Our One Tooth Wonder

Can you believe our one tooth wonder caused all of this damage?

After comforting Carter during some teething pain we were trying to get him back on track with putting himself to sleep. One night I went in to check on him and his chin and sleeper sack were drenched and covered with little brown specks. I couldn't figure out what it was - then I went to inspect his crib and that it what I found.

He has been standing up in his crib whenever he gets upset and he refuses to sit down by himself. While standing he gnaws at the crib railing. Thankfully we found this contraption at Babies R Us which is saving Carter's tooth and his crib (and bringing much needed peace of mind to his mommy and daddy).

But he definitely left his mark.

Progress

Despite my feelings of failure at the end of the day Saturday, we managed to check several things off the list by the end of the weekend. Here is a quick update...

.

*Lay mulch: I think you heard enough about this problem in my last post. We hope to have a delivery this weekend.
.

*Finish garden boxes and plant seeds : check.

We plan to fill in around pavers with mulch.

*Stain dining room chairs: check. (sort of - staining is tough.)
*Install hooks for roll down shade to protect from wind: check.

This was an easy one but the hooks had been sitting in a drawer for 2 weeks so I had to put it on the list to get it done. :)*Finagle some sort of shade for our pergola: what do you think? nice shade, huh? We are still evaluating our options but are leaning toward something like this. Adam hung this plastic while we were painting our chairs because it started to sprinkle.

*Find some patio furniture: check.

Ended up with a table from Target and chairs from Lowe's. They match perfectly and fit our budget too. I have found over the years that most furniture sets have a piece that is a good deal and then other pieces that are more expensive. At Target, the table was cheap but the chairs too expensive. At Lowe's the table was too small, but the chairs just right. So we just combined the two to get just what we wanted. *Continue to baby proof house:check.

This is Carter's new favorite toy. I think we might have to move it to the bottom of the main stairwell because Carter likes to climb the gate rails and hold on tight.

So, all in all a very productive weekend.

"New" Wheels

Check out this "new" set of wheels Adam picked up for Carter during an afternoon walk. (one man's trash is another little man's treasure) It needs a little love, but it's a classic.

Click on the May photo album to see how much Carter loves his new ride.

Happy 11 Month Birthday Carter!

If at first you don't succeed...

...try, try again. We had to put that phrase to good use today.

We have some special visitors coming at the end of June and we have a list almost a mile long of things we want to get done around the house before they come. The funny thing is, they wouldn't care at all if we did nothing on that list before they arrived, but their visit is a good inspiration for us to keep pushing forward. For this long weekend we picked a few things on that list to get done.

- lay mulch

- finish garden boxes and plant seeds

- stain dining room chairs

- install hooks for roll down shade to protect from wind

- finagle some sort of shade for our pergola

- find some patio furniture

- continue to baby proof house

At the end of day one we are in the middle of several items on the list. As of 3:00 today we were pretty bummed because several attempts at completing these items failed.

We called this week to have mulch delivered today at 11:00. At 2:00 on Friday afternoon they called to inform us they were out of the mulch we ordered. They were kind enough to offer a more expensive type of mulch but after asking questions about it we learned this pricier mulch was old wood pallets which probably had pressure treated wood and which used to hold who knows what chemicals. Did we want this in our garden beds or on the ground for sweet Carter to inspect? No thank you. They ended up only offering an apology for not being able to deliver this week so we plan to find a new supplier hopefully by next weekend. Bummer.

After Carter went down for his morning nap we got right to work in the garden. We finished the fourth and final raised bed but as we were laying newspaper and getting ready to lay the paving stones for our path, Carter woke from his nap and was ready to eat. Time out for that project.

Next it was a trip to Lowe's for staining supplies and a trip to Target for patio furniture. The patio furniture at Target was more expensive in the store than it was online so we walked away empty handed.

