Because I Just Realized I Never Blogged About It…

I was running through my blog today and noticed that I blogged about our trip to Rome, but never even touched our trip to London.  These locations were both in the same trip but for some reason I never blogged about London.  I’m guessing it’s because right when we got back we were telling people that were were pregnant and I was tired all the time. 

The London Eye

Houses of Parliament

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey.  It is GORGEOUS on the inside.  We were there the weekend after Prince William and Kate got married there.  We got to see her bouquet which, as a tradition, goes on the grave of the fallen soldier in the church. 

Buckingham Palace and the balcony that all of the Princes kissed their new wives on

Rumors are true - these guys don’t smile at all and just look into space.  They do get to move, though.  Every few minutes they march forward and switch places.  No one could be expected to stand still for an entire shift…that’s just cruel!

Windsor Castle, where the Queen frequently goes on the weekend.  If the Queen is there, her royal flag flies in the courtyard.  She wasn’t there when we were there.

Entering the Castle

The courtyard

We also went to St. George’s Chapel within Windsor Castle

Inside this chapel lies the bodies of many popular figures in British history, including Henry VIII.

From Windsor, we went to Stonehenge…which was very cool.  And VERY windy!

After leaving Stonehenge, we went to a small town called Laycock.  I’m sure none of you have heard it, but I’m also sure most have seen it!!!  Laycock is where the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice was filmed.  In the above picture we were going to eat at a small inn.

The next few pictures of are of the streets of Laycock, which will look familiar if you’ve seen P&P or any other BBC Jane Austen movie.  A lot of them were set there.

So if you don’t recognize the last couple of pictures based on P&P, then surely you’ll recognize the next few…

Look familiar???  If you’re a Harry Potter fan it should!!  These are the halls of Hogwarts my friends!!

Also a familiar place for Harry Potter fans.  This is Professor Slughorn’s house from Order of the Phoenix where Dumbledore and Harry come at night trying to convince him to come back to teach at Hogwarts.

This is Wales

From there, we went on to Bath.  Another VERY popular place where many Jane Austen novels are set.

Bath

They had a Jane Austen Centre!!!  Love her work!

And if you’ve seen any Jane Austen films (old or new), this is where most of the Bath scenes are filmed.

Several movie stars have houses on this block, including Johnny Depp.

Back in London, this is the Millennium Bridge…another Harry Potter landmark. 

A small structure of William Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

The real thing.  This was SOOOOOOO cool!!!

They actually still have plays here frequently.  They had a MacBeth play scheduled that evening.

The outside

On the Millennium Bridge

This is St. Paul’s Cathedral.  It’s where Princess Dianna got married and her crazy long train went up those steps!!

This is the Tower of London.  Back in the day, it was a prison and execution site.  It’s where Anne Boleyn was executed by her husband, Henry VIII.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…

And my final Harry Potter reference….

We actually went to King’s Cross Station (where they go through the wall to get to Hogwarts Express). 

And that was our trip.  We had WAY more pictures, I was just narrowing it down.  I had such a great time in Rome and London, however, since I was 7 weeks pregnant, I was exhausted ALL THE TIME.  That was the part that was awful.  There was so much more I wanted to see while we were there, but I was too tired to do it.

#38 and #68 - Check

Number 38 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days was to move Carter to sleeping his nights upstairs.  We did this the weekend after I started back work.  All it took was a couple of days of me sneaking around the kitchen trying to get ready for work for me to tell Justin that it was time to move upstairs for good.  We waited until the weekend just in case he woke up a bunch in the middle of the night.  To my surprise, he only woke up once around 4am.  He has been doing great!  I will say the nights of 9 hour sleep have gone bye bye for some reason.  The week I went back to work he started waking up once a night again and he’s been doing it ever since.  Usually it’s around 5-5:30 am, but every now and again he’ll wake up around 4:30.  Overall, it’s really nice to not have to tip toe around past 8pm and in the mornings!!

Number 68 on my list was to celebrate Justin’s 30th birthday.  His birthday isn’t until April 6th, but we celebrated last night.  It was also close to Sam and Chase’s birthdays so we did one big celebration at Pablo’s Mexican Restaurant.  Here’s some pics:

Me and Macarena :)

The Auburn themed birthday cake (Roll Tide)

We had a huge table and took up the entire downstairs room

See.

The boys who all turned 30!

Me and Shelly

Justin and Rob.  Justin ran a 50k that afternoon so he could barely walk.  We were 30 minutes late because he moved so slowly!!

Bonnie and Andrew.  Andrew also did the 50k and finished around 9 hours.  Bonnie started it but had to stop after mile 8 because she wasn’t feel up to par.  She had gotten food poisoning a couple of days before and was still vomiting.

Carina and Yarbs

Shelly with the Lobdell’s.  Baby Harper is on his way!! We’re going to a baby shower for her today!!  I really CANNOT wait for Carter to meet his future bff.

Allison and Chase.  Baby Savannah is on her way also!!  Both her and Harper are due in May.

My bff :)  She’s leaving me to move to Dallas in two weeks.  So sad!!

Jen and Aeron.  Jen is Justin’s sister.

