General Update

Ok, so I am finally up to date and to the recent weeks. We have been in party mode. We had 2 birthday parties the last weekend of June - CJ [our neighbor] turned 3 and Abbie [a friend from work's daughter] turned 1. We made it to about 1/2 of both parties as they were on the same day. We were supposed to go the lake the next day for Aunt Hilary's birthday but the weather did not cooperate with us. Last weekend we had our friend Melissa's birthday dinner Fri and then Thomas turned 1 on Saturday [a friend from work's son] and then we went to Chelsea's [a mom from the mom's group I was in before returning to work] baby shower on Sunday night. This weekend we had a baby shower for Michele [a friend from work] on Saturday. Next weekend Cate [a friend from high schools daughter] will be baptized. After that, things should be quiet until Labor Day weekend. That pretty much brings us up to date. Work is going well for both Carl and I, it is very busy, but we both love our jobs. We booked our tickets for our Italy trip for the end of September, we are starting to get excited, but nervous too about how Alex will do on such long flights when he has never been on a plane before.

On a GREAT news note, my dad had his screenings earlier this month and we heard back last week and all came back cancer FREE! He does not have to go back until November again. YEA! We are all very happy and relieved.

We hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and I will try to keep this updated more frequently now that we are back in town for a while.

Birthday's - Nana, Nono and Uncle David

Alex turned 1 on June 11. He had 2 birthday parties. 1 big one on June 7 with my neighbors and friends from high school, college and work along with all their kids. The other one was with with family on June 22 when Carl's parents came in for a week. He got lots of wonderful toys and clothes, everyone was so generous. Alex LOVES balloons - yes we did get them in the fan at one point! He did great with his cakes, by the 2nd one he was a pro and got the chocolate all over his face. The pictures all turned out wonderful. Please check out the link to Stephanie Campbell Photography on the left and then look under the current slide shows for the 3 shows with Alex.

Nono, Nana and Uncle David were her for a week to visit and take care of Alex. Alex became VERY attached to his Nono, he could not even go to the bathroom without him! Poor Nana had to have a very unhappy baby when we left each morning until Nono or Uncle David came down.
They took him swimming at the pool and taught him how to go down the stairs all by himself. They also taught him to blow his nose, if you ask him, he will put his hand up to his nose and blow. We had been working with him to put his hands up for touchdown in preparation for football season... Nana worked with him and now he is a pro at it. Poor David was sick for the last few days they were here, but Alex thought he was great at bouncing him on his zebra - it was a sight to see Alex would sit on the zebra and David would stand next to him and use his foot to bounce it up and down. Of course Alex can do it himself... but why when you have an Uncle David there! We really enjoyed having them here and wish they could come more often.

Knoxville

The 2nd weekend of July we all headed up to Knoxville. Carl's friends from college were having a girls weekend and invited me to join. We had a great time, some relaxing time at the pool and we went to a place called Bath Junkie and made our own bath products. Carl, Alex, Grandma and Grandad also came up and visited with his Great Aunt Margaret, Great Uncle Stan and Cousins Steven, Janet and Eric. This was their first time meeting him and they also had a great time. Alex loved Eric's dog and from what I hear they played quite well together - lots of doggie kisses. Alex did get to come over and meet the girls for a few minutes and splash in the pool. This was the first meeting of boy/girl UGA 2000 offspring - Stacy and Rory had come in from TX for the girls weekend. Here is a picture from Bath Junkie of all the girls after we made our concoctions. From right to left bottom row is Kate, Kelly, Carrie and Rory... from left to right top row is Stacy, me, Michele, Lauren and Emily. Carl and I are very excited that Lauren and her husband Scott just moved back to Atlanta and are expecting a little one. More friends for Alex to play with.

Swing Time

We bought Alex a swing for his birthday and we have it up on our deck - well sort of, it is up for now, but needs to be adjusted a bit. We keep talking about redoing our deck and so we did not cut off all the chain, just tied it up out of his reach for now since there is a possibility of it needing to be moved again. Here are a few shots of our little man and his new favorite outdoor activity!

After swinging we went for ice cream and while we were waiting for daddy in the car he started playing peek-a-boo and I thought it was too cute and snapped a picture.

4th of July Weekend

We took our first family trip together for the 4th of July. The 3 of us drove over to Hilton Head Island for the holiday weekend. We had a great time. Alex loved the sand and the water, he was not afraid at all and walked right into the water. He enjoyed Daddy burying his feet in the sand and even ate some sand the second day. We enjoyed watching the fireworks in Harbor Town, Alex took a little nap after dinner so he woke up about 30 minutes before the fireworks and he did not get upset and kept pointing to them. Below are some pictures from the beach and the park they had in Harbor Town.

