We Have A Walker & Other Adventures in Motherhood

...and a few funny moments in motherhood lately:

1. McCord has figured out how to start the CD player that is attached to his crib (looks kind of like this one).  He takes the liberty to start his CD player when he's ready to get up in the morning or from a nap.  He doesn't do this all the time, but the majority of the mornings this past week, Bo and I've woken up to "Who built the ark? Noah! Noah! Who built the ark? Brother Noah built the ark!"  We look at the video monitor, and there's Monkey, hanging onto the railing of his crib, bouncing along to the lyrics. 

2. The other day, McCord woke up from a nap after being asleep for only 1 hour.  Instead of listening to his CD, he started fussing.  I looked at the monitor, and he was in his usual standing position, ready to be picked up.  I decided to let him cry it out for a while so he'd go back to sleep as is our usual practice when he wakes up early.  This proved unsecessful.  When I went in to have a serious conversation with a one-year-old about how much Mama needs you to take a nap, so she can shower, do the laundry, vaccume the upstairs  the benefits of sleep, I noticed that he'd taken off his pajama pants and thrown them overboard.  He also had taken off his diaper and it was laying abandoned in his crib.  Even though McCord isn't saying any words now, I'm pretty sure his look meant, he had a dirty diaper during his nap, and where was I when he needed me?!!!  Let's hope we don't make a habit out of this. 

Peanut Butter Toes

Those last few months when our house was on the market were tricky.  How to keep it clean with a crawling, sticky, dirty little boy who likes to leave piles of chaos everywhere?!  I found myself constantly cleaning up and cringing when Mc would pull things out of the kitchen cabinets and leave them strewn across the downstairs (or splash in the dog bowl, or pull all of the records and CDs off of the shelf, or ..., or... or......).  And that's not the kind of mom I want to be.  Instead, I want to encourage his curiosity and let him explore, play, learn, and discover.  So a couple of weeks ago, we went outside and played with peanut butter.  Our intention was to make one of those bird feeders you probably made as a kid - you know the kind, with a pine cone, peanut butter, and bird seed - and we eventually got our mission accomplished, but it was the playing with peanut butter that McCord enjoyed so much and what made me feel like I restored my sense of motherhood.

Our birds like Peter Pan peanut butter.
We found this pine cone a couple of months ago when we vacationed at Mansfield Plantation.

Here we are getting excited about peanut butter - Rocky of course wanted to be a part of this project!

And how peanut butter ended up on his toes, I'll never know!

We hung the feeder right outside our kitchen window.

 It took our birds about 2 weeks to find it, but when they discovered it, the feeder became quite the hangout.  We learned that the little birds preferred it over the regular feeder.  We had Carolina Chickadees, Tit mouses, and Wrens.  What a joy it was to watch these birds.  McCord - as busy as this little guy is - would immediately quiet down and get real still when watching the birds.  He enjoyed watching so much, I would pull his highchair in front of the window so he could sit and watch while he ate. 

Update on our house:

We've been packing!  The official move date is IN TWO DAYS.  The washer, dryer, and fridge are coming tomorrow, and we've already had Terminix and a maid out.  Bo's been taking loads of boxes to the house every night. The painters came yesterday and did the first coat of paint on the walls, and I can't wait to show you the before and afters.  Pictures soon, promise!

Meet Henley

My sister gave me a bunch of vintage sewing books for Christmas, and I took one look at this chicken bean bag and just knew I had to make her for McCord.  I mean, what child doesn't need a gigantic chicken to bounce around with?!!!

This has definitely been the most involved sewing project I've worked on.  I must be crazy addicted to sewing, because:

• I had to borrow the overhead projector from our church to enlarge the pattern printed in the book over 2,000%.  I remember it was a cold, rainy day much like today, and I had to load Mc up in the stroller with several rolls of craft paper, markers, and painter's tape.  When I projected the pattern onto the wall it took up our entire Sunday School classroom. This of course, was back in the glory days before McCord was a crawler!

• And then, I got stumped on sewing a curved dart that I had never done before, so I had to consult with 2 members of our church who are expert sewers. 
• One of them is 90 years old and lives at Westminster.  You can imagine how silly I felt hauling a gigantic chicken pattern, yards of fabric, and a whole slew of pins into the assisted living facility with a baby on my hip!  Of course I didn't want to fold up the pattern pieces after I'd been to the trouble of enlarging them by hand, so in I walked with chicken head and gusset in tow. My friend at Westminster is a popular lady, and several of her hall mates stopped by to see what we were working on.  So McCord and I, and a bunch of 90 year olds had a grand ol' time trying to figure out this pattern.
• Still stumped, another member allowed me to stop by her house for a sewing "pep talk" and lots of tutelage.  Not only did I leave with an understanding of how to sew a curved dart, but with lots of inspiration for future projects.  I am so thankful to have knowledgeable friends who are willing to help!