We got home just in time for Carter's afternoon nap and we were pretty excited to take a shot at staining our dining room chairs. We bought them at an unfinished wood store at a great price and thought we could handle the staining. Boy were we wrong. The chairs have a "X" back with lots of nooks and crannys which makes for very difficult staining. This is what the first coat looked like.

Pretty awful, huh? Yeah. We thought so too. So once Carter woke up we made a quick trip back to Lowe's to go for Plan B - spray painting the chairs cream. Our plan is to add foam to the seats and cover them in this fabric. So we think the cream chairs will look nice. We sure hope so. The good news is that we completed one chair and the spray paint worked and looks great! So guess where we are headed tomorrow? Back to Lowe's to buy some more spray paint. There you have it - our day in a nutshell. After re-reading it I sound pretty pitiful don't I? Don't mean to whine so much. On a bright note I had a fun day hanging out with my husband (who didn't have to study) and my son (who is the happiest little kiddo) - what could be better than that.

To end on another bright note - check out our planters on our front porch. Just a few short weeks ago the green vine was barely hanging over the pot. Now the vine is touching the porch and...
...we have new blooms. I forget what these are called, but I really like the look. They are all starting to burst open. Beautiful!
We have another full day planned for tomorrow - planning to scratch a few things off the list.

JDMUEPLEEDAPQRSTUV

What do all of these random letters mean? Well, Adam can now put most of them (not the QRSTUV) on his business card. This morning he took and passed the LEED AP exam. I am pretty proud of him but also pretty excited that the nights and weekends of studying are behind us once again (hopefully for a bit longer this time!)

For those of you that are curious, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. In a nutshell it is a rating system for green buildings that measures how well they are constructed and operate in different categories such as energy efficiency, water consumption, etc. The new LEED AP could explain it much better himself but hopefully you get the idea and if not, click here or here for much more info.

Congratulations Adam!!! Carter and I look forward to taking you to see Old Crow Medicine Show tonight to celebrate!

GIVEAWAY: In Need of Practice and Name

I have been busy making bibs and t-shirts for Carter and a few others but I definitely need some more practice. And because Adam would prefer that Carter not have 20 personalized t-shirts hanging in his closet I need your help.

Here's the deal - I am giving away a t-shirt or bib to the first 10 lucky readers who leave a comment on this post. Here's the catch: I need a name for my future business. So, I figure if you can leave a comment with a catchy name idea I could make you something that you might like. What do you say? Go ahead. Click on that comment button. If you don't have a little one yourself they would make great gifts.

Here's what I need to know from you when you leave your comment:

1) Item: bib or t-shirt and size (12 mo, 18 mo, 24 mo, 3T, 4T)
{I need a smaller hoop before I can do onesies or anything smaller than 12 mo}

2) Applique or Monogram: For now just one or the other - I still need to purchase the software to combine the applique and monogram
{there are lots of start-up costs and I am doing my best to take it one step at a time.}

Applique Options:

- train
- sailboat
- beach ball*
- sand pail
- converse sneaker
- tie
- surf boards
- flip flops
- pink lemonade glass
- bird*
- whale*
- one letter of alphabet*

* see Embroidery photo album at top left of blog

3) Business Name Ideas: I am looking for something simple but catchy. Possibly a one word name like - Dogwood or Popsicle or Bowtie - I don't particularly like any of those but you get the idea. I am thinking that if I found that perfect word/name my website/business cards would say something like - Popsicle - Children's Embroidery.

Another possibility we came up with was Sweet T Designs. But, this is pretty similar to Sweet Pea Designs which is the name of a popular stationary line.

One final random option is Little Bittle - this is a nickname Adam sometimes calls me and I just think it sounds fun but it is probably a bit too silly.

You can see I need some help - please give me any ideas you have!

I hope to hear from you guys real soon because I am itching to experiment some more with my new machine. Once you leave a comment with the basic information I requested above I will e-mail you to figure out a few more details such as color preference, mailing address, etc.

Thanks for your help! I look forward to making something for your little ones.

