We’ve had a bit of a tough week.

Nathan broke out in the Hand Foot Mouth Disease rash yesterday morning. 🙁 We had the WORST night of sleep he and I have had since he was a newborn. I think I got about two and a half straight hours of sleep on Tuesday night.

I kept hoping it was his teeth. And it was – on top of the HFMD, he’s also cutting BOTH of his top teeth.

Poor little guy!

We’ve been doing Tylenol around the clock, eating ice cream for dinner to help with the blisters in his throat and watching a lot of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while cuddling in our pajamas. Today is the first day that I’ve felt awake enough to not sleep during his afternoon nap (though, I did go back to bed this morning for his first nap). He slept better last night – from about 9-5 and only moaned once or twice without really waking up.

I hate when my baby is sick. 🙁

Since HFMD is only spread by direct contact, I think we might pack Nathan into the stroller tonight and go to his new favorite place – the frozen yogurt shop!! He does NOT let go of the spoon…even after we get home.

I figure it will feel good on his throat since the HFMD causes blisters on the back of it. And it will be good for us since we’ve been cooped up for a while now! I’m praying hard that he’s on the mend – the doctor yesterday said that the blisters on his throat were already healing so she thought he’d had the sickness for 2-3 days.

It explains the lack of sleep.

Poor baby. 🙁

This has been one of those weeks that felt really busy but when I look back on it, we didn’t really do that much.

Odd how often that happens now. 🙂

We spent most of the week just playing and doing errands for Nathan’s birthday bash coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Have I mentioned I can’t believe it’s been a year lately? 🙂

Thursday night we went to our new community group. Our old one got to be so big that we had to split into two groups – which is a good problem to have, I guess. This is the second time this has happened in two years!

Friday night, I got a message from our community group leader’s wife who let me know that their one-year-old daughter, Bella, who Nathan was playing with the whole night before had just come down with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease.

So, me being me, I immediately started looking info up on it online (the internet is a very dangerous thing in the hands of a hypochondriac), we kept Nathan home from church and we didn’t go to Lunch Bunch today because apparently, the incubation time is 3-7 days before they start showing symptoms. So, until Thursday we’re pretty much avoiding all of our friends. 🙁 I feel so bad for Bella! I’ve heard it’s just a yucky sickness.

We did, though, brave the pool this weekend at Pops and Gammy’s house because well, someone loves his swim time.

Only a little bit. 🙂

We had a great weekend! We didn’t do much other than head to Mom and Dad’s to swim, but I think we all needed a nice, relaxing couple of days.

The “big pool” was finally warm enough for the Nater Tot to get in this weekend, so we slathered him up with sunscreen and let him go in. And he – as we figured – loved it. He has a little float thing that he loved bobbing around the pool in. So cute!

Juicing up before hitting the water!

I kind of wonder if he thinks this is just a huge bathtub.

Here’s the splashing boy! I love, love, LOVE the faces he makes!!

Chilling with Daddy in the 95 degree hot tub after swimming. He was so cute, just leaning back on Jon.

My boys after church on Father’s Day!!

Nathan was very excited to help Jon open his presents. This is his warm up to opening his birthday presents, I guess! Ha! 🙂

I love this picture!! Making that shirt was an ADVENTURE and a half, but it turned out okay. There’s blue paint smears all over it thanks to a baby who wasn’t too excited about just putting his hand on the T-shirt and pulling it right back off, but Jon even thought those were cute. 🙂

“There’s my handprint, Dad!”

Silly bean. He spent half the afternoon on Sunday with that straw in his mouth like that. It was so funny. I think he kept doing it because we were laughing so hard.

Helping Pops open his present. 🙂

I’m so thankful that I have such a wonderful Dad and such an amazing husband who is a great father. What a HUGE blessing!!

Y’all will have to bear with me this coming month, I think. 🙂

One year ago, almost to the day, I looked like this:

And yesterday, my little Nater Tot took his FIRST step!!

I can’t even believe it. And of course we missed it with the camera, even though we seriously have like three in arm’s reach all the time. He’s still very shaky – I don’t think we’re close to walking – but he’s never stood up as much as he has in the last two days. He’s also teething HORRIBLY and so we haven’t been getting very good sleep and naps have been rough too.

I have a question for you moms out there – did your child ever stop sleeping well when they were in the midst of mastering different “milestones”? Nathan went through a period when he learned how to crawl where he didn’t sleep either. I’m wondering if we’re also in the midst of that too with the standing/walking.

We haven’t done too much this week – just ran some errands and I’ve been trying to get some writing done. I got asked out on a date tonight by a super cute guy, so we’re ditching the Tot with his grandparents. 😉 What are you doing this weekend?

