Playdates, Root Canals, and Road Trips Oh My!

Last Friday John had his first playdate with S and D and had a lovely time. Playdates really are more for the mommies at this age though. But we did our best to prop them up next to each other - here is the result:

Our first attempt at the group photo. D on the left let us know from the beginning that he was there to socialize, not sit still for pictures

D getting a closer look at S's other man

D goes in for the kill...

D gets a good grip on S's cheeks (They're so cute,I want to grab them too D!)

D is so silly!

This is the best group photo we got of the babes

 For some reason, John looks sad in most of the pictures, but I assure you he is a very happy child. For example, right now he is laughing and jumping so hard that the Excersaucer is about to tump right over.

After the playdate last Friday, I prepared for my dreaded root canal on Monday morning - but as everyone assured me, it was not as bad as I thought it would be (side note - the first thing Dr. W asked me when I told him I had a 4 month old was.... you guessed it - "Is He Sleeping Through The Night?"), and all is well now.

John ans I are headed on our first solo road trip together down to Mobile this afternoon so I'm sure I'll have much to report after the weekend. Until then!

Virginia

Johnny Jump Up

I realize this video is much more exciting to immediate family and may be boring to all others, but it's my blog and I'll post if I want to (plus I really want to make sure I know how to upload video).

Things we have learned...

in the past four months.

10. Swaddling should be it's own art form. However, in emergency situations rolling your baby quickly up like a turkey wrap works just as well.

9. Towel hoodies really are as cute as they look in the packages.

8. During the first few months, 95% of conversations between spouses and doctors are about poop. They even make charts for you to record information about your baby's poop - poop progress reports.

7. The first question out of anyone's mouth when you say you have an infant is ALWAYS, "Is he sleeping through the night?" I'm not sure why everyone cares so much, but for some reason they do.

6. There's a reason they make a product called 'PeePee Teepee'

5. Babies are 100% honest with their emotions. They cry when they are sad and laugh when they are happy. If we could all be as real with ourselves as they are we would save lots of money spent on therapy.

4. If you can make it through the process of checking out of the hospital and putting your baby in the carseat for the first time without have a full-on panic attack then you should be very proud of yourself.

3. People and doctors like to talk about babies in terms of percentiles. For example, "My baby is in the 80th percentile for weight but only the 25th percentile for height and I'm scared she's too chubby!" In the end, Americans love ranking anything, so why not have a system for ranking babies.

2. Almost every woman wants to hold your baby but is scared to ask you because they don't know how you are about germs - it's like asking to borrow lipstick from someone you are "kinda" friends with. Do the lady a favor and ask her if she would like to hold him (unless of course you are a germaphobe).

1. Having a baby is scary, wonderful, fun, frustrating, beautiful, enlightening, hard, lovely and amazing.

Til Next Time,

Virginia

On the Road Again...

or things you may only see in rural Alabama.

This weekend there was a Sip N' See down in Dothan for John. The actual party was lovely and John was a hit, but the road trip down to D-town was also very eventful. After we had been traveling almost an hour, Wynn and I started to hear little grunts coming from John. I looked over at him and his very red little face led me to shout up to Wynn (with extreme urgency), "We need to stop as soon as possible!" Wynn began scouting for a pullover location and I had my thumbs on John's seat belt ready to get him up and out as soon as we stopped. You see, we have had some major...bathroom emergencies lately - I will spare you the details but lets just say IT'S BAD. Anyway, Wynn pulled into the first gas station we saw, jumped out and began handing me any supplies I might need for the diaper change. I was the surgeon and Wynn was the nurse. In the end, we had to remove the clothing, but we were able to save the car seat.
After the "operation", Wynn saw a bunch of folks gathering across the way and took John to see what was going on while I sterilized the car. I went over to join them and almost screamed when I saw a very large alligator looking at us behind the fence.

