Yesterday was Carter's first day in the one year old room. He woke up at 6 am and we went about our normal routine just like any other day. That is other than dressing Carter in a special first day of school outfit and taking a bunch of pictures. On the drive to daycare I felt like any other day. I wasn't prepared for the onslaught of emotions that occurred while dropping Carter off. As we walked past the infant room I felt my throat tighten. Once inside Carter's new room I struggled to hold in my emotions. Sometimes I'm caught off guard with my reactions to situations which is foreign to me. I guess it comes along with the whole parenting thing.
Carter was greeted by the other children already in the room. One of the kids even reached for Carter and then patted his back. Carter was ready to get down and play so I sent him off. It was just all so weird. The room was different, the teacher was different, I didn't fill out any information like I used to on his infant daily sheet. I felt lost. The transition was nothing for Carter. He took off right away, playing and babbling to the other kids. I missed Miss Tracie. I saw her across the kitchen area and that's when I realized it. She was the reason I chose the daycare I did. Her sweet, calm, caring demeanor. Carter may not have been overly attached, but apparently I was. I never once worried about leaving Carter with her. I knew she cared for him just as if he were her own child.
Carter's new schedule.
You'd think such a small transition wouldn't make that much of a difference. Carter moved to the room next door, no big deal, but it was. I don't know if it was the absence of the full daily sheet (he now only has half a page with little tidbits), the different teacher, the different room, the different toys, the realization that he is over a year old, or the fact that in 3 more years he'll be in preschool. Whatever it was, I cried the entire way to work and struggled to pull it together before the kids arrived for school.
This morning went much smoother for me. Carter took off straight for the book shelf and pulled out a book to read. Then he crawled off, pushed a car up against the wall, and proceeded to climb aboard. One of the other little boys followed him around and even patted his back to say hello. I felt much calmer going to work and didn't shed a single tear.
Watching other students arrive.
It was as though my students sensed I needed some cheering up because I was greeted with 3 gifts this morning. A rainbow loom bracelet, a rainbow loom ring which was so small it only fit on my pinky finger and cut off circulation at that, and a random Christmas basket which I'm thinking I better e-mail parents to make sure they know it was given to me as a gift. I've had students randomly bring things from home to give me without asking their parents first.
Presents from my sweet kiddos.
Yesterday was another instance that reminded me this whole working mom thing is so much harder for me than it is for Carter. I get all worked up and upset, missing him and wishing I could stay home, and he's at daycare cruising around having a blast with all of his friends. It was a reminder to me that I need to lighten up, look at the bright side, and focus on how great things are for Carter and forget about how sad they make me. No one said being a mom would be easy, but no one could ever explain how hard it truly is. Walking around with your heart out of your body is an understatement for sure!
Valentine's Day has always been my favorite holiday. I have to admit, as a kid it was tied with Christmas for obvious reasons, I don't think I've ever met a child (who celebrated Christmas) whose favorite holiday wasn't Christmas. I had a special dress with a red skirt and white top covered with tiny red hearts. I loved wearing that dress and saved it special for Valentine's Day. My favorite thing about it was the heart shaped buttons on the chest area. One year I even got to host a special Think Pink Party for my friends
and my mom helped me make all kinds of heart shaped goodies.
With Thomas wearing my beloved heart dress.
The Think Pink party. I'm in the middle in the all pink sweat suit.
Of course I loved the party at school, passing out valentines to my classmates, painstakingly writing the names on all of my valentines and even adding an extra heart sticker to the boy I liked's card. But the very best part of Valentine's Day was our celebration at home. My parents would make all heart-shaped food. My mom baked a heart cake and my dad cooked a heart pizza. After dinner we each got a small present from my parents which my mom would wrap in paper and stick heart stickers all over. Everyone made a box for valentines and all throughout the week we would write valentines and stick them in each other's boxes. I loved sneakily writing valentines and rushing to put them in boxes before anyone saw me. My dad always created some wild over the top box. One year it was a person with a milk jug head which he spray painted yellow. Another year he used paper towel rolls and boxes to make a sort of maze for his valentines to fall through. My mom wrote the best valentines and I even recited one she wrote to my dad the next day at school (embarrassing her to no end)! My parents did such a great job of making Valentine's Day about our love for each other as a family and I want to do that for Carter.
Our heart shaped pizza and cake and our Valentine boxes.
Posing with our presents. Looks like Thomas loved his Skittles and I couldn't get enough of my bear!
Thomas and me ready to eat. You can see dad's milk jug head Valentine box.
