Thanksgiving in Colorado

Cole and I flew to Colorado for Thanksgiving. Unfortunetely Nick stayed home and we are missing him SO much this week!!! This trip would be even better if he was here...at least we'll be together for Christmas. I was a little nervous about flying with a nearly 10 month old by myself but he did really good. The poor gentleman that sat next to us was surrounded by babies and kids, but he was a good sport. Cole talked to him and even tried to play on his laptop. ha!
We have pretty much been laying low, just spending time with Grandpa and Grammy and Uncle Ross, Uncle Ryan and Aunt Rachel. However, first item on our agenda....haircut!!!!!

This is the before shot. His bangs were literally hanging in his eyes, hair over the ears, it was just a flat out mess! While Cole played with some toys after dinner, Grammy started cutting away and it looks great!

This is the after-shot...now we can actually see his eyes!

Cole has been having so fun and just playing and playing. My parents pulled out all my old toys and he's enjoying playing with new "old" stuff. We have also had to do a quick baby-proofing of the house but I guess my parents will have to get used to that since there will be a new grand baby in the family come February.

Here is a picture of Cole after he passed out on the couch

Another picture of his new haircut....what a handsome boy!

Today my mom and I went over to some good friends house so Cole could play with Henry. It's also an excuse for us ladies to get together and catch up. Cole and Henry had a great time playing with all the toys. Henry is 4 months older and is walking, but as you can see in the pictures, Cole is significantly bigger than Henry!!! It was fun watching them play.

We will be heading back to Texas on Sunday morning and I'm sure we will be ready to see Dad by then! Let's just hope Cole does as well on the plane as he did on the way here! Oh, and can I just say I am LOVING the weather here!!! It's been amazing so far...if you like cold weather.

9 Month Appointment

Cole finally had his 9 month well check this morning and besides the fact that he was super tired, cranky and pretty much cried his way through the appointment......he's great! ha! (note to self....next time schedule his appointment for AFTER his morning nap!).
He's still a chunky monkey, but has definitely slowed down. Here are his stats:
Weight: 25lbs - 91%
Height: 30 in - 94%
Head: Don't remember, but it's in the 86%

He has not gained any weight since his 6 month appointment but that's totally normal now that he's crawling and moving around so much more.

We asked her about the whole dairy thing....since he seemed to be bothered by the dairy last time we tried it, she said that we can try some cheese, but when it comes to getting him only regular "milk", she suggests we do rice milk. She's not a huge fan of cow's milk to begin with so she thinks rice milk is the way to go. Then, once he's closer to 18 months and he can have nuts, she wants us to try almond milk!!! Whaaaa!!! I've never even heard of almond milk. But, we'll do what the doctor says and I'm sure he'll love anything we give him.

He got his one shot this month and the doctor said that for most of his appointments, we can just do one shot at a time. We talked about giving him his polio shot also today but after talking with the doctor we decided against it for a couple reasons. One, there are no cases of polio in the U.S right now and he has already had the first round of polio so he's 90% protected and two, he was already crabby to begin with so why make him more mad with a second shot!?! haha! So he has one band-aid today instead of two.

We get to try some more foods now....cheeses, black beans, fun stuff like that. However, she said we should still be doing pureed foods for a couple more months till he gets faster with the finger foods. Gosh, otherwise we'd be sitting at the table for 2 hours to try to get him to eat enough food!

I love the look on his face in the picture....he sure loves his walks, I think we go on a walk every evening and he loves to just look around at everything. However, last night he fell asleep on our walk and when I took him into the house, he just slept on my shoulder and snuggled with me for awhile...it was so great because it's hard to get that snuggle time now that he's on the move so much more. So, I'll take advantage of it when I can!

Oh, and update on Stellan....they did one last procedure on him this morning, basically they tried to get his heart into the irregular, high rates (to make sure what they did on Monday truly did work) and after trying many many times, they could not get his heart rate to go back into SVT.....so everything was a success, he's completely SVT free. Wow!!! My mother-in-law said that they have been on the news quite a bit up in the Minneapolis area (that is where they are from) so she has been able to follow his story through that as well. Pretty amazing!!

Again, if you want to read some of her blog, here is the link.

A different kind of post....

