11 Months, and a very important question

Well, this post is a week late, but better late than never, right? And the post is a week late and the pictures were taken a few days prior to his actual 11 month mark. And it happened to be a much happier time in Sammy's life. Before the teething, before the ear infection, before all the pain--when he was himself. He's still not himself, and no, he still hasn't cut those teeth. It's gotta be tomorrow, right? Right??? I've been saying that every day for a week. So let's hope I'm right this time.
So, a few things I want to record about Sam at 11 months:

He is cruising around more and more--walking along the furniture and moving from item to item. But I still don't think he'll walk any time real soon. He hasn't shown any desire to walk with us holding our hands or let go of anything and stand on his own. And he has no problems getting where he needs to go by crawling, so this is totally fine by me. :)

He has tan lines from his "rolls" on his arms and legs from all the swimming we've been doing. He doesn't look tan until you pull apart his rolls and see that they are white between them. :) You can kind of tell in the pictures.

Ever since he started crawling, he now falls asleep in the most horrible looking positions in his bed. I have to go in and reposition him shortly after he falls asleep or he wakes up crying hard (I'm guessing because his leg or arm has fallen asleep from being slept on in a strange fashion).

He loves (and I really do mean LOVES) Tyler's puppy and Curious George stuffed animals. I am envisioning some potential problems from this in our future.

He just started smacking his lips LOUD when he's eating something he really likes. He sucks his bottom lip in and just smacks away. It's very funny!

He is understanding us and responding to us a lot more. For instance, he will put his hands up over his head when we say "yay", he will give us "5", he will give me a love when I say "love Mommy" (or anyone or anything else we tell him to give a love to--Tyler, Daddy, George, puppy, etc), and he will sometimes wave bye bye and night night.

And, at 11 months, he has discovered a love for OREOS! And I'm the crazy lady who consented to this, knowing it would be a huge mess.

So, with all this talk about Oreos, I had to laugh at the way in which Sam eats his Oreo. Smashed up in his hand, trying to get every last morsel in his mouth--but most of it being saved for later on his hands, arms, bib, face, highchair, etc.
So, now this brings me the utmost important question I've asked yet. How do YOU eat your oreo? Does it look like this? Do you 'save some for later' on your face and arms? Do you have to go straight to the bath when you are finished?

Or are you like Tyler, where you pull it apart and lick the cream out of the middle? (I just noticed him doing this the other day and thought it was funny since he's never seen any of us do it.)
As for me, I will take mine double stuffed, all in one piece, with a glass of milk to dunk them in please. Mmmm, yum.

Garrett, he'll take regular or double stuffed, no milk (he thinks milk is evil), all in one piece.

One thing's for sure, though. No matter which way I eat my Oreo, I can't help but have an expression like this on my face because of their deliciousness:


And I usually have a smiliar expression to this when the Oreos are all gone:

Happy 11 Months, Sam!

So, tell me, how do YOU eat your Oreo?

Another Round of Visitors

Well, Mike and Angie arrived safe and sound on Wednesday evening and we hit the ground running and didn't stop until we dropped them off at the airport yesterday evening. We had a great time with them! We were less than stellar hosts this time around since our kids were sick, sick, sick much of the time they were here. I mean, I'm sure it was fun and all considering that the activities with our kids included, but were not limited to, the following: throwing up, diarrhea, diaper rash, fevers, pharyngitis, near sleepless nights, washing sheets at 2 am, more fevers, whining, crying, screaming, and teething, teething, teething. I'm quite certain that it was so enjoyable that the young lovebirds will go home and get to work having a few babies of their own right away--because we were THAT fun and glamorous. AND, all of that and Sam's teeth STILL haven't broke through. I thought we'd be in the clear after we discovered the ear infection, but no. They still have yet to break through, and I'd dare say this has been the roughest bout of teething I've experienced as a mom.