Christmas in May?

Gram came for a visit this weekend and as usual she showed up with a few bags from the toy store (as well as another car full of our stuff that has been packed away at her house for the past 3 years). Whenever Gram enters a toy store--or an aisle of toys at Kohls for that matter--she just can't resist herself. Carter and I always look forward to new toys to play with when she arrives and she did not disappoint. I was so excited to see this walker - Carter loves cruising on the ottoman these days and I can tell he is ready to explore other areas by foot. We help him walk around all the time but it will be great for him to be able to scoot around on this walker. He did have one tumble but it didn't seem to phase him for too long and I am sure there will be more.

Gram has been working all weekend to teach Carter how to say Ma Ma but still no luck. He is getting good at making a cow sound though. He puts his lips together and makes a "mmmm" sound. Perhaps Ma Ma will come shortly after that - or perhaps he will start referring to me as "Moooo". He is also rolling his r's nonstop. It is hilarious. When we are out driving around town he will just sit in the back carrying on an entire conversation of rolled r's.

We had a fun class at Romp N Roll yesterday and Gram enjoyed it too. She mainly observed but every once in awhile Carter would spot Gram in the distance and would take off crawling toward her. It was really sweet. Gram also bonded with Carter during his naps yesterday. She was 3 for 3 in getting him to go down - I am tempted to go confiscate her keys before she wakes so she can't leave. While she played with Carter I experimented with some more embroidery projects. I have accidentally stitched a couple of shirts together (got to work on my hooping) but am learning new lessons with each shirt and am loving it.

You may remember our devastation when the x-box did not show up in our boxes during Gram's last visit. Guess what - she found the box and we opened it Friday night only to discover the power cord was missing. The controllers were packed--all neatly wrapped up in a basket, no less--as was the connector from the x-box to the tv but there was no power cable. Just our luck. After inspecting the hook-up for the power Adam had the brilliant idea to borrow the power cable from the printer and we were in business. We played a few rounds of SSX Tricky and had some good laughs and fun memories. Nick - it will be waiting for you during your next visit.

Totally Obsessed

With what you might ask? This new embroidery machine.

I have been dreaming of purchasing an embroidery machine for some time now. Originally it started as a wish to make cute appliqued and monogrammed clothes for Carter and also as gifts. I started researching machines but somehow other priorities kept pushing this desire to the back burner. But it kept resurfacing. Again and again. So I started researching once again and started scheming how I could make this work. To make a long story (over 6 months) short...after a lot more research, some bargain shopping, and some help from Gram, I finally took the plunge...and I love it!

I am still experimenting and have so much to learn but here are a couple of my first projects.

I promise to keep posting pictures of Carter on this blog but I must warn you that this new hobby/obsession might creep into a blog post or two over the next months.

Heavy Sleeper

Although we had a little bit of a setback last night I am very thankful that Carter's sleeping habits have improved. He is still taking two naps each day but we have implemented end times for those naps to protect his night time sleep. I don't let him sleep past 11:00 in the morning or past 4:00 in the afternoon. Usually he sleeps around three hours total during the day and around eleven hours each night. The cut off times for the daily naps seems to really be helping. Before we started this approach we followed the "never wake a sleeping baby" approach. But that was killing us at night because he was sleeping so well during the day that he wanted to stay awake way past his normal bedtime. One day last weekend he was sleeping so hard when I went in to get him that I was able to snap a few pictures. Such a cutie sleeping with his soothing blanket "Hippie."

And lately he has been sleeping so hard at night that he wakes up with crazy hair, like this:

I am trying to hold out until his one year birthday for a haircut but am not sure if I am going to make it!

Day Trip

Carter and I took a day trip yesterday back to Charlottesville to meet this adorable little guy.