My love for Valentine's Day continued on through college even though I no longer got to share in all the festivities with my parents. My mom sent care packages every holiday with treats for me and all my roommates. The Valentine's Day one was always my favorite. I loved all the heart shaped goodies. Hearts are one of my favorite decorations and I love that you get to have them all over the place during the month of February! To me Valentine's Day was never about vying for the love of a boy. It was always about those around me who I loved, most importantly, my family.
During my first year teaching I got a pink Christmas tree because I grew up with 2 brothers and, gosh darn it, now that I lived by myself I was gonna girl that place up! I was after-Valentine's Day shopping that year and bought some Valentine's Day ornaments for 75% off. I knew they would look perfect on my pink tree and would give me an excuse to pull my Christmas tree back out. Now that we have a real tree, I still use my pink tree as a Valentine's Day tree. Ty wanted to get rid of it this summer, but I just couldn't do it.
Carter on Valentine's Day last year (2 months)!
This year as I put it up it was doubly fun because Carter "helped" me. First he found the ornaments and dumped them all out of the package, banging them together, and having a grand old time. When he turned and saw the tree his eyes lit up in recognition. Even with the size and color difference he knew what it was. He crawled over and began grabbing ornaments off the tree. I really wanted to get a picture of him sitting by the tree and had a heck of a time getting him to sit with his back to the tree! I am so excited for Valentine's Day this year because we will get to share it with an ever-growing Carter!
The only one I was able to get of him facing forward!
I'd like to give my mom a shout out for scanning and e-mailing me the pictures of Valentine's Day past. I had already written this post when I asked for pictures and all the pictures she sent captured what I was writing about and worked perfectly. Thanks, mom!
I'm so excited Ashley has started Move it Monday up again! I always enjoyed reading the other exercise and healthy eating related posts and looked forward to writing about it myself on Mondays. So I'm linking up today!
I'm already looking forward to spring. Although the weather we're having right now is tricking me into thinking spring is right around the corner when we still have half of January and the whole month of February to get through (but February means Valentine's Day and I LOVE Valentine's day, but that's a post for another day). I seriously have a mild battle I face every winter with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Last week when it was frigidly cold I was so depressed and in a funk about being back at work and missing Carter. This week with suddenly warm temps I'm be bopping around, singing a merry tune, and flipping through pictures and videos of Carter on my phone whenever I get the chance. I feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One's my winter personality and the other is my personality during all other seasons. But I got off track talking about the weather. I'm not just looking forward to spring for the weather, but also for the running. Right now is perfect timing to start planning out my spring races and ramping my training up accordingly.
I can't quite decide what I want to focus on for the spring. I'm dead set on running under 21 minutes in the 5K. Mostly because I ran a 21:05 in November before my second fall half-marathon and then after a bit of a hiatus from hard training a 21:20 on New Year's Eve/Day. I know I have a sub-21 in there, it's just tapping into it! And let me tell ya, it's been a LONG time since I've run under 21 minutes. Off the top of my head I'd say it was about 4ish years ago before I met Ty and my priorities changed. Back before running turned into 2 miles here and there throughout the week.
For some reason the half-marathon has always been my baby. To me it's the perfect combination of distance and speed. I love it. You get that long run runner's high afterward without the week long hobbling limp of a marathon. I tend to choose focusing on the half-marathon over other race distances every single time. Now I'm at a cross roads because if I focus on the half I want to run a new postpartum PR (I'm not even going to pretend an all-time PR is anywhere in the near future). That would mean beating my time of 1:36:51, an average of 7:21 pace per mile. That's a stout order and I'm not sure if I'm up to the challenge. And honestly the 5K is always a safe bet because if I have a bad race, I can just pick up another 5K the next weekend. Have a bad half-marathon? I'd want to wait at least 2-3 weeks before running another and then you have to find another one and it has to be open and it can't be super expensive. There are always 5Ks going on, so it's just a safe bet.
Once I kick off my long runs and put tempo runs back into my daily routine I'll have a better idea which goal I want to focus on. But even as I write this I feel the half-marathon calling my name. Plus, who knows, maybe I'll run a sub-21 minute 5K in February and then that wouldn't make a very good goal for the spring!
And you all know I can't write a post without including pictures of our precious, little man, so here ya go! Oh, and I almost forgot, I've changed my blog settings (I didn't realize they were set differently) so anyone can make comments on posts even without a blogger account! So go on and make me feel loved with a comment!
Playing peek-a-boo with daddy while daddy showered.
Carter loves mirrors and if I looked like him I would too!
