Sleep is Good!

Steve and I can't believe it but Tyler actually slept 11 hours last night! He has not slept through the night in months and months. He usually wakes up an average of twice a night. I have no idea how it happened, but we can only hope the secret ingredients to him sleeping through the night happen again. Sleep is good!

Doggie Food Is Good

We constantly have to pick Monty's water bowl and food bowl up or else Tyler will head straight for it. We have gotten pretty good at knowing when we have it on the floor so that we can make sure he is not going to get into it. I feel bad for Monty because he could be in the middle of eating but I have to pick it up or else Tyler will partake in the eating as well. It is quite the challenge keeping him from Monty's food and water and I am afraid he is just going to get faster at it but for now we just have to beat him to it. The other day he got to it before I could because I forgot I had put the water bowl down. I found him splashing the water and having just a ball. It made quite the mess but it was funny.

Window

Tyler loves to look out the window, especially when his daddy is mowing. He also likes to look out the window with Monty. Sometimes, he will even push Monty to the side if he feels he is not getting the view he wants. Monty does not mind though because he just wedges his way back in. They are quite the duo.

Watching Daddy Mow

Hanging Out With Monty at the Window

Three Hours! Are You Kidding Me?!

It took me a total of three hours to get home from work yesterday! I really was about to lose it. In the morning it took a while (like an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half), but I realized it was because of the fact that the HOV lanes are not open right now and tolls are free for everybody. So, that caused back up no matter where I went to get downtown.

The ride home was 10 times worse obviously if it took me three hours. I even left at a non-traffic time of 4:30. I got on the freeway and it was so backed up so I decided to take side streets - WRONG. None of the traffic lights are working right now so it is stop and go, stop and go, stop and go everywhere! I got on the freeway and lost patience so I got off the freeway, then got back on the freeway and off the freeway. It took me 2 1/2 hours to get to my in-laws house to pick up Tyler. It normally takes me around 30 minutes. It took me another 30 minutes to get home from there. AHHHHHHH! I was so frustrated and was in tears at times. The thing that made it all better was when I got to my in-laws house and Tyler greeted me with his precious smile and walked to me and I gave him a big hug. After that, the ride home was not so bad. It is amazing what just his presence can do to make me feel better. Man, I love him!

I decided I was getting to work early today and leaving early as well. I am NOT going through that again. I will do what I need to do until things get fixed. I left the house at 6 his morning to get to work by 7. It is ealry but I will do what I need to do to not face that horrible traffic again. It looked like it was going to be bad already at that time so I started to get frustrated again, but I took a deep breath and prayed about it and realized there was nothing I could do about it and I had to just ride it out. Fortunately, it was not as bad as I thought and I got to work in about 45 minutes. Hopefully, this afternoon goes better too.

Nodding

This is definitely newsworthy! He finally has learned how to nod instead of just shaking his head! He started bobbing his head up and down tonight just randomly. So I did it back and we giggled and kept practicing. It was great!

Whining

Tyler has now started his whining noises. If he is not getting what he wants, he might whine. If he gets something taken away from him, he might whine. If he is not getting picked up when he wants, again the whining. I really try not to give in when he does it and for now I have been either distracting him with something else and even making the whining noise back. It usually makes him laugh and even gets him to stop. Sometimes though if he is really bothered by something, he will continue. What a male!

Walk, Pick up, Walk

Tyler did something so amazing on Friday! I was in shock when he did it and wished I had the video camera or my camera on me, but as with most random moments, I did not have them in arm's reach. He was walking and then saw something he wanted to pick up, so he bent down and picked it up, stood back up, and kept walking. I am not sure what the norm is but considering he is an early walker, I am thinking that doing something like that is pretty good. He has done it again since then, but on Friday was the first time I had seen that. He is continuing to walk as much as he can. Right now he is walking and sometimes losing his balance, so he sits and continues on his path by crawling. So he starts off trying to walk and then if he needs to he crawls.

