Hi

Hi! It's me again..or maybe finally. It's been a crazy for a while, I got too behind on this blog that it became just too overwhelming with everything that was going on. I'm still working on my Master's Degree, but should have it finished in August as planned. Then Bryce has been playing baseball, which consumes at least two evenings per week unless it rains. Then there's Blaire who is growing like a weed. Then there's my job...uhh...former at that! Unfortunately my entire department was outsourced, in part due to the drop in oil & gas prices. However, I had a new job offer within a week...but I requested not to start for a couple months and they kindly obliged. 

So here I am to start catching back up while I have a little more free time than normal. 

Labor Day Weekend Fun

I know we're closer to Halloween, than we are to Labor Day but I thought I'd do a little catching up...with mostly pictures! Labor Day was just about like any other weekend we spent at the lake.

Blaire has become quite the lake baby, as expected. 

Our Redneck Yacht Club. Our boat is the one with the towels hung from the bimini; have to keep as much shade a possible for our baby girl.

Bryce went tubing for the first time over Labor Day weekend, but both boats that he tubed behind weren't fast enough for this little daredevil.

Hanging with Papa.

My babies and I

10th & 11th Months

So, yes, I've had a little bit of a hiatus! The biggest reason is due to this crazy Mom starting a Master of Accountancy degree! At first I was a little unsure about beginning this, but since Blaire goes to bed so early and Bryce for the most part entertains himself when necessary, I think it couldn't be much better timing. It's a fast track program, which means an entire course is covered in a matter of 7 weeks, but the best part is that I will graduate by August 15th of next year...and will never, ever, ever have to crack open another textbook...unless I'm helping my kids study! ;) So now that my first couple of classes are concluding this week, I have a little bit of a break where I don't have to read 10 chapters a week. Blah!

So enough about me! On to talk about one of the people everyone really wants to hear about! Yes, I missed making Blaire's 10 month post so I'll take the opportunity to do that now.  Below is what I would have written had I published this closer to her 10 month birthday!

At 10 months (and 8 days), Blaire weighed almost 22 lbs. She’s wearing size 3 diapers, and is fitting comfortably in 12 months clothes, and even can where some 18 months. She’s pulling up on anything and everything. The shower door, no problem! Mommy’s legs no problem!!

She’s sleeping really well, going from about 7:30 pm to 6:00 am. She has even gotten to where she doesn’t want me to rock her, I just put her in her crib with her bottle and she puts herself to sleep! Most days she takes 2 long naps, though she’ll sometime only take one long nap with a couple cat naps. She’s drinking 4 bottles a day and I’d like to get rid of one of them, but she’s quite attached! Not sure if we’re going to meet the goal of weaning her off of her bottle at a year. She’s still getting breast milk and I do think we’ll make it to her 1^st birthday without having to use formula. 

She’s started getting more of the food we’re eating and having less and less interest in the purees. The weekend before Labor Day weekend we were at the lake and we had smoked some ribs and bologna; we had a couple of other sides that she couldn’t eat, so I made her some glazed carrots to eat. I put them on her tray and she started screaming! She did not want her food, she wanted the food on my plate!! So I chopped up, very finely, some bologna and all became right in her world!

One of her top teeth broke through over Labor Day weekend and as of her 10 month “birthday” the second one hadn’t yet broke through. She’s crawling like a mad woman and let’s Mommy know she can’t hide from her! The other day when I was studying, my bedroom door was shut and she crawled to it and started beating…eh I mean, knocking on it. She’s waving Hello and Bye in the most enthusiastic whole armed way, and on occasion will now say “Bye”. She’s added Bubba to her vocabulary and I think she’s trying to say “Mine”. When she has things in her hand she starts saying “my, my, my”. I also think she’s trying to say “Night, Night”, because she says “ni, ni, ni” when she sees her bottle. I could completely be making assumptions on her speech, and it all could be purely coincidental!

Here are a few random pictures from her 10th month of life. 

Now, at 11 months Blaire has 4 teeth! The 4th tooth broke through a few days after her 10th month birthday. Unfortunately, we were at the doctor on the October 7th for a minor case of hand, foot, and mouth (UGH!). At that time she weighed 22 lbs 14.5 oz. Thankfully, besides not wanting food or bottle while at daycare, she never got any worse nor ran a fever. It makes me wonder if that was really what she had.

She's outgrown 12 month clothes and has moved into 18 month clothes. Summer seems to want to hang on a little longer so I'm struggling to have warmer weather clothes for her to wear and I refuse to go buy anything that she'll only need for a week or two at most. She's still in size 3 diapers, though I almost think she could move into 4's.

  

She's standing unsupported for a good length of time and has even start taking a couple steps here and there! See below. Sorry about the off-centered picture, she's so hard to catch a good picture of and of course this one was the best one of her smiling.

She's now saying “Ba ba ba” when she sees her bottle...which we're not anywhere close to weaning. We're still have some breast milk in the freezer and we're definitely going to make it to a year!