My baby daddy

The fam

Me and Tiff

Soooo, if you read my 101 list, you know that I gave up Mexican food for lent.  So what did I do while we were celebrating birthdays at a Mexican restaurant??  I brought Chick-fil-A.  Yep.

Carter - Three Months

Carter at Month 3

• Diapers: Size 1.  We learned that pampers swaddlers diapers hold in the poo MUCH better than the normal pampers diapers.  I’m not sure why that is.  But for whatever reason, when Carter wore the normal diapers, his pee and poo both would find it’s way out of the diaper and onto his clothes.  Towards the very end of the third month, we started putting him in size 2 diapers at night since that’s when he goes the longest without a diaper change.

• Clothes:  We have SOOOO many 3 month clothes.  Carter is wearing his 3 month clothes and even though the 3-6 months is still a little big, he wears those too.  He can no longer wear anything newborn.  I’ve already packed up all of his newborn stuff and am giving his clothes to Tiffany and Trevor since they’re having a little boy in May.  She’ll give them back to me when her son is done wearing them so that if we have another boy, I’ll have all of Carter’s old clothes.

• Sleep:   During month three, sleep was up and down.  For probably the first 2 1/2 weeks of March, Carter was sleeping through the night no less than 6 1/2 hours, but usually somewhere between 7-9 hours each night.  The last two weeks he’s been waking up around 5:30am.  The good news is that this works for me when I have him by myself and Justin’s out of town because I’ll feed him and put him back down to sleep while I shower and get ready for work with no disruptions.  The bad news is that Carter doesn’t know the difference between weekday and weekend and he wakes up around 5:30 on both.  But even though he wakes up at 5:30, he’s still getting around 7 hours of sleep.

• Stats:   Carter doesn’t have another pediatrician appointment until 4 months, so I don’t have official weight and height percentages.  However, we bought a scale and I tried my best to measure his height and here’s what I got:  13lbs 10oz and 25 inches long.  I may be slightly off on the height…he kicks his legs a lot and it’s hard to measure him.

• Waketime Activities:  Our waketime activities still include Baby Einstein and Praise Baby DVDs, tummy time in various places in the house, playing on the ocean playmat, observing the house in his mamaroo swing, and bathtime.  I went back to work on March 19th and Justin had him at our house that week, but this week (March 26th) was his first week at his daycare (aka - Justin’s parents house).  I’m not really sure what kind of wake times they do over there.  Knowing my mother in law, she would spend an entire waketime just holding him.  Nana loves him so much.

• Abilities:  He can hold his head up for very long periods of time now!!  And not just at a 45 degree angle but a 90 degree angle.  He can roll from his tummy to his back, but not from his back to his tummy (the books say this doesn’t come until 4 months).  He’s starting to make noise when he laughs.  I can tell when he laughs because his entire face shows it.  It’s a totally different facial expression than a smile, much much bigger.  When he thinks something is funny, he’ll make the laughing facial expression, but when he thinks something is REALLY funny, he cackles.  It’s hysterical to watch and listen to.  He’s also learning to reach for things and have control over his hands.  There’s a toy that is on the handle on his car seat and when you pull it, it makes noise.  He’s learning that he can reach his hand up and pull it for it to make noise.  A lot of the time, if he pulls it once, he’ll just leave his hand on the handle and keep pulling.  It’s as if he is afraid to let go because he won’t know how to grab it again.  And even though I shouldn’t, I laugh when he tried so hard to reach for the handle, but his hand keeps missing it.  He’s trying so hard and you can see it in his facial expression.

• Likes:

  • The kid LOVES watching TV, not just Baby Einstein or Praise Baby DVD’s, but all TV.  He gets mesmerized by it. 
  • Mirrors, lights and ceiling fans
  • Being put in his woombie downstairs.  We usually do this upstairs and he screams because he doesn’t want to take a nap, but we’ve found that (for some reason we don’t understand) when we put him in his woombie downstairs in the pack n’ play, he thinks it’s funny.  He laughs the whole time.
  • He starting to like bathtime.  He didn’t have a problem with it before (he never cried or anything) but now he smiles and laughs while he’s in the tub.  He also has figured out that the two things at the bottom of his body are controlled by him, therefore, he LOVES kicking his feet in the tub and splashing the water around.
  • Gizmo.  He’s finally realized that Gizmo exists and he frequently laughs at her when she’s around and will follow her with his eyes.
  • Morning.  My baby is SO incredibly happy in the mornings.  It makes it hard to drop him off and go to work.
• Dislikes:
  • The sun - it’s a little bright for his liking.  We’re hoping to get over this by letting him play outside more.  We’re gonna need our kid to be outdoorsy!
  • Having his bottle taken away.  When bottle feeding, we usually stop every ounce or two to try to get a burp out.  He HATES when we do that.  He starts screaming…and I mean SCREAMING.  Eyes closed, mouth open, holding his breath screaming.  The bad kind.  Side note - he still gets mostly breastmilk even though I’m back at work.  I pump and he usually only gets one formula bottle a day if he gets one at all.
  • Bumbo Seat.  For some reason, he can only handle the bumbo seat for so long….only a couple of minutes.