Carson: 10 Months

And now for what Carson has been up to this past month. Actually it seems more accurate to say what hasn't he been up to! This kid has quite the personality these days!! He is ALWAYS on the move and needs your constant eye so he doesn't do anything too crazy. The other day I took a picture because he was actually playing with his toys, rather than dumping the bin to make a mess, then crawling to do something else. So I mentioned in my last post he fell down the stairs...well let's just say our baby gates are getting good use now. Since he has now mastered going up stairs, he thinks it's time to start learning to go down them. Well I unfortunately forgot to close the gate to the downstairs while I washed some dishes the other day. I heard him "talking" and thought to myself, hmmm that sounds like an area of the house he shouldn't be in. I go to check on him and see he made it down 3 stairs all by himself. Just as I went to reach for him, that's when he toppled and rolled down the remaining 4. Oops!

But as much work as he is, it is wonderful that he has such a bright personality and is always in a smiley mood. My favorite is when we get him to do good "belly laughs." So what is Mr. C doing now. Well we are eating some sort of finger food at almost every meal. We do pasta, cheese, peas, blueberries, cheerios and clementines mostly. I judge how good he is getting by how much food ends up in the highchair after, lol. He can give high-fives and also recently started to wave. According to Nonni, it looks like the pageant wave! He can now give kisses (when he wants to sit still long enough with you :)) He is very good at mocking noises you make. Right now he loves to make a trumpet noise by vibrating his lips together. He still is nowhere near close to walking and seems very unsure of his balance. So we'll keep the raw, red knees for a while! But I think it's safe to say his all time favorite thing to do is bounce. He jumps up and down in the crib when we go in to get him (and when we put him down for naps), if you play music, he gets on all fours then puts his butt in the air and bounces by bending his knees. He loves to crawl up you, stand on your lap and laugh and bounce. Happy 10 months my crazy little man!!

Mommy & Carson's Weekend Get Away

I'm a little late on our 10 month post because Carson celebrated it while we were in Chicago, so I'll get to that in a bit. Last weekend I braved the flight by myself with little guy so we could go shower Baby O who will be here very soon! So here is how my flight went... I first booked the flights to coincide with when my sister-in-law was getting in and leaving. It also happened to fall right about the time we normally take naps, so I thought there was some hope. Our first flight I had a window seat. I wasn't sure how that was going to work with Mr. Squirmy. The guy "stuck" next to me was very nice. When I first sat down he asked who the little guy was! He somehow even managed to take a nap on the flight :) Thankfully he was amused by the window and kept banging on it for a while. I think my main problem with this flight was trying to force a nap. He has never been a great napper anyways as he loves to just squirm himself down. So naturally as I try to get him calm for a nap, he is a screaming maniac. Also the stinker, in between his "fits" would stop and smile at the guy next to me. "See I'm a cute monster!" But after what felt like an hour of fighting him, he finally napped for me!

Now time for a weekend filled with Nonni and aunties (and Uncle Mark). Saturday we drove to Granger, IN for Lauren's baby shower. Carson did so good at the restaurant (better than I could have ever imagined)! He also did pretty good sleeping in a strange place. Probably because the pack n play was tall enough he couldn't throw binkies over the sides, haha! He even got to work on his piano skills.

The flight home went much better than the first one. Unfortunately I woke up Saturday not feeling well, so I was not anticipating dealing with this guys craziness on the plane while feeling under the weather. But my plan for this flight was to not fight him and let him be (and hope he wears himself out soo much that he drifts off). Well that sorta worked. He was all over the place, well as much as you can be while confined in an airplane seat. Climbing up me pulling my air, messing up my hair, bouncing up and down, sitting and playing drums on the arm rest, dropping binkies on the floor and toys on the floor, playing drums on the seat back tray, petting the ladies jeans who was sitting next to us, climbing up me to peer to the seats behind us. While I was exhausted from him, he sure was charming everyone else on the plane! And just as he was getting restless, fussy, again and I was crossing my fingers he would fall asleep, he did not :( I think it was because he had a small dirty diaper (which I couldn't smell from my nose being stuffy). So that got changed about 40m before landing. Then 30m before landing I decided to give him his afternoon bottle since our plane had been delayed and I didn't want to wait around the Denver airport to feed him. Well that magic bottle put him right to sleep! Finally some peace!!

When we finally made it home, Reid had the house all clean, dinner made and said he got about 8hrs of work in over the weekend. He then gave me permission to travel for a day and a half every other weekend. Guess he loved how "easy" it was to clean and get things done without a crazy baby making a mess everywhere and needing your constant eye so he doesn't fall down the stairs (yes that happened before we left!)

Brookside-McCurdy Hike

Well we FINALLY had some good weather in the mountains last weekend. So we went out on a family hiking trip outside Bailey, CO to avoid the ski traffic. It isn't as "mountain-y" that way, but sometimes it's nice to just be out and only see 2-3 people. Plus as we were getting ready in the parking lot another K-Stater pulled in :)

It's been a long time since I've seen Snyder has happy as he was while we were out. Poor guy is still not taking to Carson very well. Hopefully with the weather getting nicer I'll be able to get out and take him on walks more often. In other news I've started working on Carson's 1-year book (so hard to believe). I also thought of a "theme" for our get-together when we head back to Kansas. Everyone always tells you how quickly time will go, but you just never really realize it until you experience it for yourself.

Last weekend Reid and I took advantage of his boss offering to babysit Carson and went out in downtown Littleton. Naturally the first 3 places we tried going to were busy, so we landed at this quaint place called In-Tea. It was also a Mardi-Gras weekend celebration, so later that night the area was going a "mardi-crawl" so-to-speak. Lots of bars had live music and bead stations. We did not hang around long enough to experience this...