I think this month is hitting me the hardest because y’all,

NEXT MONTH MY BABY WILL BE ONE YEAR OLD.

Next MONTH.

It’s killing me, Smalls.

This month has been so fun. He’s really the class clown, my son. He will do almost anything if it makes you laugh and that both makes me so excited and so terrified about our future with him! Ha!

He’s been sleeping GREAT for a long time – sometimes 12.5 and 13 hours at night – but then last night, he was up for almost three hours in the middle of the night. He’s cutting a tooth on the top (but it’s his right tooth next to his front teeth! So weird!), so I don’t know if maybe that was hurting him last night. Needless to say, Jon and I are pretty zonked today. Nathan moved into big boy jammies this month because the footies were way too short for him. 🙁

He’s eating almost everything. He loves yogurt, he loves chicken nuggets and his new favorite is blueberries! We have to hide the blueberries from him or he will not stop eating them.

He’s still not walking. Has zero interest in it, actually. He’ll walk along furniture, he’ll walk behind his little push toy if he’s got an audience cheering him on, but otherwise, he’d much rather zip around on the floors on all fours. I’ve tried holding his hands and having him walk, but he just makes his legs go all jelly-like and wants to get down and crawl. I guess he’ll walk when he’s ready!

He can now wave, clap his hands, blow kisses (he usually, though, misses his mouth and blows you a kiss from his ear. SO CUTE), throw his hands up to say “all done!” (and sometimes he even says it!), “pound it” (touch knuckles), points, rubs his tummy and says “mmm!”, and splashes in the pool when we tell him to splash. And he started playing catch with us! He is SO fun and like I said, he’ll do anything if it gets everyone’s attention (including dumping all of his dinner on the floor).

He loves when people come to visit! He absolutely adores when Gammy or Pops or his aunt or uncles stop by. He loves being with his friends – it is so sweet. He stood there and waited for them to come today.

He went into the nursery at church for the first time yesterday and I cried more than he did (I teared up and he didn’t even bother to blink away a tear for his mama). I talked to the nursery worker afterward and Nathan just played the whole time. I almost wished he’d at least pretended to be sad! Ha! No, I’m SO thankful that he did so well!

He lives for the pool every day now, as you can maybe tell by the theme in these pictures. So days when we don’t swim, it’s up to me to find something even more fun to do (that usually means the grocery store. Ha!). And he loves, LOVES the zoo!

Have I mentioned how much I love being this guy’s mom? 🙂

…like Moby or something. Because this boy is like those weird sci fi legends that always surface in my spam folders with titles like “HALF-BOY HALF-FISH FOUND AT LONG JOHN SILVERS!”

We went and got him a little kiddie pool from Walmart the other day. He LOVES it. And I don’t mind sitting out and getting a tan. Yesterday, he swam all afternoon and then came inside and had to have a snack while watching Barney with Dad and Kody.

It’s like he’s a big boy now!

So, lately, we’ve been having kind of an off week. Tuesday, I woke up with a sore throat and yep, it was my long-time nemesis Tonsillitis back for more destruction to my larynx and livelihood. I finally went to the doctor today and got my medication, but I have started the process of finding a doctor to take my tonsils out. But. Apparently tonsil doctors don’t feel the need to work Fridays. Maybe the mass population do not have tonsil problems on Fridays.

Nathan has been getting one of his top teeth in. Finally! I was worried that he might only have two teeth for his whole life. And I think he might be going through another growth spurt because he has been sleeping 13 hours straight at night for the last week. And then taking another two naps during the day – including a 3 hour morning nap on Monday. WOW! Who is this child?

He didn’t wake up until 9:15 this morning, so I just kept him up until after my doctor appointment and hopefully he’ll get a long nap in this afternoon and we’ll just stick with one nap today. I’m wondering if he’s moving himself to just one nap. He’s getting so big I can’t even stand it.

So, I’m sitting here drinking hot tea and praying that the ibuprofen kicks in soon so my throat will stop hurting. What are you guys up to?

This weekend, Nathan got to go in Gammy and Pop’s jacuzzi for a little bit. Their pool is still a little too cold for him, so Pops heated the hot tub up to about bath water temperature and Jon and I got in there with him and let him splash around.

He LOVED it!!

We do not have a child who is afraid of the water. It makes me very happy that he loves the pool so much, but it also scares me to death! Ha! We’ll have to have VERY strict rules about the pool when he gets a little older!