Ty was feeling about 75% better today throughout the day so we decided to venture out to the zoo. I invited Jeremy to come, I'm already loving his new schedule, and he agreed to join us. When Carter woke up from his nap I fed him, changed his diaper, and loaded the car while Ty showered. As I came back inside I heard Ty throwing up in the bathroom again. Of course Carter took off to the bathroom to check on his daddy. He's such a caring son! After that incident Ty opted out of the zoo trip. I'm just going to share the highlights of our trip with some pictures and call it a day.
We were looking at some treeshrews. Jeremy and I both saw one climbing in a tree and I pointed it out to Carter. Instead of looking over, Carter's concentration remained focused on a different tree. He screeched and pointed at the tree and then I noticed he saw a treeshrew quietly sitting in the tree that both Jeremy and I had missed because we were distracted by the shrew that was moving.
Carter looking at the treeshrew.
The next habitat included bushbabies. One was up in a tree and the other was down on the ground right against the glass. The area was dark and Carter wasn't too interested in the animals. I asked Jeremy to put Carter down on the ground to see the bushbaby up close. The moment he looked up and saw the bushbaby he screamed and then started to cry. It must have surprised him that it was so close to his face!
In the rainforest area.
We were looking at some animals and I heard a little boy behind us tell his dad he found the tiger. I turned to look at him and he was pointing at Carter. It was so adorable because Carter was wearing his tiger jacket with his hood up.
Posing with the penguins.
Seeing how much more alert and interested Carter was this time makes me so excited to go again in a few months. It will probably take that long before we have weather like today again! It got up to 70 degrees. It's just Ty's luck to be terribly sick on a weekend where the highs are 57 and 71! But of course he was feeling great on the day we set record lows and the morning started off with temperatures in the negatives. Luckily the rest of the week looks to be pretty nice.
Yep, that's right, that icky stomach bug Carter had a couple of days ago... Ty ended up with it today. Carter woke up at 6:15 am (little mister needs to learn how to sleep in on weekends) and as I got up to get Carter, Ty got up and hurried to the bathroom. We were both counting on his day going similar to Carter's when he was sick and hoped since he had thrown up in the morning he'd be done with that. Nope, not the case. Carter only threw up once at 8:00 am and was fine until the diarrhea began at 2:00 pm and lasted until 8:00 pm. Unfortunately for Ty he was on and off the toilet all day, spending his day either in the bathroom, in bed, or on the couch.
Apologizing (with snuggles) to daddy for getting him sick.
I wanted to give Ty some peace and quiet as he rested so I took Carter out to a playground close to our house. I've never seen anyone there so I was surprised when we arrived and there were 2 kids playing. The little girl immediately came over to tell me how cute my baby was and doted on Carter the entire time we were there. When I took a picture of Carter she wanted in the picture with him. When we left she asked to give him a hug and when she did, Carter had the most precious smile on his face!
The cutest little tiger you'll ever see!
Enjoying a train at the park.
Carter made a buddy.
When we got home Ty was up and still feeling horrible. I had hoped he would be feeling a bit better because it was about the same amount of time Carter had been feeling really badly. This stomach bug must be one of those things, like chicken pox, that is much worse to get when you're an adult. It could also be that Carter has a pretty kick butt immune system due to 12 months of breastfeeding, who knows! All we know is that Ty threw up all day long and could only keep Gatorade down whereas Carter even ate heavy foods like spaghetti and did fine. I'm counting on my constant exposure to germs and subsequently killer immune system to keep me from coming down with it next. I have my little germy and touchy feely first graders to thank for that! Now if I wake up tomorrow like Ty did today I will be very disappointed!
Carter was so worried about his daddy. He would walk over to him, while holding onto the couch, to check on him. We were in the living room and Carter heard Ty throwing up in the bathroom. He took off toward the bathroom to check on his daddy. I let him watch for a little bit, but then took him back in the other room because it seemed weird being an audience for what was going on. The minute I put Carter down on the floor, he took off for the bathroom after his daddy. I felt so badly for Ty and Carter seemed to as well. I'm hoping he wakes up feeling as good as new tomorrow so he doesn't miss out on the gorgeous weather! Today it got up to 57 degrees and tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the 60's. We had talked about going to the zoo if Ty is up to it. So we'll see what the morning brings.
Carter has been spending more and more time in the one year old room at daycare. He will officially move rooms next week. When we arrived this morning they had me take him over to the one year old room. Immediately he crawled over to the play kitchen and began cooking on the stove. One other child was in the room when we arrived and he was very excited to see Carter! He crawled over and they cooked together. Carter kept trying to grab the spoon from his little buddy. He's not used to being around kids as strong or stronger than him, the other little boy didn't budge. In the infant room Carter would just grab what he wanted and crawl away because he was the only one who could crawl, not happening here. Then he took off and crawled up a slide and then slid down. He did it a few times and I tried to get a video, but my phone was too full of pictures. By the time I had deleted enough pictures to take a video, Carter was over the slide. Darn! I'm sure I'll have a video of it soon!