She thinks it's unacceptable to be eating something different than what we're having. She refuses any kind of pureed food, so pretty much now eats whatever we're having. She has started feeding herself with a spoon…if I put food on in first. Below, she just HAD to have my taquito!!  

Then she was afraid to set it down; probably in fear that I'd take it back. 

  

Who cares if there's artichoke on her nose!

First time to have spaghetti...which is a favorite in our house.

 

She loves playing with her brother and will even let him rough house her a little bit. He's even taught her a few bad things!

  

She LOVES climbing and sitting in chairs!

I see a future crib escape in the works, using her car to practice.

She is such a joy!

Bryce's First Day of Pre-K

On August 13th my baby boy became a student and had his first day of Pre-K!! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??!?

As we all know, this milestone is often harder on the parents than it is on the child! However, Bryce was so excited that we couldn't be anything but excited along with him. 

He absolutely loves school! There's total of 20 kids in his class and he knew a few of the kids from daycare, so I think it's helping this transition go quite smoothly. He does constantly ask when he gets to go to school all day, but that's not going to happen until Kindergarten. Since I only work a half-day on Fridays, I'm taking Bryce directly to school on those days instead of dropping him off at daycare first...I expected he'd let me walk him in to his class on those days but I've quickly been instructed by him to drop him off and let him walk in by himself! Seriously!?!
 
So now that we're a couple weeks into it, he's got the routine down and is constantly bringing home his work. Some of it seems to be pretty good, that I'm almost not convinced he did it by himself. He's also become familiar with their "ticket system" which advises the parents of when the child misbehaves. A week ago Bryce has his first "ticket pulled", thankfully it was green ticket, which isn't too bad but I was definitely alarmed when it had "Bryce hit his neighbor" written on the square for Thursday. It wasn't like Bryce to hit kids! So I asked Bryce what happened, prepared to dish out a punishment, and he said he was swinging his arms and accidentally hit a girl. I was definitely relieved that was all it was!

They had school pictures done also a week ago, and I'll share them as soon as I get them back. We had such a short notice on them that I had to call my sister on her day off to get his haircut!

9 months

Seriously, how is that we are more than 75% of the way to Blaire’s first birthday!! I just don’t want to accept it, especially with it being my last baby. I have less 3 more months to call her a baby! Eeek!!

And let me tell you, her 9^th month of life was a big one!

First let's go over her stats. 

Yesterday, we made it in for her 9 month checkup, only 10 days after her official 9 month birthday. At this visit she weighed 21 lbs on the dot, is 27 1/2 inches long/tall, and her head, if I remember correctly, is 46.5 cm around which puts her over the 97%.

She does have an umbilical hernia, which I started noticing about a month ago. Right now it's soft, which the doctor said is a good thing and may not require any kind of attention. However, if it is still there after her first birthday we'll most likely be referred to a specialist about getting it removed. 

 

So other major happenings...

She moved out of the infant carrier into a convertible seat.

She went on her first family vacation, where we spent some time at the beach in Destin, Fl. There's a separate post for the trip, but overall she did really well considering it was a 14-hour drive one-way.

We had barely made it to the condo, and she officially started crawling on us! Of course pulling up came along with her new found mobile ability.

She still only has two teeth, but I can feel the nubs for her two top teeth so I'm guessing they'll be in within the next month or so. Here's a great shot of her two teeth, and one of the 20 pictures it took for me to catch the official 9 month picture at the beginning of the post. 

She's literally ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!

She's started eating more chopped up foods, rather than purees. I know it's easier on me during dinner time when she can feed herself. 

She's saying a couple words, ma ma ma ma, ba ba ba ba, and hi/hey. The hi/hey is usually accompanied by her waving too! She's trying to mimic things we do and will watch our mouths very closely and work her tongue to try to figure out how to match the sound we're making.

She's still sleeping great! I'm gradually getting her to where she'll sleep closer to 6 or sometimes she'll sleep a little after 6am. She's going to sleep around 7:30pm still, sometimes earlier and sometimes later. 

Of course Mama is still her favorite person and she loves to crawl up in my lap anytime she pleases.

So there she is...Miss Ameri----wait! She's just my 9 month old blue eyed beauty!

Family Vacation: Destin

During the last week in July our family of four headed out for a 14-hour road trip to Destin, Florida. This will go down in the record books as Blaire's first family vacation

We have some wonderful friends that approached us several months ago about meeting them in Destin, and insisted that we stay in their parents' condo with them. They have a daughter that is Bryce's age and a son that just turned two.

So we decided on the last week in July. We planned the timing of the drive wisely and drove it overnight while both kids slept...most of the time. We left on Wednesday night right at Blaire's bedtime. We passed through Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and nearly made it through Mississippi before Blaire woke up for her first bottle of the day.  Gave her her bottle and we proceeded on through Mississippi, Alabama, and finally into Florida. 