The walking is also leading to falls which makes me very nervous. I was reading in one of my books that of course it is going to happen, especially when they are learning to walk but I still don't like having to worry that much. Today (Sunday), Tyler took quite a fall and hit is head on the leg of one of our breakfast chairs. It bruised right away and I put as much cold on it as I could but he is a wiggler so it only worked so long. After I took care of him, I immediately researched like I always do on what I should do now. I read that you only need to call the doctor if there is a cut there, which there was not, and if it continues to get worse. He seemed fine so I think we are ok for now, but I will continue to monitor it. This is only the beginning...

Dedication

I have not posted that Tyler was dedicated this at church yet! My dad has pictures on his camera, but I have not gotten them from him yet and I keep forgetting to ask for them. I will get them posted as soon as I can though. The dedication went well. We got him dedicated at our church, Williams Trace Baptist in Sugarland on September 7th. Both sets of grandparents were there, so that was nice. I had planned on doing it when he was younger, but at least we did it before he turned a year old which was my goal. He got his own little Bible and a certificate...so cute! The lady who sets the dedications up is new to her position, but she was so great during the whole thing and made sure that everything went smoothly. Tyler did great during it too. He was his happy little self just looking around at everything going on. It went wonderful! The feeling of having so much support from our own family and the church family is awesome.

Chase

Tyler and I had so much fun today because we found a new game to play. I have to admit, I decided to relax and play video games today. There is this one game that we have that is sort of like a Tetris game. It is called Zuma and it is so addicting. I was playing and I guess Tyler decided I had had enough. He went over the the console and turned the X-Box off. It was funny because it was almost like he was saying "enough mommy." I joked and asked him if he was doing to me what I wsa probably going to do to him when he has been playing too much. Anyway, when he was heading towards it I was telling him not to do it and chasing after him. I think he found that it was fun and made it a game. I would let him down and continue to play and he would either crawl or try to walk there and turn it off. He would laugh so hard when I came after him. We then would play chase and I would go after him around the room. Monty got in on it too a couple of times. I would even put Tyler in a separate room and run to play the game for a couple of seconds until he got in there and Tyler would haul himself at superspeed back into the living room and head for the console to turn it off, and so the game continued. We both got some exercise in. Just so everyone knows, I don't play video games often and I probably won't play again for a while, but it was fun to do for today. It fun to see him learn cause and effect and use it to play a game. Later when I am chasing him around because he is in trouble, it probably won't be so funny and adorable, but at this stage it is so I will enjoy it.

Another thing we saw him do today just amazed me and also made me see how much he already knows. One of Monty's toys had gone under a table in the living room. Monty was barking because he wanted it so Tyler went over there. I asked Tyler if he could get it for Monty (not thinking he would actually do it). Tyler looked at Monty and then bent down and looked underneath the table to see Monty's toy. When he saw where it was he moved over to it and crouched down again to see where it was. He didn't quite get it for Monty but it was really amazing to see his mind working. He saw Monty had an issue, he went over to check it out, he realized what the problem was, he bend down to see where it was and he moved to where it was. How smart is he!

Hurricanes Can Be Scary

I was not worried about Hurricane Ike until it was actually here. We decided to stay at our house since we did not have a mandatory evacuation and the predicted path was northwest. Steve and I were up until the power went out about 11:30. We decided to go to bed then. At that time, the wind had picked up a little but there was no rain yet. Earlier on, we had stepped outside because it was nice and breezy. Tyler really enjoyed the wind blowing on him. He was giggling and having a good ol' time. We were next to a tree and Tyler would try and reach for the leaves. It is so cute. Anyway, winds started picking up more and more as the night went on. It got to a point where we would hear lots of noises and the windows would rattle a little. Since the power was out, we could not stay updated on where Ike was and if it had landed.

I decided to go and sleep in the closet with Tyler and Monty (we have a big closet so there was plenty of room). Steve was not as worried so he enjoyed the bed all to himself, but I was not going to take a chance of having to run around if something came. We had Tyler sleeping in our room for the night anyway, but I did not want to have to worry about it at all, so I stayed on the safe side. I did not think about it until about 3 in the morning, but my phone has internet. I was also texting and talking to my mom who kept me updated. When I was able to see from my phone that we were not in the path of the eye and the winds had calmed down, we went back into bed. I don't think I slept from 3 to 5 in the morning. Tyler slept like normal during the night. Steve and I commented on how funny it was that he had no idea that he experienced his first hurricane.

