Stuff

Things are quiet around here this weekend. Jer is back in training for a new jet, which is awesome. He is in class almost every day for the next few weeks, so today felt like a week day for me since Jer was not home with us. I got bad news this week...my cholesterol screening results came back from my ob visit last week and they are literally horrible. They were bad enough to get a call directly from my doctor, which you know is always a bad sign. I am not going to share my numbers with all of the Internet, but suffice it to say that I am a ticking time bomb. This is not exactly news; my father has always battled major problems with cholesterol and turned into a health freak about 25 years ago because of it. Even with his flawless lifestyle (and I mean flawless), he still has to take medicine. My numbers have never been great, but they are really bad this time. It looks like I am going to be forced into medication and I have an appointment with our family doctor next week to work out a plan. I am not pleased about this...I don't want to be on medication that you can't take when pregnant. Even though we are not planning to get pregnant for a while yet, it still makes me terribly nervous. I am sure that my doctor will have a plan that will work for me. I am obviously going to be forced to step it up on the elliptical and start cooking a heck of a lot more out of my "Cooking Light" recipes instead of the Paula Deen cookbook. HA! :-) In all honesty, I don't want to be careless with my health one single bit now that I am a mother. To have such horrible numbers this young means that I need to make changes now. I have a lot of years to take care of my little man.

Colin has been in a very different mood as of late. For the past week he has wanted to be rocked again at night. It came out of left field and I am not sure of the reason. I thought it was a fluke, but he has been like this all week, at naps and bedtime both. He has turned into a little cuddle bear, not only wanting to be held before bed, but also when he wakes up and randomly during the day. This morning he laid in my arms with his head on my shoulder for a good 10 minutes before he would allow me to put him down. This is very different for Colin...he usually hits the ground running. I (of course!) love to hold him and am enjoying the heck out of all this new lovey time with Mama. He is still as happy as ever, so maybe he is just going through a "Mommy" phase. It is so much fun watching him pass through all these different stages. Just when I think I have him figured out, he throws me for a loop! :-)

Ducks and Cool Weather

The high today was 75. As in 75 degrees total. I am in absolute heaven! I took Colin on a walk in his blue car this morning and it was actually cool outside. Oh, the bliss!! It is very rare to enjoy a front like this in early September in Texas, so we soaked up our random day of lovely temps. It was overcast and very windy from the leftover hurricane stuff finally passing over. Did I mention that I love it? It will probably be 100 degrees again tomorrow. But today was GREAT!

We decided to make the most of the weather and take Colin to feed the ducks in our neighborhood after dinner. We have a duck pond down the street from the house and the last time we took Colin he was too small to really notice the ducks. Today, however, was a totally different story. First of all, these ducks are savvy. They started heading up to us the very second we made our appearance. They got out of the water and walked all the way up to the sidewalk! Colin was in awe. He waved and stomped and called out to them. He held his little hands out the way he does to Enzo. I was taking pictures of this and saw one of the ducks actually walking up to Colin. Since Colin was not holding bread, I was not worried and kept shooting the pictures. The duck proceeded to nip at Colin's fingers! I guess he thought Colin had bread since he was holding his hand out. The little man was not pleased, but he was more shocked than anything. So was I! That last picture above was taken as the incident happened. Colin shook it right off and kept enjoying the scene. I took over for Jer and fed them...they actually took the bread out of my hands and I could feel their little beaks. It was so cute and did not hurt at all. I have fed ducks a lot in my lifetime, but I have never been able to hand feed them and pet them like I did today. They were adorable! It was a great time.

The Engaged Family!

I thought I would post a picture of my beautiful sister Meredith, my number one nephew Jackson, and my future brother-in-law Cory. Don't they make a great family?! I am so glad that Jer will now have a partner in crime at all family functions. :-) I love you guys!!! January wedding, here we come!!

The Lord of Sleep

It should be noted that it is 4:47 and Colin is still asleep. His afternoon nap is running nice and late because he fought it for an hour. It actually came down to me rocking him for 15 minutes just to calm him down because he was screaming bloody murder. This is the second day in a row that his afternoon nap has been a mess and this has caused me to start thinking about this nap business yet again. He has officially been asleep since 3:35, so I know he needed the sleep. Colin is one of those little ones who needs lots of sleep and I feel like his rest is my mission in life sometimes. Yesterday, I gave up the fight and it resulted in a cranky and overall unhappy baby. Today I stuck with it, including going back in to rock him and settle him instead of letting him just throw away the nap. In about 5 minutes I am going to be forced to open his door and start making noise so that he will get up. He should have been asleep at 2pm, but at least he got a nap in. I hope this late nap does not totally destroy bedtime. It is a slippery slope, I tell you! I am the lord of sleep. :-)

On another note, we have news to celebrate in my family! My sister Meredith got engaged over the weekend!! We all adore her fiance and are so excited. He fits in with our family like he has always been around, and that is saying a lot since we are a bunch of nuts. :-) I am thrilled to get a new brother-in-law! Congratulations, Mert and Cory!!

