Life Lately

It feels odd to not be doing weekly updates now, and I feel like I am missing a lot of blogging now without it!

We have had a pretty busy last couple of weeks.  The weekend before last Uncle Angel and his crew came to visit us.  Due to some around-a-bout directions, they didn't make it to our house until 1:00 a.m. on Friday night, but we greeted them nice and early Saturday morning! We took a trip to our favorite breakfast place these days - Granny's (in the gas station near Bojangles...haha).  It's SO good, and Nolan got in a good bit of toast and some eggs!  I have discovered that he will eat a lot more if we give it to him on a utensil rather than have him feed himself.  #onlychildsyndrome :)

Later that day we decided to take a trip to the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh.  It's only $5 to get in, and we knew it would keep Angel's boys entertained for a while.  Nolan loved all the people-watching, but I didn't let him down too much.  It was basically pandemonium and the one time I put him down this little girl came straight for him, grabbed his hair and poked at his eyes.  I was like, "what the heck are you doing?!"  She was exactly his size, and even when the mom pulled her off the first time, she went straight back at him.  I almost had an episode in there - Anthony kindly moved me away before I embarrassed myself :)

Aside from that it was a really cool place and I foresee us making lots of trips there in the future!  On the way home Anthony and the gang stopped for lots of yummy things to make a crab boil, and I took Nolan home to get him into bed and made a yummy buffalo chicken dip.  We had a good night eating and enjoying our new fire pit.  I can't wait to break that thing out over Christmas - I am sure the guys will spend many hours around it, and I am already dreaming about how many s'mores combinations I can make.

 

This one is kinda blurry, but he is walking with us now (albeit slowly), and it's SO cute!

 

My mom FINALLY came back from Panama, and I was so excited to pick her up last Monday.  Her flight got in around 7:45, so I went to the gym and did a little consignment shopping before I had to pick her up.  Anthony and Nolan had plenty of fun, and this was the picture Anthony sent me while I was gone...

 

 

Anthony decided to join Nolan for his "bath time," but wore his swim trunks.  He cracks me up...there is no limit to the funny things these two do together!  I fear the day when Nolan can actually contribute ideas :)



 



Last week consisted of getting Nolan healthy, and I got some great news at daycare.  Nolan was working on moving up/over to the next room, which they do for most kids around the age of one.  I wasn't super excited about this, since I love his current teachers and I really wanted him to stay in that room.  Well, last Friday when I went to pick him up the room had been rearranged (they moved out half of the cribs and a few toys).  When I asked what they were doing, Ms. Trisha told me that they were converting Nolan's room into a 1-year-old room, and that he would be staying in there!  Hooray!  Apparently, they have not had an influx of new babies, so all the kids in his room were aging at the same rate and they just converted it rather than moving everyone around.  I am very happy about this.

Another new development will markedly save me hours each week, but I am a bit sad about it.  This past weekend I actually cleaned his bottle steamer one last time, and packed up all of his old bottles and stored them away.  Since Nolan is pretty much strictly on a sippy cup aside from morning and bedtime, we don't need them anymore.  I can't even speculate how much time we have both spent washing bottles, packing and labeling bottles and toting them here and there.  It's like the end of an era or something, and if I had enough time, I would shed a tear over it!

And lastly, I was searching through my phone, and found this old picture from this Summer.  Nolan better get used to all the kisses...they aren't stopping anytime soon!
 

 

You can clearly tell what's running through his mind :)

Yikes

Monday started off like any other Monday, and I was excited because it was Nolan's 13-month mark.  He had developed a bit of a cold on Sunday, and we just figured it was due in part to the cold air at Saturday's oyster roast.  He didn't sleep all that well on Sunday, but that was nothing out of the ordinary.

He didn't have a fever, so I sent him to school since Anthony and I both are out of PTO already and my Mom and Tom are out of the country.

I got a call around 4:45 from daycare, and instantly did an internal groan.  Anytime you get a call from daycare it's never good, and I think my heart still stops a beat each time it happens. Well, they said Nolan was having trouble breathing and seemed to be wheezing.  This got my attention, of course, but I still didn't panic too much since I knew he had a cold and usually he sounds pretty bad but doesn't have huge attacks of not being able to breathe.

On the way to his daycare I called to check on him, and they said it sounded like he was getting worse and they were keeping him at the front desk.  I told them to please take him down the street to his pediatrician if he got worse/starting turning blue around his mouth, and put my foot to the floor.

When I made it to his daycare, I ran in to find him in the arms of his favorite teacher just sitting there with his head on her shoulder.  He was grunting with each breath, and I could see his little chest moving in and out trying to breathe.  I didn't even clock him out or anything - I got him into his car seat as fast as I could and flew to his doctor's office.