When we woke up, we assessed the damage. Fortunately, we were in the right place to be because the storm did not hit our area very much at all. Part of our fence was down, as were some others in our neighborhood, but that was about it. There were a couple houses whose roofs had some shingles missing but not much damage at all. Steve fixed the fence the same day (yesterday) and we were set. We went to look at his parent's house since they were out of town and houses we saw on the way were not so lucky. Trees were all over the place, stop lights had fallen in the street, and fences were down everywhere. As long as everyone was safe is all that matters.

Our power came back on about 3:30 pm yesterday so that was about 16 hours without power. It is amazing how much we depend on electricity. We were also very grateful in the fact that we had everything back and running unlike some others who are still without power and water.

What a crazy weekend!

Tyler enjoying the wind

Check Up

Tyler had his 10 month check-up last Friday. He also got one of his shots. He did really well as usual. He cries when he gets the shot, but then he is fine 30 seconds later. He is continuing to grow nicely and the doctor always comments on how wonderful he is doing. He weighed in at 23 lbs. 6 oz and his height was 29 1/4 inches. Weight-wise he is in the 80th percentile and height-wise he is in the 55th percentile, which is around what he has been so far. On a side note, I enjoy going to his doctor because the staff is so wonderful. It is a really small office and they keep it really simple, but they are very personable and they take their time to listen to you and answer all your questions. Things that are very important to me...

First Steps

August 26th
Tyler was an early crawler, so we were kind of expecting him to be an early walker as well. He has been doing a great job of walking around things by holding onto them and he also has done well holding onto our hands and walking. He has been doing those for a while and can stand on his own, but when it came to walking on his own, he would just sit and then crawl to get where he needed to go. Until two weeks ago....we were in our bedroom and I was on the bed and Steve was next to Tyler about a foot from the bed. Tyler was standing and started to come toward me. He was already close to the bed, so he only took about a step and a half and reached the bed. Steve and I looked at each other and were not sure whether to consider it as a first step because it was only a step and a half, but a step is a step and we got very excited!


August 31st
The next time he took a couple of steps Mimi and Abue got to see it. Tyler and I drove to San Antonio to meet up with my parents and some friends of theirs that we were in from Colombia.


*On a side note, I was reluctant to drive to San Antonio by myself with Tyler because you never know how the ride is going to go. I don't know if he is going to enjoy the whole way or be miserable the whole way. Usually on trips he does well, but I am always afraid of it not going well and what I would do. God was watching out for me as always, Tyler slept the whole way there (three hours) and the whole way back. It was amazing and I was reminded that He is always taking care of him and I should not worry.

Anyway, we were in the hotel room with Mimi, Abue and their friends and he took a couple of steps then.

September 1
I went to pick Tyler up from my mother-in-law's house. While I was there Tyler once again was showed his newly learned skills. This time though he took three side steps by himself. One more step than before...

September 4
Steve's schedule had him off on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually. Steve was watching him on Thursday and he sent me an email saying Tyler had walked 8 steps! I so wanted to be there to see it, but it was ok because he showed me close to it later on that night when I got home.

After that he slowed down on his trying to walk, but he kept practicing on a toy he has that helps develop walking skills. My friend Alissa gave it to him and he loves it. It is like a car that he pushes around. He runs into things with it and I am so proud because at first he would get upset, but then he learned to solve his problem and he realized on his own that he needed to back up or go around to the other side to push it. He is so brilliant!

Since we noticed he had slowed down, I started to encourage him for every little step and now he seems confident again and really trying hard.



September 13
Tyler walked the furthest he had walked so far. I was in our bedroom with Tyler and he walked from our footstool at the side of our bed to our printer. For those of you who have not seen our room which is most, that would be about 7 feet which in steps was about 20 steps. Whohoo!

September 14
Tyler walked even further today and went from our bedroom into the living room. Steve was behind him and counted about 25 steps.

Even though we are ecstatic, we know this means we are going to get our exercise...

