Random Things

I thought this picture was so cute I had to post it. We got Grant a balloon from Harris Teeter one day and I must say they provide much more entertainment value than I thought they would. In this picture Grant is also holding his most prized possession--Blue. An original name, I know. This little dog-head on a cuddly blanket is the toy we would give to Grant when he was learning to fall asleep by himself when he was about 4 or 5 months old. Since then they have become fast friends and Grant tries to take Blue everywhere with him. Often Grant will bury his face in Blue's softness and just laugh, he's just so happy to have him. I wonder if Blue will become Grant's Bunny. For those of you who don't know about Bunny, she was my own sleep toy (originally enough, a cuddly bunny) that I got when I was 2 or 3 and who slept in my bed until she was retired when I got married. Now she sleeps on the top shelf in the closet, collecting dust, but I still look at her from time to time. I guess we really like our cuddly sleep toys in this family.

Nice shot, huh? Grant and I practicing our downward dog yoga pose. Actually, Grant has recently discovered the wonders of looking at the world upside-down. I walked in the room the other day to see him looking between his legs, upside down and thought it was pretty funny. Grant must have thought it was funny too because he kept doing it over and over again.

In other news, we are leaving this Saturday for Denver for the 1st of Ryan's dental school rotations this summer. We are so excited to get out to CO and especially to see my college roommates and their hubbies. Troy and Tracie are graciously letting us stay with them and I think this trip will be a lot of fun! Just as long as Grant doesn't think Lexie is one of his toy cats :)

No more PB&J

Last Friday I wanted to switch up Grant's usual lunch of cheese toast, veggies and fruit and thought a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich sounded easy and somewhat healthy. Plus, he's now 12 months so that means he can try peanut butter, right? So I make him up a little sandwich and he eats it, not very excitedly, but he gets it down. In the back of my head I am thinking that I hope he isn't allergic to it, but he hasn't had trouble with any other food, so I tell myself he's fine. Right after I take him out of him chair I notice little red bumps forming under his chin. He won't hold still for me to take a good look at him so I bring him over to the TV and turn on Signing Time b/c I know he will be looking in one direction for awhile. In that time, the bumps had progressed to hives and started spreading all over his face. I'm getting quite concerned at this point, so I call the doctors office to see if I should bring him in or what I can do (yes, nursing knowledge pretty much goes out the window when your own child is the one who is sick). When I call the office all I get in their message machine saying we're closed for the next hour for lunch. Who takes an hour for lunch!!!! Fortunately, I had the UNC help line # from a previous late night call when Grant was 3 months old and had croup. At this point the hives are puffy all over his face and neck and he's rubbing at them, however, he seemed to be breathing normally. I finally get a hold of the nurse, who says just to give him some baby benadryl and watch him to make sure he doesn't have any breathing difficulties and call my doctor when they re-open. Of course I don't have any benadryl on hand but luckily my friend Lizzy who lives downstairs had some to share. The nurse said I needed to watch him for 2 hours because he could develop respiratory distress during that time in which cause he'd need to get to the ER immediately. So I'm pretty freaked by this whole experience but my blood pressure slowly begins to decrease back to normal once his hives start clearing out, about an hour after they started, thank goodness!! We went to the doctors yesterday for Grant to get some blood drawn which they will test to see how allergic he is. In the mean time, no more nuts in any form for Grant and we get to carry around an Epinephren pen wherever we go in case he has another encounter with peanuts that progresses to a worse reaction (which they say may be the case). I'm just glad that didn't happen the first time and it was just hives, that was scary enough for me!

Birthday Boy!

Grant's first birthday fell on mother's day, and I couldn't have asked for a better present! We actually celebrated his birthday on Saturday because my parents were able to come down for the day and hang out with us. I made Grant a homemade angel food cake with chocolate whipped cream and strawberries (okay, the strawberries weren't homemade) and we all had to wear party hats. My parents took us out to Red Robin for lunch and we sat right next to the big robin statue which was quite entertaining for Grant, that and my dad kept walking him around to play with the arcade games. My parents hadn't got him a present yet so we went to ghetto walmart and let Grant walk around and pick out what he wanted. I think this was his favorite part of his birthday. He's a good walker now and would roam the toy section touching all his favorite toys and trying them out. We got to experience ghetto walmart in it's full glory as we were leaving the store a couple of large thuggy guys were having a heated "conversation" with a lot of "your mama's" and were starting to fight. Grant not only got a few good toys on his birthday, but got to see his first street fight, don't you love walmart?

