Numero Dos

As you may have guessed by the little baby floating around on the right of the screen we are expecting another Nicker-Wood to join our family. We are very excited and the little guy or gal is due to come in February. Now if only this nausea will go away...

Time for an update--Part 3

I promise this is my last update for the day but I couldn't leave out our Utah trip. For the first weekend of our CO trip we flew up to UT for the Wood family reunion. We stayed in a beautiful, humongous cabin in the mountains of Heber City. There were lots of activities planned to keep us busy but we also had fun just hanging out with the family, playing games and catching up.

On Friday we spent time in Park City, going on a crazy scavenger hunt, looking through shops and having a picnic lunch. Yes, we stopped in the fur shop and yes, Ryan tried on the fuzzy hat, he said it was comfy.

The best part of the cabin for Grant was this large stuffed bear. Grant would squeal with joy every time he saw it and run and tackle it. The bear, being rather large, could hold his own in a wrestling match and Grant left with a few head bruises from knocking into the bed frame. I guess it's a risk you have to take when bear-wrestling.

Friday night became guy night as all the Wood-men ended up in the hot tub for a couple of hours. I guess they had a lot of man things to discuss while their toes and fingers turned into shriveled raisins. Us ladies spent the night playing games and getting to bed before midnight.
On Saturday we headed down to Pleasant Grove to hit up the Strawberry Day's fair and rodeo. The fair was a little ghetto (as to be expected) but the rodeo was tons of fun. Grant actually did pretty well at the rodeo, especially considering it wasn't done till after 10pm. We made sure to get some of the famous strawberries and cream, which were delicious. If you haven't tried them I would make it a point to get some. At the fair, we wanted to let Grant try out his first carnival ride, so we figured we couldn't go wrong with the carousel, right? I'll let the picture answer that one.

Granted it was a very rickety-old carousel and it jerked around a lot. I think the carnies were getting to him. On Sunday we went to church, took a family picture (which I hope to post next time), had a delicious lunch and said our goodbyes. Ryan had to leave that night to go back to CO to start work on Monday. I decided to stay a few days with Grant at Nana's to visit and since Sam, Christine and the kids, and my bro Ryan, were all in UT for the summer.

We had to block the stairs at Nana's with this chair since Grant refuses to go down the stairs like we teach him, he wants to go down like all the adults. The kids made the turned over chair a coveted seat and would actually sit there for awhile. I think they were probably just staking their claim on the seat.
We had fun in Utah and hung out with Christine and the kids each day. One day we went to Gardiner's Village and another day we went down to BYU. It was all fun and games until on Wed (we were flying back to CO Wed. night at 6pm) I got horrible food poisoning, I think from the previous night's Panda Express. Let me just say it was one of the worst days of my life, especially since I had to go on a crowded airplane and the guy who sat next to me would not stop talking, even though I told him repeatedly that I had been sick all day and still did not feel good. I definitely puked on the descent, but at least it was the final puke of the day. I started to feel a little better the next day but I'm not sure if I can trust Panda Express ever again.

After all our trips this summer Grant was excited to be home and see all his old toys again. That lasted until Monday and he was bored with them again. So we're back to our old routines and are here for another month until the next rotation in Virginia. I think I am done posting for the day:)

Time for an update--Part 2

We had a lot of fun in Colorado and are glad we were able to check it out, since we are considering it as a place to live after all this schooling is out of the way. Every weekend was full of sightseeing and hanging out with visiting roomies and their husbands. Bri and Dave came down one weekend and Jenna and Drew came 4th of July weekend. And of course we got to hang out with Robyn and Aaron since they're not too far from Troy and Tracie. It was so good to see everyone again and have fun together!

This is a cool hike in Boulder that we started and then came back (can't get too adventurous in flip-flops and with a stroller). Another weekend we went to Estes Park which is a really cute town way up in the mountains that had pretty rivers and lakes and a fun little main street with shops and touristy things. Estes Park is where the hotel used in The Shining is located, that would be scary staying there.

Grant would have loved to swim down the river rapids, but once again I had to restrain him, I'm such a mean mom.

One of Ryan's highlight's of the trip was finding this Cabella's-like store (I can't remember what it was called). It was pretty neat inside, almost like an animal museum. We were on our way back from Boulder when we drove by the store. Robyn and Aaron pulled over since Ryan got so excited and we spent some time looking around. Pretty big bear, huh?

This is how I kept myself busy when Ryan started looking at the guns. The deer wouldn't leave me alone, I had to give in.

During the weekdays, Grant and I would often head over to the neighborhood pool or park, which were both awesome. We had to live it up because I don't know when Grant will be able to go back to a pool that fun. It had a great kiddy-swim area, a big slide and two separate lap/swim pools. It was a great in-between nap activity.
We were sad to go but Troy and Tracie definitely deserve a week or two of quiet before their baby arrives. I know the one saddest of all to see us leave was their cat, Lexi. I think she really liked us in spite of trying to act like she didn't :) I guess soon enough there will be another baby to chase her around so she won't feel lonely. Thanks again Troy, Tracie, Robyn and Aaron, we had a lot of fun!!

Time for an update--Part 1

As you can see I have not updated our blog in quite a long time, even for my standards. This past Saturday we got back from a month long stay in CO with our friends Troy and Tracie. Ryan scheduled one of his rotations in Colorado Springs and Troy and Tracie were nice enough to let us stay with them and show us around CO. I will put more about the CO trip in Part 2, first I've been meaning to post these pics since before we left.

Grant has his first major scrape up in the beginning of June when we was running down a sidewalk hill, tripped, and rolled around a few times. It looked a little worse in person, especially when blood was oozing off his face. We had to document it now so we can realize how minor it was when he gets older and really hurts himself.

Here he is now with no major residual scars. I guess you can't really see in this picture but he does have a slightly elevated pink circle on the top of his forehead where the major scar was, but we're hoping that will eventually fade. If not, he can add it to his collection of battle wounds.

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.