First Baseball Game

Tyler went to his first baseball game and saw the Astros play the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Young Adult group at our church had a family night out. I think Tyler enjoyed people watching and clapping when others clapped a little more than the game. It was fun, but I don't think we will be taking him to another game until he understands what is going on a little more. There were some ladies behind us who Tyler enjoyed flirting with and shaking his head to. He also got to eat some of his snacks while he was there. We could tell he was getting tired because he starts to get really restless when he is ready for bed. He gets very active and very wiggly. So after the 6th or 7th inning, it was time to go. We forgot our camera and were only able to take a picture on our phones. One day he will really be into the game, but for now he will just clap when everybody else does or when he feels like it is time to clap...

No More Milk

So this is totally random and if you are a guy reading this you might want to stop reading here, but I had a very momumental moment for me a few weeks ago. My milk supply had started to dwindle over time. My mom said how hard it would be when I feed Tyler my milk for the last time. Breastfeeding is such a wonderful bond and that part of motherhood will be greatly missed, but it was time. Fortunately, I slowly decreased the amount he was getting because it was going away anyway, so it was not a shocker when I stopped. One day I finally decided that I would feed him and then if I felt full at all within the next dew days, I would feed him again. If I did not feel full, then that would be the last time. I prepared myself either way. I did not fill up again, but I think I was ready for it, so it did not seem as difficult as I thought it was going to be. There are so many other ways to bond with Tyler so I just focused on that. It is amazing how much you work your life around nursing when you are doing it. Now, I am not having to schedule everything around feeding time and make sure I am in a place I am comfortable nursing in. It is a weird feeling for sure. I felt that 9 months was pretty good considering I was doing the whole pumping at work thing. Monday, August 11th, 2008 was my last day...

Mimi and Abuelito's - Shaking and Clapping

The day after his fever, Tyler went to spend the weekend with Mimi and Abue. He had a great time but I think he wore out his grandparents for the weekend. He does not stop moving. When I picked him up, my mom said that he had been shaking his head no since he had gotten there. I had not seen him do it before but it was funny because sure enough, he did it when we got home. He has been doing it ever since. When he meets strangers and they talk to him or ask him a question, it is a shake of the head. We try to keep nodding to make him nod yes as well, but he is sticking to the shaking of the head. He probably picked it up from us as much stuff as he gets into and us shaking our head. He also came home doing something else. My parents will not claim teaching him the shaking of the head, but Mimi will claim teaching him how to clap. Mimi played pat-a-cake with him and he came back clapping. He had not done it until the next day when my mother-in-law asked me about it. She asked me when he had started clapping and I said "now" because I had not seen it yet. I talked with my mom later on and she said she had been practicing with him. He does it alot now and it is so cute. Whenever other people are clapping, he claps. When we say "yeah," he claps. Sometimes, he just randomly claps. It is so adorable!

First Time With A Fever

Tyler came down with a fever for the first time a month ago, although I am just now getting around to writing about it...Apparently, you are supposed to plan for these types of things in case it happens in the middle of the night. Ooops! I have not had to give Tyler any medicine since he was born, so I was not quite ready to have to give it and I also did not think it would be difficult to do when the time came. Well, he came down with a fever at a time when they say it usually happens...the middle of the night.

He was crying unusually around 12:30, so I went to go check on him. He felt like he was on fire! I was trying not to freak out, but he was so hot. We tried taking his temperature with an ear thermometer only to find out that what was supposed to be easy and fast was difficult and inaccurate. We finally figured out his temperature was around 100.6, although we think it was a little higher. We took off his pajamas immediately and got a cold washcloth to wipe on him to cool him down. He was actually very calm. After I had picked him up from crying, he was fine. I was the one scrambling around. We wanted to give him Tylenol to bring down the fever, but the box will not give dosages for children under 2. It says to consult your doctor. That was just great! We tried looking in books on what to do and looking on the internet. Nothing on the dosage. So I had to call my doctor at 1 in the morning. I felt bad but I figured that is what their job is.

While we were waiting for the doctor to call back, we gave Tyler some juice for hydration and he was content. I took him back to his room upstairs and we slept in the extra bed we have in his room because when I tried to put him down in his crib, he still seemed uncomfortable. He was better when I was holding him so he went to sleep lying down on me. By the time the doctor called, he was out and did not wake up again until the morning. I took him to the doctor and he seemed fine. We got some medicine just in case.

My doctor also gave me a chart with the dosages for infants. Just in case...