College Football at the Mason's

It's finally come---college football time!!! This time of year we become junk food eating couch potatoes glued to the TV. It's a little different this year though. We don't really sit down much, and we aren't as glued to the TV as we would like to be. Somehow we still manage to do just fine on the junk food part. :) As is tradition, we camped out at the Mason's house all day Saturday. Porter got a chance to try out some new toys (he especially loved the Mickey Mouse airplane that he is riding on below) and play with Morgan and Jennings. We did our regular bedtime routine at the Mason's and put Porter to bed there. We managed to get him in the truck without waking him up, and he did pretty good on the ride home, but woke up when we pulled up to the house. He had to have a bottle to go back to bed and went right back to sleep. He only got up twice after that (pretty good right now--we think it's a combination of teething and a snotty nose???) and slept until 6:50am---whooo hooo!!!

Porter and Jennings in the tub....

Bathtime is Fun time!

Bathtime

Just in case anybody forgot, Porter loves his bath. Last night I took some pictures. He transitioned to the big tub just fine. He has more room to splash and chases after toys the whole time.






























-- Post From My iPhone

Water Baby Part 2

Porter has decided that he prefers to lay in the water in the bathtub. He spends most of this bath as shown in the video below. He will be all the way under except for his little face sticking out of the water and he just loves it. He laughs, and then gets really serious about kicking and flailing his arms. I guess there's nothing wrong with it, and its definitely easier for getting soap out of his hair and for getting his booty clean.

Day 24

Porter wasn't feeling very photogenic today. Before bathtime, this is the best we could do. He was not interested in sitting in the chair in his room--he was only interested in watching TV while I standing up holding him. No sitting for mommy. See those eyes glued to the TV....

Don't know why he has to throw a leg over the edge of the tub, but this is where we end up every night. I straighten him up, and he kicks and splashes his way right back here....

Day 23--Happy St Patrick's Day!

Porter felt better today, even though he woke up at 5:00am with fever, and had fever this afternoon at daycare. He had red tender spots on his little hams where he got his shots, but they weren't sore. Here he is being a little leprechaun and then a bathtub pirate.

Day 15

Back to the regular routine. This is our version of a fat man in a hot tub.....




Part of our "regular routine" is bath, bottle, and bedtime. He is not happy about any deviation from this little schedule. It is nice most of the time, but it would be nice if he were a little flexible on that for his parents to be able to have dinner. He's a happy little boy, but an inpatient one too. (I admit, he got that from his Mama.)
Anyway, we obliged him tonight and he was ready for his bottle right after his bath. Sometimes you can't even get it warm before you have to hear about it from him. He drank it and fell fast asleep in my arms---little mouth open and milk running down his cheek. He was just a little limp dishrag, and it was as precious as could be. You really don't ever want to put them down. I could have just curled up in the chair with him and gone to sleep right there. That image is what I will always remember about him being a baby. For all you mothers out there that tell me to cherish there moments, I am ingraining every sense of these moments in my brain with the hope that I won't forget it. Maybe I am taking advantage of it a little more than others because I don't have the opportunity to spend as much time with him as I would like. I asked my Mama the other day if she was excited about picking us up from daycare as I am when I get to pick Porter up. She wasn't, but that was just something she did every day. It wasn't anything special. For me right now, every minute I get to spend with him is special. I am at work more than I am at home, and a lot of the time I'm at home Porter's in his bed sleeping. Though I like my job and know I was meant to be a surgeon, I am jealous of not being able to do some of the things that other moms get to do. It's a conflicted existence I lead right now. My top priorities don't always look like what they are. You have to take time out of the equation. Time doesn't equal importance. That's a hard concept to grasp.

Day 4

I just couldn't help it. He was in such a good mood when I got home today, I had to post all these pictures. Our evening routine is already so busy I don't even know what comes on TV anymore, but you can add taking pictures, loading and retouching the pictures, and blogging to my night. He got a good nap late this afternoon and was good to go for a couple of hours.

New Porter!

  Playing with blocks....

                   Talking to Daddy.

Then.....

Now!!!!

I Love Bathtime!

The one constant we can count on every day is that Porter will love his bath. You can just take him in the bathroom and lay him on a towel and he gets happy. Sometimes we have just given him a bath to end the fussiness. He might like it because he knows that he gets to eat right after his bath.
Also, I have seen a picture with a face like this somewhere else..... Maybe my baby book. I'll have to get Mama to scan a 29 year old picture that looks just like this. He does not have my brow, though. That's Jared's.

Porter's Birth Day

So here is the L&D post. It took a few days to get together, but finally it is finished....

One of the last known images of me while I was pregnant. Take a good look...... You may never see me this way again. Not that I don't love Porter to death, but I just need to have a little distance from the pregnancy memories and get a little more sleep.

I guess the "labor" probably started on Tuesday, November 11th. I woke up and felt like I was going to puke. Jared and some of our friends had been sick over the weekend, so I thought I must be coming down with what they had. I had my 38 week prenatal visit that day, so I had to get up and get going. After I was up, I didn't feel as bad, so I just blew it off and didn't mention it at my appointment. My regular doctor was on vacation (fine time for me to go into labor), so I saw Dr Bodie instead. He's a family friend and is super nice and an excellent doctor, so I didn't mind. He "checked" me and said there was no way in hell he would even discuss induction. I wasn't favorable.... It could be a week or 3..... Go home and kick your feet up.... The going home was going to happen, but not the kick my feet up part. I had an agenda for the week. I had taken maternity leave starting the previous Saturday, and was going to use the next week to go into nesting overdrive---clean out the cabinets, and even tackle the dreaded junk drawer(s) in the kitchen.

Back to Tuesday. I spent the rest of the day sleeping on the couch and feeling pretty miserable. I didn't even eat anything (very strange for me). Jared had to wake me up that night to tell me to go to bed. I tossed and turned for several hours, couldn't get comfortable, and still felt queasy. About 11:30pm I finally decided I would medicate myself, so I took tylenol with benadryl and sat on the edge of the tub eating rolaids until I felt like I had taken an adequate dose for my illness.

I woke up around 3:30am and felt a little funny---and I'll just leave it at that. Soon thereafter I came to the conclusion that my "water" had broken (that looks weird seeing it in writing). I promptly went back to bed and told Jared. For the next 30 minutes we layed in bed in the dark not sleeping. Then we got up and did the dishes and then we went back to bed again. Around 6:00 am I called my mom and told her not to get dressed for work, but for baby birthing. Then I called Dr Owens at home and woke her up from her vacation. Then I got a shower while Jared packed our stuff (interesting) and we headed to the hospital. Dr Bodie saw me in the screening room and confirmed what we already knew, and we were on our way to a room for and epidural and pitocin. By the end of the day (5:05pm) I looked like this.....

This was right before I completely unwrapped him to survey everything.
Daddy getting acquainted with his new full time job......


You know how everybody has that aunt that smells like moth balls??? Well, this is Porter's "Aunt Moth Ball."

Can't leave out Nana....

Ready for the first ride home.....

First bath.