Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with much to be thankful for this year. We took this same picture a few years ago, and now 3 new people have been added, Andrew, Adam, and Charlotte.

I keep thinking how fast this year has flown by. Last year at Thanksgiving I had my first baby shower. This year I had a happy and healthy baby sitting on my lap.

We are so blessed to have the families that we have, the friends we have, jobs we have, and the child that we have. Judd told me that Thanksgiving meant a lot more to him this year. He woke up this morning and looked at Charlotte and me and said, "That's just what I wanted to see this morning, the two things I am most Thankful for." Right back at ya, babe!

Over the River and Through the Woods

Well, it was more like "Over the Mountains and Through the Clouds", but Charlotte and I made it to PA without too much trouble on Monday. Judd was able to fly up last night. We have had a great visit so far. My Aunt Sue came to visit Charlotte yesterday which was nice. My grandmother is here for the week, so we have been able to visit a lot as well.

Today we drove to Frackville, PA to meet Sophia. She is the 10 week old daughter of my childhood best friend, Adrienne. You may remember I met up with her in July before Sophia made her debut. Sophia was just darling. She slept most of the time, but I did get to hold her for a minute. She weighs about 11 lbs and so tiny. I know that Charlotte was once that small, but now it is hard to believe.

And here's one with her Granddad:

Baby It's Cold Outside

Seriously, I think it was in the 20's last night!

Parent/Teacher Conference

On Friday, I had the first of many (I'm sure) parent/teacher conferences for Charlotte. Don't worry, it is something that they do around this time of year, she didn't do anything wrong.

I met her head teacher, Miss Chevonne, at the day care on Friday afternoon. She had a notebook for Charlotte that we went over. It had some pictures of her doing different activities to showcase her various developmental milestones. In one picture she was "reading" a book which showed that she had enough dexterity to flip pages (or something like that). In another picture she was "sharing" rings with Declan. I had to laugh at this picture because I witnessed her steal those same rings from Declan on Tuesday when I dropped her off.

All in all Miss Chevonne said she is doing very well and meets all of her developmental goals. I did get the vibe from her that Charlotte tends to grab things from other babies and doesn't let anything (or anyone) get in her way, but that's my girl :).

Teeth

Poor Charlotte had a hard evening yesterday. She was just screaming and crying for a couple of hours. I am thinking that it had something to do with the teeth she was getting or now has. She has gone from 0 to 3 (almost 4) teeth in about 2 weeks. We gave her some Orajel and Tylenol before bed and she ended up sleeping through the night.

She also has a horrible diaper rash, so maybe that was the cause of the screams last night? Do babies get diaper rashes when they are teething? because they swallow more saliva? I thought I read that somewhere....

She woke up this morning in a great mood. At daycare today they said she didn't seem bothered by anything. We played and played this afternoon after I picked her up. Tonight she crawled around chasing me for a while. It was really fun. I would crawl behind the couch and she would look for me and then I'd pop out - she would laugh and laugh. I just love her to pieces. Here are a few pictures from tonight.

Tutorial: How to add a signature

I have seen a couple of questions about how to add a signature to your blog posts, so I've decided to write a little tutorial to show you how. If there are other tutorials you'd like for me to write up, leave a comment and I'll think about it :)

Step 1: Create an image of the signature you would like. I did mine using a digital pen, however you could use something like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to create something like this:


(or, if you want me to create a simple one for you, just shoot me a comment)

Step 2: Upload your image to a site like flickr or picasa, you'll need to have your image online so you can reference it using a URL. For instance, my signature uses this URL:

< img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/carrieedavis/SGGiOldlSBI/AAAAAAAACm0/IYqijgziRHA/s144/sig.jpg"/>
Step 3: Get your image's URL.

If you are using Picasa, next to your picture you'll see a box called "Embed Image". Beneath that box, you'll see a check box called, "Hide Album Link", check that box. Then copy what is in the "Embed Image" box.

If you are using Flickr, once you upload your image, you'll see a link called "All Sizes" at the top of the image. Choose the size image that you want, and copy what is in the box just beneath the image.

Step 4: Login to Blogger, click on Settings, then Formatting, scroll to the bottom of the page and find the section called "Post Template". Paste your image URL into the box. Save your settings and create a new post, your sig should show automatically in that post.

Step 5: It may not look exactly like you want it to, is there a border around it? maybe extra text? Go back to your settings panel and edit the Post Template. Remove anything in the URL other than this tag:

< img src="your url" / >

then, add this to your tag:

< img src="your url" style='border: none; background: transparent;'/ >

Save the settings.


Now create a new post and you should have a clean looking signature.