Long time!

OK so I know it has been a long time since I posted... shame on me. It has been very busy with birthdays and trips and work, so I plan to just do it bit by bit to catch up.So today I will update for the 12 month checkup which he had on his exact birthday - I can't believe he is a year!

Length 29 3/4 inch 50-75%

Weight 22 lbs. 3.2 oz. 25-50%

Head 47 cm. 50-75%

He did fine with his shots, actually was worse getting his ears checked than getting the shots. And then he slept through the night for about 2 weeks, but then a molar started to come in and that went bye bye in a major way!
We also got word that he is now off the waiting list for mothers morning out, so he will start in Sept. on Wed and Fri mornings from 9-12 at Dunwoody United Methodist, which is just a few minutes away from my office and between my office and grandma and granddad's house. He will probably be one of the oldest in his class as many of the schools around here cut off on year end instead of beginning, so the cutoffs are May 31 and his birthday is later, so he will be the big boy in school, which is fine with me. Not sure how he will like school to begin with, our child who had never met a stranger and had no clue what separation anxiety meant in his 1st year, has hit separation anxiety with a vengeance in month 13. Wed night Grandma and Grandad and Alex and I went to a buffet veggie place and we even set him up so he could see the buffet line, but if any of us got up to get food [note that the other 2 of us were still at the table with him]- he cried huge tears and full on red face, like we were all leaving him there. He even cried in the car this morning with me when we backed out and Carl went back in the house, he stops about 30 seconds later, but it is still funny.
I am going to try to add a link to my page to my friend Stephanie's photo website as she took the pictures for his birthdays and year pictures and they are AWESOME! When you get to the page look down the right and there are 3 in there Alex party with family, Alex party with friends and Carl Alicia and Alex that are all of us. If there is anyone in Atlanta looking for a photographer, Steph is great, and I am not just biased because she is my friend, check the pictures out for yourself and see!
There is so much to still talk about, 1st birthday parties [yes he had 2] - 1 year pictures - visit with Nono, Nana and Uncle David - first beach trip for the 4th and a visit to Knoxville - all of these I will post soon along with the June pictures.

Happy May!

May has been a great month for us.

Mothers Day and my birthday were great. We had a great brunch with Grandma and Grandad and then Carl took me out to dinner that night for my birthday. Here is a picture of Alex and I on Mothers Day/my birthday.

We also did Relay for Life this month, which I am one of the organizing committee members for my company. It was really busy but was a wonderful time, even Alex had a great time walking around and visiting with people.

I also held a play date with 2 friends from high school Jill and Sam and their girls Turner and Cate the Sunday after Relay. We had a great time visiting together while the kids played.

This last weekend was Memorial Day. We enjoyed a cookout with our neighbors and also some time visiting our friend Wendy who was recovering from surgery and I went baby shopping with my friend Michele and her husband Hilly. We took Alex to the pool for the first time on Sat afternoon and he loved it, we took him back again on Mon morning. He was not a huge fan of his float on Mon, mainly because he realized he can't splash as big [he is definitely Carl's son], but he LOVED the water. We were getting ready to go to the pool on Mon and I asked him if he wanted to go down to pool to splash and he started kicking his feet in his highchair and smiling huge! Here are some of my favorite photos, I know I know Auburn folks, I just could not resist, he looked too cute in daddy's hat.

Our biggest news for May is that we have a real WALKER now! He has been cruising very fast on furniture for quite some time and with his walking toys, but over the last few weeks he has slowly started to let go and go from couch to couch - then from couch to table, but as of this last week, if we set him down standing and walk away he will walk to us! He has even started to choose to walk over crawl in the house, pulling up on the coffee table then walking all the way over to the kitchen. I think the fact that he is now in shorts and he was scraping his little knees gave him the motivation to get up off them. The funniest to me is he still loves his push toy, but now he walks with it and when he runs into something - picks it up - turns around - and keeps going... he is even learning to steer it before he hit something too. He is also trying to turn every piece of furniture in our house into a push toy - our laundry basket is his most favorite.

He loves to play in his room and bathroom. When we come in at night, he surveys the family room toys, then takes off for the stairs to go up to his room and make sure everything is still there where he left it. He loves to go up stairs himself - then when he gets to the top, he looks through the rail to see the bottom then claps proudly! We are using our gates to full advantage now.

I am now in my new job full time, which is great, but is why I have not had more time to update the blog. It is taking some adjusting, I think it is actually more strange to go to a new job in the same company than it is a whole new one. I am very busy, but am really doing things to make a positive change which is cool.

This next 2 weeks we will be preparing for Alex's first birthday which I am very excited about.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.