The Night Before Mary Frances’s Birthday-2009

This was us last year (2009) in Valdosta for Katie’s scheduled C-Section and Thanksgiving….It was the night before Mary Frances’s Birthday…..I was about 6 months pregnant, and I don’t think I need to point this out, but here’s the pink elephant that’s standing in the room with us: I. WAS. HUGE. I looked like I was having twins! Anyway, I stole these pictures from Katie’s snapfish account today! I hadn’t ever seen them before…

I didn’t take a lot of “belly pictures” when I was pregnant because I felt so huge and fat that I didn’t want my picture to be taken a lot….

Now looking back, I wish I had done more. I really like looking at them. And I see so much more than just a really fat stage of life….

It was a very unique season I had with Thomas. It is part of our story.

I know I will take more pictures with my next pregnancy.

I Love the County Fair and I’m Not Ashamed of It….

And I’ve loved it as long as I can remember. My Granddaddy Brown used to take me and my sisters every year. I remember how hwy 67 used to back for miles with traffic, but since he used to be the President of the Kiwans Club and actually was the one who originally brought the fair to town, he got a special parking pass. So going to the fair with ‘Daddy Brown’ was even more special in my mind as a child because it meant more time for rides and games and less time spent stuck in traffic and parking. In later teenage years when Daddy Brown was not well enough to attend the fair and after he passed, I can remember going on Thursday nights, aka “Wristband Night”, with all of my high school friends and seeing everyone who was anyone. Oh, the joys of living in a small town!

I’m not sure if I have ever skipped a year of going to the fair besides last year when I was pregnant and about to move into our new home. I spent all of last September and October picking out new paint shades for the wall, new carpet and countertops, and being a 24/7 incubator for the baby in my belly.  And now that our Little Red Bird has arrived,  I want to take as many adventures to the fair with him over the years as he will allow me to.

 

I love everything about a county fair. The funnel cakes…the livestock…seeing everyone you know….eating a bag of cotton candy while I’m there and then another bag when I get home…the excitement that’s in the air….all of the different colored lights on all of the rides….the corndogs….heck, I even like the rap songs from the 90’s they blast out.  I thought Thomas would really love it this year, but I think he was just completely over stimulated.  The music is so so so loud, and I had forgotten, or actually never really taken into account, how loud the rides are themselves. If you look at the fair from Thomas’s eyes, it is pretty scary.  He ended up wanting to be carried almost the entire time. There’s nothing like having to push an empty stroller and carry your kid. Luckily, I had many helpers on this little outting, but I’ve been known to use one arm to push the grocery cart and the other arm to carry T on my hip.

 

This year, we went with Heather and Kelby, or better known as “Aunt Heather and Uncle Bubba” to Thomas.  Some of the pictures below are ones I’ve stolen on Heather’s facebook account (forgive me, Sister!). Between lugging my child, our stroller, and my camera around, I didn’t get a chance to take too many pics.

           

All of the hours Kelby’s logged in the gym lately paid off when he was able to hit the thingy with the hammer hard enough to win his woman a lollipop.

 

Heather was so proud!

 

See, I told you I had a lot of helpers. They juggled Thomas and shared a corn dog while D and I chowed down on our nachos and corn dogs. Oh, how I love this picture!

 

 

On a completely different note, don’t you wish your refrigerator looked like this every day?? I had washed both purple and green grapes, cut up both green and red apples, strawberries, and cantaloupe!!  It was all being used for a party the next day. I’m not this on top of things on a daily basis. But, YUMMY!  I wish I were and could keep my fridge looking like this!

And on another completely random note, this is usually what I see when nap time is over.

Every time I get Thomas up from a nap, we play a little game of peek-a-boo. Mainly because I’m already down on the floor picking  up all of the pacies he’s thrown out. I love seeing his little face through the rails!

And in case you’re thinking, “Oh, what a boring nursery. She doesn’t even have a cute bumper.” Let me explain…well, for starters, it is kind of a boring nursery. I didn’t really get into the whole “have a perfectly cute and completed” nursery thing when I was pregnant. I was 6 months pregnant when we moved, and well, I was just too exhausted and sick of decorating when we moved to do much in his nursery. I have a lot of ideas and it is slowly coming together. But for now, it’s kind of random. And I did have a really cute little baby bumper in his crib with character farm animals and tractors and such, but I felt like it was entirely too wide and took up way too much room in his crib. Not to mention I was worried that with it being so thick that it wouldn’t allow air to circulate well throughout his crib. So, we now use this little mesh one from Babies-R-Us, and I think it is great. It is enough to keep his limbs from getting stuck and to cushion a few falls, yet still breathable and thin!

 

And lastly, I’ll leave you with Thomas and his best friends.  He greets them both at the door.

He and his Daddy love to sit on the porch and rock in the afternoons.

