Finally...

When Nick and I took Cole in for his 9 month appointment a couple months ago, the doctor asked us if Cole was clapping or waving bye-bye yet. Um......nope, but he gives high fives!!! ha! I really wasn't worried that he hadn't achieved those milestones yet, but this weekend, he finally did both! We even got him waving on video. We were so excited when he started waving and then last night we were over at Ryan and Casey's playing around with their karaoke machine and Cole started clapping. Yay!!!!


We are finally out for over 2 weeks for Christmas break! I am SO excited! We leave Wednesday for Minnesota so I'm spending the next 2 days getting packed.
I'm just hoping we are all completely healthy by the time we leave. I swear I've been battling a cold for over a month now...as soon as it starts to clear up, it all comes back. My head literally felt like it was going to explode last night, so at 4:30am, I made a trip to Walmart to get some Sudafed. I was absolutely miserable.
Then to add to my awesome luck, last Friday I woke up with my eye plastered shut. I went to the doctor that morning to find out I had a scratch on my cornea which then got infected, which is "technically" Pink eye. Luckily, I didn't pass it off to Nick or Cole...but my chapped, dry, cracked hands are a result of my obsessive washing. :)

We can't wait to get up to Minnesota to see family...let's just hope we don't freeze up there!!! Brrrr!!!

Rough couple of weeks

As much as I love winter, the cold air, snow (well, not so much in Texas), warm drinks, fire places....this cold air has been rough on all of us! I feel like I've been battling a cold for a month now and poor Cole has been dealing with the same. Cole has been sneezing, coughing, runny nose and a super chapped face. He just has not been his normal happy self and it's so sad to see. Plus, he's getting one of his top fangs (not sure what that tooth is ACTUALLY called) so he's been drooling, cranky and really clingy with his momma, which I love but can get tiring after awhile. Plus, it hurts Nick's feelings :(

I'm ready for our bubbly, loud and social baby to be back to his normal self, so I can't believe I'm about to say this...but I'm ready for warm weather!!

Another interesting thing that has happend to us this past weekend....our son has all of a sudden decided that he doesn't want baby food. At first I thought it was the whole teething thing and he just wasn't in the mood to eat, but after many attempts and food being flung across the room, we just gave him table food and he ate that fine. Last night I made a chicken, potatoes, green bean dish and he ate everything with us. He loved it! Since I've never done this whole parenting thing before, I really didn't know when babies stop eating baby food. I assumed that since he's only getting his 3rd tooth, that he wouldn't be quite ready. I guess they let you know what they are ready for.

I'm about to order Cole's 1st birthday party invites.....I can't believe it's almost been a year! We haven't thrown too many birthday parties in our day, so I'm starting to realize all that goes into it. I think after his 1st birthday, I may hire a party planner for the rest of his parties...ha! Good thing I'm a boy mom, b/c if I had a daughter, she would thoroughly be disappointed in my decorating abilities. :)

How's this for a cute face!?!

Poor little Max (Tracy's dog) is now an only child.....Sterling went to doggie heaven last week. It will be sad not having Sterling around and as Tracy said tonight..."who's going to clean Max's face now?".....we nominated Dennis (father in law)...ha! :)

Cole....you are LOUD!!!!

The other night we were just hanging out at home and had to take some video of our child being obnoxiously loud!!!! It was quite hilarious...even the dogs don't quite know what to do with him.



This video was from tonight...it's amazing what makes babies laugh.

Birthdays, Christmas lights and family

With this past weekend being my birthday weekend, we got to do a lot of fun things! Friday night we just hung out at home and played with Cole. I'm always so exhausted on Friday's so being at home was fine with me! We gave Cole a bath and took a few pictures...we had to get a few shots in before he started screaming because we torture him and make him wear clothes to bed. Sheesh, what mean parents we are!

This is a shot AFTER we got him dressed and was in a better mood.

