In the past, I have had a strong distaste for the stupid time change but now I'm passionately against it. Three things have run through my head on a daily basis since we "fell back":
1) If I ever run for president, my only platform will be to abolish the time change. And I would win too.
2) I never knew how terrible it was until I had a baby. Babies don't observe Daylight Savings Time. So their parents don't get to either. A baby that once slept from 7pm to 6am (with about 3 wake-ups a night in our case - ugh) is now up at 5am. And the transition takes a. long. time.
3) Grayson has now adjusted but I haven't? It's so strange. Never before has it taken me this long but I still feel like it should be 8pm when it's barely 6 yet. Really weird...
So...vote for me for President. Maybe I'll run if I can ever adjust to the time change and gain my energy back!
Beau, Grayson and I headed out to Beau's brother's house yesterday for an early Thanksgiving celebration. His family is always so flexible and understanding with sharing with the "other sides." Since Beau's sister planned to spend Thanksgiving out of town with her fiance's family, we all decided Sunday would be a perfect time to bring everyone together. Grayson's cousin Payton just adores him!! And it's so cute to watch the two of them. It won't be long before he can play back and they will have so much fun together.
I am proud to say that a) my dish turned out well, b) we didn't forget anything going or coming back, and c) everyone had a lovely time with great food! Here is our family photo:
Please note that we are all well aware that it looks like I have two children. But Payton just loves her Baby Grayson and wanted to stay close. How could we resist? :)
Yesterday I lay Grayson down on his back on his play mat (as I often do) while I went to put the diaper bag in the car....soooo, I was away for 15 seconds maybe...my easy days really are behind me!
I'm super excited to be blogging from my new fancy shmancy MacBook Pro. I swore I would never own one after I worked at an agency once that was all Mac, all the time and the learning curve was doubly frustrating for me (new job AND a new operating system - ugh). However, time heals all wounds (dramatic, I know) and I jumped on this snooty Apple bandwagon yesterday! Never mind the Mac desktop I married into and have been reluctant to use for the past 3 years.
To tell you the truth, I didn't even feel like I belonged in the Apple store. Like the little 22 year old girl helping us was above me - all while she upsold us on a gazillion other things (iTV - WTH?!) and checked us out in the middle of the store on her little iPhone. Wayne's World's "We're not worthy" comes to mind here!
Maybe I'll impress you with some snazzy photo editing once I figure out what the iHell I'm doing on this thing!
Grayson is now 5 months and I feel like a broken record always talking about how much he's growing up and how active he wants to be. He is reaching for things now - everything - from my hair and glasses to menus and salt shakers on the dinner table! He's fast too - I'm still not trained to look out for it yet!
He is drooling like crazy from teething but still no teeth yet. He usually always has at least 2 fingers in his mouth. We know it's a rough day when all 5 fingers make it in. :(
Everywhere we go, we get comments on what a big baby he is so I was surprised to see the 80th percentiles - what do the babies in the 90s look like?! Ha! Overall, the ped said everything looks great and commented on Grayson's strength after he grabbed ahold of the doctor's two fingers and pulled himself up with minimal help from the doc. We really do have a stander/mover/shaker on our hands!
We are still working with the same solids as before - avocado and rice cereal. I'm introducing sweet potatoes this week. He's still waking up at least once a night. If he wakes up any more than that, we give him the pacifier and just rub his belly until he goes back asleep. No additional feedings. We are now putting him to sleep awake and having him sooth himself to sleep. It's really working out quite well! This is also how he goes down for naps now, which is still about 3x a day.
Grayson is starting to notice the other babies in our play group but he isn't ready to reach for them or anything. It's really entertaining to watch the progress of a baby. Everything is so new and exciting in his world. :) I'm just glad I get to be here to see it all.
I don't have any spectacular 5 month photos so once again, a video of giggles!
Okay, I take that back. Here's a quick pic I just snapped of my boys on the floor. Grayson is almost the size of his playmat :)
Have I been MIA or what?! My laptop finally gave up the good fight and I'm sharing the desktop with Beau. I have never known what sharing a computer is like and let me tell you, it's not fun! So much to talk about so let's dive right in....
Halloween Wrap-Up
I must brag on Beau for a minute. He carved these pumpkins of our family and they were amazing! So much detail and it only took him an afternoon to do it.