Murder of a Sweet Potato

The Baby. In the highchair. With the spoon.

Signs of the Season

I don't get excited when I see Big John's Christmas tree lots going up or the Holiday food sections in the grocery store. For me, I know it is starting to look a lot like Christmas when Starbucks switches to the holiday cups.

What a home office looks like...

when you work from home while trying to care for your 9 month old.

I kept Charlotte home today to give her another day of rest. She was much better today. She didn't have a fever and was VERY busy the whole day. I think she explored every inch of the house. However, I was pretty tired by the end of the day. I think I had 4 conference calls to attend. I was on mute a lot.

I had a call at 10:45 AM that I knew I would need to participate in. So, I kept her up until 9:45 hoping she would take a 2 hour nap like she had been all week. At 10:38 I heard her scream. I thought she'd go back to sleep. I was wrong, she was ready to play. So, I brought every toy into the office and plugged the pacifier into her mouth. She actually did pretty well and I made it through the meeting without a single baby outburst. Talk about stressful.

I think she'll go to day care tomorrow and I'll go to the office. Hopefully I'll be able to get the stuff done that I should have done today.

M & N

Baby Showers and The Law

I'm not sure where this past weekend went. It flew by really fast.

Friday Judd got home before Charlotte went to bed - first time all week! He gave her a bath and put her to bed. Friday night was his night to get up with her if she cried, and Saturday morning was my morning to sleep in. Charlotte (the little stinker) slept through the entire night until 7 am Saturday morning! That is amazing for her - usually she's up at 6 - 6:15 am. Of course this happens on Judd's night. (Saturday night she was coughing from 1:30-2:30 - when it was my night.) After he got her up they went to get bagels and coffee. Saturday we just hung out around the house. This is how I found her at one point in the day after she had been playing with her Dad.

We were supposed to go to Jennifer D's on Saturday night to see her house and hang out. But, Charlotte was pretty cranky and seemed to not feel very well, so we ended up staying home. I knew there were going to be a couple of other kids there and didn't want to pass germs along.

Judd went to the grocery store while I put Charlotte to bed. I came downstairs and saw blue flashing lights in front of the house. I looked out the window and saw someone was pulled over. Then I looked closer and saw that it was our Jeep that was pulled over, and then saw that Judd was the driver! I walked outside and asked what he did wrong. Turns out he hadn't come to a complete stop at the intersection in front of our house. He was furious when he came in. I thought it was kinda funny.

Saturday night we watched "I Am Legend". This movie was one of the freakiest movies I have ever seen. I tend to stay away from anything that is rated R, especially if it is rated R for violence. I picked "I Am Legend" because I like Will Smith, and it was rated PG-13. This movie is pushing the envelope for PG-13. I don't think I would ever let my 13 year old watch this. I had to watch TV for an hour after it was over just so I could get those "people" out of my head. Then, Charlotte wakes up at 1:30 and I have to walk through the dark house by myself. It really tested my bravery :) (Yes, I'm a huge wimp)

Sunday, Renee Frisbee, Ashley Wells, and I hosted a baby shower for Allison Dawson. It was a great turnout, beautiful day, and she got some very thoughtful gifts for little baby D.

After the shower, I took Charlotte's temp because she had been coughing all day, sounded like she was wheezing, and felt pretty hot. Her temp was over 102, so we called the doc. They said to give her a breathing treatment to see if that helped her. We gave her a treatment and the nurse called us back. She asked me to put the phone up to Charlotte's mouth, then she said that she was still wheezing and thought we should bring her in. We ended up at the CHOA Immediate Care clinic on Satellite Blvd. Charlotte wasn't acting any differently, just didn't sound very good. She smiled and waved at all of the nurses and was quite the celebrity. I think 4 different people said, "Bye Charlotte" on the way out. I know they were all thinking, "Those parents are crazy, that child is acting just fine." She hasn't had a sick day yet that has kept her from smiling. She does have bronchitis and her ear infection has not improved. So, we have a stronger antibiotics medicine now. I kept her home from day care today. She has slept for about 4 hours today between both naps. Her coughing has decreased quite a bit. She is still wheezing slightly when she breathes, but is still a happy girl!

Thanksgiving Feast

It was a little early, but Charlotte's daycare had a Thanksgiving Feast on Thursday. It was at 5:00pm, so Judd couldn't make it. He was pretty sad about it. I picked her up at 4:45pm and we headed to the church's fellowship hall for the dinner. They had the tables set up by class, so we found the Infant 2 table that had Charlotte's placemat set up:

I thought that was a nice touch. It must have taken some extra time (and I'm sure those infant room teachers don't have much extra time) to get all of their footprints and hand prints. I can only imagine trying to get Charlotte to be still long enough to capture a hand print.

