Red Robin

We decided to eat at Red Robin Friday night before going to our friend's Halloween Party. This was the first time we'd taken Carson there. It's so kid-friendly -- kid-friendly menu, kid-friendly whole milk on tap, kid-friendly atmosphere, kid-friendly balloons in the entry way.....needless to say, we'll be frequenting there often.

Mid-meal, an older couple was seated next to us. Nate quietly mentioned to me, "That guy looks like a real stiff." As we are about to leave the restaurant, Carson decides to whip my Wet Ones travel pack over his head. It landed right in front of stiff guy's plate. He was appalled.

Had we not been at a kid-friendly restaurant, Nate and Mr. Stiff may have gotten in to a fight.

Monkey Business

Carson's school hosted a Halloween party for each of its classes. Following suit with his classroom's name, The Elephants, Carson decided to be a monkey. How cute?!



Carson and his favorite teacher, Deven.

Rubber Ducky

There is something so adorable about a chubby baby playing in the water while his doting father watches on.

Home Sweet Home

There is something so refreshing about seeing the sun rise on a flat corn field, or at least that's what Mommy said when we woke up at Grammie and Paw-Paw's this weekend. (Scratch that - three weekends ago. Get with it, Mommy! This post is so old now!) I had a great time at the farm! I had a cold, so I slept a lot, but I did manage to spent time with Angela and Paxton and Shelley, Mason and Lauren in between napping and dropping food on Grammie and Paw-Paw's kitchen floor. (It needed to be broken in and clumps of Mandarin oranges did just that.)

Oh, crap!

Flash Back: Two weeks ago, I was picking up Carson's play area and saw a stain on the cushion of his personalized green chair. To my dismay, I quickly realized it was cat pee. Monster has done this kind of stuff before -- the last time I was in our storage room I was overwhelmed by the smell of cat pee. Monster had peed on Carson's tummy mat, his pumpkin seat cover and the seat of his Jumperoo. Damn cat. Anyway, we rubbed Monster's face in the dried pee spot and threw him in to "the can" for a week stint. ("The can" is the room that houses Monster's cat box. It has no windows, has a concrete floor and is where our circuit breaker is located. Not exactly prime real estate.)

Fast Forward: After putting Carson down for a nap this morning, I plopped myself on the couch and turned on the TV. The ottoman we have in front of the couch was slightly blocking my view, but I could tell that Monster was doing "something" with one of Carson's "toys," or so I thought. Monster was actually taking a crap on Carson's sippy cup. What?! WHAT?!? I ran after Monster who jetted under our bed. I hauled him out from under the bed and threw him in to "the can" after saying, "Bad kitty!" over 20 times.

To make this story even funnier (not really), I am not feeling well today, so as I cleaned up Monster's mess and chucked my kid's sippy in to the trash, I threw up in my mouth two times.

What a crappy day.

I Wanna Talk About Me

I wanna talk about me, I wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number 1 oh my, me, my,
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see.
I like talkin about you, you, you, you usually, but occasionally
I wanna talk about me! (me, me, me,) I wanna talk about me-e-e. (me, me, me)


ME and my daddy


ME and my mommy


ME


ME


ME


I wanna talk about ME!


ME, ME, ME

(Thank you for that, Carson Ross/Toby Keith!)

MC Hammer

It warms my heart to see Carson playing with the work bench I used to play with at my Grandma and Grandpa Nelson's house.

Push Toys

Who needs them really? Carson has come up with some very creative push toys lately - his gi-normous high chair, the ottoman we use as a coffee table, me.....as I'm cooking dinner, he weasels between my legs and tries to push me across the kitchen. By the way, one of the things I have come to love most about being a mommy is having my little munchkin stand between my legs for no reason other than to be close to me. It's so cute!

Grant's Farm

Today was a first for all three of us - a trip to Grant's Farm. It's closer to our house than the zoo and is much more our speed. I think Carson is still a bit too young to fully enjoy what Grant's Farm has to offer, but regardless, we picked a great fall day for our family field trip.

Carson was oblivious to the giant camel behind us.


I couldn't get Carson to look at me because he was
too busy flirting with the little girl behind us.


My crew looks rough! This was our last photo opp before heading home.

Eating Out

Carson has recently moved away from babbling. He much prefers high-pitched screaming to get our attention. (Hello, Kid. We are paying attention to you!) We decided to eat out on Friday night and as luck would have it, we pretty much had the entire restaurant to ourselves. Maybe I should rephrase that - we had a portion of the "dining room" to ourselves because Carson's screams caused neighboring guests to move into other sections of the restaurant.

Whatever. We enjoyed our meal as a family!




(I promise you my kid has more than one pair of pjs. He just seems to be always be wearing these when I pull out the camera.)

1-yr Stats

Height: 31 inches (90%)
Weight: 25 pounds (80%)
Head: 46.7 centimeters (50-75%)

We got us a "big one!"

Birthday Party

Carson did not overly enjoy his first birthday party -- too many people, too loud, too much going on, etc. As you can see below, he pretty much said, "To hell with this cake!" He did, however, eventually calm down (after Cheerios and milk with Paw-Paw) and enjoyed playing in the mounds of wrapping and tissue paper his gifts produced.







We did get Carson to tie in to his cake on his actual birthday. Just like his mom, he loves butter cream icing!

Pee-wee's Playhouse

Carson's Playhouse has a much better ring to it. (Not to mention that Pee-wee creeps me out.) For those of you with kids, you know how their "loot" begins to consume every open space in your home. As a result, we created a playroom for Carson in our lower level. He was overwhelmed when we first showed it to him, but he's slowly getting the hang of it.