I mentioned in my last post that my Fall decor kind of fell apart. Welllll, let's just say mold took over - on these pumpkins, one I was using as a vase and the gourds in my cake stand from this post. Looking back, that cake stand was a glorified petri dish. Gross. I most definitely did NOT take a picture of that.
And finally, more pictures from Grayson's second Halloween costume for his first Halloween (got that?) I ended up buying costume #2 when we realized that it was going to be 87 degrees Halloween day for the Prestonwood Baptist Fall Festival. The bumble bee would have been suffocating to my already-sweaty boy!
I included this last one because if you look in the background just to the left of us....now THAT'S a bat! :-)
Ma in town
My grandmother has been in town this week and we have been BUSY! This week has flown by and each day of running around has ended with me practically falling asleep at dinner, my mom worn out and Ma wondering what's next on the agenda. Ha! She has so much energy - ready to keep going and we just couldn't! Yes, she's 90! When Grayson starts walking, I'm sending Ma after him!
Play Group
Thanks to our friends Kristi and Emmie, Grayson and I have joined a play group full of fun moms and cute, cute babies! It feels so good to have him socialized and too many things on the calendar to count. Even better, this group finds all the free/low cost fun things to do in town - I don't even know how they find them! Here is a picture from Mom's Night Out (not so free but oh so fun!) this past Wednesday.
Good News!
Beau has accepted a job offer that will put him in Dallas for the first time since I have known him! This is the job that most everyone has heard us talking about since before the baby was born and he is so excited about it! I'm just happy to have him home :D
Changes to my Digital World
You may have noticed that my Facebook page looks a little different these days. I have tightened down on some settings for a little while for security reasons. Nothing to be alarmed about but on that note, I'm following in many friends' footsteps and this blog is going private! I will be in touch when I'm ready to make that move.
Family Pictures
Beau and I decided that we would take some pictures after church last week. Why not, it was a beautiful day and we were dressed for it. It was much more difficult than we imagined since no one was behind the camera to get Grayson to smile, look, focus, etc. We decided no more picture time BEFORE his nap. We are such amateurs with all this baby stuff! ;-)
And finally....
a little backyard family time. These two had been giggling and chasing Brinkley around for a solid 20+ minutes before I grabbed the camera. So this little boy is exhausted from laughing so hard (not crying, like I say in the video). I wish I had captured ALL of it! We just can't get enough of his giggles :)
We did it! My mom and I successfully traveled to Corpus Christi and back last week - an 8 hour trip with Grayson in tow! It was a last minute trip to attend the funeral of Ma's cousin, Amelia Garza Verley. Sadly, it's things like this that bring family together but we really enjoyed seeing everyone. There were so many cousins and distant cousins and first, second and third cousins that we were able to see again! It was really cool to see my mom and grandmother interact with so many people that they grew up with, yet that we don't see very often anymore due to distance. Ma is 13 years older than Amelia so she was able to tell Amelia's daughters stories of her childhood, which was awesome to listen to. Ma is a great story teller and has an amazing memory (yes, at 90 years old)!
I forgot the camera so I don't have any pictures of family (are you even supposed to take pictures under these circumstances?) and I only had the video camera so OF COURSE the only videos are of Grayson. :-) Take a look - overall, he did great sitting for so long, which is he hates to do...
Here we are working on holding an (empty) bottle...it's 1 1/2 minutes of the same thing so you only have to watch the first 20 seconds or so ;-)
A time-passer that quickly came to an end!
and a little down time while we were there...he REALLY wants to be on his own...hope the same applies when he's 18! :)
I know I haven't written in a while. I have lots of updates from our last minute road trip to Corpus Christ (8 hours with a 4 month old!) to the Prestonwood Baptist Fall Festival fun we had yesterday! Other stories like how I hit a woman in the parking lot of the kid's urgent care center (like my vehicle made contact with her body - don't worry, she's okay, it didn't even knock her off her feet) to the actual reason why we went to the urgent care place and other things like Beau's mad pumpkin carving skills to my throw pillow updates and my fall decor's fall from grace. Lots to talk about. But that involves lots of typing, even more thinking and photo downloading on my laptop that is dying a very slow death.....which is running better than I am, might I add.
Maybe someday my baby won't wake up 100x a night and I'll have the energy to update this blog!