After I picked Carter up at daycare we headed to the trails to run. I decided to run from a parking lot with a playground so we could play on the playground afterward because it was 57 degrees! I told Ty where we were running from so he'd run from the same place and we could see him. The playground is a bit strange with different toys than most, but Carter had a blast. The first thing we played on was a spinner you sit in. Carter laughed and laughed and laughed. Sliding was Carter's other favorite. We did it quite a few times, but I was worried to let go so I stood beside the slide and held his hand. To get to the slide you have to climb up stairs and I was impressed with how Carter navigated up them holding my hands. He continues to amaze me! After the first time I just lifted him up to the top of the slide from the side. On one side of the playground they have hills with fake grass. I took Carter up to the top and went part-way down. He scooted down the hill on his bottom, it was hilarious. Ty arrived a little while after that so we showed him and I was able to get a video.
How were we going to top our playground experience? We decided to go out to dinner and got Carter a meal for his first restaurant meal. We went to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I ordered Carter one beef and one cheese enchilada. The first thing we gave him was the rice and he chowed down on it! Ty ate the refried beans, but other than that Carter pretty much dominated the meal on his own. We left with a to-go box, but it didn't have much in it. Little dude is quite the eater!
Very excited to see his meal!
Enjoying food at mommy and daddy's favorite restaurant.
Today started out just like an average ordinary day around here. My alarm went off at 6:00 and after reading posts on my phone I finally pulled myself out of bed a little before 6:15. Carter woke up around 6:30 and ate his normal breakfast of a banana, some apple juice, and a little bit of oatmeal. We headed for daycare at our regular time and arrived a bit before 8:00. That's when our day got interesting.
As I walked into the main lobby area of Carter's daycare he threw up. Not a little spit up, but a lot of puke. It was in my hair, on my coat, all over Carter's coat, on the floor, and on my shoe. The teacher and receptionist who were in the lobby rushed around to get us paper towels. I took Carter into his classroom to clean off and he immediately wanted to play and was acting like nothing had happened. Even though he seemed okay I couldn't leave him at daycare after throwing up. It was the first time he had ever had big boy throw up. So after he was all cleaned up or as cleaned up as he was getting we headed home. Luckily I already had a sub for the day because I was supposed to be
meeting with some other teachers and our Curriculum Resource Instructor (CRI) for curriculum
development. I hated not being there for the planning, but was so
relieved I didn't have to worry about whipping out sub plans and finding
a sub in less than 30 minutes. The CRI leading our planning session
was very sweet and understanding about the situation which was nice.
Trying to get his humidifier to work like Elephun. Spoiler alert: it didn't work!
When we got home Carter took a little 30 minute cat nap while I rocked him. Then he ate a snack and played. He was acting normal, just a little bit more tired and sluggish than usual. He went down for a nap at 2:00 pm and slept for 2 hours. After his nap he continued to play and seemed happy and chipper. Then as he was crawling across the floor, he suddenly stopped and paused in the middle of the room on all fours. As he did so he got a confused look on his face as he began to very loudly toot and, it was pretty obvious from the sounds, have diarrhea. It was all over his pant leg and onesie so when I changed his diaper, I changed his clothes. He was upset so I rocked him for a while and he again had diarrhea. This time not only soiling his clothes, but mine as well! By the time Ty got home for the evening I had changed Carter's outfit 5 times and mine twice. We eventually gave up on clothing (for Carter, not me). You can imagine how difficult a diarrhea diaper is to change when your baby refuses to lay down for it. So we also soiled the changing table pad thoroughly. I'm not sure why, but I was quite surprised by how much was soaked up into the diaper! I had just washed a load of cloth diapers, but we made sure to steer clear of them today.
Forget clothes!
Still having fun, rocking his diaper and socks!
Earlier in the day I messaged the doctor. He figured Carter had a stomach bug which would clear up shortly, but suggested we make sure he stayed hydrated with Gatorade or Pedialyte and keep him informed of any changes. Thankfully Carter was chugging water and apple juice all day long. At one point he drank all of his water. When I took his sippy to refill it, he screamed for me to return it! By bedtime Carter seemed to be feeling much better and was producing much less diarrhea. Hopefully he will be mostly, if not all, better tomorrow. He never ran a temperature which I think helped him not feel too poorly.
