Kim's baby shower

This weekend I helped host a baby shower for my friend Kim, who is expecting her first baby (a boy!) in August. I used to work with Kim at my old law firm, and she is someone who I learned so much from and who I miss working with a lot. I know that she is going to be a great mom! It was fun to get together with a bunch of my old coworkers and catch up and celebrate with Kim. The shower had an owl theme, and we had the most beautiful and delicious owl cake! It was made by Kathy's Icing on the Cake, the same bakery that made two of my baby shower cakes. The owl cookie favors are from Society Bakery.

Here are a few pictures from the shower:

Kim & all the hostesses

Kim & her mom

a bunch of onesies

owl cookie favors

First Fathers Day

On Sunday we celebrated Frank's first Father's Day, and we were so happy that he was home so we could spend the day together as a family. It has absolutely warmed my heart to watch Frank with Frankie. He is a fantastic man, friend, and husband, so I knew that he would also be a fantastic father, but it is so inspiring to actually see it. Frank has a huge heart, and he clearly loves our little buddy a whole lot. And Frankie loves his Daddy too. He loves to watch him and listen to him talk. When Frank talks, Frankie stops what he is doing and listens to him intently. He also loves to play with him. I can tell that they are going to have a lot of fun together over the years. It is very interesting that Frankie says "da-da" when he is happy, and "ma-ma" when he is upset. He is such a happy baby that he says "da-da" a whole lot more than he says "ma-ma," and I think he is getting closer to figuring out what it means.

Frank's one request for Father's Day was to have Popeye's fried chicken. Easy enough for me!! Frankie also made Frank an adorable little keepsake with his footprints, a picture of him, and a poem about fathers. I got Frank some other gifts, but the homemade one was his favorite!

Here are a couple of more pictures from this weekend:

standing up like a big boy

my little cutie

fun in the bath!

Daddy & me

Happy seven month birthday!

Today my little boy is seven months old! I cannot believe how fast the time has flown by. I feel like he has grown and changed so much in the last month. At seven months Frank is...

• now taking a bath like a big boy, sitting up in the bathtub without the baby bathtub. He loves bath time so much more like this because he can really play and splash!
• he also loves going to the pool, and we hope to go a lot this summer.
• getting faster at crawling by the day. He is still doing an inchworm movement, where he pushes up and then down and then up again. He will crawl to anything he is not supposed to--dog toys, the remote, keys, cell phone, TV cabinet. But he never wants to crawl for a toy or for Mommy.
  
• says "da-da-da" and "ma-ma-ma" all the time now. He definitely does not know what he is saying, but he tries to repeat when we say them.
  
• still eats 5 bottles a day, but is now eating two solid meals a day and getting MUCH better at them! He also likes puffs, but he still cannot quite feed them to himself yet. He can pick them up and get them near his mouth, but he very rarely gets them in there.
• is consistently called the happiest, easiest baby in his day care class.
• weighs 19 lbs and 5 ounces and is strep throat free, wahoo!!!
• survived his first major illness.
• is so happy that his Daddy is home and he gets to spend time with him every night!
• loves that Mommy gets to leave work at 4:00 most days to have more extra special time together in the evening.
  

We are so blessed to have such a happy baby, and we thank god every day for blessing us with him. Happy Seven Months little buddy!! We love you more than anything in the world.

Day care projects

I think is is absolutely adorable that Frank's day care has a "cirriculum," even for the infants, and they do little neat projects with them every week. A couple of weeks ago, they tie-dyed onesies. Every Friday, they do splash day in a baby pool. They used their hand and foot prints to make a flag for memorial day, and they used footprints to make all the Mommy's bags for mother's day. The teachers all take pictures of all of the activities and put the pictures on bulletin boards so that we can always see what the kids are up to. I work close enough to the day care that I can stop by during my lunch break, and every time I stop by Frank is smiling and having fun (at least, when he is not napping). Every time I drop him off in the morning he is smiling, and he is happy almost every time I come to pick him. Overall, despite the sickness, I have been so happy with the day care we chose. Frank is thriving in that environment, and it is evident how much all of the infant teachers care for him. It is so hard to leave him and go to work every day, but at least I know that he is happy and that he is learning new things every day.

Someone is feeling better!

Frankie is feeling MUCH better! He has not had a fever since Sunday morning, and last night he finally slept through the night again without waking up crying. It had been almost a week since he had done that, so it was very much appreciated.

These are some pictures I took yesterday evening of the two Franks playing in our backyard.

