Carter - 16 Month Update

Oh Lord….Month 16 was a whirlwind. 

• Carter went on a food strike mid-way through the month and it was driving me crazy.  He didn’t want to eat lunch or dinner (he has always LOVED breakfast though - it’s his favorite meal by far).  At first I thought that the molars coming in were bothering him, but he would eat cheerios, yogurt, goldfish, blueberries, bananas, etc.  Basically he was eating all the foods he liked, but not necessarily what he needed.  So it became a battle of the will’s.  My will vs. Carter’s will.  I’m slightly ashamed to say that one night, I did send him to bed with no dinner.  He refused to eat what I tried to give him and I gave him MANY options.  He just wanted Cheerios.  I wasn’t going to give in.  So he had a bath and went straight to bed.  I was sure he’d wake up starving, but he didn’t.  I read in a book once that “if they’re hungry, they will eat” and I believe that’s true. 
• Carter bled a lot this month!  The first time, he was running from the garage into the driveway and toppled over on his face on the concrete.  Then later that same week, he was running in my in-laws backyard with Papa and tripped over a stick or something and his leg started bleeding.  It scabbed over eventually and just as it was starting heal, he tripped while walking on the sidewalk in our neighborhood and the EXACT same spot start bleeding again.  He didn’t cry any of those three times, so I guess that’s good.  This is just the beginning of having a boy I assume!
• The kid repeats everything we say and it’s caused his vocabulary to expand drastically.  There are so many things he says and knows that I can’t even list them all.  He can identify four colors: green, blue, yellow, and purple.  He loves to say (this is not an all inclusive list of every word he knows, he knows way more than this.  These are just the things he’s been saying the most this month):
  • bird
  • ball
  • “YEAH” (he likes to yell that one)
  • cow
  • Car car (this is how he says his name.  He can’t say “Carter” so he just says “Carcar”)
  • keys (and he totally knows where keys go too, because when we do give him our keys to play with, he always walks to the back door and stands on his tip toes to reach the keys to the door knob)
  • “squirrel”, except that it comes out more like “curl”.
  • “boo” while pointing to his scabbed up knee (he’s trying to say “boo boo” because that’s what I call his injuries!)
  • Even though he knows the four colors listed above, he prefers “geen” because he says it all the time.
  • When he refers to milk, he says “mooooo”.  Which is hilarious to me, because he has NO idea that cows give us milk and cows say “moo”.
  • Go.  He says this when he knows we’re about to leave to go somewhere.  He usually says the word with a little question mark at the end of it too, as if he saying “are we going mommy?’
  • Bible.  Though, he calls EVERY book a Bible.  He doesn’t quite know the difference yet.
  • Amen.  Yes, he says amen.  And I TOTALLY didn’t push that.  After our prayers at night, I always say “amen” and for some reason, he just started saying it after me and he’s been doing it ever since.  So weird, but I love it!
  • Elmo.  Lord, this kid is in LOVE with Elmo.  Funny story, he even woke up at 6am this morning yelling “Elmo, elmo!!!”.  I think it’s because he was wearing his Elmo jammies last night and when he woke up, he saw him and got excited.  Thankfully he went back to sleep.
• Carter has single handedly changed our dog’s name.  Gizmo’s new name is “good girl”.  He is so used to hearing Justin talk to the Giz and say “good girl” when she does what he says, that now Carter thinks that “good girl” is her name.  Every time he sees her or even hears her collar jingle when she’s walking, he says “good girl”.  I’ll even say “that’s Gizmo” and he responds with “good girl”.
• Sleep is the same as it always has been (minus the two awful sleep days due to sicknesses-see further down).  He sleeps at night anywhere from 10-12 hours, usually around 11ish.  He has always been content to just play in his crib until we come get him in the mornings.  Some days, he may wake up at 6:45am, but we don’t go get him until after 8.  It doesn’t bother him in the least.  He just plays with Henry and a lot of the time, he’ll just go back to sleep.  Naps vary.  Sometimes he’ll take 2-two hour naps.  Sometimes it’s 1-two hour nap and then no 2nd nap, just quiet time in the crib.  Sometimes it’s 2 – 1 1/2 hour naps.  It’s so all over the place and depends on the day.  But the fact that he still takes two naps is enough for me to not transition to one nap just yet.  My guess is that the transition will be complete this summer.  As of now, the days he goes to MDO at church, he only has one nap because he doesn’t nap at church.  So he’s technically in the process of transitioning now, but he shows too much interest in keeping that 2nd nap on the other days for me to drop it just yet.
• He had his 15 month doctor’s appointment this month.  It was a good checkup.  He got some shots (boo) one of which apparently caused a sickness 2 weeks later (more on that below).  At that appointment, he weighed 23.6lbs (25%) and was 29.75 inches tall (10%).  The height percentage was a shocker for us because he has been consistently in the 75-85% range for height his whole life, but maybe he’s just got a delayed growth spurt or something.  We do know that his 12 month stats were not correct, because if they were, then his body and head both shrank.  Maybe he’ll hit a growth spurt in the next few weeks.  We’ll see at 18 month appointment in July.  Also, he’s starting to remember the doctor’s office and what happens there.  He cried most of the time we were there.
• Our biggest fun thing this month was our very first family vacation.  Well, it started off fun, but then Carter developed a couple of sicknesses while we were there causing the end of the trip to be a bust.  You can see the Gatlinburg post here.
• The sicknesses.  So at the end of month 15, Carter developed the croup virus (the pediatric form of laryngitis).  This virus supposedly came from the MMR shot he got at his 15 month checkup.  It caused him to breakout in red spots all over his body and get a temp up to 103.  None of this came to light until day 2 of our family vacation in Gatlinburg when he started being supper cuddly and he didn’t sleep through the night (a first, with one exception, since he was 3 months old).  See the link above for more info on the trip and the doctor’s visit.  Carter is completely fine now.  His fever broke on Monday afternoon, but he was still extremely fussy and cuddly.  I stayed home from work Monday and Tuesday to take care of him, but he seemed much better and more like himself by Tuesday afternoon, so he went back to Nana’s on Wednesday.  He didn’t go to school all week because I was afraid he may spread it.  He lost his appetite SIGNIFICANTLY during the illness and we’re still trying to build it back up now.  He lost a little over a pound during the sickness.

