How to get banned from the Children's Museum

Emily invited Carter and I to meet her and Molly at the Children's Museum at Fair Park last Thursday. I have never been there but have heard it is perfect for their age so I was really looking forward to it! They have several different things for the kids to do, and it was all right up Carter's alley!

You could "milk" this cow, which kinda oogs me out, but at least it was just water.

This was an area that had holes in the floor and you put balls in the holes and they rolled through a track and out a hole. It had something to do with being seeds and then there were buckets of fruit and veggies too. The balls just so happened to be exactly the size of Carter's mouth....


This is the water table. It was really cool! Carter and Molly both loved it, and refused to wear the plastic smocks, which were rather large for them.

This thing rocked back and forth and the balls rolled around. Carter spent several minutes beating on the glass trying to get the balls.

Looking out of the fire truck

Sliding down the back of the fire truck

He and Molly spent a good deal of time driving the fire truck!

And this was his favorite part. You held the button for about a minute and the hot air balloon floated up. He kept going back to it.

And that is where the pictures stopped because I was too mortified to remember to use my camera.

So he was running out of the water room and a lady was walking in, and she didn't see him and he ran into her leg and fell over. He started fussing and she bent down and picked him up and was comforting him, and my little angel reached back and slapped the poor lady across the face and shouted "NO!!" So naturally I picked him up and was scolding him for hitting, and he leaned over and bit my face. I could see the face of the lady sitting nearby and her jaw just kept dropping. He has NEVER done anything like that to us, much less a stranger, and I felt so horrible. Emily was fortunate enough to miss the whole incident, but heard the aftermath when she passed the lady and overhead her telling someone "Did you see that baby just slug me?"

We didn't stay too much longer.

But thanks Emily for continuing to hang out with us, even though my son will clearly not be a good influence on your sweet, calm Molly.

My kid is weird

Most kids are scared of the vacuum, but no, not mine. The video speaks for itself...

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Things I couldn't have made it without

So in the past few months I have had many friends that are having babies or have gotten pregnant, and they have asked my opinion on various baby items(like I'm some sort of expert). I remember being so overwhelmed before registering because of all the different choices to make. Maybe if there weren't 4500 different kinds of bottles babies wouldn't suffer from nipple confusion! Generally, I have taken all my advice from Brooke since not only has she gone through all this twice but she actually researches products, my mom, and my aunts, and then figured out what works best for my kid, as all kids are different! There are definitely some things that I would recommend to anyone, and here are a few things that I don't know how I would have made it without or have made life much easier!

Baby Einstein Aquarium

Brooke recommended this to me and it sounded like a cool thing because it has a remote that hangs on the door so that you can restart it without the baby seeing you. What I didn't realize is how obsessed Carter would be with it! He still loves it, and now he pushes the button to start it anytime he wakes up during the night, then goes back to sleep on his own. It also has a button on top that is a nightlight feature to look into the crib. I have used it a lot!

Homedics Sound Machine

This has been awesome for travel. It has like 6 different sounds, but Carter likes the ocean one the best. It also has 3 different discs for projection, and the little projector thingy rotates so that you can shine it on the wall or the ceiling. It also has a timer, but we just leave it on all night.

Boudreaux's Butt Paste

I discovered Boudreaux's when I worked at a daycare in college. I got some at a baby shower, and quickly discovered that it worked the best on Carter. For some reason the prescription rash creme only exacerbates the situation, and other cremes seem to do nothing. Obviously other people may have different outcomes with other products, but I am a huge fan of this.

Johnson and Johnson Lavender bath wash and lotion

I also recieved a crazy amount of bath products and lotions for shower gifts. I got a lot of the lavender scented bedtime lotion and bath wash, and it has turned out to be my favorite. I'm not sure if it really is soothing for bedtime purposes, but I really like the way it smells, not like typical baby lotion. Now that Carter is older and I don't lather him up after every bath, I have taken to using it for myself! :)

Gas drops

These are such a necessity! I honestly did not really use the Mylicon brand very much, as I am El Cheapo and Target's Up and Up brand was significantly cheaper, but they have the same effect. I had a very gassy baby on my hands!

Tylenol

No link or picture needed. :) Again though, I usually get the Target brand tylenol and ibuprofen.