My cousin, Chuck, just finished his second year at UVA Law and is about to head south for his summer internship so I had to go meet baby Chase before they left. He is precious. And quite the cuddle bug. His parents say he really likes to be held which was no problem for me. Although it was very different to hold a tiny baby again. Everyone always said how weird it was to hold Carter when he was little after getting used to holding a bigger baby and now I totally agree. Desiree, the proud mama, tried to hold both boys for a picture, but Carter was a little squirmy. I was surprised when I looked at the picture at how big Carter looks compared to Chase. I am used to him being the tiny one - not the big baby!

And here is the wonderful big sister, Natalie. She just turned three and her Mommy and Daddy couldn't say enough good things about how great a big sister she has been to Chase. She had fun playing with Carter too and shared her toys with him while we were visiting.

Sweet Baby Chase tuckered out while we were there and decided to take a quick nap on Daddy's shoulder. I bet he is glad to have Daddy home after all the crazy hours of studying for final over the past couple of weeks. Congrats on finishing year 2, Chuck!

On our way back home we swung by Monticello to see the new Visitor Center as well as visit some old friends. It was a gorgeous day and the mountaintop was packed. As I was waiting in line to get a ticket to ride the shuttle bus to the top I overheard that the next available house tour was two hours later. Yikes. Good thing I just wanted to visit friends and good thing they have an INCREDIBLE new Visitor Center for guests to enjoy while waiting to tour the house. This was my first visit back since the new Visitor Center opened and I was thrilled to see how wonderful it all turned out. If any of you reading this blog are in the area I definitely recommend planning a visit to the home of Mr. Jefferson. Seriously. It is incredible. Here is an overhead picture of the new center. It has a cafe with yummy food from Brix, a stunning Museum Shop that made me wish I still got a discount, and all brand new exhibits to learn more about TJ and his time at Monticello. Plan your visit now!!!

I couldn't resist taking a couple of shots of my cute baby boy in front of the house. He was all smiles and if you look really closely at this close up you can see Carter's first tooth! Yippee!!!

Speaking of Carter - he is just waking from his morning nap, so I must run for now.

Oink Oink

Carter has taken a fascination with books. We now have them scattered about the house for him to play with. Yesterday he would read one in the kitchen then crawl to the living room to read another then he was on to the playroom to read some more. Carter's reading includes turning the pages over and over again. He still isn't interested in any of the words on the page - just the pictures. And a lot of the pictures include animals. So what do I do instead of reading the words? I make animal noises. Lots of animal noises.

You should hear my pig snort. I get Carter giggles for that one every time.

I do a pretty good rooster too.

Last Friday I took Carter to an animal farm where you can pet and feed the animals. Don't worry - we didn't take advantage of that this visit - we just looked at the live animals while I made lots of funny animal noises. I am not sure that he fully caught on to the whole experience but I imagine it will only get more fun as he gets older. For now he seems just as interested in the squirrels and birds that play around our house but it was a fun adventure that I look forward to again - perhaps the next time with Carter's cousins who are visiting in June!

3 outta 4 Ain't Bad

Boy did we work hard on my first Mother's Day. But it was a gorgeous day and I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact we even had a few hours of Carter free working thanks to some generous babysitting from our across the street neighbors. After the yummy breakfast we headed off to Lowe's. On Saturday we had calculated out how many landscape timbers and nails we needed to form our garden beds. As we were loading the 20th or so timber onto the cart we started having second thoughts (really ninth thoughts - we can really overthink things sometimes (most of the time)). We wondered if we might be attracting termites to our yard (last week there were some termites flying around an old stump across the street). We wondered if we would have to replace these next year. Plus, the timbers at Lowe's were looking pretty rough. So, we unloaded the 20 or so timbers and headed for the cedar aisle. (Thankfully only one timber fell on my foot during this process.) The original plan was to do 3 six-foot boxes and one long box in the back. The cedar boards came in 10 foot lengths so we quickly changed our plans to 3 five foot square boxes and 1 twenty by 3 foot box in the back which made for simple measuring, easy cutting, and less waste. We rented a truck from Lowe's for an hour, brought everything home, and got right to work.