And just for kicks, here’s yet another picture of Lady with one of her kills!

I Have A 9 Month Old…..

And I can’t believe it. The whole “enjoy them while they’re yours, they grow up way too fast” does not even begin to give light to the truth that every parents knows deep in their heart of hearts that these long days and endless around-the-clock hours spent tending to my little one’s every need really are the good ole’ days that I’ll spend my golden years looking back on and yearning for every time I see a tired mother and her little one who is incapable of running out of energy (longest sentence ever??). Well, I don’t know that I’ll quite yearn for them, but there will definitely always be a little place in my heart that appreciates and longs for the joy that only a baby can put in a Mommy’s heart.

I took Thomas to his nine month well-check yesterday. He got the first round of his flu shots and will go back in four weeks to get the final shot. He weighed 19lbs 12oz, which put him in the 25% for his age. When he went on August 25, he weighed 17lbs 2 oz. Dr.Rice said he has quit gaining so much weight so fast because he is mobile and active now. She also said that babies who are breastfed tend to stay in the eight percentiles with their weight, and once they are weaned (around 8.5 months for Thomas), their weight gain usually slows down drastically.

He was 29.5 inches tall (75%) and his head was 45.5cm (45%).

Thomas has recently taken to a particular “lovie”, his frog. The frog stays in the crib with Thomas’s pacies and can most likely be found snuggled under Thomas’s arm as he drifts off to sleep.

Thomas is still saying words like “ma ma” and “da da” and “ra ra”…he loves to clap and will wave bye-bye, although he finds clapping much more amusing!

He is a very efficient crawler and loves to pull up and cruise along the sofa and fire place. He can actually kind of “run” while he cruises. In the past week or so, he has started letting go of the furniture he was holding onto for balance and standing on his own for about five seconds. I know it doesn’t sound like long, but it seems like an eternity when you are watching him do it!

I tried introducing some finger foods (sweet peas) last night, and he was not crazy about the idea. I would put one in his mouth, and you could tell he did not understand the whole “chew it up and swallow it” concept. He would just kind of work his tongue around and then spit it back out. It is going to take some work.

He officially weaned around 8.5 months, and it now taking a combination of formula and breastmilk that I had stored up in the deep freezer. He get a sippy cup of mostly water and a little bit of organic apple juice with his lunch and dinner.

He is very comfortable around mine and Daniel’s family and would (FINALLY!!) be okay if I left him with one of them during the day. He still absolutely despises the nursery at church, so I am still spending every Sunday morning in the nursery. I always try to leave the room for a few minutes, and it always results in a total panic attack on T-Bird’s behalf.

We have been traveling so much and having so many visitors in town that he really is not on quite as much of a sleeping schedule as he used to be. He still goes to bed around 7:00p.m. but is now waking up anywhere from 5:00am-6:30a.m. And he may or may not go directly back down after he gets a bottle. On the way to and from Valdosta for Thanksgiving, he fell asleep in his car seat for a nap without any crying. This was a first. Usually, we have to listen to about ten minutes of screaming before he’ll give it up and go to sleep. We are about to put him in his Britax Advocate 70CS carseat…aka, his Big Boy car seat! We still have had him in his Graco SnugRide 32 Infant Carseat up to this point because it will go in the middle of the car and the Britax (while rear facing) must go on one of the side seats. Daniel felt that having the Graco car seat in the center of the car was safer than having the Britax on an outside seat. However, Thomas just looks ridiculously too big to still be in his infant carrier. So, onto the Big Boy car seat it is! I can’t wait until he is a year old and can be forward facing!

He is still taking a definite two, some days three, naps a day. His morning nap is 1hr 15mins most days, and his afternoon nap is anywhere from 1-2 hours. Since we have been so off schedule lately, he sometimes is getting in a third nap in the late afternoon. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to effect his bedtime that much. Yesterday, he slept from 4:00-5:15p.m. and was still out cold by 7:30p.m.

Thomas’s most important milestone recently was his FIRST TOOTH! I just happen to notice it the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when we were in Valdosta. I did not know he was even cutting one, and so far, I don’t see or feel the second one coming in. I must say, I thought his gummy little grins were adorable, but that one bottom tooth shining when he smiles is cute in a whole ‘nother way.

St.George Vacation 2010

Our “summer vacation” this year was quite different from any other one we’ve ever taken. We rented a house at St.George Island since Grandmama told us that when she was at her beach house in Gulf Shores it “smelled fishy” and “clumps of oil” lined the shores. We went with Katie & Andrew & Mary Frances, Karen & Jeremy & their 18 month old, Caroline, and Summer & Scott & Kennedy!  You can imagine the business of the house with four kids under 18 months old! We packed for what seemed like days….and had to bag everything in trash bags so it wouldn’t get wet on the back of D’s truck if it rained….and the bagging the bags part just seems to make packing that much more involved….