Saturday, I wanted to do a little bit of shopping. My parents gave me $$ for my birthday and I have not been shopping for myself in several months mainly because Nick and I are doing the Dave Ramsey stuff and sometimes that fun stuff just doesn't fit into our new budget. Anyhow...I think my family new I'd been itching to do some shopping so I really appreciated the money and gift cards!!! We wanted to go shopping after Cole took his mid-morning nap....and as you can see, he decided to take his nap on me! :) ha! I didn't care, Nick and I watched a movie while he napped, and that was nice because we don't get to watch a lot of movies these days.
We headed out and did some shopping, ate lunch together, watched Cole flirt with a little girl and then we headed home so Cole could take his afternoon nap before we headed out for dinner with Nick's family.
Here I am with my birthday nachos :) Actually, Dennis really wanted these and even though I was completely stuffed from dinner, we humored him and got them anyway...ha!
Here is Grandma Tracy playing with Cole during dinner. It was kind of nice because usually when we go out to dinner, I have a hard time "enjoying" the meal because I'm having to tend to my son, but I sat on the opposite side of the table and Tracy and Emily pretty much watched him during dinner and I was able to just sit and enjoy my meal.
After dinner, we decided to walk around for a bit because Frisco Square was having their big tree lighting event and there were tons of people and fun things going on. Frisco Square has an amazing light show during the holidays so those were fun to see. We didn't stay out too long because it was COLD!!!

Sunday we went to Nick's parents house and watched football, ate chili and most of all, we went because Nick's family dog, Sterling, is not doing too well and is probably going to be put down this week so we wanted to make sure Benson and Roxy could see Sterling and play with him one last time....sniff sniff!! He's such a sweet dog and will be missed so much! He and Benson were buddies since Benson was a puppy, so I'm sure Benson will miss him!
Here is a picture we took of Cole with Sterling so that Cole can see who he is when he's older.Here is a video of Cole playing with his new music table that Grandma and Granddad got him. He absolutely loves it and has been "dancing" like crazy.

Bound to happen sometime...

It's been 10 months and Cole has been absolutely sick-free, no fever, cold...nothing. Well, I guess it was bound to happen sometime. Cole got his first bug. He started getting congested before Thanksgiving and I think flying and being in a different climate (Colorado) did not make him get any better. I absolutely LOVE Colorado, but that dry air was killing us! Then a few days later he started getting a cough and the cough has just gotten worse and worse. Since it had been going on for quite awhile I decided to call our pediatrician and see what they say. I was a little reluctant to call at first because I know that they can't do much for babies under 1 year. I talked to the nurse and she actually recommended 2 homeopathic medicines. I had never heard of them before but these are what a lot of the holistic, homeopathic doctors recommend using. She told me to get Lithy Tree and Briar Rose. I guess it's actually good for anyone to use during the cold/flu season to boost your immune system and she recommended us using it before we travel since flying sometimes gets people sick. ALSO, it is something that is good to take before kids get vaccines to boost their immune systems because if kids are sick or their immune system is compromised and then they get vaccines, that is when they can have bad side effects.

I really appreciate these types of doctors that don't just push drugs on their patients because that is what the pharmaceutical companies tell them to prescribe. I know it does not benefit our doctor to recommend these remedies and not get any proceeds from prescribing drugs, so that shows that they really are doing what they think is best for our kids. Ok ok, I know all this stuff is a controversial, but it's my blog and I can write what I want! :-)

I ended up taking him into the doctor anyway because he was sounding very raspy and kind of weezy so she checked him for RSV and to make sure he wasn't contageous. He does not have RSV and he should be getting better in the next day or two. I think being back in our climate should help....but by the time he gets back to normal, it will be time for us to pack up and head off to Minnesota for Christmas. Whew....what a busy time of year!
I guess I can't complain about him being sick, I mean, it's definitely not fun...especially when he was waking up for several hours during the night, but going this long without being sick is pretty good right!?!