Playtex bottles Drop-in system

I chose to go with these style of bottles, and luckily Carter was not picky about the nipple style. My mom had used the early version of these when Caleb was little, and I knew that I wanted something easy and with the least amount of parts. All this hype about the Dr. Brown's and other kinds that reduced gas, but the have so many dang parts and each one has to be washed every use! I'm sure they work, but on these all you really have to wash is the nipple and ring unless the rest of the bottle gets dirty. And you can get accessories that attach to the breast pump for milk storage. (And FYI-Target makes the bottle bags for cheaper too!) I did not use the brown colored nipples though, as that freaks me out for some reason. Why can't they just be clear?

Medela breast pump

I borrowed Brooke's pump, which looked kinda like this picture. Those suckers are not cheap! I just bought my own accessories for pumping. I was very pleased with this brand, although I have not heard of anyone using other brands so I had nothing else to go on. If you can't buy one or borrow from a friend, I know there are places you can rent from. Its pretty user friendly, and easy to carry around with you. This bag and I were like BFF's attached at the hip for 4 months.

Baby Einstein car mirror

I grabbed this item just before I made my first post-baby solo trip to Waco. I had visions of a screaming baby and needing to pump and horrid traffic, and I gladly threw down the money for this in an attempt to prevent Carter from a total meltdown. You'll be glad to know that we made it safely to Waco on that trip, in the rain, but minus major meltdowns, although any minor issue might have pushed me into the full blown panic attack that I was on the verge of. Anyways, Carter was only about 2 months at the time, and it took another month or so for him to even realize it was there. It is still something that he likes to play with. It has various settings of music, lights, music with lights, but the selling point for me was the timer. That little red sun at the top? That guy is the knob to choose the time setting up to one hour. Not included is the umbrella that you will need to reach the yellow restart button after the alotted hour time slot so as not to pull the car over. But I would never do that....

Graco products

Another Brooke recommedation. When I asked her "Where do I start with this freaking registry??" she said if you stick with Graco as far as the bigger items, you'll be good. I used the travel system that included the stroller and infant car seat, and also a Graco pack n' play. I've also since purchased a Graco convertible car seat once Carter outgrew the infant seat. I have been very pleased with everything that I used, and have seen that in terms of safety they generally recieved ratings comperable to the more expensive brands. I just cannot personally justify spending $300 dollars on a car seat that has met all the same safety standards as my $90 one.

Please take any of my opinions with a grain of salt. And do not for one second think that I was paid to endorse any of these things, or Target for that matter, although we all know that I would be their personal spokesperson for free! I wouldn't even know how to go about getting paid for endorsements, nor would any company care about my opinion. I also think it will be fun to look back in a few years to see what ancient products I used in comparison to what will be current!

16 months

Carter is 16 months old now. Not that that is your typical milestone age, but he has been learning some new words and tricks in the last month or so and I wanted to write them down before I forgot!

• Will answer questions by nodding his head yes or shaking for no



• Doesn't have a very extensive vocabulary, but will say dog, ball, more, donut, dada, momma, nana(which depending on the situation is either BAnana or Christiaan's mom Nana!), and a few other words are hit or miss like GrandDude, GranPam, wawa for watermelon, and lots of mumbling



• Loves to play in the water, specifically the water hose



• Can climb on most of the furniture. He loves to steal your seat when you get up!



• Obessessed with dogs



• Not afraid to touch bugs



• Favorite foods are chicken nuggets, green beans, any kind of cookies, all fruits, french fries, applesauce, hot dogs, and he will literally eat anything if it has been dipped in ketchup. He's recently developed a love for Gatorade and carbonated drinks, but also still likes ice water and rice milk. When he sees something he wants to eat he will very emphatically say "MMMMmmmmm!!!"



• Has decided that diaper changes are the source of pure torture and makes it very hard to change his diaper


• Likes to go down his Little Tikes slide repeatedly, and usually stops himself with his feet at the very bottom, stands up and then jumps off the end!


• I think he is beginning the Terrible Twos. He has become quite the tantrum thrower, a biter, will fling himself to the ground kicking and screaming, will throw the closest item at you, and arch his back to get away from you. Its quite a scene.


• His latest cute trick is to steal anyones cell phone and talk on it. He has figured out how to unlock iPhones. Consider yourself warned.


• On the size side of things, he is about 22 lbs, wearing a size 4-5 shoe, is bridging into 18 month clothes and size 4 diapers. I recently gave him his 3rd haircut. He has his 4 front teeth on top and bottom, 2 molars on the top, one on bottom and another working its way on the bottom.