A few pictures and fun videos from this month:

I promise every video I take isn’t during bathtime, even though it seems like it!  This video below is of Carter playing with his favorite bath toy.  It’s a float with a hole for a person to go in the float.  He is obsessed with it.  He knocks the person off and then puts her back.  And he does it slowly too, like he’s really concentrating hard on it!

And yet another bath video below.  This is of Carter saying his name, or a version of it at least:

What cracks me up about these videos is that not only does it look like bathtime is the only time I take videos, but also that green is the only fun color I make his bath!!!  I swear these weren’t taken the same day!

I have many many pictures of Carter this month, but not enough time to upload them.  They will go in another post soon.  Even though busy season is over for me, I’ve got a lot of working going on in April and May so I have very little free time right now.  I’ve been slacking not only in blogging, but also in reading my sweet friends blogs, so if you haven’t seen me comment in a while, I’m so sorry!  I’m working on it, I promise!

First Family Trip

If you follow me on instagram or facebook, you already know how this trip went.  Epic failure.  On top of the sickness Carter developed at the end of our trip, mommy completely forgot to bring her camera, so all of the pictures below are from the iPhone, so excuse the quality.

The first part of the trip was fine, but Carter started getting sick during the last leg of it and it just all exploded when we got home today.  The trip was always going to be a short trip.  Justin was out of town until Thursday night so we couldn’t leave until Friday, and he goes out again tomorrow so we had to come back today.  Like I said, short trip.  Anyway, we left around 10 on Friday.  Carter did extremely well on the ride up there.  Especially granted that we were in traffic in Pigeon Forge for over an hour.  A trip that should have taken us about 5 hours took us almost 7 between the number of stops and because of the extreme traffic, which I later found out was due to a hot rod show going on that weekend.

Sweet boy just wore his pajamas the whole way there and snuggled with Henry.  He slept about 45 minutes on the way there and watched Elmo episodes the rest of the way.

The horrific traffic that we really weren’t expecting!

When we finally got to our cabin, Carter had a lot of fun exploring it.  I should mention that Justin rented our cabin for us.  Almost 5 years ago to the weekend, Justin and I went on our very first trip together ever.  We went to Gatlinburg…..and stayed in the exact same cabin.  So where we stayed for our first trip together ever as a couple was also the same place we stayed as our first trip as a family.  Love when he does romantic things like that!