With advice from wiser sewers, I lined the beanbag with a stiffer fabric I had on hand to keep it from coming un-sewn, so I essentially made the beanbag twice.  Then I added a zipper at the bottom in case it ever needs to be washed. 

Once it was all sewn up, the deflated chicken laid around the house for about a week while I was waiting on the stuffing I ordered online to arrive.  Meanwhile, we get a showing for our house (they always happen at the most convenient times!), so I had to load up Henley in her deflated and very unattractive state, with McCord and Rocky and drive around town for a couple of hours.  I'm pretty sure a deflated, gigantic chicken isn't going to help us sell our house!

Finally, last night my extremely patient husband helped me fill up Henley.  This was quite a comedic endeavor! I'm not sure if it was harder to get the filling inside the chicken or clean up all the million little beads?!!! 

Then this morning, we decided that the Easter bunny would like to give Mc his gift early, so I brought Henley up to the nursery right after he woke up.  Here they are getting acquainted. 

I think they'll be fast friends! 

...and this is the smile I hoped for!



Christmas Card Out-takes

While in Aiken over Thanksgiving, we tried to get a good photograph for our Christmas card, but it's a lot to ask a 4 month old to look nice and smile at the camera. And to withhold from making obscene gestures with your left hand. 

And to get the dog to sit for the family picture. 

Just in case there was any question what McCord thought about taking the family photo, Monkey shot the bird

in every.

single.

picture.

And while Monkey was communicating a different message, we simply wanted to let our friends and family know how thankful we are for their support and encouragement this year.  So as a last resort, we settled on a conglomerate of pictures taken over the past 5 months (sigh). 





Finding the Perfect Tree & Some Christmas Crafts

A couple of weeks ago, Bo and I packed up McCord and Rocky and headed to Boone to find the perfect Christmas tree.  We've done this since we were married and I look forward to this family tradition every year.  We went to a new farm this year, and the trees were HUGE.  We wandered into a row of trees looking for the perfect one, and were amazed at how closely they were planted.  You could hardly walk down a row because the forest was so thick.  We felt like we were completely secluded in a wild and magical forest.  Well, in the rush to leave the house earlier in the morning, we managed to pack warm clothes for everyone including McCord's fleece jester suit (see pictures below) and Rocky's winter jacket (wish I had a picture of that!), but we forgot Bo's coat!  Needless to say, we found the perfect tree in less than 30 minutes.  I wish I would have gotten more photos of the day, but here are a few we managed to take. 



We can't remember the name of this farm, but it was in Linville, NC on Hwy 221 and had a big red barn visible from the highway



Check out the jester suit - compliments of cousin Bayer - this is the "Mama made me wear this" face.  McCord was quite a trooper, a total of 6 1/2 hours in the car and only 3 meltdowns!

 

You can see the tree in the background here...

 

...and this is a onesie I appliqued for Monkey to honor the day.  

 

.... And now switching gears...I've been wanting to share this link with all of my crafty friends.  These little elves are really easy and fun to make.  If I can transition Monkey to a good napping schedule this week, you just might see more of them. 

Family Vacation

We spent last week with the Keisler-side of the family at Lake Keowee.  McCord really enjoyed spending time with his grandparents - Aiya and Doe Doe, Uncle Ashley, Aunt Cam, and cousins Bayer and Calla.  We fished, danced with the kids, and we even worked in a couple of rainy-day crafts.  We also spent a good part of the week watching and rewatching and rewatching again the video of overnight internet sensation Antoine Dodson and the Antoine Dodson song.  McCord surprised us all and started laughing for the first time last week (not at Antoine like the rest of us, but at my mom)! 

Here are some pictures from craft day.  Please ignore my ghetto fabulous outfit - I must have been influenced by Antoine. 

Monkey says, "They're climbing in your windows and snatching your people up! They're gonna find you, so hide your kids!"

 This is a little onesie that my sister made for Calla using rubber stamps.  There's a tutorial for it here at one of my favorite blogs Fly Through Our Window.

This is a picture of my dad placing his footprint on an art smock for my mom.  We had the whole family put their print on it - babies included.  I'll post pictures of the completed project later.  Creating a family t-shirt or apron would be a fun Christmas gift for grandmothers. 

