melt your heart a little?

It melts my heart a little every time I see something like this. I bet it melts Grandma and Grandpa's hearts too.

can I get a love laugh?

I'm in the process of going through all of our vacation pictures and had to post this one. This picture cracks me up. We call it the I-don't-want-to-play-in-bed-anymore-I-want-breakfast! picture. Every morning in Cabo we'd play in bed and try to keep Carter content for as long as possible before venturing out into the living room/kitchen for breakfast. Every morning we'd get to this point and give in and go have breakfast. Shortly after this the sippy banging would start and people would start emerging from the bedrooms :)

The rest of the pictures will come sometime in the not so near future. I have tons to go through and organize.

mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carter is mobile!! Check it out! He took his first few crawls while on a beach chair in Cabo. Not a shabby place to take your first few crawls. Here he is a couple days later going after, what else, my cell phone. Cell phones make great baby motivation :)

Cartboo

Carter's new favorite thing is to stand. And he is starting to cruise a bit and taking steps while standing!

look mom, one hand!

I love watching Carter eat. The mess he makes, the way he pushes it all around his tray, the way he shoves things in his mouth, spits them out, takes them out to inspect them then puts it back in, the way his lips move when he chews. Ahh, precious! Makes me smile like a crazy person. See?

Carter's Chaos

Carter had a busy day today! Between standing in the crib, falling asleep sitting up, throwing up on the way to Target and playing bashful with mama... Carter was a busy kid today!

Carter decided to sit in his crib for a while before both naps today. I watched on the video monitor trying to catch him in the act of sitting up. I missed that but I did see this and brought the camera to catch it because it was way too cute!

Yesterday Joe and I were talking about when he'd learn to sit up from laying down.. apparently Carter heard us and decided to show us! While we were playing he did it once and I ran as fast as I could to get the video camera and lucky for me he did it again before he moved on to only wanting to stand :)

sleepy bear

Carter figured out a couple new things in his crib this morning when I put him down for his morning nap. First, he figured out how to get himself into a sitting position from laying down. I clicked on Cartey TV to see what he was up to, because I could hear him talking, and to my amazement he was sitting up in his crib playing with his bear! I thought to myself "hmm this could make it interesting". Next thing I knew he was pulling up in his crib, playing with his bear and blanket and not napping! I watched him on Cartey TV for 20ish minutes and I could tell he was getting tired. He was smushing his face on his blanket and pulling at his ear. He was leaning forward to lay his face on his blanket, then sitting up and laying his head on the bars of his crib, etc. I contemplated going up and laying him down but before I could even do that he fell asleep..... like this

Looks comfy, right? I helped him onto his tummy because I couldn't imagine sleeping like that for an hour+.

I also had this picture on my camera. It was really hot in his room so he napped shirtless. Too cute!

9 months!

Carter had his 9 month well baby check yesterday. Dr. McGarey walked in the room saying "wow almost 3 feet" Kinda. He is over 2.5 feet and well on his way to 3 feet :)

height 31 inches >99%
weight 22lbs 14oz 89%
head 47.4cm 96%

His weight gain is slowing down. He only gained 2lbs over the last 3 months, but he grew 3 inches in that time! When he was littler he would gain 2-3lbs a month :) Overall a very bug guy.

As usual he was VERY flirty with Dr McGarey. He really likes her. He had a great time pulling on her stethoscope, necklace, holding her hand, talking to her, etc. He adores her, it's cute :)

He got a shot (that we didn't do last time because the combo of shots gave him a reaction) and was fine with the shot. He cried after the initial poke for a few seconds until I picked him up. But the second I picked him up he gave a huge happy smile to the nurse that just gave him the shot! He also had his toe pricked to test his blood and see if he was anemic. Toe prick went fine, not sure he even noticed cause Joe was making faces at him, and he is not anemic.

Dr. McGarey said whatever we're doing is working! He isn't drinking as much as she normally recommends but said you can't argue with success and that he was clearly thriving :) Always good to hear that your baby is doing well.

We talked about milestones a bit and she mentioned that she thought he'd probably skip crawling. I totally agree with that. He has zero interest in crawling but always wants to be standing. She said it takes way more muscle to pull his big body up into a standing position, from sitting, than it would to crawl.

The only not so positive thing that we talked about was his clogged tear duct. His right eye is still clogged pretty frequently. Usually babies will grow out of it around 12 months, but if they don't they have to go in and unclog the tear duct so it doesn't say clogged forever. This didn't really sound like a big deal until I asked what it entails..... general anesthesia and putting a probe down into the tear duct from the corner of his eye. Yikes. As soon as I heard general anesthesia my hands got a little sweaty and I said "wait, general anesthesia means totally under right?" Dr. McGarey "Yes, it is a 5-10 minute procedure so not very long, but yes totally under." So we're really hoping and praying that he grows out of this! Not to mention that there isn't a pediatric eye doctor in Flagstaff that does this so we'd have to go down to Phoenix to have it done. If you want to send some positive tear duct thoughts and/or prayers we'll take them :)

Because a post is no good without pictures... here are a few of Carter's very first pictures. He was less than 24 hours old. Taken with my crappy cell phone but still so important to me as these were some of the first pictures taken when the 3 of us were finally all together in our room at the hospital.

sleeping on the brand new mama (15 hours old)


sleeping in the arms of the brand new daddy (6 hours old)

squeeze me 'smore... minnesota!

This shirt was given to Carter when he was just a few weeks old.... at that time we said "OMG that is huge! He isn't going to wear that until he is at least 5 years old!"

All he wants to do is stand up! Seriously that is the only thing he is interested in these days!

And he is usually screaming while he is standing.

And Tuck Bear