He was so excited!!

This is our fabulous cabin, Livin’ Large!

LOVE this porch!  And the view….

This is the view from our porch on Saturday morning.  It’s Mount LeConte, which was also the very first mountain I ever climbed on that same trip with Justin 5 years ago. 

The next morning, we wanted to take Carter to Clingman’s Dome, which is the highest point in the state of Tennessee.  This was my very first highpoint to complete and we wanted it to be Carter’s as well.  For those of you readers that don’t know, Justin and I have a goal of climbing the highest point in each of the 50 states.  Justin has well over 30 (can’t remember exactly how much) because of how much he travels for work.  I have 14 total.  Naturally, we want Carter to take trips like this with us, so we decided that since we were so close to the TN highpoint, we’d take Carter to the top.  Some highpoints are climbing, others are drive ups or walk ups.  Clingman’s Dome was one you could drive to the top of, park in a lot, but then you had about a half mile walk up a very steep paved road.  So we put Carterman in the stroller and rolled him up.  It was a colder than normal weekend for this time of year, so we put him in a onesie underneath a sweater with a hood (to cover his ears) as well a jeans and thick socks and shoes.  We were NOT expecting the wind and just how cold it really was at the top.

 

This is how cold it was at the top.  This is not snow folks, it’s just plain old frozen tree.  FROZEN.

This is the best picture of Carter at the top we could get.  It was way to windy and cold and I wanted to get him back to the bottom.  We put him back in the stroller and quickly went down to the car, but I could tell he was cold, he started whining a lot.  Eventually I took him out of the stroller and held him in my chest underneath a jacket that Justin put over us.  This was all he wanted and quieted him instantly.  As the couple walking behind us said “there’s no safer place than mom’s arms”.

As soon as we got Carter in the warm car, he was fine.  He watched some more Elmo on the way back to the cabin and was being SO goofy…

  

Toe touch!!!

We put him down for a nap once we got to the cabin.  He took a 2 hour nap, but was actually in the pack-n-play for close to 3 hours.  Usually he wakes up from naps/nighttime sleep and just plays with his animals and we let him for a while before going to get him.

Once he was awake, we got him ready to head to the aquarium.  I should note a couple of things that I noticed.  First, I saw Carter’s bottom right molar breaking the skin during the car ride to Gatlinburg.  I was hoping it wouldn’t be too painful for him and he showed no signs of pain until the next day.  Carter has also had a very small appetite most of the week and even some the week before.  However, starting this day, he just straight up wasn’t eating.  Yogurt and goldfish was about all he would eat.  I was wondering if he was getting sick or if those teeth were hurting that bad.

Anyway, we got him ready and headed to the aquarium.

On the left, Carter was looking at the fish in the tank.   On the right, Carter was eating daddy’s Dippin’ Dots.  He wasn’t sure about them at first, but then he would run to Justin to get some of his and then run to me to get some of mine.  Sneaky sneaky.

After leaving the aquarium, we headed to take a picture by the Smoky Mountain sign and to walk along the trail next to it.  At this point, Carter had spent the last 24 hours either in the carseat or in a stroller, so it was past time for him to be able to walk around.

 

After walking around on the nature trail, we ran a couple of errands and then headed home.  This is where I started noticing Carter not acting right.  He is usually either SO happy or SO fussy.  It’s one extreme or the other.  So I knew something was up when he did this on the entire car ride home:

No watching tv, no making noise, nothing.  Just stared out the window.   He is NEVER this quiet or this still.  I think I knew something was wrong right then, I was just hoping I was wrong and that he was just tired. 

We got home and tried to feed him dinner.  Not only would he not eat dinner, but he wouldn’t even touch his milk.  We tried juice and water and he took a few sips of that, but that was it.  I even resorted to heating up fried chicken fingers.  This is usually what I give him when he refuses to eat anything else because he LOVES them.  He wouldn’t even touch it.  I knew something was wrong for sure then.  The remainder of the night, he did things like this:

        

