Weekend in "the 'Ham"

This Saturday we packed up and headed down to Birmingham to help celebrate Miss Abbie D's 3rd birthday. Since Abbie absolutely loves the Disney princesses Jamie threw her a princess party and invited everyone to wear their "royal attire". Even though Ian is still pretty little we thought it would be fun if he could participate in the party's theme so after doing a quick Internet search Kirk found the cutest "heir to the throne" costume on amazon. Since it was both cheap and adorable we decided to go ahead and get it. It was supposedly a size 12-18 months so I figured it would be big on him and maybe he could wear it for Halloween. Turns out the costume fits pretty much just right so I'm thinking by Halloween it will probably be too small. Oh well, at least we did manage to get one good wear out of it. Kirk, being the crafty one that he is, also made a little fake sword to go with the costume which Ian thought was the best thing EVER for him to chew on. He also managed to break it within 2 minutes tops of playing with it, go figure!!

Prince CaspIAN


Yummy sword


The party was really cute with all of the little girls running around in their finest dress up gowns, jewelry, slippers, (the works). Little girls this age are the CUTEST and so much fun!!

Pretty birthday princess


After the party Abbie was able to practice her big sister skills with Ian. I can tell already that she is going to love being a big sister and is going to be doing all she can to help with baby Carson when he arrives. Luckily for her baby Carson will be a bit smaller and easier to handle when he arrives and will hopefully not take up her whole lap and then some!!

Cinderella Abbie holding Ian
Notice this is Miss Abbie's second outfit of the afternoon, such a girl!!


The rest of the weekend we got to spend lots of QT with Kirk's family. Suellen, Marlee Sue, and Garrett were all in town and luckily since no one managed to get sick this time, at least not ahead of time, we were finally able to get all of the cousins together. For having all of these babies and kiddos in one place I'd say things were remarkably calm. Somehow I doubt it will be the same when all of these babies become mobile. Something tells me we have some wild and crazy get togethers in store for us!!

Marlee Sue and Ian checking each other out


Cousins: Marlee Sue, Garrett, and Ian
We gave the babies the corn to play with and they were absolutely fascinated. Ian, of course never one time put it in his mouth either. Swords are much better I guess.


Cousins: Garrett, Ian, Marlee Sue, and Miss Daisy

Half a year

Ian celebrated his "half birthday" this month. Unfortunately the celebration was short lived as he came down with something this past week and we had to turn his six month checkup into a sick visit. Tuesday when I showed up to pick him up from daycare the teacher notified me that she had contemplated calling me since he felt warm to her and upon inspection she noted that he had a slight fever, not quite high enough, though, to warrant a phone call. When I got him home I took his temp and it was around 100. He seemed fine at that time, in good spirits and playful. At this point I wondered if the low grade temp might be a result of teething, we keep looking for teeth but so far nothing. It was a gorgeous day here so I decided to break out the fancy jogging stroller and head out for a walk. All seemed well until that night around midnight when he woke up burning up hot with a 103 temp. I knew the poor kid didn't feel good at all when I just could not get him to go back to sleep and had to actually bring him to bed with us to get him to settle back down. The high fever continued on until the checkup appointment where the poor kid had to have blood drawn, get catheterized for a urine sample, get an antibiotic shot in the leg, and a chest x-ray. Needless to say after all of this activity he was DONE with the doctors office. We then had to spend the next couple of days making repeat trips to the pediatricians office since the fevers continued to rage on until thankfully a blood draw yesterday revealed that he finally seems to be back on the mend. The culprit of all of this activity has been ruled a virus since all the tests that were run came back normal. I have been so worried about my sweet boy this week and am so glad he finally seems to be getting better. Don't think I could stand one more minute of seeing him feel so awful. Having a sick baby has got to be one of the worst most helpless feelings there is.

On a happier note other than this sick spell Ian is doing well and continues to grow like a weed. He is now up to 19 lbs 7ounces and is 28 inches and some change long. He is now proficient at rolling both front to back and back to front.
We are now working on sitting up which he is doing great with. He can sit up by himself unsupported for a pretty good while and is getting better at correcting himself at times when he starts to lose balance.

Sitting up like a big boy



He is also now enjoying sampling different foods. So far we've tried carrots, peas, squash, bananas, and of course rice cereal(which he does not seem to be a fan of). Seems the carrots have earned their spot on the top of his favorites list so far. Every night now he sits at the table in his highchair and has dinner with us. I'm also working on having him join me for breakfast in the mornings now on the weekends. Kirk really seems to be enjoying his new role in helping out with mealtime now that it's no longer only up to mom to provide all the food. Ian seems to be enjoying trying all of these new and exciting flavors as well as making a huge mess of course.

Enjoying peas and carrots

Mr Independent helping

Jump Around

What do we do in our house for entertainment on a Tuesday night?

It's as easy as breaking out the ipod, cranking up a little House of Pain, and popping the baby in the jumparoo. What can we say we're easily amused. The jumparoo definitely appears to be Ian's favorite toy of the moment and we've been getting a kick out of watching him have so much fun in it. This toy is AWESOME. Not only does it entertain baby, mommy, daddy, and grandparents but it has the magical ability to keep Ian entertained for quite awhile with all of it's cool toys and bouncing action giving mommy and daddy either down time or time to actually get something done, that in and of itself makes it priceless. Apparently it's comfortable as well as he's actually managed to fall asleep in it while playing.
Here he is all bounced out:

Squeaky Clean

How cute is this sweet little guy?? I took these pics a few nights ago of Ian after his bath, all wrapped up in his hooded towel having fun just rolling around on the bathmat. He looked so adorable that I just HAD to get some pictures of the whole thing to try and capture some of that cuteness.

