Staycation Weekend

This weekend was a fun and busy one. (Side Note... last weekend we had no plans, which sounds fun, but in actuality was horrible because we didn't keep Charlie entertained enough. Lesson learned, from now on we plan on keeping our weekends full and our toddler happy!) Friday night we had dinner at our new neighbors house. Fun times in the hood!

Saturday morning we visited the CSA farm that we are planning on joining. Charlie loved seeing the ducks, roosters, chickens and horses and even got to take a tractor ride around the farm!

Saturday afternoon was Miss Amelie's birthday party.
It was all decked out in a Dora theme and they even had a real-life Dora come to the party. (Which I'm pretty sure was actually a man and, unfortunately, scared all of the kids.)
Charlie enjoyed seeing his friend Trace,
kissing Olivia,
and playing at the Boudreaux's house.
Patrick has a client who owns a hotel in N. Richland Hills. He got us a sweet deal on a suite, so we decided to stay Saturday night. Charlie loved the room:
We went swimming the next morning and then went to a Ranger's game Sunday afternoon.
It was a full weekend... Charlie was so pooped that he slept until 7:45am Monday morning!! (He typically rises around 6:00am.)

18 Months

Where has the time gone? This little guy... is now this big guy. (Just practicing drinking from a water bottle... we still have a ways to go.)

Charlie now weighs in at 27.7 lbs (70%) and is at 34" in height (90%). It is looking more like he will be long and lean.

This past month has brought some definite fun and definite frustration. On the fun front, Charlie's verbal skills are really coming along. It is like the flood gates opened and now he will attempt to say almost anything. He now will call for "mama" or "dada" from his crib, will tell us if he wants the lights on, and will tell us if he wants juice/milk/snack verbally. It's fun to hear his attempts as sometimes they don't come out perfectly. He talks about his teacher, Ms. Mary, often... except that it comes out "Manny". Pretty cute. His favorite book still tends to be "Charlie's World" where he can look at all of his family members and call them by name.

On the frustration front, he is definitely at the stage where he is pushing the limits and trying to see what he can get away with. One day he decided to stand on his slide and jump up before sliding down to see what Patrick would do, so Patrick kept putting him in time out because he wouldn't "sit on his bottom". The next day he tried the same thing out with me. (At this point I didn't know he had tried it with Patrick just the day before.) I just let him do it knowing that either a) he would fall and get hurt or b) he would be doing this time and time again as boys do, so he really needed to learn how to do it without getting hurt. After 10 million times of standing on the slide without getting hurt (and scaring me every time), I just kicked the slide over and said "Uh oh, slide broken" and he moved on to something else. Lately though, my biggest saving grace has been to offer choices. We are now in the phase where eating is not a priority to him, so to get him to eat and not throw a fit, I offer many choices. Do you want to sit in the little chair or the big chair?, Do you want this plate or that one?, Do you want want this bite or this bite? (I have 2 different utensils with 2 different things on them). It's a challenge to always stay ahead of the game and "plan" out the choices, but it is totally worth the sanity that it brings to my day!

Lost Reno

A few weeks ago I painted our red brick in our family room. It was a LONG process that was spread over a few days, but I think the end result turned out quite nice. I feel like the white brightens up the room.

Before: (please excuse the toys)

After:

I also painted the lamps from a blue to a black and got a new ottoman.

And painted the mirror above the fireplace from a gold to a black.

And, got a new FLOR rug!

Future plans... paint the room a much softer,lighter color; add built-ins around the fireplace; rip out the current TV montrosity to open up the room; take up the carpet (We are talking about doing this after our second child is walking... and I'm not even pregnant... so, we've got a while.)

Latest Reno

Remember this little problem?

Our busted sink worked (at the moment), but would need to be replaced before either the calk came completely undone or we sold the house. (Not that we are selling anytime soon.) So, what used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

New countertopsNew floor
It's not complete yet. I have a shower curtain on order and I plan to repaint the green to a taupe color when my finger is back to normal.

Injury Prone

I have had my fair share of bizarre injuries. Let me share:

1) I broke my leg at the age of 2 trying to climb out of my crib. BROKE it. I have always blamed this on Julie thinking she probably pushed me out of the crib. But, now that I am older and have a toddler of my own I am thinking that maybe, just maybe I was too old to be in a crib. I was 2... come on, mom.

2) In high school my back-handspringed my way into a desk.... in the middle of a gym. Why was there a desk in the middle of a gym? I don't know either. Result= sprained ankle and crutches.

(I also cartwheeled into a pool table. Result= sprained ankle and crutches... again.)

3) At summer camp, when I was 21, (I know, I know- those two first things shouldn't be in the same sentence, but that's another story) I got bitten by a copperhead on my left foot. Had a hospital stay. At one point my leg became so swollen that the doctor said that if they couldn't get it down then they would have to amputate. I remember thinking "Do it already. There is too much pressure in my leg. Life will go on without a leg." For years after that when I pressed on my left foot it would leave an indention. Pretty freaky.

(I'm not counting this one, as it's not really that bizarre. But, a few years back I was walking to a car late at night and fell into a pot hole. It gashed my leg to the bone. I probably should have gone to get stitches, but didn't. Now I have a pretty dent on my shin to remind me to just suck it up and go to the doctor.)

