PD Jammin

Today Peeds had his first experience listening to music through headphones. At first he was fascinated. That lasted for about 5 seconds. After that, he just wanted to take them off of his head.

Christmas at the Clarkes

PD's first lucid Christmas was a brilliant affair. He was such a good boy and by the time all of the unwrapping was finished he was quite a pro at it. We all love everything we received. Thanks to everyone for making it such a wonderful Christmas. To those who couldn't be here with us this year, we love and miss you. To those who were able to be here, we love you and we miss you now that you've gone home. xxx P.S. - I think the stomach flu that hit us after Christmas is finally passing. I was totally worthless yesterday and Poor Sug was sick all night and slept most of today. If we gave it to you, we're very very very sorry. If you gave it to us, grrrrr :-P

PDs Mail

PD's British passport came today. Look how pleased he is to be able to come and go as he pleases!!

Silly walk to the tub

Well Peeds has been an absolute joy to be around both yesterday and today. He's been in a great mood. He's eaten well, napped, giggled and has really been great. Maybe we've passed the days of sitting around crying for no reason.

Here is a lil pre-bath vid. He loves the bath so much that he runs to get into it each night. But even back during the days when all he did was army crawl, he'd still do this silly walk when he got to the bathroom tiles because they were too cold on his little belly.

Enjoy

The Morning after

Well yesterday was the big birthday bash! HUUUUGE thanks to the fam and Kat, Ris and Danielle for coming to the party. We had a blast. PD didn't thrash his cake nearly as badly as we thought he would. Aunt B gave him a cupcake earlier in the day and he had it EVERYWHERE. But as soon as we gave him his ducky cake the paparazzi showed up and I think he got a little stage fright. :-)

Still, we had lots of yummy food and he received wonderful gifts from everyone. I'm so grateful that he is loved by all.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PD

Well today is PDs birthday. I woke up about 4 times last night thinking, "I was in labor this time last year!!"

We're all set up for the party. We've had about 5 of the 8 people who were coming either text or e-mail yesterday and today to say that they weren't going to make it. BOOOO to them. Oh well, whacha gonna do? The fam will be here.

Here is a video of PD dancing to Shakira

Busy busy busy

Sug and I are home. We've had a wonderful lazy day here at the house just hanging out. We were going to go and get Peeds tomorrow but he's decided to stay in Ohio until Friday and he'll just ride down here with his aunt B when she gets off of work. He won't even get home until bedtime so we won't get to see him until Saturday. We're going to go to a belated Guy Fawkes celebration on Saturday and then Cas and Gary are coming to visit on Sunday. I can't believe it's already almost time for them to be here. Yaaaay

We took a few more strides towards being ready for the birthday bash. We've decided on nuggets and tots for the kiddos. I think we're just going to lay a floor covering downstairs and let them go crazy doing whatever they want. That's probably the easiest way to handle it. We can bring all of the goodies downstairs and we'll just have that one room to clean afterwards.

Separated again

Well, once again, Sug, PD and I are separated. Sug is at home, I'm in St. Louis and PD is in Ohio with the Grands. Just a few more sleeps until we're back together. PD and I are having dinner with Friends on Saturday evening so I'm going to have to get him earlier than I normally would. But we have to get back because they fly out of Nashville at 6:40 am on Sunday morning.

PD went to a Birthday party on Saturday and it looked like he had a pretty good time. Becca send pics but they're from her phone and they're a little blury. I'll post pics if I get some from anyone else at the party who had a camera.

We're now counting down the days until Cas and Gary's arrival. EXCITING STUFF!!

A few more days to go...

There are just a couple more days left in the boys' trip. They're still having a great time with the Fam.

Vaca continues

Today Oliver had his first sausage roll... yummy!!

Oh and he got a new hat! Too cute!

Trip Update

Looks like the boys are having a good time!

Fever update

Last night PDs temerature topped out at 102.7. We spoke with a Nurse through our insurance hotline who said that as long as he wasn't presenting any symptoms, we didn't need to go to the hospital. He woke with a fever of 101.0 so we gave him tylenol and when I left for work his temperature was 101.6. Sug is going to take him into the doctor this morning to have him checked out and find out if it will be ok for him to head to England this afternoon. We'll keep everyone posted.

So the teeth have taken OVER PD's mouth and he's getting really good at learning how to use them. Sug and I are getting better at keeping our fingers out of the danger zone.