He was extremely cuddly and just sad.  He never cried per se….just whined every now and again.  He just wanted to be held.  Eventually we put him to bed and he fell asleep immediately, but then he was up probably every few hours that night.  He hasn’t woken up in the middle of the night (with one RARE exception) since he was 3 months old.  Most of the time, I didn’t go in there, I let him soothe himself back to sleep.  We had been giving him Tylenol every 4 hours since dinner time so he did get a dose around 2:30 am when he wouldn’t stop crying.  I went in there, daddy gave him Tylenol while mommy changed his poopy diaper (which is probably the reason he wouldn’t go back to sleep like he did the other times he woke up) and then daddy went back to bed while I rocked Carter to sleep again.  I noticed Carter developed a fever before bedtime because his forehead was SO hot.  But at 2:30am, his head wasn’t the only part of his body that was hot.  His chest, stomach, arms, thighs and even his feet were blazing.  I knew he had a very high temp, but we didn’t have a thermometer so I had no idea what it was.

Finally at 7am, I told Justin that we needed to forego our previous plans for that day and just head home.  He agreed.  We were supposed to go hiking in Cades Cove on the way home but Carter was WAY too sick for that.  His body was still on fire and even though he was acting ok, I knew he was still sick.

This is what he did most of the way home.  He didn’t sleep as well as he did on the way to Gatlinburg.   He took two naps but they were VERY short, like 15-20 minutes each.  I had to crawl in the backseat with him several times to keep him entertained, but I didn’t mind doing it because I knew he was hurting.

I also noticed some red spots developing during the ride home which I thought was weird, but I dismissed it after I talked to my mom and my friend Tiffany (both are RNs) and they both said it was a fever rash that comes with fevers.  We stopped at a rest area once we crossed back into Alabama and let Carter run around the grounds for about 45 minutes to stretch his legs.  I went to change his diaper and when I unzipped his footies, I saw that the red dots were ALL over his body too.  I told Justin that I was going to call the on call nurse at his pediatrician’s office when we got back in town to see what that could have been.

When we got home, we gave Carter a lukewarm bath (which he DIDN’T love) and then put him to sleep.  We also took his temperature, which had a reading of 103 degrees.  He’s only had one high grade fever and it was 102.5.  He ended up sleeping for a good hour or so until we had to wake him up.  We had to wake him up because when I called the on call nurse, she called me back and asked about his symptoms.  When I told her, she said we needed to go to Children’s Hospital ASAP.  I don’t know what mother WOULDN’T start freaking out as soon as they heard that!  So we headed to Children’s and waited for over 2 hours total to see a doctor.  I was furious that I woke Carter from the only decent sleep he’s had in a 24 hour period to go to see a doctor, where we had to wait for 2 hours.  FRUSTRATING!

 

On the left, Carter cuddling daddy in the waiting room while we were waiting to get called back.  On the right, this was taken after we left the doctor’s office.  You can see a couple of the red spots on his face.  This isn’t a great picture of them, but he wouldn’t let me take another decent one.  These spots are all over his face, neck, back and stomach.  When he went through crying fits while being touched by the doctors, these red spots got bigger!

So what did the doc say?  Oh lord….this is where the epic failure of the weekend comes in.

See, mommy’s mistake was thinking that all of these was due to the molars coming in.  Not so much.  On top of his molars cutting through, Carter developed croup virus.  The doctor thinks that this may have come from the MMR vaccine that Carter got at his 15 month appointment that was 2 weeks and 2 days prior to this (apparently the symptoms take that long to show up).  This sickness is a side effect of that shot and apparently it’s a good thing because it builds up his immunity really well.  Regardless of where it came from, this awesome virus further made our lives near-unbearable by causing a double ear infection.  So….molars cutting, croup virus that causes coughing and extreme discomfort and lack of appetite, and double ear infection.  Awesome.  Carter’s never had a single ear infection in his life and he’s 16 months old now. 

The doc also said that he could, in addition to all three of those, have strep, but he wasn’t going to test for it because the antibiotics that he was going to give for the ear infections would also knock out the strep.  Like Justin said when we were in the doctor’s office, when Carter does get sick, he knocks it out of the ball park!  Carter is very rarely sick.  And when he is sick, he takes it like a trooper.  Luckily, it appears that the worst of his days are behind us.  We gave him all of his medicine last night (oral motrin, oral antibiotic and ear drops) and put him to bed and he was asleep by 8:15pm.  It’s now 8am the next morning and sweet boy is still asleep. 