All of this leads me to my latest bizarre-o accident. The doctor is calling it a "left index finger tip amputation". That's right, I accidently (of course) cut off the tip of my left index finger.... with scissors...doing a craft...at school. That's the bizarre part. The doctor said that these type of accidents aren't really that rare, but they typically involve a knife. Not scissors and certainly not doing a craft. This happened on Wednesday. I spent the afternoon in CareNow (which is where you go for Workman's Comp in Mesquite) and spent the rest of the night and most of Thursday on some serious pain meds. It was amazing how much blood there was. My friend actually found the tip laying on a table, but said that it had already started to die, so she didn't save it. So, I have an open wound. The doctor tried to put silver nitrate on it to deaden the capillaries, but it bled too much to work. So, she pressure packed it and it is on the way to mending itself. At my check up yesturday it was still bleeding. She wants me to wear this for a month:


Pretty, eh? Good thing I have a beach trip coming up in two short weeks.

And she said not to be surprised if my nail falls off. Awesome!! Luckily, Patrick has been superdad and has pretty much been on Charlie duty since this happened. Many thanks to him.

And now, for the money shot... get ready, it's pretty bad...

Galveston- Part 2

Other than "beachin' it" we got to explore Galveston. On Thursday night we went to a super yummy dinner at Gaido's. It was the most fancy restaraunt Charlie has ever been to. He thought it was yummy too.
On Friday we went to the Aquarium at Moody Gardens. It was a neat one, but Charlie was much more interested in RUNNING everywhere rather than looking at the fish. He was a hand full there. C takes a moment to see the shark.

That night we had dinner at The Original, which is a mexican place and then hit up The Strand. Charlie loved La King's Confectionary. Especially the chocolate ice cream and driving the boat.

He was amazed with the candy balls.

In a boat.

A table for little people.

Here are some cute "family" pics from the trip:

Our attenpt at a family picture.

Galveston- Part 1

We took our first official family trip last week. Charlie and I left Wednesday afternoon and picked up Patrick at the Houston airport before making our way down to Galveston. The trip down was pretty interesting. We left at around 3pm, which was after Charlie's nap, so I was looking at a good 4 hours of awake, trying-to-entertain-while-driving, Charlie. He was pretty good for about 2.5 hours and then he started getting pretty fussy. I gave him a snack to try and occupy him, but he choked a little bit and ended up throwing up on his shirt and the carseat. Awesome. With no good place to stop and the fact that it would soon be dinner time I kept on trucking in hopes of finding a Chick-fi-let. (Good parenting, I know.) My GPS lead me onto the tollway in Houston, which didn't have any food joints off of it, so I quickly exited since Charlie was even more upset than before. Once I stopped at the gas station and got Charlie out I realized that he had a massive poo that was the-worst-poo-of-all-time. Up the back, around the front, out the shorts. Great... no wonder he was so upset! So, after using approximately 10 wipes, throwing his shorts immediately into the trash, and changing him into PJs we were off is search of dinner. We picked up Patrick and headed down to the coast.

Neither of us have ever been to Galveston (I went twice in college, but stayed in houses that had beach front access), so we were surprised to find out that there really isn't much beach front access for condos. You have to cross a main street to get to the beach. Where we where wasn't much of a beach as it was rocks, so we had to drive to the beach everyday. Anywho, we figured out that even where the houses are, it is still a public beach, so we spent most of our time there. Nice, out of the way, and family friendly. Luckily, Charlie LOVED the beach and the ocean! He ran back and forth for hours on the sand and into the ocean. Patrick and I would take shifts "chasing" and relaxing.

We attempted to put up the tent hoping that Mr. C would nap at the beach. It was a no go.

Cheese
Charlie carried his bucket and toys to and from the beach.
Patrick "burried" Charlie one day.
Our white, little man
I love this pic!
One of Charlie's favorite things to do was scoop up wet sand and throw it on Patrick and I. He could do this for hours.
Charlie stole some other kids truck. Nice.

The Weekend

The triplets went home on Friday. Juls and I met half way to make the exchange. She got her car and her kids back and I got my car and my life back. Before this I had a play date with my TCU friends and (most) of their kids on Friday morning. Unfortunately, I took no pictures due to my 4 super-clingy kids. Thanks to my friends who helped feed the kids, get them packed up, clean my house, and take Charlie for the afternoon so that he didn't have to be in the car for 3 hours! A HUGE help- thank you!

My friend, Molly, from TCU was in town for the weekend. (Her daughter, Ellen, got sick and was unable to make the trip... which meant that her husband, Erik, couldn't come either... we missed you guys!) On Friday night, we had a rare-adult-only night out.

On Saturday we had Jack Greer's birthday party. (He's the oldest of the group- age 4!) The party was at Pump It Up... this was our first experience at this place and it was so super fun. A great place to have a party!

Charlie loved the slides! Sam and his cape.
Sweet baby Ollie.

Even little Lauren had fun jumping.

Happy Birthday Jack!
Charlie in his cape.
Look how big he is sitting at the table and drinking his juice!

We then hung out at the Greer's all day on Saturday and had dinner there. Charlie was a trooper and stayed up until 8:45pm. It was a great weekend!!

Charlie, Sam and Nathan enjoyng some Backyardagains.