Update

Sug fixed the camera!! I'm hoping to update the blog with pics and possibly a video of PD sometime this evening. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knows he fixed. Like, REALLY fixed it. The screen works and everything. How clever is he?!

Good news!

First off, let me tell you that last night after his bath, I let PD run around naked for a little while because he has a little red booty that I'm trying to clear up. He's got this little toy radio sitting on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. When you push the big yellow button on top, it plays a song. Well last night after his bath he crawled over to the bookcase and started playing with his radio but he didn't take it off of the shelf, he just leaned up into it. So his torso was in the bookcase and his tushy and knees were on the floor. When he'd press the button to play a song, he'd start bouncing along with the song. I called sug to ask if he knew where a camera was because I soooooooo wanted to get that little bouncing booty on video. But, alas, I broke the camera a little on my mom's birthday and then Sug "fixed" it WELL BROKEN. So I have no vid of it. But it was cute.

ON TO THE GOOD NEWS

The bestest news is that it looks like Sug is going to be going back on payroll at Secure Air. The former chief pilot, Ed, is retiring and training Sug up as a co-pilot on the lear-jet. YAAAAY SUG. The second bits of good news are to do with my job. I have now been assigned a geographic territory and it's right in our backyard. I'm covering the east side of downtown nashville, donleson, hermitage and Old Hickory. It's very exciting stuff. I brought my redcross car home yesterday so the little Jetta is going to be getting a break. The only drama with that is that I have to take PD to the sitter in the Jetta then come home and get the ARC car and take it to work. That worked out this morning because I needed to come back and put some laundry into the dryer anyway, but it's like a 30 minute process to take him and get back. I need those 30 Minutes in the morning!!!

Still, good news, huh?!

One silly boy

How is it possible that our little man got so silly in just 9 months??

Correction... TEETH

Today Sug noticed one of the top teeth has come in. I knew this would happen. No teeth for AGES and now two teeth in two weeks and the one's beside of the one's that HAVE come in are pushing their way through right now. Please excuse the messy face. We didn't notice the new tooth until lunchtime so he's got food all over him.

I've booked their tickets to England. They leave Nashville on the 7th of October and land on the 8th in Gatwick and leave England via Heathrow on the 20th. I'll have a lonely empty house for a couple of weeks if anyone wants to come and visit. :-D

Plans for PDs 1st Birthday Party are well underway. We're really excited about it. I've found the cutest little favors on-line but they don't ship to the US only to Europe and the UK so I will be contacting the worlds greatest mother-in-law to ask if she'll help me out and let me ship them to her pad and she can just bring them over with her when she comes in November.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that Sug gets a job soon after he returns. He got some promising news over the weekend and I just hope that it works out the way it sounds like it's going to.

We have a tooth!

I came home from work on Tuesday evening and Sug says, "Guess what I found?" It turns out, PD has a tooth. It's just the top of the bottom left front tooth, but it's there and it bites. He won't let us see it. We have to trick him into showing it. But as soon as I'm able to get a photo, I'll share it. Also, he "walked" down the hall on Sunday holding on to Grandpa's fingers. Up until now, if we held his fingers and tilted him forward, he would just lean. Now he picks up his little foot and walks forward. He says "Mama" but I'm not sure that he knows what it means. He reaches when he's scared or hurt or just wants to be held. He has also self-weaned himself from breast-feeding and adopted a pacifier instead and started pulling up on things so that he can stand. All of this the last couple of weeks.

Another fun day at the beach

Today we took Kelly and PD to the beach at the Anderson Road Recreational Area. I think it's safe to say that everyone had a good time. PD got his time in the water. Sug and Kelly got their time annoying one another and I got to hang out with my friends which I haven't really gotten to do since I started working.

Another crazy week

Kelly made it in to town last night. I've hardly seen her at all because last night was also Pokeeno and I hadn't been able to make it to Pokeeno since April. We had pokeeno at Eller's. Her husband totally busted his butt playing the gracious host. We told Eller that if any of our husbands ever leave us she'd better "low jack" her man cuz we're coming after him. Naturally, none of us could be happier than we are now. BUT, if our men ever decide that THEY could be, then Eller had better watch her back. JK!!!

There are videos on facebook at the moment of us playing chase with PD. He has always loved being chased and thinks its so funny when Harley or Daddy follow us up the stairs. Now, he is initating chases on his own by crawling into the room, making eye contact, spinning around and sprint-crawling out of the room squealing. It's really funny, check out our vids on facebook because the one I tried to load on here of it didn't work.

