What to do?

Recently I have been racking my brain trying to think of some way to make a little extra money. $50 a month, $100 a month. I don't care. I just need something. 

I have been trying to get in touch with my crafty side thinking of something I could make and try to sell online. I figure this is the best thing for me. No boss, on my own time, and contact through email. With a baby this is the best way. 

Scott and I have had a few thoughts, but thought I could ask all of you. What do you think I should do????

Not So Innocent

As Carter draws closer and closer to a year old, it seems that his little innocent baby self is fading. Don't get me wrong. He is still my adorable baby boy, but we are really starting to see his disobedient side. 

We have already seen it before. Crawling back to something he was told to not touch for the 5th time and getting angry when told "no". Then there was the other day in the park. Scott was at work and it was a beautiful day so I thought I would take Carter on a walk to the park for a little while and play. We have done this many times before and we play on the swings and slide and then go and sit in the grass. He is usually really good about staying on the grass, and I had brought a blanket and toys, but this day his curiosity was running high and he really wanted to go explore the concrete. I would usually let him do this, but he didn't have shoes on  and I was actually so exhausted that I didn't want to have to chase after him constantly. (I know, such a lame excuse, but the truth). I kept telling him 'no' and moving him back over to the grass where our stuff was. Of course he wasn't listening and would go right back. This went on multiple times with Carter getting very frustrated. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "Why didn't you just let him go?". Well, I thought about that and I easily could have, but then that ruins all consistency and teaches Carter that if he keeps doing it I will finally give in. No sir, I will not do that. I have to make my yes, yes and my no, no. 

After he went back again for probably the 15th time, I finally got in his face and said, "no". Well, he took that little hand of his and smacked me right on the face. I was shocked and grabbed that little hand, gave it a swat and said "no, you may not hit me!". He then takes his other hand and yanks on my hair. I of course was upset with him, but then for some reason, I just started laughing, which he saw, so he of course started laughing with me. I know, I deserve a trophy for good parenting skills. Basically everything I had done up to that point was thrown in the garbage. 

I think my laughter came about from see this type of behavior out of him for the first time. I was upset with him, but then there was something that was almost cute about it. There will be other things that seem to be 'cute' as well, but from here on out, if we feel like we have to laugh we need to quickly turn our head away so he can not see our face. It might be cute now, but it won't be down the road and if we don't nip it in the bud now, it will be a disaster later. After all, a baby does have a sinful nature and they really aren't as innocent as one would like to think. 

A Great Day

Scott, Carter and I had a very nice Valentine's Day together. We had a nice morning drinking coffee while playing on the floor with Carter and then had a wonderful lunch at Sue's Java (favorite coffee shop!). The only bummer part of our day was that we were hoping there would be snow up around Whiskeytown so we drove all the up there. What we found was just more rain. But at least we were out of the house some. :) That night we made a great dinner, had a very tasty bottle of wine, and ate some treats that I made the day before. This was the menu:

Dinner

Chicken breast halves, brie and raspberry preserve wrapped in pastry dough

Garlic-butter pasta

Sautéed Asparagus

Dessert

Chocolate covered strawberries

Shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate

Drink

Garnacha De Fuego 2006 

(Great wine for under $10)

All homemade(except the wine of course)and quite delicious. I love cooking so it's always fun for me to try new things. I'm so thankful to have a husband that is an adventurous eater. Here are some pictures of my creations. Thanks goes out to my wonderful husband for taking so much interest in trying to get a good picture of it all. :)

Just Some Fun Pics

Just wanted to post some cute pictures of Carter.

Such a messy eater :)

Carter with Gigi

A Traumatic Experience

Today I learned a big lesson through a traumatic experience. 

A few months ago I learned my first lesson to no longer put Carter on our bed. He had become a little more mobile at that point (though not yet crawling) and I was afraid that he would roll off the bed. Well, even though I kept my eyes on him almost constantly, it only took one second of me turning my head for him to roll off landing flat on his back. That was horrible, but he was okay. He only cried for about a minute or two and it was more out of shock than actually being hurt. 