We arrived at the condo around 9:30am. An vacation officially started. Since Nic and I didn't get much sleep we had a low key day. 

The condo was located right on Choctawhatchee Bay and offered amazing views and even more amazing sunsets. Crab Island was very close and if we had kayak's we could have easily paddled over there.

Many mornings were spent either in the pool or on the beach.

 

 

 As much as I love to have everything in chronological order, it's just not feasible without making this post much longer than it already is. So, from here I'll just  just touch on the attractions and points of interest that we visited.

Harborwalk Village - This is a tourist's dream location. Contained within this area was Destin Harbor and marina, many restaurants, lots of shopping and even a few activities (zipline, anyone?). If you rent a boat in Destin or take a charter, this is very likely where you'll depart from. One thing though, is that parking is TERRIBLE!

 

Village of Baytowne Wharf - This is another location similar to the Harborwalk Village. It's located in the Sandestin Resort area. There were lots of restaurants, shopping, and also some activities. It didn't appear to have any type of marina associated with it, though. It's supposedly designed after Bourbon Street in New Orleans, though I saw more resemblance to the French Quarter.

 Miramar Beach - I wanted to have at least one true beach day, so my friend took us to Miramar Beach. We got there between 10am and 10:30am and soon found out that had we arrived any later, parking would have been hard to find. It's an extremely popular beach and I saw the white sand that everyone talks about. It's true, after being all over the Caribbean, that Destin has some of the whitest sand I have ever seen! We enjoyed the waves, me especially! I was really wishing we hadn't left Bryce's body board at home. Blaire even enjoyed the waves and would giggle as the waves came up on her chubby little legs.

 This is Bryce being clobbered by a wave!

Buccaneer Pirate Ship - Once Bryce saw the pirate ship sailing in the bay in front of the condo, he was persistent about riding it. So we chose a night, and sailed out of the Harborwalk Village Marina. We had a good time, even though Bryce decided to be shy rather than participate in the various activities the crews had for the kids...it's still one of his favorite moments of the trip.

Gulfarium - The Gulfarium is located in Ft. Walton beach. We watched the Dolphin show that was included with the expensive admission ticket. Other than that there was a small indoor aquarium area and some outdoor exhibits of sharks, stingrays, turtles, seals, penguins, otters, and alligators. One exhibit contained probably 50-100 baby alligators, which was probably my favorite. Other than that I was a disappointed in the quality of the exhibits and quantity.

We didn't see as much as I wanted to see, but when you're traveling with kids you have to take a lot of time out of the trip for nap time. ;)

Of course we indulged in some great food! Below are the places we tried:

Dewey Destin's - This was the first meal we had in Destin and since we were tired from our drive in, we sent the men out to pick it up and bring it back to the condo. Nic and I both had the Mate's Platter which consisted of fried fish, shrimp, and scallops. It was delicious and was accompanied by the BEST hush puppies I HAVE EVER HAD! Definitely goes on the "Favorites List"!

Mellow Mushroom - Pizza is pizza! Though we weren't disappointed. 

Crab Trap (Ft. Walton Beach) - After our visit to the Gulfarium we stopped at the Crab Trap for lunch. I had crab legs and grilled shrimp, which both were delicious but nothing extraordinary.

La Famiglia - This is an Italian restaurant located on the edge of Harborwalk Village. Nic had something with lamb chops and I had Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo. We both were not impressed and didn't feel the quality of the food was close to the cost. We probably won't return here when we return to Destin.

 Pompano Joes - This restaurant is located on Miramar Beach and is probably my favorite place of all the restaurants we tried in Destin. Here we had Coral Reef Nachos for an appetizer. Then I ordered Coconut Shrimp, which I should have known better since I usually find that is not my favorite shrimp dish, but it was still good. The shrimp was served with Caribbean Rice & Beans, which was AMAZING! Then my friend had the Tuna & Strawberry Fields Salad. She let me try a bite and I had wished I had ordered it. I'm craving it and cannot wait to return to have it!

Acme Oyster House (Sandestin) - This restaurant was located within The Baytowne Wharf. I ordered the Fried Crab Platter. The food was decent, but it was far from being my favorite. 

McGuire's Irish Pub - This restaurant is located just across from Harborwalk Village. It's probably my 2nd favorite. Here I had an Irish Wake to drink, which tasted like a Screwdriver. Then I ordered the Grilled Prime Rib steak, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it! It was fantastic!

All in all, we had a wonderful trip, not only did we spend time as a family but we were fortunate to spend time with such wonderful friends. The night before we drove home, we enjoyed one last beautiful sunset which was a perfect ending to our time in Destin.

 The day we left, we left earlier in the day since Nic wanted to be home by 7am the next morning. So to break this long drive up a little, we decided to stop at the USS Alabama Battleship in Mobile, AL. Bryce doesn't quite understand the history of this battleship and the USS Drum submarine, but one day he will.