Tomorrow Sug and Kelly are off to pick up Yota. FUUUUUUUUUN Roadtrip! Woot woot. I shall be packing up snacks tonight to get them ready for their voyage and I'm sure they'll be taking some roadtrip videos which I will post as soon as they give them to me. My weekend is packed as well. Birthday party tomorrow and then Maurisa is coming to spend the night with Lori and myself tomorrow night followed by brunch the next morning and then Lori is moving to Austin. BOOOOO!!

Back from Ohio

We spent the weekend in Ohio with the fam. Oliver had a blast playing with his Aunt B and, as always, his Grandma and Grandpa doted on him.









We've spent the last couple of days putting everything away and getting ready for Kelly's big visit. It's gonna be awesome. This is the last sleep. I must say that I prefer these quick trips that we don't even have to count down to. My trip over in May was a quick one like this and it was like, "Hmmm I think I'll go to England" and BAM, I was there. Same with Bird. She sat there and said, "I have a few weeks off, I think I'll go to America" and she'll be here this time tomorrow. Definitely the way to travel.

great. I'm in orientation all week but I'm ready to get started on the job.

I'll post pics of Oliver's new tooth as soon as he'll let me. He's spent monday and tuesday with a babysitter and she loves him. The new job is going

I've been trying to get a new computer all week. For some reason I'm not able to surf when I'm connected wirelessly. I plan to call geek squad tonight.

Moving right along

Oliver is getting better and better at his rendition of a crawl. He keeps getting up on all fours so maybe in a few weeks he'll have the "proper" crawl technique down.

Good times at the libaray

Well the library was PACKED! The show started at 11:30 and we got there at 10 passed to make sure that we had a good seat. But apparently loads of other people had the same idea because we stood in a queue that wrapped around the library and when we were the 3rd people from the front they cut off admission. Thankfully, they arranged to do a special 12:30 production so we waited for that one to happen. It was crazy too! You wouldn't believe the people who showed up right up until 11:30 thinking they were going to get in. The 12:30 performance was nearly to capacity as well!! Still the kids were so sweet watching it. I sat next to a lady who said that Mr. Tischner used to open his home at Christmas time for the public to come and walk-through and see all of his puppets. That would have been a sight to see.

I'm so grateful that the Nashville Public Library offers these shows.

It happened last night

Last night, it happened. The moment that Mom and Cas (MIL) both said would come. As PD and I sat Skyping with Sug, PD started to fuss. We had a really good day yesterday so I figured there was an actual issue. I gave him a sniff and sure enough, he needed a change. We went up to his room and laid a diaper beneath him like we always do and proceeded to open him up.




OMG! I have no idea where all of that stuff came from because the kid has not been eating properly. He refuses anything by spoon. He used to only refuse the spoon in the morning but would eat dinner. Now he'll take about 3 bites and then wants to do it himself. Anyway, if he's refusing things by spoon then he's getting by on what he can pick up and feed himself and that's not a whole lot. So where did all of that poo come from?! Who knows. It was everywhere. Luckily we use cloth diapers so it didn't get out. I know that it would have leaked out of everywhere if he'd been in a sposie.

Still, It had gotten all over his diaper cover and worked it's way to the front and as soon as I opened the diaper I think it started to multiply like Gremlins!!! I decided to just put him in the bath cuz a wipey wasn't going to cut it. So I wrapped him in the clean diaper which was now covered in poo anyway and we went to the bathroom. I sat him on the toilet and ran a little bath and sat him in it. He was very entertained by all of the little bits of poo floating around in the tub and it was all I could do to keep him from playing with them.

After I got him out of the tub I used the toilet shower to rinse off the tub, toilet, both diapers and the cover and then cleaned the toilet, floor, side of the tub, sink and myself with clorox wipes. It was INSANE!!

Poor sug just sat all alone on skype while I did all of this because he thought it was just going to be a quick change.

Today is my last day as a SAHM. So PD and I are off to the library with some friends to see Cinderella again and I'm not sure how we're going to spend the rest of the day.

I'm still not sure who he is going to stay with on Monday. I have spoken with 3 different people. As soon as Marsha lets me know if she wants to come out here, I'll have a plan. If she doesn't, he'll go to Danielle's until Sug gets home then Sug will keep him.