We’ll see how the day goes though.  The big issue from here, for me at least, is going to be getting him to eat/drink.  The doctor said no diary, so no yogurt (which is the only thing he was willing to eat).  He can only drink juices and waters and eat things that are easy such as jello and the fruit pouch things.  His diet will be barely there for a few days.  As if my kid wasn’t skinny enough, he’ll probably lose several pounds due to this!

Keep my baby in your prayers folks!  He definitely takes sickness well, and I know it hurts mommy more than him, but he is still hurting.  He’s never had an ear infection so I know having a DOUBLE ear infection is killing him.  Not to mention the pain when he swallows anything.  I hate that as an adult and I can’t imagine being a child and not knowing what is wrong!

First Haircut

Yesterday Carter had his very first haircut!  He’s almost 16 months old and just now had his first haircut.  It’s because he still doesn’t really have a lot of hair!  Even though he doesn’t have a ton of hair yet, what he did have was uneven and falling over his ears so it was time to get it taken care of.  Momma had an appointment herself at 3 and my stylist was going to do his hair when she was done with mine, so I told my mother-in-law to meet us up there at 4ish.  Side note-me, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law all use the same woman to cut our hair.  She cut the twins hair for their first cut too!  We tried to cut it with Carter just looking in the mirror, but that wasn’t distracting enough for him.  Every time Jackie touched the back of his head, he turned around to look at her and see what she was doing.  So we ended up going out the back door to get him outside to see if that distracted him more.  It worked, so Jackie cut off a bit while I was holding him in the back lot.  Debbie (MIL) was kind enough to snap some pictures with my phone:

 

And yes, I cut my hair off.  And got bangs.  That are already annoying the crap out of me.  My hair is extremely fine and thin and when it gets as long as I allowed it to get (completely neglected during busy season) it just looks nappy and won’t hold any kind of curl.  So it was just time to cut it off.  It feels so much lighter now!  It will definitely take some practice figuring out how to style it!  My hair hasn’t been this short in years!

15 Month Appointment

Today was Carter’s 15 month appointment.  He’s 15 1/2 months old now, but this is the first available appointment he had that both Justin and I could go to.  I went from work to meet Justin and Carter at the doctor’s office.  Carter was in a super good mood.  We waited in the waiting room for maybe 5 minutes and then got called back.  As soon as we got into an exam room, I think the memories came rushing back to Carter and he realized what happens there.  He started crying as soon as the nurse came in and wanted to measure him and he cried on and off all the way until we put his pants on (which he knows means that he’s leaving).

Justin snapped a couple of pictures of us waiting on our doc to come in:

 

The stats threw us for a loop.  Carter has been tall and skinny his whole life.  His percentages in height have always been over 50% and most of the time was 75% or more, and his weight percentages usually hover around 25-30%.  At his 12 month appointment, he was measured at 30.5 inches which was 75%.  Justin and I left that appointment thinking that he wasn’t measured right because we have a measuring poster in his room and we happened to measure him that day and only got 28.5 inches.  We just dismissed it though.

So today he measured at 29.75 inches.  They even measured him twice because they noticed that he “shrunk” according to their records.  But sure enough, he is actually 29.75 inches, which puts him in the 10th percentile.  TENTH PERCENTILE.  We are in such disbelief!  He has been consistently tall his whole life and not only is this the first time he’s been less than 50%, but he’s barely even on the charts!!!!  This is just crazy to me!  Anyway, his weight was 23lbs 6oz, which is 25%.  Doc also noticed that Carter’s molars have cut through the skin and we should have his first year molars within days.  There have been very swollen bumps in his mouth for weeks so I’ve been wondering when they would break through but when Carter was crying one time, the doc  noticed white poking through on both sides of his mouth and said the molars were officially cutting.  This makes me happy because I’ve been dreading the molars coming through.  I’ve heard nothing but bad stories about how fussy babies are because of how much the molars hurt when they come through.  Makes sense.  Can you imagine what that feels like??  Anyway, Carter hasn’t been fussy at all so I’m extremely thankful!