Thomas did pretty well on the car ride. It was long…and since it’s December 1st when I’m typing this and this vacation was back in September, I don’t quite remember exactly how long it was. It felt like about ten hours, but in reality, I think it was more like five…BUT!! We survived, and we arrived at our house, Almost Heaven.

We stopped in Eufala, AL, and ate some lunch at a little cafe in their downtown district. We stopped a couple more times along the way to give Thomas some interaction and milk.

 

Kennedy was still obsessed with her bouncy seat at this point in time. I have never seen a child spend so much time in one chair!!

 

The house was one road off of the beach, but it came with a golf cart so it was not bad at all…and much cheaper since it wasn’t sitting directly on the beach. Since every couple there had a young child, none of us were ever on the beach together at the same time except for me and Summer, and that little trip to the sand and ocean lasted all of 10 minutes. I have no idea why we thought it was a good idea to take my 6.5 month old down to the ocean. By the time we got him all lathered up in sun screen and the beach bags packed and everyone out the door, it was time to come back in for a nap or nursing. Consequently, we spent a lot of time at the pool and indoors playing, which was just as fun in our opinion. Anyway, the golf cart provided not only transportation, but also a lot of entertainment for the babies and the adults, too. Thomas and Mary Frances love (love, love, love, love, love!!!) golf cart rides! It is a great way to entertain a baby when the afternoon-after-nap-but-not-quite-bedtime-crankies appear. Trust me, when it is warm enough outside, we spend almost every evening riding our golf cart! Anyways, Summer and I were complete heifers rode the golf cart to town one evening after Thomas was asleep to get ice cream, and it splattered all over that heifer’s her shirt, hair, and face as we rode back and she tried to eat it while we were in motion. And if you know Summer, you know why this is funny. Just picture it!!

 

Andrew dropped the golf cart off at the beach and walked back….reading his case notes. I don’t know why I thought it was so funny to see him walking down the sidewalk reading his lawyer paperwork stuff, but it was to me.  But a lot of things that Andrew does are funny to me.

Some other things we did were model Mary Frances’s hair bows…..

Play nicely in our pajamas…..

and eat!!  Daniel and I went out on a date night with Summer and Scott one evening once we put Thomas to bed. Have I mentioned that I love the fact that my child goes to bed at 7:00p.m….it brings a whole new meaning to freedom!! We ate at the same restaurant that my family ate at when we vacationed at St.George Island in 2007. In fact, the night before I left for that family vacation was the night of mine and Daniel’s first real date….the only other time I had ever seen/met Daniel was a few weeks before when he and Scott, my brother-in-law, came to town and took me out to dinner at Longhorn’s. I spent most of the evenings of this family vacation downstairs in the bedroom when Jenna and I were staying talking on the phone and falling in love with Daniel. My family kept telling me that I wasn’t playing “hard to get” very well, but at that point in time, I think I realized this one wasn’t a game to be played. This One was my forever.

 

And don’t let these pictures below fool you. It may look like we were leisurely playing and relaxing on the beach, but rest assured, there was nothing easy or uncomplicated about getting our toes in water. However, as short lived as it may have been, Thomas did enjoy his time in the ocean water.

   

I was so busy trying to take pictures of Thomas’s reactions to the water and waves that I was waist deep in the ocean with my camera and swim suit cover up on and all the while dragging Thomas’s paci through the ocean water before I realized it. So, like any other mother who is obsessed with taking pictures of her child, I did not take a time-out to adjust my wardrobe. The show must go on! I hope you all appreciate how much of a martyr I am in order to bring you these family photos….even if they are three months old and two seasons ago:)  Speaking of which, now that it is December, I’m guessing that it is officially “winter” which means that I need to get around to posting all of my “fall” photos from our trip to Dahlonega, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and May Fray’s birthday party. This post is about to be concluded with all pictures! Enjoy!!

 

Hold on, I can’t leave you with these pictures and no explanation! “The Fray” as she is appropriately and lovingly referred to, pooped in our pool and shut it down for a full 24 hours. We spent lots of quality time inside playing during those 24 hours seeing as how taking the babies to the beach was a load of work that neither Daniel nor I (or Scott and Summer for that matter) cared to take on.

     

My final thoughts on St.George Island is that it is a wonderful, safe, quiet, private, family-friendly place to vacation! It was the absolute perfect location for our family this year. However, if you are looking for a place with a lot of entertainment and restaurants and surf shops, this is definitely not the place. It worked out great for us thought because all we needed was a pool, some open floor space to throw down a blanket and T’s toys, and some great sisters and friends to share it with. Now that I think about it, I think we could have gotten all that and more at the Holiday Inn….and don’t they provide a free continental breakfast?!?…..