Storytime and playdates

We went to the library today for storytime. It was just the standard storytime that they always do but Oliver enjoys it so much. They sing their little songs about being friends and making a rainbow and read books aloud to the kids. Oliver loves being around all of the bigger kids.

After storytime Marsha and Shannon came over with Maddy and Dylan for a playdate. Oliver slept through the whole thing, pretty much. By the time he woke up Maddy and Marsha were just about to leave. They did stay long enough for Maddy to pinch Oliver and make him cry. Then his cry upset her and she started to cry. Naturally he was over it waaaaay before she was. Still, he was teary and I felt bad that I didn't stop it. I was trying to take pictures of them playing but the camera wouldn't focus. I'm not sure what was going on there. As soon as they started crying the camera sorted itself out. That was frustrating.

Oh... did I mention we now have a camera?! OH YEAH!

After Marsha and Shannon left Oliver and I hung out for a bit then Mia came over. It was really nice to catch up. Naturally, she brought Bear with her. He's so cute and Oliver thought he was just the best thing ever...

We've had a pretty good couple of days...

Sug was home all day on Friday and devoted the entire day to hanging out with us. IT WAS AWESOME! We went to the Library downtown which is an event in itself. The building is beautiful. BUT, the reason we went was to take Oliver to see the Cinderella marionette show. It was an amazing production. The soundtrack was witty and entertaining. The library staff who manned the marionettes behind the set nailed it. The audience was enthralled the entire time. I've told all of my friends and there is a good chance I'm going to go back with them before too long. I'm sure there will be all new productions of things when the Clarke's come over around PD's birthday. Sug had such a great time and commented several times on how the outing was right up Cas's ally so we're totally taking her when she comes to visit. We went to the puppet show then to Provence (a bakery downtown) and had a coffee. Then walked to the arcade a couple of blocks away and got a chocolate soft-serve cone. It's so hard to find chocolate soft-serve these days. I got them all of the time when I was pregnant and working at curves. Until I found out I had gestational diabetes, that is.

The plan Friday was to dash home after storytime and let PD have a nap then take him to the Zoo and wear him out because Eller had offered to keep him while we went to see Harry Potter. Unfortunately, he didn't feel like taking a nap for quite a while after we got home so we never made it to the zoo. We'll do it as a family soon, though. Maybe when Sug gets home from the west coast.

We took him to Eller's around 6:00 and experience the "Cry because mommy is leaving" for the first time. Needless to say I felt like crap and totally contradicted myself. I've always said that if my kid ever started crying because I was leaving him with some one I would just leave anyway and let him deal with it. I TOTALLY CAVED. I snatched him right back out of Alfred's arms to have myself a little cuddle at which point he stopped crying and cuddled into me. (Oliver, much like his mummy, isn't a cuddler unless he's sleepy) I was at a total loss at what to do and on the brink of cancelling the entire outing but Eller was very reassuring and turned on some kiddie show and pulled out some toys and Oliver totally forgot that we were there so we snuck out. Apparently, he was cool the rest of the evening. He went right back to being his normal chuckling, giggling self until he had to go to bed. We all know that no matter where you lay him he acts like it's on a bed of nails. Still, Eller handled it just fine and I'm ever so grateful!

By the time we got back to pic Oliver up around 10 he had been sleeping like a log for ages. I joined Eller for glass (or 3) of wine while Sug and Alfred talked about canoeing or hiking or whatever it is guys talk about. I'm sure we totally outstayed our welcome as we didn't end up leaving until around 1 and Oliver did not appreciate being woken up. He stayed awake the whole car-ride home and was reluctant to be laid down into his own bed. In the end, he slept really well that night as did Sug and I. :-D

Yesterday was our big "Mom's Group" BBQ. Sug cut the grass and set up a tent outside and got the place looking really nice then we stay inside and let the babies play with the toys in the recroom the whole time. lol I had 3 cancellations the day of and 3 no-shows. I was upset and totally about to put a nasty message on the group message board about it but Maurisa talked me down. I'm still chafed and still want her to kick them all out of the group but she won't do it cuz she's nicer than me. :-D

I did have a great time with the people who did show-up though. The food was great and the babies had a really good time plus the other mom's got to get out of the house and have some grown-up conversation which is sometimes a rarity. So all-in-all I'd call it a success.

Still no camera - maybe Monday??