Thankfully, I caught a nurse as she was leaving and found out the office closed 30 minutes before!  I told her look, "my son can't breathe and he needs a breathing treatment RIGHT NOW."  I knew I didn't have time to make it home in time, and wasn't sure I could treat something like this anyway.  She took one look at him and said "let's go" and we ran inside and she let me back in where thankfully there were nurses and a doctor still there.

They were all so awesome and made me feel as calm as possible at that moment.  They instantly got on to checking his pulse/oxygen level, and got out the breathing machine to start a treatment.  After his treatment, he was still grunting, and they lifted his little shirt and you could see how hard he was working to breathe in.  They decided to give him an oral steroid and kept taking his pulse/ox for the next few minutes.  I loved the doctor that ended up helping us.  She said the only thing keeping them from calling the paramedics was that his oxygen levels were good.  She was amazed at that fact, because according to her "everything else looks so bad."  It took everything in me not to cry, but I was so freaked out I just functioned.

His oxygen levels stayed above 95, so we just hung out for a little while longer to see if he would calm down.  Odd thing, that when we arrived he didn't have a fever, and in the middle of our visit he started to get super flushed cheeks and starting burning up.  He was breathing fast, and the doctor said it was the result of the steroids + breathing treatment + fever.  The last pulse/ox measurement they did clocked Nolan's heartbeat at 202 bpm.  Poor little guy - he must have felt wired!

After about 30 minutes he ended up calming down and started to become more like himself - smiling and talking and moving around a bit.  She said he had some fluid in his ears so we were going to get Augmentin for that, and then the steroid to take too.  She recommended that we go straight home and do another breathing treatment, and then we were to do them around the clock every 4 hours until the next evening.

We got home and did exactly what she said.  Nolan had a really rough night that, and Anthony and I knew he had to just feel terrible.  We were all suffering from the same respiratory thing, but this just caught Nolan off guard.  Anthony stayed home with him the next day since the doctor said he needed "one on one" monitoring until we were sure he was doing better.

It was one heck of a scary day - I hate this stuff.  I wasn't prepared for a "real" flare up, and it's just mentally and emotionally draining.  I guess at least we now know what a serious attack looks like, but I pray I don't ever have to witness another one as long as I live!

13 Months!

It's weird to only be doing "monthly" posts now as opposed to "weekly" posts!  I must admit it's a bit easier to keep up with, at least in the picture department.  The downside is that with my current "mom brain" I have to write little notes down throughout the month or else I wouldn't remember anything.  Really I do remember it all, but it's just that it's hard to recall everything when I go to write it down.  I really hate it, but I just can't seem to remember anything these days!  I feel like my mind is constantly going in 100 different directions at a time, and I just don't have the same mental capacity like I used to. 

Anyway, on to little man!  This has been a great month for Nolan, and he has learned/mastered so many things over the last few weeks.

Eating: This is a big subject/issue for us.  Not because Nolan is a bad eater - he actually has eaten every single thing I have ever fed him (edamame, spinach, broccoli, sweet potatoes, yogurt, you name it).  Our issue has been texture - up until recently!  For a long time, Nolan would eat anything - as long as you pureed the heck out of it!  Getting him to eat finger/chunky foods was a big challenge at first.  He ate puffs like nobody's business, but anything else got spit out (or thrown up) before he even realized he liked the taste.  All of this seemed okay with me, until it seemed like he was falling behind in his class with his eating habits.  So annoying to compare your kid to what other kids were doing, but I still noticed. 

He was also still waking up at least once a night usually, and for a while I wouldn't nurse him since we were working on sleep training.  Well, everything seemed to change after his one year appointment!  After we learned that he needed to gain weight, I tried quite a few new recipes that focused on some good fats and lots of protein.  My "purees" of chicken and brown rice and hamburger with butternut squash didn't turn out as smooth as usual, so I held my breath and gave them to him anyway.  And he ate them - and slept all night long!  It was such a momentous occasion - poor little guy finally had a full belly and wasn't hungry!  All of my efforts to feed him the "healthy" stuff were starving him (ok, not really, but that's what I felt like).  His dinners of cereal, and several vegetables or beans/fruits just weren't keeping him satiated all night.

And, as if almost overnight, he began to eat finger foods! I started circling more "approved" foods on his menu at school, and began to get reports that he was eating all of the foods he was served each day.  We were SO relieved - relieved that he was eating like he should, and hopefully would begin to be the chunky monkey we used to see when he was a baby!