The Dinner

It was inevitable. I knew the moment would have to come one of these days. Today was that day. We had to leave a restaurant because of the little man. Now, in all fairness to Colin, this was my fault. Colin took an extra long morning nap for some reason today and thus refused to nap this afternoon. That meant that by the time Jer and I took Colin out to dinner, he had been awake for 6 hours straight, which is a long time for this kiddo. He was entering the land of tiredness before we left the house, but still I persisted. We had a coupon for a local place close by and it was close to expiring, and it was for a free entree and since we are on a budget these days, I just had to take advantage of the chance to eat out. Yes, it is totally my fault, but can't you see the draw?!? :-)

Anyway, as soon as we walked in the door, I knew we had made a huge mistake. It took the hostess about 3 minutes to get us to a table and in that time Colin had already started kicking to be let loose out of Jer's arms. He has never done that before and I was worried. We sat down and Colin was okay for about 10 minutes. Then as he started to spiral down, the server brought out the salads and cornbread. "Saved!", I thought to myself. Colin ate my whole tomato (this is his new thing these days...he loves tomatoes) and some cornbread. I literally inhaled my salad just in case. That was smart because he started to cry once he ate all the tomato and tired of the cornbread. I don't know how he is my child sometimes...I could eat bread until I passed out, but Colin never wants any. I picked him up and walked him around the lobby, hoping on top of hoping that his lovely golden chicken fingers would show up soon and take him out of his funk. I walked back to the table once he started trying to kick out of my arms and tried to put him back in his high chair. He refused to bend his knees and started to turn red. Oh no. Jer tried to take him at this point and that was the wrong move...he arched his back in one of the best temper displays I have ever been privy to and literally almost catapulted himself out of Jer's hands. He was now officially screaming. Yep, you guessed it. Time to go. I took Colin to the car while Jer had the server box up our food and paid the bill. And of course, as soon as he got strapped into his comfy seat and I turned on his favorite episode of "Go, Diego, Go!", he was back to his happy self. Good grief. Is it wrong that I wish there were DVD players on the chairs in restaurants? Just kidding. Kind of.

As we were driving home with our yummy food (which was even better at home, I think!) Jer noted that he had never seen another family leave like that when their baby started to have a tantrum. I thought about it and realized that I actually haven't either. We then chatted about how in our experience, most folks just stay and let the kid freak out while other diners are forced to talk over a screaming baby. Jer and I have experienced it countless times, which is probably why I am so sensitive about disturbing others. I don't mind it when he is a little too loud while happily playing in his seat, but if he starts to cry and I can't comfort him immediately, I always jump up and take him out of the room. I just don't want to disturb others trying to enjoy their food! I am wondering if I am being irrational and too hung up on it. Should I have let him cry until we got our food? Would anyone else have packed up and left like I did? I was not upset at all that we had to leave, but I suppose we could have stayed and ridden out the storm. I practically start to have a panic attack when Colin seems ready to make a scene. I would love to hear how everyone handles that situation. Am I crazy?

My worn out little man was so tired that he cried himself to sleep tonight, which he hardly ever does. Poor baby! I put him down early, so he should feel much better in the morning. I am sorry that Jer has to go back to work tomorrow! We have had a great weekend!

Labor Day Weekend 2008

This has been a wonderful Labor Day weekend so far. Jer has been off work since Thursday, which is such a treat for Colin and I. My mom and sister Alieson came into town yesterday for a quick overnight visit and left after lunch today. It was wonderful to see them, even for a short trip. We all had lunch yesterday at Polenzo's, which is one of my new favorite places that just opened up within walking distance of our house! Jer then stayed home with Colin yesterday afternoon and I was able to spend a few hours shopping with my mom and sister. We went to Ann Taylor, which reminded me almost immediately that I don't get to wear beautiful clothes anymore. Having a "suit" job can really be a pain sometimes, but at least I got to wear fabulous clothes. Don't worry...I would still much rather take care of Colin than wear cashmere. :-)

Last night we went to Big Lots while Jer stayed home with the man, which is yet another strange family tradition. Big Lots is this huge closeout store that is full of random junk with the odd little treasure tucked in here and there. My mom and sisters and I have always loved to go there and just mill around checking things out. It is the kind of place that you go into needing nothing and come out of with a decorative yard sign, wooden basket, kitchen rug, and Halloween table runner. (yes, that is exactly what I ended up with. It could have been worse...at one point I was looking at chairs for heaven's sake!) It was fun to be out at night with the girls, especially since being out past sunset is a novelty to me at this stage of the game!

Hurricane Gustov is heading toward the Gulf Coast as we speak and has put a damper on the weekend for all of us down here. My dad was unable to come to visit because he is knee deep in preparation for his stores in the areas that are near what looks like landfall. While the hurricane has been in the news for several days, it just got really bad yesterday. We have been glued to Fox News all day long and it looks like it should hit around New Orleans tomorrow morning and will be a Category 3 storm. I am worried about my good friend Shannon and her family...they went on a much needed weekend vacation to Galveston this weekend and are there now. What horrible timing! Since Galveston should get a huge pounding, I would imagine they got stuck in the horrible traffic of folks evacuating. I am sure hoping they are safe and sound tonight. I know she was really looking forward to the trip and her twins first visit to the beach. What luck.

We treated Colin to a huge bubble bath tonight, which accounts for the adorable pictures. I bought a bottle of the real "Mr. Bubble" at the store today and the tub was overflowing with bubbles. He was not sure what to think at first, but then started exploring and had a blast. It is the little moments like these that make me burst at the seams with pure joy. I love him so much!