Over the past week or so, I've had this family on my mind and yesterday proved to me what a great God we serve!!! I've read this ladies blog for such a long time, some of you may have heard of her...I mean, she has like 20,000 followers and is such an amazing woman of God. Her littliest guy Stellan has had heart troubles from the get-go and this past week he was in pretty rough shape. They flew to Boston to do a procedure to try to rid him of his irregular heart rhythms and yesterday she watched her little guy flat line right in front of her and lose blood pressure. They shocked him back to life, did the procedure and as MckMama says, it was a Home Run!!! The procedure was a complete success and they are looking at a little guy who should no longer have heart problems the rest of his life. He still has a lot of hurdles to jump, but in the big picture he should be fine. If you get a chance, go to her website and read a little bit of her blog, her pictures are amazing and she definitely tells you like it is and it's just amazing how she can capture your attention. It's such an awesome story, while she was pregnant, the doctors told her that Stellan would surely die (probably in utero) but they chose life and to give it over to God and look where he is now! Talk about faith!
Click here to view her page.....it's a pretty amazing blog, I encourage you to just read her last few posts!!!
I'm not the type of person that gets caught up in this whole Twitter thing, but literally yesterday, I sat with my phone just waiting for updates on little Stellan. It's amazing what technology can do these days!!! I felt like I was sitting right there with her, feeling her pain and sorrow. I've never even met this woman, but I guess as a mother you can feel that pain of possibly losing a child.
This typically isn't like me.....to be sharing my "feelings" like this, but yesterday I had such a heavy heart and when she posted that the surgery was a success and her little guy would live, it was such an amazing feeling!!! So many people were praying for Stellan yesterday and it shows what prayer can do!

Snoop Dog and the Park...and Walmart bathrooms

What does this post have anything to do with Snoop Dogg??? Well, as I sit here typing this up, my hubby is off with his buddies enjoying the Snoop Dogg concert. This isn't his first time going to his concert, I think it's his 4th or 5th time. What a groupie!
So because Nick was leaving us tonight, we made him go to the park with us this afternoon. The weather here has been perfect so we thought we'd go out and enjoy it. He's finally big enough to put in the swing, but he doesn't seem to really know what's going on yet so he seemed kind of bored with it. Oh well, in time!

I've posted about this before, but literally, Cole has been so "fun" to feed lately. It has gotten to be so challenging that seriously, Nick and I pretty much do paper-rock-scissors to see who gets to feed him. We always end up having to strip him out of his clothes because they are caked with food and as you can see in this first picture, he gets the food all over his hair. Sometimes there are minuses to having lots of hair! Even though he's a complete mess, he sure is a cute mess!!!

(Can you see the food in the hair??)

CHEESE!!!!!!!!!

We had a pretty laid back weekend which was nice. We got a lot of cleaning done. We had to do a real deep clean because Cole is all over the place now and why is it that babies can find the smallest morsels and pick it up and eat it?? So we thought we should get a good cleaning in so he's not filthy after crawling around the house :)
Sunday morning was pretty eventful...we get everything ready to head out to church (We haven't been in a couple weeks, mind you). We are in the car and shoot! I realize I forgot to bring a bottle and he needs one b/c he'll be hungry in the middle of service. We are too far to go back home so we have to stop at Walmart. I buy a bottle, bottle washer and some dish soap. I head into the Walmart bathroom which if you can imagine, isn't the cleanest bathroom out there. I sort of clean this bottle and off to church we go. We get to church, Nick drops me off so I can re-rinse the bottle since it still smells like dish soap then he was going to bring Cole in with him. We walk in, only to realize they changed service times....grrrr!!!! So what do we do??? We go to Dunkin Donuts and hide our frustrations with donuts! :) What good parents we are! It's funny how much more interesting our lives are with a baby!

Graceful Eater

The last few days have been quite hilarious while trying to feed Cole. He's learned how to be LOUD and how to spit his food out. It's fun!! (can you sense my sarcasm?)
We just started giving Cole some chicken that I prepared this past weekend and to be honest, I was a little nervous because I was the one that prepared it and fed it to him...what if I did something wrong and give him food poisoning or something? BUT, he did great with it and seemed to enjoy it so far. Luckily, he has not turned down any food we have given him. This may be a problem when he's 4 years old and we end up on the Maury Povich show for having a "fat kid".....:) ha!
Let's see...we normally could get Cole fed in about 15 minutes (dinner), but lately, it has been turning into a 40 minute ordeal and I'm sure you can understand why after seeing this video. He's a mess, what should we do with him??? :)

Mr. Spider - Man

We had a pretty fun first Halloween with Cole. Here he is dressed up like a spider, isn't he the cutest?? He looks totally thrilled to be here huh?

This video is us getting ready for Halloween. Cole is crawling along, showing off his new outfit, when he has to pause to take care of some business....ha!


We went with Ryan and Casey to Prestonwood Baptist Church because they have a HUGE Fall Festival and it's pretty amazing what they put on for the kiddos. Obviously we couldn't do a whole lot because Cole is a little young to be doing fun things. Next year....
We ran into quite a few friends at the Fall Festival and it's so fun seeing all the little kids dressed up. Parents sure are creative these days!
Here is a picture of me and Cole....


Ahhhh!!!! Nick and Ryan, you guys are just precious pushing those cute strollers around!

Here is Cole and Lexie...she was trying to get Cole to look at the camera, but then she wasn't even looking...ha!
We had a great Halloween, next year will be even more fun when Cole can walk and participate in more of the activities! Hope everyone else had fun Fall festivities!