Growing Pains

Nothing like watching a Royal Wedding on a beautiful day to put you in good spirits! That and getting a little over 6, count ‘em 6 hours of sleep in a row. Yes, our little boy slept from 9:30 to 4:18 this morning, in his own crib. Boy did Ted and I need it too, it has been a rough week of wake ups with both kids. By the time we reached last night we were exhausted. And unfortunately that meant we were on a short fuse when it came time to dealing with four year old antics. And unfortunately for Katherine she had a bit of a bad night. Yes, there were tears. Which led her to say probably the most guilt inducing phrase I have ever heard: “You don’t need me anymore.” Just thinking about it now makes my heart ache. She seemed fine after a quick talk and TV time together but I’m thinking of some Mommy and Katherine time this weekend.

I think we are finally having some of those "growing pains" of having a little brother.  Overall, Katherine does great but with Teddy's lack of sleep lately, his increase in mobility and the fact that he gets cranky and clingy every day from 5-7, Miss K is trying to figure out what's going on. Clearly her "baby brother" is very quickly becoming not so much of a baby anymore.  And as she predicted before he was born, she doesn't like him getting into "her stuff".  Or taking over anything that she previously deemed her territory.  However, our girl has some luck coming her way. She found a four leaf clover in our yard this week! Ted and I had plans to save but it dried up first…thankfully she has not asked for it…yet.

And I swear that Teddy said “bath” last night. Or some babble that was a good imitation of me saying “Do you want to take A BATH?” over and over again. Either way, I’ll take it.

A must read, at least in our house

This required an immediate post. Someone has summed up our entire sleeptime situation with Teddy in a book.

Go the F to sleep

You think I'm kidding about that title?  I want an autographed copy of this masterpiece.

Walking Feet

This was the weekend.  Teddy is officially walking and not crawling.  He still has some work to do before he is stable on his little legs but even so, we haven't seen him crawling in the past couple of days.  And this evening I noticed that he is picking up speed.

This was much more of a gradual process with Teddy than it was with Katherine.  At 14 months, we were begging Miss K to just let go and walk already, everyone knew she was capable of doing it.  Therefore I can pinpoint the exact day in October of 2007 when she finally did let go and take off.  There's no real exact day or moment with Teddy.  One day he could put one foot forward, a few days later take one wobbly step, a week after that take a couple of steps.   In sum, it was probably a good month or two of time between being a non-walker and a walker.

Of course, I know your waiting for some photos or video of the big man.  Teddy is very hard to get good pictures of because the kid doesn't sit still long enough.  And the minute he realizes your taking his picture, Operation Get the Camera is on.  I have a lot of blurry head shots of him.  We'll see if we can remedy that situation here shortly.

That Easter Bunny...

He's really something.


And look he brought Mommy a Pampered Chef Consultant kit!


And of course he had to take a peek at his two favorite kiddos before he left.


Yup, he's something alright!


Happy Easter!

All's well!

Now that I've taken a deep breath from the previous week, let's get back to the blog, shall we?  First things first, many of you may have seen the news reports of the storms that whipped through these parts on Saturday afternoon.  Rest assured we are fine, our house is fine, even Reeses is fine.  We were lucky to be in a trough between tornadoes.  Still when you look at the storm map, wow, how scary is this?

All of those lines are the paths of tornadoes or multiple tornadoes.  We are right between the one that went through Raleigh and the one that went through Rocky Mount.  But the pictures from the areas where the storm did go are devasting.  Actually, we were not home when the storms came through, we were up at Papa and Gram Coberly's for the weekend to visit the Easter Bunny and celebrate Teddy's birthday with BOTH sets of Papa and Gram's.  The storms up there weren't nearly as bad.  When we returned home on Sunday with my parents we expected to at least see tree branches all over the yard.  Instead there was nothing.  Surreal how there can be such devastation just a few miles away yet you would never know that anything happened at our house.

So now that we are back and hopefully settled into our routine, there's lot's of catching up to do around here.  So stay tuned for future posts on Katherine's visit with the bunny (Teddy was sleeping), Teddy's WALKING FEET and my new adventure.  And yes, I know the pictures are lacking at the moment, I'll get to that too.

This week

It hasn't gone at all like I thought it would.  Not that I had any plans for it, just the normal daily routine. Plans for a few posts to cover some things that have been going around here.  A few meetings at work that I wanted to get over with.  Time with the kids. Pretty much the same old, same old. 

I don't think there's been one day that has been routine, thanks to the dreaded stomach bug that hit Katherine at the beginning of the week.  Truth be told, we're pretty sure that Teddy had it last week but we just chalked it up to too much sweets on his birthday for a little tummy that had not experienced them before.  In the middle of the night, Monday into Tuesday, Katherine came into our room.  I don't think either of us caught what she said but the end result was her laying in our bed.  At some point Mr. T joined us too and we were one big happy family snoozing til morning.  We thought all was well until Ted went to go get Katherine's clothes for the day and suddenly saw why she had come in our room.  She had thrown up, in her sleep, in her bed.  Let's not think about the fact that she had then laid with the rest of us, don't go there, we tried not to.  So in the blink of an eye, plans for the day changed immediately.  We halved the day, since I had a meeting to attend in the afternoon.  Poor kid spent most of the day curled up in a bed of blankets on the living room floor, watching Nick Jr.