At this point it was past Carter's first morning nap so I put him to bed hoping he would get an extra long nap so we could work longer. No such luck. The little man woke up exactly 1 1/2 hours later - just like clock work. Thankfully we had run into our neighbors across the street and they offered to babysit for an hour or so if we were interested. I agreed (probably a little too quickly - especially on Mother's Day!) and after a quick lunch packed a diaper bag of supplies and sent Carter off with some of his favorite neighbors. They took Carter for a stroll just down the road to the retirement home where Nelson's mother lives. Apparently Carter was all smiles and made plenty of others smile too. I think everyone had a great time. And we completed 3 of the 4 boxes.

Thankfully some other neighbors lent us a carpenter square and level so we could make the squares actually square...well, almost square. By the end of the day we were beat. And so was Carter. He went right to sleep which gave us a chance to grill outside and enjoy a nice dinner under our pergola. All in all it was a fabulous day and I feel pretty blessed to have such a precious baby boy and a super thoughtful husband who is pretty good with power tools too.

Check out the almost finished product. We are going to fill in the pathways with mulch and then paving stones. Eventually we are going to plant sedum (kind of like this)around the paving stones. I hope to get some planting done this week...

Carter came out before his bed time to approve our work. Only a matter of time before he is running along those pathways (and hopefully eating lots of our produce! By the way, thanks for all of the comments with recommendations for introducing new foods. We are trying them all and are making some progress. Yay!)

In Honor of Mother's Day...

...Carter has perfected saying "Da Da." Take a listen.

Aside from the constant "Da Da" noises around here, I am having a great first Mother's Day. After a yummy waffle and scrambled eggs breakfast we are off to Lowes for some more garden supplies and then work.

Here are a few questions for you to ponder this Mother's Day...

1) In what ways did/does motherhood change you?

2) What's the one thing you would have done differently as a mom?

3) What is your favorite motherhood memory?

4) In what ways do you think I'm like you? And not like you?

5) What's the best thing I can do for you right now?

Gwynnie & Peggy - you don't have to answer in the comments section but we just might quiz you on some of these on your next visit.

Happy Mother's Day! I am off to play with my boys.

{some questions taken from Judith Newman's You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New Mother featured in this month's Real Simple magazine.}

Happy Mom's Day

[Adam here with a quick post]

That's a lucky kid and a GREAT MOMMA! Happy Mother's Day, Tracy!

Be Back Soon

Lot's of work to do this weekend...

Thanks for the tiller, Poppa.

Adam said his first 30 seconds of electric tilling = 2+ hours of shovel tilling last year.
He is loving his new garden tool.

A New Contraption

The baby food aisle at the grocery store is killing our budget. I run in for a few items for the week plus Carter's baby food and am shocked when I get to the register. We have got to get this baby on table foods. We have tried introducing bananas and strawberries here and there but he always spits them out. He loves bananas and strawberries in a baby food jar, just not the real stuff. I think it is a texture thing. So, this morning I put a small amount of a banana in this new contraption - it has a mesh bag at the end that Carter can 'gum' on and banana magically oozes out into his mouth and then into his belly. Since he can hold it and decide when it goes in and out of his mouth I think it just might work.
Anyone have any tricks for introducing table foods?

Garden Update

As I mentioned in the previous post we originally planned on taking a three day vacation this weekend. Even though those plans fell through Adam decided to take Friday off so we could have an extra day to work around the house. Unfortunately we had another set of original plans that did not come to fruition. We have mentioned once or twice about our wire grass issue. It continues to love our back yard. We have gone through several plans of attack to get rid of this grass and have a successful vegetable/flower garden. Plan A was to build raised boxes and bring in new soil and cover the bottom wire-grass-filled soil with newspaper and weed defense fabric. This plan quickly got very expensive. Plan B was to use Round Up very sparingly to kill the wire grass and use our existing soil. We planned on tilling this weekend, adding in some compost, and using landscape timbers to outline our boxes. We were pretty excited until we closely looked at the garden area that we planned on tilling and saw very active wire grass. We have used Round-Up twice now on this section and you can see that the ends are starting to die off, but there is definitely still more green than brown so we are waiting as patiently as we can for the Round-Up to do its thing before we till and plant.