This is all I can think of right now. No new pictures this week! I'm going to try to start being better about journaling his growth and progress because his baby book is sadly quite empty in spots!

It's been a busy week

So the other night Carter and I were playing in the den, when the fridge started making a noise like it was about to fly off. Thankfully Caleb was home, although comatose sleeping at the moment, and it only turned out the the fan wriggled loose and not something that needed to be replaced. But Carter, Mr. Technical, just had to be all up in Uncle Caleb's business trying to figure out what he was doing. He kept leaning over to see under the fridge, and every now and then will still do that.


Don't get ahead of yourself. This is not a mugshot. This is the before picture from Saturday before I chopped off my hair.

And the after. Why did I wait so long to do this? So. Much. Better.

Meet Harper Leigh Pruitt, our latest "niece." Shane and Kasi took Raygen to Sea World last Wednesday and Thursday, and apparently Harper was a feeling a little left out of the fun, because late Thursday night Kasi went into labor!! We were all totally shocked, although I totally called it that she would not make it to her induction date. Harper was about 3 weeks early from her due date and 2 weeks from her induction date, but besides weighing in at a teeny 5 lb 15 oz she is perfectly healthy! Of course, we were all DYING to hop in the car and make a road trip to San Antonio, but we will make up for lost time!

Big sis Raygen is so proud of her baby sister! When we came in I hugged her and she escorted me straight to show off Harper!

Before they made it back from San Antonio I showed Carter a couple of pics of Harper that Kasi had texted me, and he would smile and laugh. So when he saw her in person he actually did that then too! He would give her kisses, which his version of kisses include him leaning his head towards whatever you tell him to kiss, so basically he was just leaning his head on her, but so sweet!

I love his face here!

Aunt Bri was so beside herself all weekend and especially Sunday when we knew they were heading home, that she could barely hold a conversation! And if you know her, you know that she never lacks for conversation topics! :) hehe!

Brycen is much more of a momma's boy than Carter, so he was not very thrilled that she was holding another baby!

He was nice enough to give me a half smile though! Good luck having more kids, Brad and Bri!

Uncle Christiaan took his turn....he's such a natural!

And Uncle Brad waited patiently for his turn! He probably held her the longest of all of us!

Mr. Personality has gotten to be quite the goof lately. He has a variety of strange and silly laughs, and seems to just bound from one piece of furniture to another, not too unlike the monkeys in the zoo. And the temper tantrums, HOLY KAMOLY!!!!! I need to remember to catch some of that with my camera, because they are quite dramatic. I have NO IDEA where he gets that from...

Where's Carter??

Peek-a-boo!

And I paid another visit to Kasi and Harper today, and caught her wide awake! This outfit is a preemie sleeper that I picked up for her that I thought would be too small, but it actually fits pretty well! It barely even feels like you are holding anything when you have her, especially in comparison to what I am used to lugging around all day! Its amazing to me what a difference a pound makes with babies, because Carter was only a pound more, but seemed so much bigger!

Fourth Fun

We started out the celebrating by joining our C3 family at the Rowlett Main Street celebration. C3 had a booth set up to do face painting and pass out frisbees. It was hot as all get out, and chasing Carter around and trying not to lose him amongst the throngs of people was very trying. He was determined to explore and was not a fan of the monkey leash! Our friends helped me to entertain him while waiting for dark by various things. One being giving him the rest of their cherry limeade, and someone else gave him an entire can of Dr. Pepper. Awesome.

This is James, a little boy from our church, that cracks me up! He turned the frisbees upside down and was skating across the grass with them!

And it was finally fireworks time! He was completely in awe, and shouted "Wow!" the whole show!

Both the boys loved it!

Then on the 4th we went to a pool party at Brianna's mom's house and then met Brad and Bri out in Rockwall to watch the fireworks out there.

I brought some poppers and Carter LOVED them!

Tha boyz

And again with the dog crate. They took turns closing each other in it and tried unsuccessfully a couple of times to both climb in.

More cherry limeade.

Don't we all three look like we spent the day out in 100 degree heat?? Oh yeah, because we did.

Brycen's cheese face

These boys are quite obsessed with watermelon at the moment.

Daddy stealing some!

And finally, the last of the fireworks for this year. Again he loved them. I was curious to see how he would react this year since last year he loved them even though he was only 4 months old.

I personally could watch a decent fireworks show any day of the year!