Grant and Grandpa about to blow out his candle, he made such a cute birthday boy!

Enjoying one of his books with Grandma and Grandpa.

This is one of Grant's favorite presents which we actually gave him about a week ago one day when he was bored and cranky. He's just kickin it on his fire truck. He's got his headband on so he can fit in the next time we go to walmart :)

So after all the birthday food, fun and festivities, Grant had a real rough time falling asleep that night. Grant never cries in his crib at night before going to bed, he seriously probably has less than 5 times since he was 2 months old. So on Saturday he was screaming after I put him to bed, I checked on him twice, gave him a binky and finally just went to take my shower and let Ryan listen to him cry. He was asleep when I got out but then woke up 45 min later crying again. Finally he went to sleep for the night after some coaxing and a couple of his cuddly toys were in the crib with him. We think it was from all the fun and the dramatic increase in grease and fat in his diet compared to a normal day (he had some fries and burger at Red Robin, and then cake and whipped cream when he got home). Needless to say, Grant didn't get anymore of his birthday cake and I made use of the leftovers to make the yummy parfaits seen above. Sorry buddy, maybe next year you can have more than one piece of your birthday cake.

Videos, finally!!! Part 2

Here's the 2nd video I was trying to upload. This is the end of videos for awhile!

Videos, finally!!!

I say finally because for the past week I have been trying to figure out how to get my videos to post on the blog. My parents gave us a camcorder since Christmas and we had yet to upload any of our footage onto the camera. So this past week I decided I was going to try it out and see if I could upload anything. I got it onto the computer okay, and even made my own little movie out of some clips of video (it had an awesome transition part with fading and volume changes--well for that all you have to do is push a button). Anyway, I could not get it to upload onto blog. After a couple of days of trying, I realized the file was too big, so I deleted some of the video to make it under 100MB, and it still didn't work. I decided to try one more time with just regular footage, no fancy transitions or volume changes, and here you go, some came up. Needless to say, I'm not sure how many more videos I'll be posting, although I guess it may be easier now that I know what I can and cannot post.

This is video of Grant walking around a bit. He still won't walk completely on his own, although I think he probably can. He really likes to hold on to one of our fingers and walk with us, but if we let go he'll sit down and start to cry. I think he just likes the ability to walk mom and dad around himself.

I just tried uploading my 2nd video clip of Grant talking, but it won't let me, so I'll try it on the next post.

Going Private

Ryan and I decided to change our blog status to private. Please email one of us if you want to still see our blog (I don't think I have everyone's email). I'll be switching it over in the next couple of days, but you can still email us after we switch and I'll put you on the list of viewers. Hope to hear from you all!

Lazy Post

Just as the title says, this is a lazy post, I know I need to update the blog but I don't feel like uploading all my new pictures. I just looked through my camera and there's at least 50 new pictures that I need to upload and are more current than these, but at least this is something different. Ryan has to go the Dallas for the next two days for a research convention/presentation thing so I think I'll spend some time on the blog during those evenings. Here's some pictures from a random Sunday afternoon.

Grant loves to sit and look out the window. He usually calls out to people as they walk by or bangs on the window at them. He's also learned to say one of his first intelligible words while looking out the window. When we see a car drive by I ask Grant if he can say car. Basically all he can get out in "ca" but it's still really cute.

On Monday and Tuesday this week we headed down to Wilmington and stayed with Ryan's dental school mentor. They are a very nice couple who have a lot of room in their house and invited us to come stay with them and have fun at the beach. Ryan spent some of Tuesday shadowing his mentor's orthodontic practice but otherwise we went down the the oceanfront and had some fun. We decided we'll have to go again sometime when it's warm enough to swim. On the way home we realized we didn't take any pictures, but the lady we stayed with took a few and emailed them to me. This is Grant harassing their miniature schnauzer who he only warmed up to during the end of our visit. The first day Grant would start screaming every time the dog barked and didn't want to be near it. I realized this was probably better than Grant not being afraid because then all he wanted to do was poke her eyes and pull her whiskers.