Here is a picture of what we want the wire grass to look like before we till.

Brown and dry. This wire grass reared its ugly head much earlier in a different part of our backyard where we have a couple of crape myrtles growing. We targeted this area with Round-Up and saw great results so we are doing the same thing with the veggie garden area. It is just taking a while. A very long while.

Since we couldn't make garden progress, we tackled a couple of other projects. We installed a roll down shade on our back porch to keep the intense afternoon sun out of our dining room. We also planted some new flowers for the front porch. There are some Tiny Tunias (far left), Coleus (purple stuff in the middle), Blue Danube Ageratums (far right), and then the spiky grass in the back and the green trailing vine in the front (don't know the proper names for those).

While I was out snapping some photos I caught a bee working its magic on one of our purple flower plants (yep - don't know the name for this one either.) And finally, check out our first rose bloom of the season. There are at least 20 other buds ready to open - should be beautiful!

Very thankful for our April showers that have brought some gorgeous May flowers!

Five Years Down

We knew we wanted to do something special for our five year anniversary. We originally decided we would take a three day vacation to the coast. After that idea fizzled we talked about getting a baby sitter so we could have a dinner out. That idea changed to getting a baby sitter for the day so we could hang out together and work on house projects. This is sounding more and more romantic, right? The final decision was to stay at home and enjoy dinner on our new dining room table. After all, the five year ‘traditional’ gift is wood and we have a brand new hunk of wood to eat on. So it was settled. Then Adam started scheming and told me I couldn’t help with dinner. He had something in mind and I wouldn’t know anything more than that until last night’s feast began.

Are you ready for this? The menu retraced our past five years together by food, drink, and music. It was the sweetest, most thoughtful gift he could ever give. The menu was revealed to me as each course was brought to the table along with a picture. You know how there are certain songs that remind you of certain times in your life? Adam had a song/artist for each course that really did set the mood and bring back lots of memories. I got teary after the first course.

So, for those of you that are interested, here is our dinner course by course along with a brief explanation of the meaning behind the choices.

1

Georgia Peach & Mozarella Salad

Champagne

Indigo Girls, All That We Let In

{we lived in Atlanta,GA and the bubbly was appropriate to celebrate our anniversary}

2

Bratwurst, Potato & Onion

Lowenbrau (Munchen) Lager

Josh Rouse, Nashville

{summer 2005 backpacking Europe - we ate lots of meat and potatoes during our time in Germany. Josh Rouse was one of the few cds we took with us. It was pre i-pod days so we had one portable cd player and two sets of headphones.}

3

Virginia Ham and Apple Slaw

Blenheim Vineyards Virginia Chardonnay

Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream

{one of our first Law School activities was a tour of Blenheim Vineyards. The Patty Griffin album reminds us of one afternoon as we were headed home from church - Adam really needed to get back to the library but this album was playing as we were approaching our apartment and he drove right past the turn and we enjoyed an afternoon drive through the country}

4

Guadalajara Chips & Salsa

Water

Ryan Adams, Cold Roses

{living on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, walking to favorite Mexican restaurant to satisfy one of my pregnancy cravings}

5
Fruits of Labor
Blenheim Vineyards Virginia Chardonnay
Emmylou Harris, All I Intended to Be
{The dish included blueberries and strawberries cooked in butter in a cast iron skilled over an apple. The Fruits of Labor took us to our current home with Adam's degrees, a new job and of course a precious baby boy.}

I feel as stuffed now writing this as I was last night and again, a little teary. What a wonderful evening to celebrate our first five years. Here's to many more - Cheers!