Though you can't tell it from these pictures he was actually somewhat sick when these were taken, I only wish I looked that cute when I'm sick. We had to take him in for his first official sick visit this week since he had been running a fever all weekend and by Monday wasn't eating as well and was generally fussy. Turns out he has an ear infection (again) and some sort of virus. Luckily though he appears to be on the mend for now. Mommy however is another story. After spending a wonderful weekend in Birmingham visiting with Kirk's parents and two of our favorite families (the Garrison's and DuPriest's) and fully enjoying my first four day weekend in FOREVER I managed to return to work for one full day last week prior to becoming SICK on Wednesday morning. I have no idea what I managed to pick up but I woke up around 4 in the morning shivering uncontrollably. After putting on sweats, getting back under the covers, and continuing to shiver for 30 minutes to an hour I decided that I must be sick. Sure enough an hour later a temp check revealed a temp around 102. I felt so terrible I couldn't even stand the idea of getting out of bed and was just getting ready to tell Kirk he was going to have to handle Ian when he informs me that he's also sick and sure enough 101 temp. Around noon or so I decided that I felt so terrible that I must make an appointment to see my doctor right that minute only to be told that he wouldn't be able to see me for two days. Since I have connections in the medical field (a-hem MOM) I was able to get a flu test done since I was convinced that's what I had only to find out it was negative. Luckily our fevers resolved relatively quickly and just when we thought we were getting back to normal Ian managed to get sick. With all of this going on I had to call out and miss three of my four scheduled work days last week and Ian has not been back to daycare in about a week since we didn't want to chance him getting the other kids sick. I'm convinced that the authorities will be coming out any minute to find out what we've done with the kid...
Though I am definitely a lot better now I am still a bit congested and just not yet back to my old self. Hopefully all will be back to normal on Thursday when I am due to go back to work. I already feel like I have single handedly put myself on the bad employee list with what happened last week and am afraid that if I have to miss any more days they might decide to do something drastic like string my up by my toenails and beat me or something but hey, you've gotta do what you've gotta do right? Especially when it comes to my sick kiddo. So, until Thursday we will be taking it easy trying to get better and I will be enjoying spending a little extra time with Ian as I managed to get a bonus day off this week which couldn't have been timed better actually. Gotta love that.

Pimp my ride - stroller edition

Spring fever has kicked in big time around our house with all of the beautiful spring weather we've been having lately (with the exception of this week of course). Kirk and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather this past weekend by loading Ian up and heading to my favorite walking trail for some quality time in the great outdoors. We used this opportunity to try out Ian's new shades as well as his new ride, a cool new jogging stroller that I got as one of my birthday gifts from Kirk. The new ride seemed to receive Ian's seal of approval as he spent half of the walk asleep and the other half just chillin. As for the shades, he didn't even really seem to notice them but he sure did entertain some of our fellow walkers who couldn't help but smile when they saw him coming.
Joe Cool himself

The sunglasses came about after Kirk and I received a note from Ian's teachers at daycare saying that each time they took him out for a walk they noticed he kept his eyes tightly closed the whole time until they got him back inside. Poor kiddo. I had no idea they even made sunglasses that little but sure enough Kirk and I managed to find some at babiesrus. Seeing him in them still cracks me up every time.

4 month stats

In celebration of his four month birthday Ian had a checkup with the pediatrician Tuesday and he is now up to....
17 lbs and 27 inches, this puts him in the 90th percentile for his age!! The appointment turned out to be good timing as I was getting a bit concerned about the little guy since he's been congested, snotty, and had a nasty cough for a couple of weeks now and every time he seemed to be getting better it seemed like he'd sound worse again. Turns out he's got a bit of an ear infection so we have been filling him full of antibiotics and cough syrup for the last couple of days. Luckily it seems to be helping though and he now finally seems to be on the mend. The Dr. also gave us clearance to start baby cereal anytime we're ready. I'm hoping that when we do give it a whirl maybe it'll help fill up his belly and he'll sleep a little longer at night, a girl can dream right???

Today was a pretty big day for us as apparently Ian rolled over for the first time. I say apparently because neither Kirk or myself witnessed it. I was upstairs taking a nap after work and Kirk had put him on the floor on his belly. The next time he glanced over at him he was on his back. Though we didn't actually see it we're still exciting. Hopefully we'll be able to actually witness it soon. He's also grabbing at things and holding them in both his hands now. He's changed so much already that it's hard to believe it's only been four months since he was born. I'm constantly amazed at how much he's changed, how much we've learned, and how far we've all come in these last four months.

Winter Wonderland

I knew the weather forecast called for possible snow this weekend but I must admit I had my doubts and didn't really give it a second thought until we woke up to this scene this morning:


A snow covered Bradford pear in bloom

Guess the groundhog was right. Luckily we are into the 4th week since his prediction so hopefully only two more weeks to go until spring!! Happy March 1st.