Shift Work

"Big 'ole pile of shiffffttttttt work
11 to 3
3 to 11
11 to 7"

I don't personally work shifts, but I am knee-deep in "shift" work these days! And my blog is suffering because of it, as is the laundry, emailing my friends, time with Nate and Carson.....the list could go on.

(Mom, listen to Kenny Chesney and this will make sense!)

Right of Passage

Don't they all do this?!

NOGGIN

In an effort to help my kid "learn," I have updated our dishNetwork package and thus added NOGGIN (and BRAVO - Yeah!) to our channel repertoire. I still have no clue what Yo Gabba Gabba! is, or how the heck to pronounce Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. Carson and I will learn together, I guess....

(Other Mommas - I seriously am clueless when it comes to Kid-TV. Any program suggestions?)



(For the record, that is Nate's Skittles wrapper!)

Wedding Bells - 9.10.05

Four years and counting!

Shoe Limitations

We went to the mall yesterday to get Carson his first pair of "big boy" shoes. (He is about to move in to the Elephant Room, a.k.a the 1-yr old room, at day care, and apparently the elephants have a shoe rule.) Anyway, my dad has very wide feet, and so does Nate's dad. (I happen to have very narrow feet, but that's beside the point.) As luck would have it, Carson has extra wide feet too. That's right - he wears a 5 XW, which means our only shoe options for our tank are New Balance and/or Stride Rite.

Fred Flintstone would be so proud!

Speed Racer

Those damn tigers!

Despite the fact that my Illini got their butts kicked, I had a great time at the game with my Mizzou hubby.

Illinois 9 - Missouri 37

Walking in Memphis

Then I'm walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel

Yes, I feel (felt) frustrated after a five and a half hour trip home from Memphis last weekend did not result in a car nap for Carson. He did eventually fall asleep, as we were pulling in the damn driveway! The last half of the trip consisted of constant whimpers, back-arching like no other, and some serious "tune out" by Mom and Dad. (Amy, I can only wait until Carson's pulls an "Are you done ignoring me?" moment. She is seriously so smart!)

Regardless of the drive home, we had a great time with the Corless Clan. How I managed not to take one single picture during the trip, I don't know. Oh, well - it's the quality time we spent with friends that matters most, right?!

We miss you guys already!!

Chicken of the Sea

I'm talking tuna, Ms. Simpson. (I personally think Nick and Jessica will hook up sometime in the next year.)

My cat Monster has been getting a scoop of tuna every morning for several years. This stopped, of course, when we brought home Carson. I decided to stop neglecting my cat about a week ago and reinstated the "breakfast tuna." Two Saturdays ago (I have been disgustingly busy at work lately. Slacking with blogging is the least of my worries!), I put a scoop of tuna on a plastic lid and Monster went to town. Seconds later I saw Monster dart into the dining room. Kitty, I just started to re-spoil you. What's the deal?

The deal is Carson. He crawled over to the pile of tuna, squeezed it between his hands and ate it. Gross!

Do you know how hard it is to get rid of tuna-smell? Very - my kid smelled like rotten fish the rest of the day.

Ms. Kim

I miss you already! Look at how big I am getting:

Chester the Cheetah

If Frito-Lay ever gets tired of its mascot,
I have another option.

It's official - Carson said "Ma-ma!"

8.17.09 - He may not know what he is saying, but he's saying it. Finally, the letter "M" is now a part of Carson's vocabulary. Yeah!

Bitter Sweet

Nate and I spent this weekend (alone) at Table Rock Lake. Grammie and Paw-Paw were gracious enough to spend Thursday, Friday and Saturday at our house taking care of Carson. The "directions" I left for my parents consisted of chicken-scratched food options and a very rough outline of Carson's typical day. Vacation must have been on the brain when I put together the "directions" because normal me would have left two copies of a novel-like Word document next to the phone, which would have been accompanied by directions to the nearest Urgent Care, Carson's doctor's office number, the pediatrician exchange number, directions on how to decipher each of Carson's moods, the difference between a "healthy poop" and a "worrisome poop," etc. I did pull Carson's insurance card out of my wallet just before we left, so the mommy in me never totally checked out.

After a few days by the pool, a couple's massage, wave runner rentals, many glasses of wine and outlet mall shopping, we were ready to come home to Carson. We definitely enjoyed our time away, but really underestimated just how much we would miss our little bug.

Swimmer's Ear

Carson was sick on Sunday so he didn't really have an interest in pool time during Grandma's BBQ, but he did manage to smile big while Aunt Carrie helped him strut his stuff. : )

So You Think You Can Dance

Boss Ross

This is what Ms. Kim and all the other infant room teachers call me at school. (They were calling me this way before I became the oldest baby in the infant room.) Last Friday, I decided I better live up to my name. Since I can now crawl and no one else in the room can, I decided to "flex my muscles." I crawled in to Jack's lap, pull up to my knees and yanked his binky right out of his mouth. I then put Jack's binky in my mouth.

I really am a good kid and don't plan to make a habit out of doing mean things to my friends, but I did feel the need to let everyone know who's boss of the infant room. Who rules the infant room? Carson (a.k.a. Boss) Ross does!

I'm free...

...to wreck Mommy's kitchen! Come to find out, she has named a cabinet after me. It's filled with my sippy cups, banana cookies, Town House crackers, bottles, formula, dinner bibs, fruit snacks, baby utensils...ummm, lots of other cool stuff - all things I have yanked off the shelves and thrown on the floor. Fun! I've heard her say a couple of times this past week, "Stay out of your cabinet, Bud." (I started crawling a week ago, July 24th to be exact!)

(Check out my big-boy seat!)

...to chase the cat! Monster-kitty is kind of afraid of me, I think. His tail is the coolest toy ever!


...to get off of the rug in the great room. I've been stuck on that thing for the last 10-months. It's finally nice to see what else this place has to offer.



Finally, I am MOBILE!