Big Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow I have an interview with the American Red Cross here in Nashville. I'm really excited about it. I'm interviewing for a position as a DRD Rep which is what I used to do in Huntington. I hope I get it. Our little family could really use the extra income. Even after the economy recovers, if Sug decides that he's going to go to the airlines, we'll need an extra income for the first year at least. I think I'm looking at being at this job for at least 3 years. AT LEAST 3 years. It could take longer than that for the airlines to recover enough to start hiring. We'll see.

No big news with PD today. We went to story time at the library then to lunch with my friend Laurel. We weren't going to go to story time at all because Marsha is in San Diego and we normally go with her. Then I figured PD really enjoys it and he over-slept last week so we only saw the last 10 minutes. I sent Laurel a text and she was free so she met us for lunch. We got some books from the library about sewing because I'd like to be better at my sewing machine. After his afternoon nap I took him to the dam to feed the ducks. He was so cute sitting there in his bumbo with all of the ducks surrounding him scrambling for the food. Hopefully, if we go next week, we'll have a camera and we'll take a vid so you guys can see too!

We've found another food PD doesn't like

I've devoted quite a bit of time this week to making baby food for Oliver. We went to whole foods and bought organic produce, baby snacks and other things to make his food. I've spent ages steaming, cooking, pureeing, freezing, labeling and storing. Tonight he got to try his new food for the first time. The verdict?!

He loves the Ravioli we got for him. We kind of knew he would. My friend Laura got me all kinds of baby food when I was pregnant and one of his faves has been a beef and tomato macaroni. He liked the corn as well. The lima beans... uuuuuuum not so much! In fact he kind of gagged each time I gave him some. It could be a consistency thing. I'll try adding some milk to them next time and cream them up to see if that improves his opinion on them. For now, though, he REALLY doesn't like lima beans.

I have plans for several more types of baby food to make for Oliver. There are several websites I've found that offer recipes for baby food and I've checked out some books from the library to learn some tricks as well.

We spent the day at our friends' Corinne and Olivia's house. Olivia's 1st birthday is July 31st so Oliver and I went out to their house to help them decorate a super cute cupcake style that Corinne made for Olivia to smash up after she's gotten her pictures taken with it. They have a professional photographer coming out to the house to photo the event. FUN TIMES!

A major development at Casa de Clarke

So tonight, after Sug gave Oliver a bath, they went back to Oliver's room while I went downstairs to finish making some vegetable soup. Before long, Sug was calling to me to come up stairs and look at something. When I got to Oliver's room Oliver was in the floor and Sug was sitting on the futon. He threw a snappy in the floor about 4 feet away. Oliver spun around (he's been doing that for weeks) and proceeded to push/scoot/army crawl over to the snappy. Now there have been a couple of times when he has done one simple army crawl, but only ever on one side and only one little push. Tonight, it seems, he has figured out that if he keeps pushing, he'll keep moving. We were so proud. Of course, we don't have any pictures, but Sug went directly to eBay and did a "Buy It Now" on a camera as soon as we got back downstairs. With any luck, we'll have a new camera by this weekend.

Things are looking up!

This economy has pretty much affected everyone I know in one way or another. It's sad to think how bad things have gotten. Last fall, when Sug (my husband Daniel who will nearly always be referred to as "SUG") and I were budgeting for me to stop working, everything was fine. Soon after I stopped working, as luck would have it, he took a paycut and we found ourselves not nearly as financially sound as we had hoped to be. A couple of months went by and he took another paycut. Once that happened we were JUST getting by. At least I had been able to save up a bit here and there after the first paycut. After the second one, we needed every penny he made. Naturally, a couple of months after the second paycut he was laid off. PERFECT! Even with government assistance we were still struggling. Luckily he got called back to work after just a couple of months of being laid off and he's been working ever since.

Still, between normal everyday expenses and the mound of medical bills we have from being pregnant with Oliver(sometimes referred to as PD or Peeds), we're just getting by. I have tried any number of things to contribute to the household fund to help keep us afloat without much luck. Except for www.mommycanworkathome.com which is still going to take a while to show a great return, I haven't had much luck.

I have interviewed for several jobs and actually been offered the position in several circumstances. The problem with those jobs is that they have all been bogus. No one is serious and it's all very frustrating.

But today, my friends, things are looking up. I saw a posting for a job on craigslist at the ARC. This position is for the exact same job that I used to do when I lived in Ohio. I spoke with a lady on the phone and have an interview set up for next Thursday. Yes indeed, things are looking up!