2nd photo journal done!

With all these projects I want to complete, and seemingly in the middle of so many, I forced myself to stick with ONE to the end.

My choice was the project I was furthest behind on...publishing this blog alongside of family photos from the previous year. This was both easy and time-consuming. Easy because with the Blurb.com software, I just clicked a few electronic buttons and SLURP my blog entries were in journal album form. Time-consuming because I not only wanted these written blog posts, but desired adding in additional photos and comments. Add to that the plethora of page formats and arrangements. All together a wonderful time-sink project.

I had already finished Tam's birth in November of 2008 until August of 2009. We published prior to Christmas so that we could show it off to family. I love the result: the colors are vibrant, the smiles are genuine, and all the spelling errors are my own :-)

These past few months I been bent on trying to catch up. Yeah... I was trying to go from August 2009 to February, um, March, egads, APRIL 2011. I did eventually realize that this was a no go since only so many pages will fit into a book (certainly not 2 1/2 years worth). In the end, I settled for the minor goal of August 2009 to July 2010 finished, spell-checked, and published.

AND....I'm done!

300+ pages later and I'm ready to click publish! Now I'm just waiting until next pay day to justify the expense :-)

(plus I've started on the next one)

Drawing with chalk

The chalkboard was made by Brian and sits into the coffee table when it doesn't have the normal wood stained top. It has made a great toy for when we are stuck inside due to rain. More often it is used as ramp to launch toy cars instead of a chalk board.



But last night, Tam drew with the chalk all over the board, several times over. He was WAY into it. I couldn't believe that it held his attention for nearly an hour! And the majority of the time HE wanted to do the drawing and not have me draw the cars for him. With this much excitement, we may have to get some color chalk for him too :-)






According to Tam, most of these doodles are cars...some with two tires, some with more...some that are "wee-ooo" (emergency vehicles)...some that are wearing hats like daddy...some that roar like dinosaurs. It's awesome to hear such imagination :-)

After the board was filled with sketches, Tam used his trusty sleeve to wipe them away so that he could make more.


Great job, Little One!

Sunday walks

This past weekend was been pretty miserable here. The weather was sketchy at best, but mostly cold, wet, rainy, snowy, hailing, crap-tacular. In addition to the bummer weather, I'm still getting over my latest cold and Tam caught a bit of the same bug. Because of this, most of Friday and Saturday, the two of us stayed inside while playing cars and watching "Happy Feet" on T.V.

Side-note : Tam quite enjoyed the movie for the birds, the singing, the dancing, and, of course, the happy feet :-)

By Sunday, we were ready to get OUT...or at least I was ready to leave the house and haul Tam with me to get a change of scenery. We took Brian into work around noon, came home for naps, and then went back out to our local mall. Now a mall is a wonderful space for just walking around during horrible winter/spring weather and for people watching. Our mall did not disappoint this day.

Since I had no shopping to do and no purpose other than to walk around, I let Tam totally lead us through the shops. He set a rather slow meandering pace as he threaded his way through mannequins and live people alike. Hey, I didn't mind going slow at all; it seemed that the wee one was lounging comfortably on my bladder the entire time so small steps for me was great. It felt really good for us to get out and stretch our legs...so much so, that every time I asked Tam if he wanted to sit down to eat, to drink, or to rest, he would reply with "No, mommy. Walk!"

The cutest thing was that Tam insisted that he bring a baby doll with him on this trip. I didn't care, so I let him and he chose to bring my old yellow-yarn haired rag doll. It was a superb choice because the all cloth doll was easy for little arms to carry and light-weight.

Yep, there goes my son with his "baby" walking around the mall...and checking out the Cars. These would be the ones they drive in to the midway to entice people to come out to the dealers and by them. With doll in one arm, Tam loved running up to these and patting the tires (which were sometimes as big as he is). Loved it!

You just gotta let them embrace their nurturing-side along with the testosterone-driven side :-)

Wordless Wednesday - Plant Taxonomy

A tribute to my plant taxonomy students who had their first exam this week... Can you identify this common NE trees?



































1 - Wild Cherry
2 - Shagbark hickory
3 - Silver Maple
4 - Paper birch
(Yep, all photos by me and my new camera :-)

33 Weeks!

Egads, where has the time gone?! In a little under 2 months, our new ball of joy will be with us (if he's on schedule). I seem to feel bigger everyday, I swear. Though I feel like the weight has shifted from my legs and ankles to all BABY belly. He's in there, all right. His jabs and pokes are still pretty intense and I certainly can tell when he's doing a big stretch or flipping sides. That's when the huge bulge of a bum / spine sticks out. I'm fairly confident he's head down, since I feel his hiccups pretty low, and often at least once a day. Other than that, he is turning around in there fairly frequently during his active moments. When resting, he seems to prefer having his spine / butt along my right-side or against my back.

Appointment with doctor today went...quick. I saw another ob/gyn in our practice since mine was on spring break vacation with her little girls. This alternative doctor was, in a word, brisk. I know these appointments are scheduled for only 15minutes and are short, but he seemed especially anxious to be done / not bothered. I got this sense from several things, like not asking me how I'm doing, or how's it going, or how the little one has been moving, or if I had any questions. Oh, and of course he didn't believe me when I said I know the head is down (freakin' hiccups behind my pelvic bone) but had to push hard on his little head to feel him himself. (Though he might have just been covering his 33week checklist).

Luckily, things are going well and I didn't have any questions that couldn't wait until my next time with my own doc. Otherwise, all is good. BP is good, weight is good, size is good, heartbeat is good, I pee when I cough (can do without that one). I just have to remember to get us all over for the hospital tour and early registration sometime soon.

ooohhh....I can't wait to hold this new little wonder!

Notes from Babycenter.com:

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. He's rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in his skull aren't fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for him to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don't entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

Colors!

Finally, finally, Tam is recognizing and communicating colors!

Prior to this achievement, given just about anything, Tam would insist it was "red." And for a while, I was worried that the poor kiddo wasn't seeing the colors at all, perhaps having some form of colorblindness. Both Brian and I were trying to entice him to learn the colors by asking him to bring us cars of certain shades and giving high praise as reward for correctness.

But, this last week or so, we have had success. Tam can now consistently name red, blue, green, white, black, and purple. If you ask him what his favorite color is, each day it might be something different. However, whenever we are playing the matchbox cars game on the playstation, he ALWAYS wants to be the purple car...even over the car that looks like "Doc" from the Cars movie (his favorite car in the movie). Yes, yellow is still right out...I think he can't say the word yet. And pink is still red.

This has also led to him determining that Brian and I have certain toy matchbox cars that are distinctly ours. One of them is a yellow car for Dada, and one is a green car for Mommy. It's kinda cute...especially since he can't seem to explain WHY these certain cars are ours. It seems his little brain is grasping more concepts and remember more each day.