You'll KNOW when he has a fever

When we went to our first pediatrician appointment, when baby Frank was one week old, the doctor told us that we would KNOW when he has a fever, because his whole body would radiate heat. Boy, was he right! Unfortunately, I got to experience that for myself this weekend. On Friday, I was at home resting and recovering from strep throat when Ms. Chelcie, Frank's day care teacher, called me and told me that he had a fever and that it was rising rapidly. I quickly sped over to the day care and picked him up. At that point, his fever was 103.8, which is dangerously close to the magical 104 number where you need to take him in to the doctor immediately. I called his pediatrician and my own doctor, and neither could see him yesterday. So we went home and I gave him Tylenol, which brought down the fever, although it came back with a vengeance every 4 hours or so when the Tylenol wore off.

He slept from 7:30 until 2:30 with no problems, and I had gone to check on him around 1:00 and he seemed to be fine, with no fever. Then, at 2:30, he woke up crying, and I went upstairs and picked him up. His skin felt like it was on fire, and he was literally radiating heat. It really scared me, because he felt even hotter than he had been earlier in the day. At that time, I took his temperature on his forehead, and it was about 102, which is about the equivalent of 104 if you take it rectally. I gave him some Tylenol, rocked him to sleep, and held him until I could feel his skin return to its normal temperature and until he did not have a fever. It took about 45 minutes, and I was honestly scared to put him back in his crib. I still had a mild fever myself at this point, so I was just plain hot and nervous for the rest of the night.

He ended up sleeping until the morning, when he woke up and again had a high fever. That is when we made the decision to take him in to an urgent care center. I had never been to an urgent care center before in my life, so I was pretty scared and apprehensive about it. I was envisioning the waiting room at the ER on Grey's Anatomy, with extremely sick people, bleeding people, and gun shot victims. Luckily, it was nothing like that, and we actually had a great experience. The doctor tested him for strep and the test was negative, but he said that all the indicators--very red throat, pus pockets, and high fever, and the fact that I had a confirmed case of strep--convinced him that we should treat it like strep and put Frank on antibiotics. We picked up the medicine, gave it to him, and almost immediately you could see a difference. He finally started playing again on his own, and was okay without being held 100 percent of the time, like he was the last 24 hours. Hopefully he will be all better soon!

Frank was such a trooper during this whole time. We suspect that his throat started to hurt a few days ago, because he would wake up and cry a little bit at night, which is rare for him, and get randomly fussy at strange times. I stupidly thought it was just teething, because he did not have any other symptoms. He started making the "m" sound when he was moaning and not feeling good, and just today he started saying ma-ma-ma. I am convinced it was because he really wanted his mama when he was not feeling good. I am actually supposed to be in Austin at my good friend jenn's bachelorette party this weekend, but I could not leave my sick baby boy. This was his first scary illness, and I now understand what parents mean when they say they would rather be sick every day than to watch their children sick and in pain. I completely forgot about my own ailments as soon as I knew that Frank was in pain. I love you so much little buddy, and I hope that you get well soon!

My son, the inchworm

We officially have a mover!!! He still has not mastered the proper crawl, but yesterday he started "inchworm" crawling. He can now move forward to get where he wants to go. I took this video of him tonight crawling to the remote (I promise that I didn't let him play with it FRANK!).

Frankie & Mason

Our good friends Ryon and Sara came to Dallas this weekend, and Frankie got to hang out with his best bud Mason. Mason and Frank are pretty similar in that they are both active and noisy, but Mason is a lot more deliberate than Frank is. He always looks like he is studying everything. He can also move!! He can scoot across an entire room. It is so funny, because he does not get up on his knees, but he can move, and then Frankie gets up on his hands and knees, but he cannot move. They need to teach each other their respective skills. They have been together before, but this time they actually seemed to notice each other, so that was neat. It will be so fun to watch them grow up together.

Little stinker

Yesterday when I went to pick Frankie up at day care, I walked into his classroom to find him feeding himself a bottle on Miss Chelcie's lap. She was holding him, but he was holding his own bottle. I said, "Wow, look he is holding his own bottle!" And she looked at me like I was crazy. She said, "he has been doing that for every bottle, every day, for the last month--doesn't he do it at home?" Of course not. That little stinker is obviously SPOILED, because he doesn't even try to hold his own bottle at home. In fact, last night, after witnessing his ability to hold his own bottle, I tried to get him to hold it at home for his two evening feedings, and he refused. Same thing again this morning. I do think it is pretty neat that he clearly knows the difference between getting a bottle at day care and getting one at home. And I don't mind spoiling my little monkey since I miss him so much every day.