sat and sat and sat. I was afraid to peek in, in case he saw me, but no worries he fast asleep. I hated leaving him that way but did not want him to be miserable. Luckily I was able to lay him down..I do hope the red marks on his forehead from the bars on the crib go away eventually...

Kailey had an epifany

To preface this Kailey has been learing all about insect and caterpillar life cycles in school recently. So, last night on the way home from church we were talking about horses. We had rented a movie about horses and the synopsis says that the horse will have foal (or baby) as I told Kailey. Kailey then says, "Oh, so horses don't lay eggs!"

Standing In The Need Of Prayer

Well Carter is growing up-too fast. Seen below was his progress to date...

7 months: sitting unassisted for long periods of time; pulled to standing-hoping it was a fluke we began removing anything he could pull up on....

7 1/2 months: As of March 26th at a friend's b-day party he progressed from carpet swimming to army crawling everywhere. My friend Amanda says it has to be the peer pressure from all the other babies flaunting their crawling abilities...

7 months, 3 weeks: Now can crawl on all fours but prefers the army crawl. After that, the nightmare began: fever, irritability: double ear infections- treated with a new antibiotic about every 5 days when it would stop working. The side effects were diareah and vomiting and yeast infection and many tears, and loads of laundry on my part. Also the borrowing of a steam cleaner-yes it was really, really bad.

7 months, 3 weeks: That illusive bottom tooth came thru. It had been lurking near the surface since 6 months. He is the now proud owner of 7 sharp teeth. He likes testing them out when eating food by grinding them (sqeak, squeak) after each bite.

7 months, weeks 3-4: Mommy felt like poop because I got back to back mastitis. I lovingly refer to it as the red streaked boob of death...if you have had it you know what I mean.

8 months: Pulls to standing on anything. oh and he crawls really fast. When he knows I am chasing him down, he looks, giggles and speeds up. So much for reading a book next to happily sitting still baby!!!

So much fun, so little time

Time is passing by so fast. I feel like my life is on fast forward. Carter will be 7 months in a week...7 months. To recap for my memory is sketchy at best these days:

6-8 weeks-essentially sleeping thru the night form about 10:30-6:30

2 months- Carter loves to coo and talk to us. Says oooowa and cooo

2 months, 2 weeks- so alert and responsive, smiling all the time-absolutely melts your heart

4 months- Talking!! Saying buh-buh, duh-duh, wuh-wuh

4 months, 1 week- rolled over for the first, second, third time (and ever since diaper changes became alot more challenging :) but only would roll to the left for several weeks.

5 months, 2 weeks- no longer sleeping thru the night...hungry at 4 am

5 months, 2 weeks, 3 days- started cereal, alvacado...mmm-mmm good-I swear he eats more now than Kailey did at a year (However Kailey was 17 lbs at a year and he was 16 at 5 months...)

5 months, 2 weeks, 4 days- back to sleeping through the night!!

5 months, 3 weeks- Getting 2 teeth (bottom middle) the one on right came thru slightly before the left. Not a happy camper for a few very fussy days. After several hours of crying I gave him tylenol. Poor baby! (I am referring to me who dealt with the ongoing crying)

Started saying ma! ma! When he gets mad he very loudly says ba-ba-ba-ba!

6 months- Saw Dr. Hassell and got his shots, Carter weighed 16 lbs 10ou (40th %), 26.5 inches long (50th%) and head circumference was in the 75th % which explains why several outfits will NOT go over his head. Also emerging was his top right tooth! 6 months and 3 teeth cut and they are so very sharp. We had some trying out of our new teeth that did not feel good on mommy!

6 months, 4 days- Another new tooth to the right of the top middle tooth (we did find another new bottom tooth while at the doctor but it is just sitting there so we are not sure if it counts as a tooth)

6 months, 1 week- Carter carpet swims. He uses his feet to propel himself forward while reaching out his had for what he wants. He made it several feet to where I was sitting in no time. Can sit up for zero seconds.

6 months, 2 weeks- said da! Chris was all the way down the hall bathing Kailey. When Carter exclaimed da! Chris yelled, "I heard it!"

6 months, 3 weeks- can sit up for about 10 seconds unassited. Loving life, happy all the time, especially whe he is chewing on anything!!