I can’t wait until he can go in the big pool. He looked so adorable in his little swimsuit. He even got to get in yesterday with Pops again and he spent the whole time baby-talking. Probably about how much fun he was having. 😉

Nathan will be eleven months old on the 13th (I’m in total shock!!), and so I’ve been starting to think about his first birthday party. I think we’re going to have a whale swim party. 🙂

You know. To celebrate our little squirt.

🙂

Today, Nathan and I headed over to play at Melanie and Julia’s house. I just love those two. We let the kids play in Julia’s little kiddie pool in the backyard and everything was going just fine.

They’d only each nearly-drowned once, they were splashing, talking, yelling, laughing and having a great time when Nathan slipped and as I grabbed him, we noticed all sorts of little floaties in the water.

Bark? Leaves?

Nope. Poop.

So we whipped the kids out of the water and set them down on the patio. I peeked into Nathan’s diaper and said, “Oh dang. It’s Nathan” right as Melanie said, “Oh shoot! It’s Julia!”

BOTH of them had pooped in the pool. At the SAME time.

We laughed SO hard! Melanie hosed them down and then we carried them upstairs to the tub and Nathan had his first group bath.

So funny! And I love this picture of the two culprits after they were all clean from the bath:

Julia’s expression is totally, “Who me? I did nothing.” Meanwhile, look at my son’s face. 😉

Oh, the adventures we’ve got coming!

So sorry for the long delay in posting! My parents took all of my family to Seattle for my sister’s 21st birthday trip and we just got back Wednesday night. So we’ve been unpacking, doing laundry and catching up on some sleep.

The birthday girl!!! Well, sort of – her birthday isn’t until October, actually, but since everyone had Memorial Day off of work and her team – the Yankees – were playing in Seattle this weekend, it worked out better to go now. 🙂

It was SO FUN. Such a fabulous trip! I’d never been to Seattle and what an amazing city! I think I could definitely live very happily surrounded by so many coffee shops! Cayce and I had something from Starbucks at least once a day – sometimes twice or three times (decaf for me – I was NOT about to nurse Nathan to bed at night after that much caffeine!). It was even sunny the first few days we were there!

Nathan LOVED the ocean! He was so mesmerized by it! Jon found tons of crabs there and obviously, Nathan was pretty fascinated. 🙂

We stayed on a house right on the water and it was so gorgeous – I loved ocean sunsets! I think I took about 500 pictures over the five days we were there. I cannot imagine not having digital cameras – I would be completely broke if I were using the cameras my parents had when I was a little kid!

We got to the house at 2:30AM – our flight was about 5+ hours late. We had a VERY cranky boy in that airport! I felt so bad for the people around us. We walked and walked and walked our airport. Thankfully, he and I both slept for most of the flight, so it wasn’t too bad. And Nathan slept until 9:30 the next morning – thank God! We were zonked!

Saturday, we hung around Seattle, saw the first Starbucks and fought our way through the very crowded Pike Place Market (SO COOL).

The girls in front of the original Starbucks!!

Pops and Nathan at the Market. 🙂 Nathan loved all the street acts!

Everyone else went to a Mariners and Yankees game that night while Jon, Nathan and I stayed home, had a quiet dinner on the porch watching the ocean, and then took a walk along the beach.

Sweet baby on the beach. 🙂

Have I mentioned I love this little face?

He’s gotten very into sharing. And blowing kisses. And poking. 🙂

The three of us on the beach Saturday night. Nathan wasn’t too interested in the camera.

Gammy and Nathan Sunday morning on the porch!

We went to the Seattle Aquarium and Nathan got to touch all kinds of slimy sea creatures (yuck) and watch the fish, which he LOVED. And we saw the cutest sea otters! I think Cayce and I were about to adopt one.

He was obviously very afraid of the sea anemones.

Ha! Not!

He loved watching the fish!!

After we got Nathan in bed, we roasted marshmallows on the porch. No one really got into singing campfire songs, but Mom and I tried. Ha!

All of us – minus Jon taking the picture – around the fire pit. And Bryant got creative:

The boys really got into skipping rocks this week. I found out that I do not have whatever muscle is needed in order to flick the rocks.

We ended with a trip to the Cheesecake Factory for Cayce’s birthday dinner. SO. YUMMY.

Me and the un-birthday girl! 🙂

It was such a fabulous trip! I think I’m going through Seattle withdrawal today. The Market there had the most beautiful flowers and the most delicious pastries and the original Starbucks was right across the street. There were all these great little places to eat and walk and the most gorgeous views of the ocean.

The donuts in the Market. HUGE.

My favorite part of the Market (minus the original Starbucks) – the flowers!! They were SO beautiful and so inexpensive! I wished we weren’t flying home – I would have bought at least one, if not more!

Such a wonderful trip! Thank you so much, Mom and Dad!