Charlotte is 8 Months!

Charlotte is 8 Months old... my how time flies.  Yes, I just posted the 7 month update, but I'm gonna post this one on time!  Regardless of how recent the last update was posted, Charlotte has changed so much in just the last days and weeks I have plenty to report.

• She is a mover and a shaker!  Charlotte is full-on crawling now.  Wherever she wants to go, she goes.


• She is using her new crawling muscles to finally sit up straight and on her own! Previously she would sit up in a "tripod" fashion but now she can sit up from standing or laying down perfectly fine.  She does seem to prefer sitting up on her knees instead of her bottom.  This reinforces our belief mentioned below...


• Charlotte wants to walk more than anything - at least that is the belief that Jeff and I hold!  She pulls up anytime she can and tries to "walk" along whatever she is holding onto.  Many times, she let go and head the opposite direction, falling of course, but wanting to walk.  She works on pulling up on things more than she does her newfound crawling skills.  And if you give her the chance, she'll grab ahold of your fingers and take off walking across the room.  She  is awesome.


• We are getting ready to move onto new foods!  Since I am making her food, I make a big batch of foods to freeze that will last us 2 months at a time.  Her first round of food were the basic first tastes and not she is ready for the big time: mixed veggies, peas, peaches, broccoli, apricots, corn, potato, blueberries and zucchini.


• Teething seems to have kicked into high gear! The last few days we have been using up the ibuprofen and orajel as Charlotte has been in some pain :( It makes me so sad - especially since we have nothing to show for it! She has yet to have that first tooth break through.  I hope with all this work maybe they will all come through at once and we'll be done with it.  It has totally disrupted her slept schedule too.  She hurts and can't fall asleep, and now that she can pull up and stand she won't lay down in her crib - meaning she can't just lay down and cry herself to sleep.  Poor kiddo :(


• The teething aside, I still hold to the belief that she is the happiest baby ever.  Other than crying over her teething and her being sick a couple weeks ago, she doesn't really cry.  She is always willing to give you a big ol' grin and curl up in your lap to cuddle.  I am around babies all day - and not naming names, but babies that pinch me to the point of bruising, try to bite me constantly, and scream bloody murder for no apparent reason.  And none of these are from Charlotte.  Hopefully I'm not spoiled and #2 (no, nothing to report thank you very much) will be the same (knock on wood, cross my fingers, whatever works)

With Charlotte changing so fast, we'll see what happens this month![gallery]

We Sleep Like Kings

Jeff and I have been sleeping on our wonderful queen bed for years now.  Jeff bought it back when we were dating (I helped him pick it out of course!) so it is a good 5 plus years old.  The age isn't as bad, but the fact that it has been taken apart, moved, and put back up at least 6 times now had begun to show its wear.  The mattress was starting to permanently have Jeff and Jordan shapes and we were not getting good nights sleep from it.  We looked at moving up to a King but the cost of the bed, mattress set, bedding, etc, was just going to be too much at this time.  We decided to go ahead and look at getting just a basic queen mattress for the time being so we can get a good nights sleep and upgrade later.

As you read in the Labor Day post, we went to Mattress Inn here in Spring Hill and found a great sale they were having and we ended up being able to get a full King set with frame for not a lot more than what we were thinking of spending for just a queen mattress.  We did have to factor in new bed linens but between the savings going to places like overstock.com and Ross and looking at the long term savings of going ahead with it now, the King won!

The bed was delivered last Tuesday and linens came via UPS over the past week.  While we still need a headboard, the bed is wonderful!  We have slept many wonderful nights - and we don't roll over and hit or kick each other either!  Here is to many more comfortable and cozy nights in our big fabulous bed.

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Jeff's Birthday!

This past weekend my dear hubby had his 29th birthday!  We had a 3 day run of birthday activities to make up for the past few years where his birthday money has been used to pay for bills or groceries :(  He has worked so hard lately I was excited to be able to help him relax for his special day.

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So I have realized that Fantasy Football is just about luck. Yes, you choose your team during the draft, and yes, you choose your starting line up but from there? Nothing! It is totally up to your players and their teams. You just have to sit back and hope they score the points they are supposed to.