Well, today's incident added a whole new level to falling off the bed. I had been out running errands with Carter stopping by the church and then the grocery store before heading home. My usual routine is to take Carter up first and then come back down to get grocery's. So, like usual, I sat him down (well away from the door) with his sippy cup and snacks. He was occupied so I ran back down bringing up grocery's. I got them all up but then had some boxes of stuff I needed to bring up last. As I walked out of the apartment, I know I closed the door, but not all of the way. There was still enough of the door sticking out that Carter was able to grab the edge and pull it open. Can you see where my story is leading???

I'm at the bottom of the stairs holding my four boxes when I look up and see my precious little boy looking down at me from the top of the stairs, putting his little hand down trying to reach the next step. My heart suddenly stopped as I see my little boy falling head over heal down the stairwell (and if you know our stairs, you know they are very steep). I yelled "NO CARTER!!", dropped everything in my arms and sprinted up the stairs to grab him as fast as I could. 

I caught him when he was about half way down. He was of course crying and all I could do was hold him tight, rock back and forth, and tell him it was okay. I just sat there with him for about 2 minutes looking him over with my teary eyes to make sure he was okay. I took him inside and for the next 15 minutes all I could do was shakily tell him how sorry I was, that I would never let that happen again and thanking God that my baby was okay. 

The image of him toppling down keeps replaying in my mind over and over making me feel like a horrible mother. But I know that kids do get hurt and that as parents, you can not protect them all the time.....but I could have at least prevented this one. I feel so awful!! Of course Carter only cried for maybe 3 minutes or so and then was completely fine wanting to play. I think it was much worse for me than him. And now I know to always close the door all the way before going down the stairs. 

Patience

Being a parent is all about patience. Scott and I have recently discovered how true this is with Carter's recent accomplishment of crawling. Yes, everyone applaud him as we are very proud of him, but it's also opened up a whole new world to him and loads of patience for us. 

Before, when he was just rolling around like a bug, he could only go so far and get into so much. Now that he's crawling, he is pretty much everywhere and into everything. We find ourselves constantly telling him, "no touch!" and redirecting him somewhere else. Of course, he turns himself right back around and slowly reaches that little sausage hand of his back to the forbidden object as his eyes are glued on us to see if we're watching.  The first 5-10 times we find that we are turning away with laughter as we think, "what a stinker" and crack up. But by about the 20th time, your patience starts to wear on you. 

Scott and I were so excited for him to crawl and would make a point to work with him on it everyday. Now that he can, we sometimes look at each other and wonder why we pushed for it so much. :) Of course seeing our little one accomplish a huge task and discover more of the world around him is so much better than him being stuck in one spot. We are just finally seeing that swatting his hand saying "no touch" is only the beginning of our loving and patience demanding parent/child relationship. 

Christmas Miracle

Lately we have been trying a new sleeping schedule for Carter, hoping to get him sleeping through the night. For the past 8 months he has slept through the night 3 times, while all other times waking up every 2 to 3 hours. Enough is enough! We began by reading a great book called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, (thanks to Val for letting me borrow it) and putting it's practices to work right away. Carter was put on a strict sleeping schedule as we discovered that he was so overly exhausted that he just couldn't sleep well. 

First we began comforting him whenever he woke up crying at night until he went back to sleep, but then the more I read in the book, the more Scott and I decided that we needed to stop going to him when he cries and just let him cry it out. It would be doing him a favor by letting him figure out how to put himself back to sleep on his own instead of relying on us. We had tried this before, but was never consistent and would end up arguing and going in sane lying in bed listening to him. So we thought that it would be a better idea to just get up and watch tv or a movie until he put himself back to sleep. Two nights ago he woke up at 3:20am (which was actually pretty good for him) and we drug ourselves into the living room and watched Conan O'Brien and the news for 40 minutes until he went to sleep. It was great as instead of getting angry and snapping at each other, we were laughing and actually having a good time. 

Last night, we were expecting the same thing, but lo and behold, it was a miracle. He went to bed at 7pm and didn't wake up until 5am! I did wake up around 3am expecting him to cry at any minute, but, silence. If he keeps this up, it will be a true Christmas miracle (besides the TRUE Christmas miracle of Jesus). Way to go Carter!

Now, some cute pictures of my son.

Cute pics Daddy took

One of my faves

Evan wrapped him in newspaper and he was thrilled

He likes to play with our shoes