The doctor said that he was well above average on developmental abilities, which I knew already.  Carter is so advanced.  He knows the difference between 4 different colors right now (yellow, green, purple and blue) and he also knows how to match up shapes to holes that the shapes fit into.  Example-he knows that the red circular toy goes into the hole shaped like a circle.  Same for the square and the triangle.  He knows 4 body parts (head, tummy, nose and teeth) and repeats pretty much everything we say, which has caused his vocabulary to expand drastically.  I believe there are two reasons for his advanced development:  1) Mommy and 2) Nana.  Nana used to be a teacher at our church for the three year old class, so she knows all about teaching young children and she works with him on things all the time since she has him everyday while I’m at work.  When he’s with me, we’re constantly working on things too.  The colors knowledge comes from me at bathtime.  We have colored bath letters and numbers and we go over all the colors during bath time.  Those 4 just happen to be the ones he picked up on first.  We’re now working on orange and red.  When I was home on maternity leave, I constantly worked with him on tummy time and rolling over both ways and he did of those ahead of schedule too.  It takes work and I’m exhausted most of the time, but I can see it paying off in his abilities. 

So overall, doc appointment went well.  We’ll go back again when he’s 18 months, which will be the end of June, but I think it will be the 2nd week of July before we can make it to the doctor.  I’ll definitely be interested to see how his height is then!

Facebook…

This is kind of a long post, but worth the read.  If you read anything, let it be the last two paragraphs though!

I made the decision recently to rejoin Facebook.  I was off the site for a whopping 8 months.  8 very needed months for a break.  A break from the negativity, from the competition of who has more friends, from the stalking, from the unnecessary overload of information on people I barely even know.  I made an agreement with myself, however, that if I am going to get back on the site, there will be some big changes (you’ll have to read all the way to the bottom to see what event took place that kind of forced me to get back on facebook).  Changes that included going through my friend list and deleting over 400 people.  I want facebook to be a place where I can keep up with people that I love and, no offense to anyone I deleted, but I don’t love people I passed in the halls at Hoover High School one time and never spoke to again.

There was a method behind the madness of who all I deleted.  For me, it wasn’t as much about deleting people as it was about limiting the number of those who see everything about my family.  There is no offense to anyone I deleted from my page.  Basically, the only people I remained friends with are:

• People I see on a somewhat normal basis.
• Family members, even if I rarely see some of them.
• People that, even though we aren’t close anymore and I rarely see them, I was extremely close with them at some point in my life and wanted to keep them around.
• People that follow this blog and my instagram.
• Current and previous co-workers (you never know when you’ll need them)

That’s pretty much why I went from over 700 friends from when I got off facebook in August 2012 to 300 now.  It’s surprisingly hard to delete people on the new facebook (apparently a newer version came out while I was gone-shocking).  Every time I scrolled down my list of friends and found someone to delete, I deleted them, but then the page scrolled all the way back to the top and I had to scroll down to find the place where I left off.  You can imagine how long it took me to delete over 400 people.  Needless to say, I’m probably not done deleting people.  As I see people in my newsfeed that don’t fall in the categories above, I’ll delete them too. 

I can’t stress enough though that I have no ill will towards anyone I am deleting.  This is strictly a way for me to make facebook more simple for me.  No more overload of information.  And I am also going to be limiting what all I am putting on the site.  I fear that I am putting too much out there about our family between facebook and the blog.  My facebook was already private before I got off the site 8 months ago, but I still had over 700 friends (and that 700 number came AFTER I deleted a good 300 before finally getting off the site all together) that could see everything I posted.  Every picture, every word, every video.  People that not only did I really not want seeing all those things, but I doubt that they cared anyway.  I’m sure that most of the people I deleted probably had no idea we even had a kid!  There’s only a select few people that I truly feel like they care about our family and those are the ones that I kept around.  Also, I am not adding the facebook app on my phone nor am I receiving email notifications.  I log on to the site when I have free time and that’s that.  No constant updates of who likes what status and who’s commenting on what.  It’s just so stressful and overwhelming!  I’d much rather me come to facebook than facebook come to me via a thousand “push notifications”.  If I add it on my phone, I know that when I roll over to turn my alarm clock off in the morning, facebook will be the first thing I look at.  And that time is not for facebook!  Morning time before work, for me,  is for getting ready and spending some time with God.  Main reasons I wanted to join again:

• Our families that don’t live near us and don’t see Carter often want to see pictures of him and see how he’s doing.  They either don’t know how to use the blog for that or for whatever reason, just forget they can check on him there.  Also, almost every woman I go to church with has commented on not seeing pictures of him anymore.
• Birthdays.  After getting off facebook, I realized that I knew a small handful of people’s birthdays.  As ashamed as I am of that, it’s reality.  I like telling people happy birthday but can’t do that if I don’t know when it is!!
• Updates on others.  I did very much miss knowing what’s going on with the people that I love, especially people that were getting engaged, married or having babies!

