Hugs All Around

Carson is going through a major hug phase. He wants to give hugs to us all the time. And its not just us, he gives hugs to kids when he sees them, really whenever he is happy. We are pretty sure that this is just about the cutest phase he will ever go though. Now not everyone receives these hugs as happily as Aaron and I do. Just this week I was keeping our friend's little girl, Julia, and we went on a walk. On our walks, we often stop and have hug breaks or Carson just hugs my leg. Well Carson wanted to hug Julia today and she looked at me and said, "tell Carson no hugging me." Carson also really wants to give Josie hugs and she is not so interested in his attention so I have to make her sit. That's okay because it just means more for me. :) We will be so sad when this stops, I hope it never does.

Congrats Dick Pierson!

Last week we made a trip to Arkansas to see Aaron's Dad receive a really important, fancy award (that I can't remember the name of) from the Arkansas Hospital Board. We are all very proud of him and happy that we could barely make it in time for the Awards Ceremony and dinner. All of Aaron's siblings came (except his brother in Utah who had a six day old baby...) and it was so fun to see everyone. Aaron had to work that morning so we were hauling to get there, no stops along the way. Then we threw our screaming baby at the baby sitter and took off. Pretty sure she earned her wages that night. After that we spent the weekend in Arkansas, enjoying beautiful weather and watching soccer and baseball games.

Google This:

Texas Rat Snake

This is what we found in our back yard on Sunday night. It was pretty much the scariest thing ever! After Aaron tried to cut its head off and missed it coiled up and hisses at us, I was freaking out! It was huge, it says they can be up to 6 feet but I would say this one was about 4. Aaron went next door to borrow a hoe from our neighbor and I refused to stay alone in the backyard with it to keep an eye on it and while we were gone, it got away. To where??? Who knows but I send Josie out to do an inspection before we go outside since she found it in the first place. Seriously snakes are scary.

15 Months

My little man had his 15 Month check up last week. While there he got 3 shots, yuck! His official stats are:

Height: 32" (75th)

Weight: 23LBS. (30th)

Head: 18.5" (50th)

I was happy to see his weight go up some but I don't stress out about it at all because he continues to be a fabulous eater. We are loving this age more than we knew possible. It is so fun to see him copying sounds and dancing and doing hand motions to songs. We could watch this kid play for hours. He is really good about playing with his toys but his mega obsession is still books. He wants to read all day long...it really wears on me some days. A girl can only read these books so much! I get new ones at the library but we read so much I am worn out on them a few days later. And he follows me around the house with a book until I stop and sometimes he grabs my hand and opens it and puts a book inside, how old are kids when they can read on their own? :) Oh well, there could be worse things I suppose. Carson loves to take showers, he is such a funny kid if I try to shower without him he starts banging on the shower door and taking off his clothes...hard to resist. He is into everything and loving every minute of it. He can throw a tantrum already if he doesn't get his way or if I stop reading before he is ready but overall he is a happy kid. We still aren't sure what he is allergic too but we will keep trying to figure it out! He is down to one nap a day and sleeps about 11 hours at night. He loves for me to chase him around the house and he love to take walks, barefoot of course because we can't convince this kid to wear shoes for anything. He is a very curious boy and he could spend hours in my Mom's classroom at her school, pulling things out, stacking things, and reading books. He is turning into such a sweet and cuddly boy and he even gives "Sam" his hand puppet dog friend hugs and kisses. He hates to brush his teeth at night and doesn't enjoy reading scriptures at night...he tries to pull the book out of my hand and replace it with one he would rather read. Also as soon as he sees me pull out his medicine he tries to run away from me. He does the same when I change his diaper, he thinks it is a fabulous game.

We sure have a lot of fun with this sweet boy!

The return of wheat

As soon as I could bring back one of the forbidden foods, wheat made a return in all its cookie, rolls, waffle, and sandwich glory. We really missed it and so far (fingers crossed) no rash has shown up so I am hoping this is not the culprit. Thank you so much for all of your comments and helpful advice with the rash, I used the advice and his rash has cleared up and he feels much better. In fact here he is on day 7 of his diet, all cleared up.

(Don't judge the pink Dora sippy, we use any and all hand-me-downs people throw our way)

And in other news, beautiful Texas fall has officially begun and it is not disappointing. The weather is amazing and I feel like we could live outside. Only bad news is my bike is in the shop and it is taking forever to fix. I am so upset without it since the weather is so amazing. Today we went to the zoo and had so much fun, Carson loved it much more this time around. Pretty sure he spent about 5 minutes of it in his stroller, the rest of the time he wanted to walk or push the stroller. Then at the end we went to the park and it was empty and what started out as fun on the slides ended up like this:

Needless to say my little man was worn out and took a very long nap, skipping lunch, after we got home.