We had the usual Thanksgiving feast food, turkey, stuffing, rice, green beans, and pumpkin pie. It was all cooked by the daycare chef. It was actually pretty good. The after school kids did some "singing" on stage. I kept looking up there thinking there was no way Charlotte would be that big one day.

There is a 1 year old in Charlotte's class, Declan. His parents sat at our table and I got to know them. Declan is their first child, and cute, cute cute!

O is for Obama

Nope, not really. :)

I have been debating about whether or not I wanted to blog about the election. I'm not a political person. I have never felt confident about my ability to know the issues inside and out. I even debated whether to vote or not because I just wasn't so sure about either one of the candidates. But then I thought about all of the men and women in the past that fought for me to vote, and the fact that as a woman I couldn't vote until 1920, and I decided to vote.

I felt like I needed to blog about this election because history was made and I want to document my thoughts. Can you believe that just 54 years ago the Supreme Court had to tell schools that black and whites could attend the same school and now we have an African-American president? It truly does prove that anything is possible. I did not vote for Barack Obama, but I am happy that someone from humble beginnings can work hard enough to become president. I pray that he will lead our country in the right direction. He has promised change, I hope that it is change for the better.

9 months

9 months. She's been out as long as she was in. We had a doctor's appointment today. Here are her stats:

• Weight: 20 lbs 4 oz - 75%
• Height: 28 3/4"- 90 %
• Head: 17 3/4 " - 75%

While the doctor was checking her ears she said, "She has an ear infection." Judd and I just kinda looked at each other, we had no idea. She didn't have a fever, was a little cranky, but all in all acting normal. I guess she's a tough one! I'm just glad that her eardrums didn't burst yesterday when we were flying.

She continues to develop right on track, and for that we are very thankful. Over the past month she is really interacting with us a lot more. She mimicks different movements or sounds that we make. She is laughing a lot more, even seems to be a little ticklish. Within the last few days we are starting to see signs of teeth.

L is for Little Lamb

You might have already guessed it!

The Wheels on the Bus

Charlotte and I had a nice weekend visiting my family. We flew into Baltimore Friday morning and met my sister Sally at the airport. Charlotte was a good girl on the flight, slept for 2/3 of it. We hung out at Sally's place on Friday then headed over to my sister Rachel's apartment in the evening. I dressed Charlotte up in her little lamb costume so she could Trick or Treat at Aunt Rachel's. Rachel's fiancee, Adam, met us there and we headed out to dinner. Charlotte wore her costume and got some looks and smiles.

Saturday we headed to my parent's house for the rest of the weekend. We went for walks, took Charlotte shopping, and watched the Dawgs lose. My grandmother came over Saturday evening and Charlotte put on a show for her. She is quite the little entertainer. One of her new tricks is to spit food out when you put it in her mouth - she thinks that is hilarious. I don't.

Sunday morning we played then Dad made us waffles. They were yummy, Charlotte ate every bite that I gave her. We headed to the airport in the afternoon and luckily got on the 2:30 pm flight. I was pretty nervous about the flight, Charlotte had been cranky all weekend. Keeping a very wiggly 9 month old happy on an airplane is difficult at best. She was fussy for a little while, but fell asleep for about a half an hour. Once we landed and were taxing to the gate (which seemed to take a lifetime), she started to get very frustrated and loud. She wanted to be able to crawl all over the plane and I wouldn't let her. So, in an act of desperation, I laid her on my lap and started to sing "The Wheels on the Bus" while moving her feet & legs to the beat. I didn't think I was singing that loud, but I guess I was. I didn't really care, it was working, she was quiet and smiling. I had made it through most of the verses I know:

• the wheels on the bus go round and round
• the doors on the bus go open, shut
• the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish
• the people on the bus go up and down
• the driver on the bus says Move on Back
• the babies on the bus go Wah! Wah! Wah!
• the mommies on the bus go Shh! Shh! Shh!

Then I was stuck...someone from the row behind me says "Does the bus have horn?" Why, yes it does!

• The horn on the bus goes Beep Beep Beep

I looked around and about 6 people around me were just looking at Charlotte and smiling..I think the lady next to me was actually tapping her foot. Thankfully we made it to the gate and got off of the plane.

A year ago if someone had told me that I would be singing "The Wheels on the Bus" in front of a plane full of people, I would have laughed in their face. It just goes to show that you'll do almost ANYTHING to keep your baby quiet in a confined space! So, all you expectant moms out there...brush up on your children's songs.