All this to say, the actual true reason that I got on facebook was really only because of pictures.  See, my in-laws gave me an external hard drive for Christmas in 2011.  I saved ALL of my pictures on it.  I’m talking, pictures from high school all the way to Carter’s birth.  Wouldn’t you have it…that hard drive broke and we lost ALL of those pictures.  We had extra backup of really important events like Carter’s birth pictures my sister took and our wedding photos, but take a minute to let that sink in.  Africa pictures-gone.  High school in it’s entirety-gone.  College dance team photos-gone.  My life while living in Nashville-gone.  Honeymoon pictures in Hawaii-gone.  Mountain climbing trips like Colorado-gone.  So, the only thing we could think of to get as much of them back as possible, was for me to log back on facebook and start saving them.  ONE AT A TIME.  There are close to 5,000 pictures on there.  As of now, I have saved 2 of 64 albums.  This will take me FOREVER.

So anyway, knowing it would take me forever to save all those images, I just figured I may as well get back online, but make some changes.  We’ll see how it goes.  Y’all, I have LOVED LOVED LOVED my time off facebook.  We live in such a “busy” world where we always say we never have time for anything.  No time to play with our kids, no time to read and study the Bible, no time to talk to our friends in person instead of via computer.  When I got off facebook, I had so much time!  I started reading the Bible in August 2010 and have read one chapter everyday since then, but since I got off facebook, I’ve put such a bigger dent in it.  I’m over halfway through the Old Testament and am currently starting my 27th book of the Bible today (all 26 that have been read weren’t in the Old Testament though, I skipped around in 2010 before deciding in 2011 to read from beginning to end).

I had more time to spend with my husband, like, quality time.  I even found myself always yelling at him for being on his phone when we were in the living room with Carter playing.  I’m sure I’m getting on his nerves telling him to get off his phone all the time :)  The past 8 months just truly allowed me to enjoy the moment.  I wasn’t worried about getting the perfect pictures to put on facebook or worried about how many people “liked” my status.  It was truly freeing.  I mean, in all honesty, how many of us are friends with those people on facebook that just drive you NUTS.  People you can’t necessarily defriend because it would cause World War III, but you were just drawn to every word they wrote and picture they put up and then you went to your other friends and said “OMG can you believe she said this???” or “I cannot believe he put that picture up!!!”.  It was so nice to be done with that.  I found myself being way more positive and patient.  I didn’t know the drama going on with certain people and it was extremely nice.  I highly suggest everyone just take a few months, or even just a few days, to get off facebook and focus on what truly matters.

Weekend Fun

This weekend was BEAUTIFUL in Alabama.  Temps were mid 70’s and the sun was shining all weekend!  Justin turned 31 on Saturday.  We didn’t have any big plans though.  We went to dinner just the three of us at a mexican restaurant by our house.

This is kind of an awful picture but she’ll do.  There must have been a fingerprint on the front of my camera on my phone because this picture turned out fuzzy.  Justin didn’t ask for anything for his birthday and it always falls in my busy season which is a big inconvenience because I’m always too tired to do anything or plan anything special.  This year, I got him a gas tank cover for his jeep that he was wanting and I also framed our certificates for summiting Kilimanjaro.  He’s been asking me to do this for TWO years now.  So I finally did it.

We already have a big canvas of a picture of us at the top of the mountain hung up in a room in our house and these will go on both sides of the canvas.  The only thing I’m waiting on for the “Africa” wall in our house to be done is something to bolt to the wall to hold the spear that Justin got from the Maasai tribe.  Hopefully it won’t be another two years for that.

I played with little man a bit before it was bedtime.  Sorry the picture is fuzzy again.  This is when I realized that there was a fingerprint on the camera.

That face on the left cracks me up.  It was like he was saying “MOMMY!!!  Open this fridge and give me a yogurt”.  But mommy didn’t let him have his way on that one.  I said, “no Carter, it’s night night time”.  That’s when he ran into our bedroom and jumped onto his toy car as if to say “Wrong mommy.  NOT night night time”.  God love him.