The last 2 weeks I have been slated to win both games by at least 10 points - great right? Well somehow I have lost each one of them. The first week my team did not score near what they were supposed to in the "predicted" column and the other team blew their predictions out of the water with 2 players that had unexpected games. The second game, while not as bad, the same thing happened. I have realized that there is nothing I can do when this happens. Once the games start I am set with my lineup. No matter what happens, I can't change anything. It's a roll of the dice.

Speaking of dice, I have realized that Fantasy Football is very much like Monopoly for me. Yes, you can buy your properties and choose if and where to build your houses and hotels but in the end it is up to the roll of the dice where you land. Where you land, you pay. period. Once everything is bought up there is nothing you can do but roll and play and see what happens. This is what frustrates me about Monopoly. I cannot play with friend or family as I can get really upset. You work so hard on the front end to just leave it up to chance? No Thanks. Sounds familiar I think...

We'll see how the rest of the season goes... I play my husband next week. (My husband who has beat the pants off every person he has played so far - but by my theory it can't be by any skills of his own....?? )

Explosion!

Well Charlotte just exploded all the sudden!  She is crawling up a storm now!  In the previous post I mentioned that she is crawling some.  She was up on all fours and would crawl a few "steps" then collapse into an army crawl and continue on.  Today, she is crawling across the room like it is no problem at all!  She'll crawl to go get a toy, to come visit me, and even to the ottoman - where she is trying to pull up!

That is the other thing that she has started to do all the sudden.  I came in yesterday and she was up on her knees at her crib railing and now she won't stop!  Today she saw a cup on the ottoman and was doing a really good job pulling up to the ottoman to get it.  Needless to say I have gotten my butt into gear doing some of the baby proofing and tonight we have to lower her mattress before she pushes herself over the top! (she is napping in the pack n play for now - one push with a leg to go from being on her knees to wanting to stand up and I would have my first big "mommy accident"- no thank you!)

My baby is growing up!

Here are a couple photos of her new skills!  I have a little video of her crawling but it wouldn't upload to the blog so take a quick visit to my MobileMe gallery here: Charlotte Crawling!

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The Long Awaited Living Room

Well after 9 months folks it is finally here! We have furniture in our Living Room!  (Funny it took as long to grow Charlotte as it did to get some furniture... sad) We moved into this house in January and moved from about 900 square feet to over 2400, needless to say there were some empty or sparse rooms.  The formal living and dining rooms were the worst - didn't have a thing in them excepting the occasional pack n' play.  We are not formal people so didn't know what we wanted to do with the rooms, plus it costs $$ to furnish a home at at this point a nursery was more important!  I would have been fine leaving it empty - Brady loves running after his toys in there.  However, if you have been to my home you probably experienced a moment or two of awkwardness when you walked in.  That's because these two empty rooms are the rooms that you walk directly into when you come into our home.  Odd isn't it?  I would feel weird walking into someones seemingly empty home (especially if I knew how long they lived there!) Well it was time to get something done - it was driving me crazy, we had some extra cash, and we were having a lot of things happening at our house in the coming weeks (including dad's big 50th!) so we decided to get it done.

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Read "more" of our Craigslist adventure here...

Gulf Shores Vacation

A few weeks ago we took a wonderful vacation to Gulf Shores Alabama.  We were long overdue for a vacation and were excited to take our first one with Charlotte Bug!  The trip planning was actually my mom's doing.  A friend of her's has a boss with a condo that he rents out on a vacation rental website.  Mom jumped on and looked at it and it was 3 bedroom and 3 full bath - perfect for all of us! We worked it out so that Mom and Dad went down August 16th (Sunday) for Mom's birthday and their anniversary and were on their own from then until we (Jeff, me, Charlotte and my sister Hannah) drove down Wednesday. We had a great couple days as a family and then Mom, Dad, and Hannah left Friday and me, Jeff and Charlotte got the condo to ourselves until Sunday. (Our anniversary was Thursday the 20th) Shew! It took a lot of planning out all the details but it worked out perfect - and we got a cheaper rate for staying there so long!

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Find our "more" about our condo and the beach!