Funny how kids bounce back though, by the evening she was back to old self, appetite returned and off to school she went the next day.  Phew, dodged that bullet we thought.  And we really did...until...stupid me absentmindedly gave her a big cup of milk to have with her dinner the next night.  A cup of milk that she chugged with gusto and then asked for more.  Yes, I now the Golden Rule, do not give a child who has really had stomach issues dairy, no matter how well they seem.  At bedtime she complained that her stomach hurt a bit but that she was ok.  Yeah, you can guess what happened a few hours later.  Add to that that Teddy was up every two hours that night as well and yup, it was a rough overnight at our house.

So there we were yesterday morning with a kid who was now perfectly fine but who we new full well needed to avoid milk products for the day and would surely make mention of the previous nights events to her classmates if we tried to send her in.  Sometimes that dreaded 24 hour rule is not a good thing.  So with an important can't miss meeting at work (which consumed my week), what's a mom to do?  That's right, off to work we went!  Katherine loved it and she was as good as gold watching a movie and playing quietly in the office next to my meeting.  Phew!

So all in all, I reached Friday thinking it was time to call it a week and start over again on Monday.  I'll save my other updates for then.  Better late than never right?

New Year, New Seat

What do you do when your newly minted one year old figures out how to stand up in his high chair?


Get a more secure seat. You bet he's strapped in. He's a curious one:


Twelve Months Stats:
Height: 29.5 inches (48th percentile)
Weight: 21 lbs 3 oz (25th percentile)
Head: 47 cm (73rd percentile)

Small body, big head. Perfect combination for a little explorer.

Girls Day

Lunch at every 4 year olds favorite place.


-- Post From My iPhone

One Year

I can’t believe we’ve hit this mark already. I keep staring at the title for this post, one year...one entire year that Teddy has been here. Wow, this year has flown by. All morning I kept thinking, gee, last year at this time we were walking around the hospital; we were being admitted, etc… At the moment I am typing this post, well…I was getting my epidural. Last year at this time I couldn’t believe I was actually in labor, at the end of my pregnancy, how did it go by so fast? This year I’m contemplating how this tiny little baby boy we brought home is about to enter into full fledged toddler hood.

Even in spite of my disbelief of where we find ourselves, I’m thrilled to be here. I love that Teddy’s personality is starting to blossom. I love that you can actually “play” with him now, that he is beginning to really interact with other. He’s curious, he’s into everything and he loves his big sister with all his heart.

He went to school this morning wearing his birthday boy t-shirt carrying cupcakes for all of his friends and teachers. They were so excited to see him, to join in the celebration. I know he doesn’t really have a clue that this day is different than any other day. In fact, he was content to sleep in this morning, he even rolled over on the changing table and curled up to catch a few more zzzz’s. Who could blame him, don’t we all want to sleep in on our birthdays?

Happy Birthday Teddy!

I'll have my cake...

I'll save the official birthday post for tomorrow but on the eve of Teddy's first birthday, here are some pictures of our little family celebration this weekend.  Since our weekday nights are crazy we decided to do the cake a presents on Sunday night.  Also, Katherine was beside herself trying to wait until Tuesday.  But unlike Miss K on her first birthday, Mr T did not disappoint in the cake eating department.  Now which handful should I eat first?

We got him a wagon for his birthday, a small one that will be just perfect for him to pull around the yard this summer. I probably should have thought about that a bit more because Teddy has already realized it is also the perfect mobile step stool.  Exihibit A:

Oh yeah, year two is going to be a blast! 

Wrong turn

So in the rush to get to daycare yesterday, I took a wrong turn. Actually, the kids were unusually quiet in the backseat which allowed me to space out and get on the highway to head straight into work instead of heading straight into town. Katherine immediately noticed something was amiss: “This isn’t the way to school!” Ahhh, ooops, no it isn’t. In fact, she had a minor meltdown over it while I assured her we would just get off at the next exit. “I’m not going to school today!?!?” which turned into “We’re going to be late to school!!” Now I should be pleased that the kid was genuinely upset at the thought of not going to school. But what surprised me was how upset she was at just the simple change in the route to get to school. We never even left town but she was shaken. When we got to school, I told her that I accidentally made a wrong turn and, well, that happens sometimes. Her response? “I don’t want you to do that ever again!”

Teddy made a visit to the “big kid room” yesterday. That’s right; he’s starting his transition to the toddler room. I’m both excited and in shock that we are at this point. Ms. Mary is not happy; she wants her Teddy to stick around with her for a little while longer. No, last weekend was not “the weekend”, he is not walking yet. But he is making strides, letting go and taking one or two steps before toppling over. It won’t be long. Seems he had fabulous time in the new room and was so tired he slept for close to four hours in a row during the afternoon. Does this mean we will have a little boy who will be so tuckered out from his days in the toddler room he will sleep straight through the night? We’ll see!