Now, he still loves anything we feed him, and particularly loves bread (he is his momma's child) and beans (his dad's child).  Haha :)

Waving "Bye Bye": This is something he has been tinkering with for a while now, but it starting to use it more consistently, or at least most of the time when we ask him to do it.  He has also started to "blow kisses" which I think started out from him doing his Indian call with the back of his hand.  It started off with him making the sound, and then turned into him smacking the back of his hand with his mouth and then throwing his hand out.  So best I can guess is that we are progressing into the blowing kiss stage :)

W-A-L-K-I-N-G: I don't have to outline what a huge milestone this is!  We have had a couple of "steps" here and there, but most of those involved a couple of steps as he was falling towards one of us, so we didn't count those.  We counted his official first steps on October 24th - where he intentionally walked back and forth between the two of us!  I caught it on video, but I don't have the video loaded at this point.  He was so proud of himself, but still continues to like to crawl everywhere.  I guess he figures he can get to what he wants faster by crawling rather than having to "concentrate" on walking.  Impatient much?  Not sure where he gets that from...

Words: Nolan doesn't have that many words in his repertoire right now, but you can tell he is constantly looking at things and wondering what they are.  Usually, this is done by pointing and grunting at something :)  He does say "Momma," "Dada" and "ball."  Anthony will tell you that "Dada" was his first word, but it really was "ball."  He sputtered dada a long time before he actually knew what it meant, but ball was the first word used in the correct context.  I can, however, give Anthony credit for teaching it to him!  It was so cute - we went to Char-Grill a couple of weeks ago, and they had little pumpkins out on each of the tables.  Nolan kept looking around going "ball" "ball" "ball!" at all of them.  We explained to him that they were pumpkins, but I guess they do look like orange balls so he was right!

Halloween:  I covered this in another post, but this year was very different from last year's Halloween!  He was just a tiny little 3-week old poot then!  Next year is sure to be even more fun since I suspect we will be putting effort into a real costume then :)

Throwing:  Nolan has entered that stage where throwing anything is fun.  He particularly likes to throw things off of his highchair for Vegas to eat, and behind his dresser when I am changing him.  He has a pretty good arm too!  He launched a toy off his dresser the other day from laying down and it went pretty far!  He somewhat played a game of "catch" with me the other day, but it basically consisted of him rolling the ball back and forth to me two times :)  It will be interesting to see what sports he takes interest in when he gets older - perhaps it will be baseball like his Papa and Uncle Cade...

Health: Nolan has had a few stuffy noses here and there, but is seeming to become better at fighting them off on his own now.  He still gets his Pulmicort breathing treatment twice a day, which we think is helping.

Oyster Roast!

This past weekend we were lucky enough to be able to go to Kim and Brandon's Annual Oyster Roast.  This was our first year attending since we have always lived in Georgia.  It's typically a kid-free weekend, but Nolan tagged along since we didn't have anyone to watch him - he was a perfect little gentleman and had a great time too.

And to be honest, I was happy to be able to dress him up in his cute new clothes - his mini Carhart's and warm vest were too cute!

We all ended up getting sick on Sunday from being out in the cold, but it was super fun while it lasted! :)

The first couple of photos were taken by my friend Robin, and I tried to pull them off of Shutterfly so they may be a bit fuzzy...

 

School Pictures!

I was so excited when I found out Nolan's daycare was going to do school pictures.  I know they are sort of cheesy, but I love all of these memories and think how cool it's going to be to look back at these one day! 

I loved all three shots, so I just purchased the CD of the images instead of a photo package.

 

I didn't realize they would be full-length photos, or I may have put some pants on him, but oh well :)  His little bruised up legs are just a reminder of this crazy age!

Trick or Treat!

We didn't end up having as many trick-or-treaters as we expected this year, but I was fine with that!  I would guess we had about 40 or so kids come by.  They came in big bunches, so it was hard to count for sure.  I would guess they started around 7:30 or so, but were done by 8:45.  It was perfect timing because we were able to wind down around the same time I put Nolan to bed.

Nolan testing out his new hat and waiting for the trick-or-treaters to arrive...

 

 

My best attempt at a family photo...poor Vegas :)

My mom seems to have forgotten that I even went to USC...the last few things she has bought him have been ORANGE and have a TIGER on them...eek.  At least he wore it for Halloween - I call his costume "Dress like the team you despise." :)

 

These cute little jammies actually glowed in the dark...imagine my surprise to find that out in his room, in the dark, while they were hanging on his closet.  Nice.

We also attended another costume party, and sadly, didn't know that until the day before.  Not so sadly (or still kinda sad depending on  how you look at it), we were able to throw our matching outfits together without buying anything...ha!

You can't really tell, but Nolan had on his overalls too!