My sister, my mom, and Bayer worked really hard on these caramel snacks.  They dipped pretzel rods, ritz crackers, and apples in caramel and covered them with peanuts and crushed oreos.  Then they went back over them with melted chocolate. 

My favorite memory of the week: my mom, my sister, and I spent Monday morning shopping with Bayer and McCord.  On our drive home, McCord decided he'd had enough and cranked it up to a Level 10 Meltdown.  He cried at the top of his lungs letting us all know that he was not very happy about this shopping-business.  Four-year-old Bayer was completely unphased by his tears and started making up a little rap to cheer McCord up.  It consisted of a few "bop bop bop"s, and had a catchy little rhythm to it.  Here we are driving in the rain, down the back roads of Senaca, with a very unhappy baby and a rapping 4-year-old.  We couldn't get home fast enough.  All of a sudden, McCord broke into a whole-hearted belly laugh at his goofy cousin.  He loved Bayer's bop, bop, bops!  Before long, McCord was laughing at Bayer.  Bayer was laughing at McCord; and my mom, my sister, and I were laughing at the both of them.  I about wrecked the car trying to watch the two of them interact.  It was so funny!

Kindermusik Rocks!

Tonight McCord attended his first Kindermusik class which was held at our church.  Kindermusik is a music and movement program for young children (even as young as McCord!).  Research shows that music introduced at a young age can help build neural pathways by fostering language, mathmatic, and social skills.  We bounced, sang, and danced to a variety of songs led by our instructor and McCord loved every minute!  His favorite thing was the rainmaker that you see below.  McCord and his classmates were given goodie bags full of Kindermusik materials - a CD, book, and wall poster to study for their homework - too cute!

A Little Something for the Grandmothers

Bo and I are so thankful that both of our moms were willing to stay with us after McCord was born to help us get adjusted to parenthood.  We had a lot to learn between the diaper changes, breastfeeding, and burping, but we were fortunate to be able to learn from the best.  Aiya ({pronounced Eye - ya}my mom) stayed the first week and GeeGee (Bo's mom) stayed the second week.  In addition to helping us care for the baby, they cooked, cleaned, and did laundry - lots of it! 

McCord and I felt creative yesterday, so we set out to make something for Aiya and GeeGee to thank them for all of their love and support. 

Here we are at Clay Escape in Fort Mill where you can choose from a variety of pottery pieces to paint and design any way you choose. 

Look at all of the options of pottery and paint colors...

 

The owner's name is Jennifer and she was extremely helpful, and she loves babies, so we had a great time messing around in the paint. You can tell she also has a great sense of humor...

Here's the budding artist...

... and here's a sneak peak of McCord's contribution to Aiya and GeeGee's gifts.  You'll have to check back later for the final results.

Apology Cookies

Dear Rock Hill Animal Hospital,

McCord sincerely apologizes for his meltdown during Hank's appointment.  We hope the oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies make up for any ill feelings!

Adventures in Motherhood - Part I

Meet Hank.

He's a charming little fellow, and a pesky little rascal too. 

He slipped out the door Thursday evening.  And Bo and I couldn't get him to come back in before we went to sleep, so our highly domesticated house cat spent a night out in the great outdoors.  Fortunately he came home some time in the middle of the night.  He quickly disappeared into my closet where he hid all day.  I saw him for the first time at 4:30 p.m. and noticed that his left eye was swollen shut.  After calling Bo to discuss his condition, we decided that he needed to be seen by the vet before the weekend.  So in a mad dash, I loaded up Hank the Tank and Monkey McCord in the car - we made it to the vet's office just before they close.

For a split-second, I allowed myself to think that I could handle this motherhood thing pretty well - after all, I managed to maneuver a cat carrier and a car seat carrier with a sleeping infant into Rock Hill Animal Hospital before it closed at a moments notice.  But, that thought of confidence only lasted an instant.  And then the vet walked in the exam room, and McCord woke up.  Hungry.  And cranky.  And he cried

the

whole

time. 

Fortunately, our vet is good natured and very understanding.  He also has a cynical sense of humor, because he chuckled when he told me Hank's cornea was lacerated and he'd need drops in his eye 4 TIMES A DAY.  And did I mention that we just had a newborn?

When we got home, this is what I found - remnants of the graham cracker bag that I left on the kitchen counter in a hurry to make it to the vet.  It was accompanied by little pieces of plastic all around the house.

Here's the guilty culprit.

The cat did it.