Blake the Mouth Monster

Here are the items I've removed from my sweet little baby's mouth in the last couple of weeks:

1. Fake Dreidel game coins
2. Quarter
3. Penny (at the same time as the quarter actually)
4. Various lids/caps from Abby's toys in her room
5. Cat food
6. The door stopper. (Actually - he was laying on the marble floor sucking the door stopper.  Like a pacifier??!!)
7. A mouth full of black and white cat hair (after he bit our cat, who didn't seem to mind at all)
8. Rocks/leaves from outside
9. Pink domino


Wow.  I think he's making up for the fact that we never had to deal with any of this when his sister was a baby!!!

Tubes for Blake

We were able to get into the ENT last week after my crazy 3x per day calling to check on cancellations. Our Feb 27 appointment went to Feb 18, and then Feb 11 and finally Feb 5!  We saw the doctor on Wednesday and immediately scheduled his surgery to get ear tubes today (Monday).  I sure hope this helps to alleviate all these infections he's had since Christmas.

The facility doesn't allow photos inside the building like they did for Abby, so I took this one once we got home (after his nap of course) and you can see my Superman is already feeling pretty good!

Mi Vida Loca!

We've had a hard couple of months lately.  Seems having one young child can be a challenge, but having two brings on twice as many things to go wrong!

Blake is on antibiotic shots - he's had 4 now in 3 days - for an ear infection he's had since Christmas.  He's already been through 30 days of 3 other types of meds, so we are hoping the shots hold him over long enough to get into the ENT (he will most definitely need tubes)...which is a whole other story!

Abby also got a double ear infection and didn't tell us until it was so bad that one of her ear drums ruptured.  She is doing really well now though and we go back for one more follow up with her ENT at the end of February.  Hoping she will get a clean bill of health and we can stop her meds too.

Then this week Blake tripped over a mat (twice in the same day) and his mouth met the corner of a cabinet.  This led to an emergency trip to the dentist for x-rays.  Poor little guy has a bad boo-boo but the dentist thinks it's just soft tissue damage and it should heal, we just have to watch for discoloration which would mean the tooth was dying. :(

I'm so ready for some calm around our house!!

Blake's birthday party!

Last weekend we drove up to Dallas to celebrate Blake's 1st birthday at Teri's house.  It was a nice lunch of fajitas, cake and presents!  I still can't believe he's already a year old!

(video - make sure you go to the blog to see it!)

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BLAKE!!

I swear I blinked and Blake turned ONE!   This year has flown by.  Seems like the first year with Abby felt like it lasted 10 years...but not this one.  Blake has been the easiest and mostly happiest baby and I know how lucky we are.  And I'm so thankful he has this personality and I hope it stays with him through life!

He's still trying to ramp up on his walking skills and he's still very vocal with babbling (no real words just yet other than bye-bye).  His favorite person (besides his Mommy of course) is Abby.  He beams when she plays with him and gets sad when she won't.

I can't wait to see how much he will develop over the next few months, he's turning into quite the little boy!!

We love you so much sweet boy!  Happy Birthday!!

Abby's new "do"

This is Abby's new layered "haircut".  Complements of Avery, one of her BFF's at school.

Great.

Walking!

Watch out world, here he comes!!

(video)

Catch up post!

We've done so much over the past couple months that I haven't even had time to update the blog with everything, so I thought I'd do one big "catch up post" here!

1. Right after Thanksgiving we went to Gaylord ICE in Grapevine, TX with my Mom and Sister.  It's cold.  Very, very cold!!

2.  Heather and I went to Mexico.   That is a whole story by itself, but it was still very relaxing!  And warm!

3. Blake has become quite the He-Man and likes to rearrange our kitchen.  Often.

4. Blake's first and only words so far are "Bye-Bye".  But it's so cute I make him say it all day…therefore he has no idea what it actually means. :)

5. Abby got to talk in the dome of the State Capital for the first time while we were there for a private Christmas party.

6. We baked Christmas cookies. 

 7. And went to the new Austin Aquarium.

8. Stayed warm by the fireplace.

9. And wore Christmas Jammies.  :)

10.  Christmas Eve we sipped Hot Cocoa and drove around looking at Christmas lights.  In our jammies of course!

11. Abby made sure to take care of not only Santa, but his reindeers too!

I think that about sums it up!  I'll post Christmas and NYE soon!

Dance show!

When I was little and in dancing, each recital we had my Dad used to video tape it.  But the final product was always just a whole video of it zoomed in on ONLY me.  You could never see the other kids dancing, just me…the whole time!

Maybe it's a Dad thing?

Last week at dance they did a small "performance" for the parents.  I wasn't there, so Matt made sure to video tape it for me.  And guess what - it's just a zoomed in video of JUST Abby. :)

See it here!

11 Months Old!

Blake is 11 Months Old today!  He is a man on a mission - always cruising/crawling, getting into things, throwing balls, banging toys as loud as possible, turning on the bathtub to play in the water and TEETHING!  I think in the past month he's had 4 teeth come in with 4 more on the way (as confirmed by his doctor this morning!).