But, all that aside, we did manage to do some fun things. Our activities included: Oak Alley plantation, the Quarter, a ride on the Steamer Natchez, the Aquarium, a swamp tour, breakfast at Petunia's in the Quarter (best breakfast on the planet), several trips for sno-balls (twice in one day even), playing Wackee Six until all hours of the night, watching the Olympics, playing Wii, fishing in our pond, dinner at Deanie's, Kenner Seafood, & La Madeleine, lunch at Raising Cane's, and beignets at Cafe du Monde. We got them to try all sorts of good stuff when they were here: crab fingers, crawfish pistolettes, all sorts of seafood (softshell crab, oysters, shrimp, catfish), shrimp po-boys, sweet potato fries, and I'm sure I'm missing something... So, with all of this fun and a few sick kids in the mix, we are definitely exhausted. But we are SO glad we got some visitors. We love visitors! Thanks for coming!!! Here are a few highlights of their trip. (I definitely didn't take pictures of everything since playing photographer while taking care of a very fussy baby just didn't happen.)

Oak Alley Plantation:
This is one of my favorite places in all of Louisiana. It's just gorgeous! Garrett was kind enough to take the day off work to help with the kids, so he watched them while I took Mike and Angie here. It was such a nice break for me!
Here is the view from the veranda of the 28 oak trees that line the walk way out to the road (the trees are over 300 years old, by the way).

We did a little fishing in our pond where Mike caught the biggest fish we've seen come out of there! It got dubbed the "monster".
The Steamer Natchez

This old steamboat takes a ride 6 miles up the Mississippi River and back (docks right from the french Quarter) and gives you a river side tour of the city. It's a very fun and tourist-y thing to do. On this day, Sam felt particularly awful, so dragging him around was pretty hard on him, but he was a trooper. (but he did let us have it when we left to go home and screamed nearly the entire drive home, so we paid for it later)

(Mike and Angie look like frighteningly young parents here in this picture, but I had to get a picture of them with my kids!)

And here is a view of downtown from the boat. We could see Garrett's office building from there. In case you were wondering, it is the building that the arrow is pointing to. And if you look really hard you can see him in his office on the 38th floor... ha ha! He was working while we were playing. Too bad he couldn't have taken the day off to watch the kids again while we played...LOL! No really, we would have just enjoyed having him with us!
And this is the paddle behind the boat that we were all fascinated watching, of course.

And this is the best of Sam for the day, the best being not very good. It was a rough day for him.
And Tyler definitely loves taking a ride on that boat, but does not enjoy the horn that is very loud!
Sno-balls

Of course, we had to get our fill of these while they were here, and they were especially good for Sam and his sore gums. They helped him feel much better! Mike and Angie definitely approved of them. They were a big hit.

Touring a Swamp

We hopped on a boat and took a tour of a swamp. It is always fascinating to me. I think swamps are very beautiful in a lot of ways.
Cypress trees line the swamp. They are very cool looking.
And the boys enjoyed hanging out the boat and looking for alligators. (this was the day we finally saw some of our "regular Sam" show through a little bit. He was pretty happy this day.)
Sam especially loved sitting on Garrett's lap, hanging out the boat and literally yelling at the top of his lungs:
And we all got a little up close and personal with some of these:

All from the safety of our boat, of course (and under the care of our tour guide)!


We would throw out marshmallows to get the alligators to come closer. Tyler was THRILLED when the alligator ate "his" marshmallow. We also saw lots of blue heron, egrets, and turtles, but I wasn't able to get any pictures of them.

And that's a wrap. We had a great time and already miss our visitors! Please come back again soon!

Emerging...

(this was a VERY rare face to be seen today. Not crying and no binky...)

I'm emerging from this blur of the past 3 days. First, I went TWO WHOLE DAYS without the internet. Oh, be still my heart, it was tough! Our home phone line was mysteriously down for two days, which meant no internet either. They came and fixed it this afternoon, and really couldn't figure out why it happened. Of course no emailing, or blogging was difficult, but I mostly found that it was hard when I would have some random thought come to my mind and go to look up some info online and not be able to. Oh boy, how we rely on the internet at our house. I can't imagine life without it! But...on the flip side, oh boy did I get a lot more done around the house! Garrett even has freshly ironed shirts in the closet...a very rare occurence. Maybe we should 'schedule' some outages in the near future...