Sunday we went to church and then came home and had a nap.  Once he woke up we took a trip to BuyBuy Baby because he needs some new pajamas.  Most of his 12 month ones are getting snug so it’s time to jump into some 18 month ones.  I saw these overalls and just HAD to buy.  Carter LOVES Elmo.  He looked at the outfit and said “Eeeeemo!”.

It’s spring time!  Time to pack up the jeans and pants and get out some short and overalls!  I just love overalls and little boys.  They’re so cute!  Carter is loving being outside now that the weather is fabulous.  He just wants to walk around all day outside.  However, now that it’s hot outside and he’s wearing shorts, we’re getting some scrapped up knees and arms from falling.  Carter had his first bloody nose this weekend.  He was walking (too fast-I tried to get him to slow down but got to him too late) and took a spill and hit the driveway floor.  He cried, but I didn’t see any blood then.  We came inside and I put him on the floor to play and he played happily.  He went into the living room for a bit and then came back into the kitchen and that’s when I saw the blood.  He was fine though.  I guess he didn’t realize he was bleeding. 

      

We went to the park in our neighborhood and played on the swings.  He loves to swing!  And he was also loving those Honey Nut Cheerios too!

We had a great weekend though.  I did have to work on Saturday for a couple of hours and I know I’ll have to work again this Saturday for probably longer than I did last Saturday, but it’s almost over y’all.  Today is April 8th.  Only 7 more days.  One week.  This Friday will even be my very last Friday to work.  Starting next week, I’m only working 34 hours a week and will have every Friday off.  SOOOOOOOOO excited!!!!

Easter 2013

We had so much fun this Easter!!!  Last year, Carter was only 3 months old and the twins (my nieces from Justin’s sister, Jennifer) were only about 7 months old.  This year, Carter is 15 months and the girls are 18 months old.  It was so much more fun!  Not that last year wasn’t fun, but at these ages, they began to understand that the baskets are gifts for them.  The girls are even beginning to understand to collect eggs from the playroom (our little egg hunt was inside because it was raining most of the day) and put into their baskets.  Carter’s still a little young for this though. 

We started the morning by getting ready for church and then giving Carter his Easter basket and taking a few pictures with mom and dad:

 

It was all over as soon as he realized there were goldfish in the basket.  He required daddy to open them RIGHT THEN…

 

We also gave him a singing bunny.  He wasn’t too sure about it at the beginning.  But when we played with it again before bedtime he LOVED it.  Laughed hysterically at it.

He was watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in the background and apparently something was quite funny…

His little cackle even had me laughing!!

We packed up and headed to church where we dropped Carter off at the nursery while Justin and I went to our Sunday School class and then to our contemporary service.  Afterwards, we got Carter and headed out to the courtyard where lots of families were taking pictures.  I managed to get a few of the Gault’s (Justin’s sister’s family) but never got many because it was FAR past Carter’s naptime and we went ahead and left to get him to Justin’s parents house for a nap and waited for everyone else to meet us there.

Celia and Papa

The Gault Family:  Aeron, Cynthia, Celia and Jennifer

The kids ate lunch and played a little bit and then all three went down for a nap while the adults had lunch.  After roughly 2 hours, all three woke up around the same time and joined us in the playroom for some more Easter fun.

Carter was all about Papa. Every time I turned around he was either sitting in his lap and standing right under him.

He was pointing out the birds to Papa.

All the kids got sunglasses in their baskets and they LOVED them.  Especially Carter….he was having a ball with his!

   

This is a blurry picture but his face is priceless.  He was playing with one of the shirts that the girls got in their baskets and was just turning in circles laughing. 

This one makes me laugh too.  Not sure why….just Celia’s face and Carter’s face!  So funny!

And this is what happens when Carterman runs out of goldfish.  Y’all.  This kid is a garbage disposal.   I have no idea how he is so skinny since he eats EVERYTHING in sight.

Nana going over colors with Celia and Carter.  Notice the now full container of goldfish.  The grandparents can never say no ;)

Then we decided to bust out some leftover cupcakes.  Just what three toddlers need right??  SUGAR.

 

Carter started off watching the girls eat their cupcakes while being held by Uncle Aeron, but then decided he needed one too.

 

Had to get a picture of mom and dad.  We haven’t had one in a while!

Then we tried to get a picture of all the grandkids and Nana and Papa.  Naturally it was a disaster:

And that was our Easter :)  I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!!!