Then we watched the group of people next to us start launching marshmallows at the big gator like they were just feeding the ducks at the local pond.  I don't know a whole lot about these scary reptiles, but I'm pretty sure that marshmallows are less of their diet than say, the hand that is feeding them. Anyway, if you're not supposed to feed squirrels or birds because they will come back to you in multitudes, doesn't the same apply to alligators? We decided to leave before we found out.

The Sip N' See for John was wonderful and John had a blast showing off for all the ladies. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Spending Some Time With Ms. Cindy, One of Our Gracious Hosts

Yummy and Pretty

John chatting up Grandmama

 

Tired After A Long Day of Entertaining

Reading the Paper With Grandad After A Good Night's Sleep

John's Mix Tape

or flashback to my high school years.

I find that the most random songs from the deep cobwebs of my brain tend to surface when I'm singing to John. We have jam bands for rocking, rap/hip hop for burping, and pop for everyday musical interludes. Not to mention a few modern hits filtered in. So here are some of the tunes that seem to get John rockin'. (p.s. Any inappropriate lyrics have been altered for a child-friendly environment):

Shrimp n' Grits - Outkast
Tricky - Run-D.M.C.
Walkin' (for your Love) - WSP
Hey Jude (modified to 'Hey John') - Beatles
Anything Taylor Swift (Sorry Buddy)
In a Little While - U2
We Bid You Goodnight - Traditional
Down to the River to Pray - Traditional, made popular by O' Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack
Bootylicious - Destiny's Child
Hey Ya - Outkast
5 Little Speckled Frogs (the only true children's song I know all the words to)
Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart

As you can see, John has quite the mixture of genres, and even though we all know his daddy is the real singer around here, he makes me think I could be the next American Idol.

All Bottled Up

These days I measure my success in terms of how many bottles I have ready in the refrigerator. There are few things in this world more stressful than holding a screaming baby and trying to pour, mix, heat and take the top off of a slippery bottle and then try to jam it into the screaming mouth while still standing ...all using only one hand. Forget bibs, burp cloths and all other cutesy tools - we're talking survival mode at this point.
So, you can imagine my extreme happiness when, at 7:00am in the morning, my fridge looks like this:

And my little babe in return looks like this:

So the end solution involves getting up at 5:00am for now, but it's actually sort of nice when the groggy wears off to have an hour or so to write, read, blog, etc. And it is more than worth it to see that award-winning smile instead of a protruding bottom lip on the edge of breakdown. Thats it for now -

Love, Wynn & Virginia

Four Months Later...

My how time flies! I guess the lesson here is either have your blog in place before the baby comes, or wait to start it until 4 months down the road. Anyway, instead of trying to rehash all that has happened in the past four months, I think I will post a picture journal today to show how busy our little one has been! Then I can really start with a clean up-to-date slate on this blog about life as parents, smug-marrieds and such. So here you go for your viewing pleasure - The exciting life of Baby John:

All bundled up in the early days

All wrapped up with Mommy

John didn't take to his first bath very well...

First Bottle with Daddy

I love to snuggle with daddy

John's trademark sleeping position

Snoozin'

My good friend Mr. Tiger

Posing after Bathtime (Now that he loves it!)

Not a fan of the rice cereal (who can blame him!)

No more pictures please Mommy

Lila is only a little jealous about not being the baby anymore...

Big Bro and Sis snuggled up (well, Lila is doing more sitting on Shug than snuggling with him)

All dressed up to hit the road!

John lounging on the porch in his giraffe bouncy seat

John's Baptism 6-5-10 (This was the best picture we got of the group...oh well)

Auntie Carroll, John's Fairy Godmother

Zonked out after a long day of playing

Just chillin' with Uncle Clint

Now its starting to taste yummy!

Our beautiful boy

Naptime with Chief

Lila and Her Baby

All smiles

Say Whatttt?

So mad!

I am the winner!!!

Hangin with my pops

Date night

Daddy's Number 1 Fan

Family time at the beach