Austin and Allergies

So a little over a month ago I gave Carson a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he loved it. The next day he started breaking out with a rash that started on his legs and spread all over his little body. It was so sad. So doctor said sounds like he is allergic to peanuts, Benadryl until it clears up. Well it cleared up and I stopped giving him peanuts. Then it turned into the rash that never goes away. We cannot get this thing to clear up, it just keeps coming back. So I decided maybe its not peanuts, it must be something else. But we cannot for the life of us figure out what it is. Carson eats everything in sight and has since he was 9 months old so I can't figure out what is new in his diet. So we go back to the doctor, blood tests at this age are usually inconclusive so she wants him off milk, wheat, nuts, berries, eggs, and seafood. Are you kidding me??? Do this for a whole week and see if it clears up and then you'll know if it is one of these things. Poor Carson, he can't eat anything. I have had the hardest time coming up with anything for him to eat. He is all fruit and vegetabled out. After 2 days of oatmeal he was over it and a person can only eat so much rice. I sure hope its like seafood, that wouldn't be so hard but wheat causes a whole lifestyle change. And I will have to do it too because when he sees me eating bread or something he wants it. Did you know there is wheat in ice cream? Not to mention milk! I feel sorry for him. It has only been 3 or 4 days but the rash is not clearing up. Any ideas, what are your kids allergic too?

On a lighter note we went to Austin this weekend. I forgot our camera but we did take this picture of Carson riding the train. (this is before he peed through his diaper and jeans and onto my lap :) I love Austin and we had a great time, it is so beautiful there. Aaron and I went on a run through UT campus and around the capital and enjoyed checking it out. The football stadium is huge. I oftentimes think we would be happier in a smaller town...

Just call me Martha

So do you think nesting can rub off on people?? My friend, Andrea, is 30+ weeks pregnant and really nesting and I think it rubbed off on me. She was at my house talking about getting the nursery painted and all set up and mentioned that they were going to donate their second bedroom furniture and we said, "we'll take it." Now I know I have never accurately described the current state of our bedroom. Well I would use the word pitiful but that seems a little strong since we do actually own a bed, so I will say...bare oh and I must add unorganized. Our bed sits on the floor, we have no furniture in our bedroom. We used to keep our clothes in piles on the floor (since we have no dresser) until Josie started sleeping on it. So I moved my craft and scrapbooking shelves into our room and that's where we've kept our clothes.

Next problem, Aaron. Aaron has many wonderful and fabulous qualities but one of them is not organization or throwing things away. He keeps EVERYTHING and doesn't ever really find a place to put it. So it usually ends up in a big pile next to his side of the bed. It drives me crazy but Aaron always says, "let me have this one place in the whole house." That's tough to argue with but also this pile is difficult to sleep in the same room as. Add the pile of books and every talk Aaron has ever read and it was starting to wear on me.

Enter the new furniture. Now I did not take a before picture of this furniture but let me give you a brief description. Remember the shiny laminate particle board furniture phase? Probably not because it was before your time but I'm sure you have seen some of it. It was that with the gold lining. I don't think I am hurting Devin and Andrea's feelings when I say that while the furniture was in excellent condition it wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing. So after spending some serious time on google and many of those do-it-yourself blogs I decided that I could fix them up some. I sanded, primed, and painted the dresser and two night stands all by myself. This was my project while Aaron was out of town last week. I worked on it every night after Carson went to sleep. I love the color and I wish I would've gotten a glossier finish paint I am pretty pleased with how they turned out. I really wanted to rip off the handles and put new ones on but the two Lowe's workers convinced me that I would ruin the drawers. (After the first one said no I set out for a second opinion because I really, really wanted new handles)

(Not a great picture, not sure why its spotting. Trust me the whole dresser is painted)

Well the new furniture caused me to go into a major state of nesting, at least that's what I'm calling it. I moved the shelves back into their home in the office, which meant I needed to move stuff around in the office and organize the office closet.

Then I thought well I need to move some stuff from Carson's closet in here so I organized Carson's closet and put up a curtain in his room. (I hung it all by myself and used a power tool in the process :)

Then since I was working on the bedroom I moved the plastic drawers into the closet and organized the whole closet.

I had to move some stuff upstairs so I organized the upstairs closet and all the holiday stuff.

Then I thought while I was at it I would work on the laundry room. (Which reminded me that we need more toilet paper)

Phew and then I was done and very happy and I only had to purchase 3 storage bins. Maybe Aaron should go out of town more often...just kidding, I hate for Aaron to go out of town.

And the best part of the room is this compromise. I found an extra basket that we weren't really using in the laundry room and Aaron is free to fill it with whatever he wants and at least it looks better inside a basket right?? Well I may have taken it too far when I said he could put whatever he wanted in there because he has put clothes in there that he doesn't feel like putting away and yesterday I found candy. Marriage is all about compromises. :)

*Note I don't mean to sound like I am complaining about our bedroom furniture. Really our bedroom has just always been the least of priorities. We worked on our office, living room, upstairs, and Caron's rooms first. I know we'll get around to finishing up our bedroom eventually.