BUT I didn't get as much done as I could have because the last three days have also been spent in the utmost awful of teething nightmares. Oh my! Sam's cutting his two front teeth and his gums are SO swollen, and he has been a grouch and clingy as all get out. But today was just where it all came to a head. He cried much of the day, took a decent morning nap, but only a 30 minute afternoon nap, and just screamed his head off for a few hours after he woke up. By this time I figured it had to be more than just teeth that were bothering him, but the dr.'s office was closing, so if we went today, we'd have to go to urgent care...so I wasn't sure what to do. Then Garrett got home from work, and after about thirty more minutes of solid screaming, we decided to take him in. Sure enough, it was an ear infection. {and isn't it almost a relief when they can tell you it really is something like that? so then you can get some antibiotics and really knock it out!}. And at 11 months, this is the first time he's been to the doctor for anything but a well child appointment, so I guess that's really not too shabby. I'm so glad he's been a heatlhy little tike! So, he's finally resting for the first time since this morning and we're hoping for a good night. BUT, those teeth haven't broken through yet either, so we'll see what tomorrow brings. Oh, having a sick baby is so sad...and SOOOO exhausting!

And I'm so glad we took him tonight since my sister Angie and her husband Mike are flying in tomorrow and the sooner he's back to his happy self, the better it will be for everyone involved!

OK, seriously, don't even think about taking that binky from him, even for just a moment.

Glad to be emerging from this because we are excited and ready to play with our visitors tomorrow!

Meet Jake

Meet Jake. But I'm warning you, you will fall in love with him.
My dear friend Katy had this precious little bundle just 7 days ago and I got the pleasure of spending the afternoon with him yesterday. And oh, he is beeeeautiful! When Katy was pregnant, I got this hair brained idea that I would give her *this* as a baby gift. So I've been excited about his arrival for months now. There is nothing sweeter than a newborn baby! And it was SO fun to take his pictures. And I have never shared anything on the blog that I have done for anyone else, but I wanted to give Katy a sneak peak at a few and I am so smitten by this little man, I couldn't help but share! So here are just a few of my many, many favorites of this gorgeous baby boy.

Thank you, Katy and Clint, for making such a beautiful baby and letting me take his pictures! :)

The Plan, continued.

Well, it came to the point in our 'plan' (for more info on 'the plan', see back a few posts) that we needed to take Tyler to the driving range. I mean, he's gotta get comfortable with those irons and his driver. It was a pretty successful outing, if I do say so myself.

All kidding aside, though, Garrett has been chomping at the bit to take Tyler out to the range and we finally went on Saturday night. It was SO hot, but it was a ton of fun. I even took my clubs and hit a few. I realized that it's been two years since I golfed last. How sad is that? It was fun to swing the clubs again, though. I had forgotten just how much I like to golf. And Tyler... well, Tyler absolutely loved it. I couldn't get over how much energy he had in heat like that. He would just swing and swing and swing, then finally hit a ball and start all over again. And we finished off a big bucket, the rest of us were about dead, and Tyler said "we need to get some more balls." I think he was quite impressed by the fact that you could just hit and hit and hit and not chase after the ball. I'm sure we'll be going back again. It was a great activity!
So here he is working with his irons.

And don't expect to see any facial expressions. Because even if I were able to get many shots from the front, he insists on wearing his hat like this, so you can't see his face anyways.
And what was Sam doing the whole time? Just sitting in the stroller, soaking it all in (so he'll be a pro too some day), and enjoying some nice refreshing beverages.
And then it was to work with the driver.
It took him some time, but he finally got the hang of it and made contact!
And I have certainly seen Tyler sweat a lot before (as you all probably have too since I think I mentioned that he does that quite often!), but nothing would match the sweatiness that came from this event. Wow, it was hilarious! But it was too dark to get a good picture by the time we were done. I guess it's all just proof of how hard he was working!

Mom's Busted.

Tyler gave the opening prayer in primary today. Things went something like this:

Primary leader: "Tyler is going to give our opening prayer today. Tyler, do you need help?"

Tyler: "No. I will just to do it by myself."

Me & Garrett in the hallway watching: (thinking to ourselves 'oh dear, this could be interesting')

{Tyler walks up to the microphone gives it a few taps, finds out it's not working, but still puts his mouth directly on the mic--standard procedure for all little kids, right?}

Tyler: "Hevnlee Father, thankful for dis day. Please bless the food to make us healthy and strong." pause.... "Mom, fold your arms!"

Me: (just glad the mic wasn't working so maybe no one caught it.)

At that point, he continued on, but I didn't hear a word he said because I was laughing too hard. But my response should have been "I'll fold my arms if you close your eyes!". That would have been classy, right? But regardless, I was just glad that the food had been blessed...