Teething

A couple of weeks ago, my once good-natured, happy baby turned into this whiny, grouchy baby with quite a short fuse. And then the culprits behind the transformation of my child's personality appeared: two little whitish structures in his mouth popped up. It was a relief to see that there was a perfectly good explanation to his behavior and I stopped considering the possiblity of shipping him off to his grandparents until he was old enough to reason with, say like age 5 or so.

I don't have any pictures yet. Every time I try to pull his lip down to get a good shot, he sticks his tongue out, so now I have a bunch of pictures of his tongue. I'll save them until he's older and I'll show them to his girlfriend.

Wait, he keeps banging on the keyboard. I think he has something he wants to say:
2 3WS11SAazaaaaaqq

I think that means that he is denying all charges against him in this post.

Trick or Treat!

I think Peyton enjoyed his first Halloween! He got to go trick or treating with his good pal Amelia and collected lots of candy that he can't have. Really, it was more for our own amusement more than anything. We're willing to admit that.

I've posted a few pictures. Matt and Mary stopped by with their flower, Kalina. We dressed up as zookeepers and took our little monkey trick or treating. Chad and Lauren dressed up as farmers and took their cow trick or treating. We went back to the farmers' house for a party and caught up with another farmer (Michelle) as well as the chicken (Peyton's pal Camden) and the egg (Mark). We had a good time. http://picasaweb.google.com/jharrell528/Halloween08

Big Adventures

Hello Everyone!
Peyton has been quite the busy little boy lately. He's becoming quite the traveler too! We recently took a quick trip home to shop for his Nanny's wedding dress. Actually, Peyton wasn't too interested in shopping, so he spent some quality time with his Lulu and Papa instead. But he also had a great time visiting with all of his grandparents and great-grandparents. He even got to go for a stroll down Magazine Street with a "policeman dressed in blue" (Everybody sing the song, now...), known to Peyton as his Gramps.

Peyton is crawling all over the place now. Nothing is safe anymore! He wants to explore and put everything in his mouth - especially those things that he shouldn't have. He's eating solid food, and doesn't turn much away. He's already had green beans, peas, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, avocado, carrots, and squash. We try something new every few days. The only thing he wasn't too crazy about at first was the avocado, but I think it was mostly because it wasn't a very ripe avocado and he didn't like the texture. I tried again after I pureed one in the food processor and he liked it much better that time.

For the most part, Peyton is a pretty happy baby. We get the biggest kick out of his giggling and laughing.



I've posted a few new pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jharrell528/SeptOctPeyton2008#

This week is the State Fair in NC, so we went to check out all of the animals. The best part was the pig races, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, it was during this time that Peyton decided it was time to take a nap, so he missed out. But Patrick and I enjoyed them anyway! You should watch the video, they're so darn cute:

Growing Boy!

Peyton is growing up quickly. We started him on rice cereal this week. He seems to like it and Patrick doesn't think it tastes too bad either. I disagree, but Nellie definitely likes it. I got distracted and put Peyton's bowl down on the floor. Next time I looked, it was squeaky clean. I asked Patrick why he washed it and he said he hadn't touched it. There's only one other explanation: Nellie.



And Peyton has just started learning how to crawl. He's been getting up on his hands and knees all week and would just rock back and forth. But tonight, he went for it. Nellie better watch out because here he comes!




We recently had some much needed time off for vacation, and initially headed to Gulf Shores, Alabama. However, Gustav had other plans for us, so after getting all the way to La Grange, GA, we turned around and came home. Still feeling like we needed a vacation (La Grange just didn't cut it), we headed to Myrtle Beach. We were there a few days before Hanna reared her ugly head and made us run from there too. I think that's the last time we plan a trip in September. We did get to spend some quality time together, which is really all that matters, but it would have been nice if we didn't have to keep running from the storms. Peyton didn't understand why we kept putting him back in his car seat for rides that never seemed to end. His parents didn't understand why he would wait to poop until after we were back on the road after a lengthy pit stop.
Here are a few pictures form our vacation to the beach:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jharrell528/BeachTripSept2008#


My mom's mom and my dad's mom both celebrate birthdays on August 17th (at least its easy to remember), so Peyton and I took a quick trip home to help them celebrate.
And here are some pictures from that trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jharrell528/PeytonAugust2008#

Pictures

Recently, my mom, grandmother and sister visited for the weekend. Since we had 4 generations here, we decided to take some pictures. Patrick was able to set up his camera and lights in some of his studio space at work and we did different combinations of people for a variety of pictures. I think they came out really nice. It was hard to get Peyton to cooperate. I only wish I had a video camera to film the clowns that were trying to get him to smile from behind the camera.

Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to bring enough home with me last weekend for everyone, but I knew that we could always print more. I have posted the pictures here. If you would like copies of one, some, or all, please email me to let me know what pictures you want (they are numbered), what size, etc by Tuesday, August 26th. Obviously 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 pictures are all cropped differently, and the photographer (Patrick) would like to be able to crop each picture to the specific size that you would like. I will take care of printing the pictures and will pass them onto my mom, dad, or Mrs Jayne and they will get them to you as soon as possible. I can always print more after the 26th, but I can't promise that it will be done in a timely fashion :)

Peyton's First Cold

It had to happen sooner or later. Peyton has been lucky enough to avoid the sniffles for 4 months, but it wasn't meant to last. He started with a cough alone a couple of weeks ago that progressed into a stuffy nose that led to a fever this weekend. I took him to the doctor on Monday afternoon (after a visit on Friday when the pediatrician thought he was fine and I was being an overly paranoid mother) and we discussed his symptoms further. The pediatrician wasn't completely sure that he had an ear infection. He asked me to wait to see if the fever subsided on its own over the next day or two. It didn't after a day and I decided it wasn't worth waiting until day 2, so I filled the prescription and gave Peyton his first dose of antibiotics last night. That was certainly a challenge. When the pharmacist told me the dose was 5 mLs, I thought to myself that I have trouble getting him to take 1 mL of tylenol, how in the world am I going to get him to take 5 mLs of antibiotic? I think Peyton wore more of the medicine on his clothes than he got in his mouth the first two times. Then Dad took over and gave him the third dose and did a way better job of getting the medicine down than I did. At least when he was done, Peyton's eyebrows weren't the color of pink bubble gum. Peyton seems to be acting like he feels a lot better today and he only has a low-grade fever. Hopefully we're nearing the end of this nasty cold.

Wow...it's been a really long time since I've updated the blog, hasn't it? In my defense, I've been very busy. I'm back at work and trying to balance motherhood with finishing my degree (yes, Patrick, one day I will graduate. One day.) Its been a pretty smooth transition back to work. I think that has been the biggest surprise. But it hasn't left time for much else, including the blog. I will try to post more frequently, but I make no promises.

Peyton goes to Mrs. Lauren's everyday and she takes very good care of him. Knowing that has made things a lot easier. I knew Lauren's husband, Chad, at LSU. We were biochemistry majors together. One day we actually realized that we were related, sort of. Chad's grandmother's sister is my grandmother's sister-in-law. We had lost touch after graduation but one day a few years ago, I looked up on the shuttle bus to school one day and saw Chad and we've kept in touch ever since. He's now a post-doc here at UNC. His wife, Lauren, worked at a daycare. They had a baby last September but Lauren initially went back to work and took Amelia with her. After some campaigning on our part, Lauren decided to stay home with Amelia and watch children in her home. So right now, its just Peyton and Amelia. Camden, the child of another grad student at UNC, will start at Mrs. Lauren's in another week. Lauren has lots of toys and games that the babies get to play with and she works on their motor skills and development. Peyton is already rolling over! I think he has a great time at her house.

At the end of each week, Lauren posts pictures of Peyton playing throughout the week and sends a journal home with a description of everything that Peyton has done that week and what he thinks about it all. (He dictates and she writes it down for him, obviously he can't write yet) Its been great to have such a personal touch to his daycare experience.
Here are pictures from last week:
August 1st pictures

I've taken a few pictures recently, too, and posted them on picasa. I think the ones posted on July 26th and August 6th are the ones that I hadn't posted on here previously. My mom, sister, and grandmother were all visiting recently, so a few pictures from their visit are there. Just in case anyone is interested in printing their own copies pf some pictures, you can order prints through Walgreens by choosing "Order prints" while viewing the album then choose walgreens as the printer.

Patrick has taken some really nice, professional quality pictures (like the one above) too, so when he finishes editing them, I'll post a link to those as well.

We went for Peyton's 4 month checkup yesterday. Other than a minor cold, he is doing really well. He weighs 19lbs, 10oz, which puts him above the 97th percentile on the growth chart. He's smiling, laughing, rolling over, and I think its just a matter of time before he starts crawling. He reaches out for things and puts everything in his mouth. Not everything can possible taste that good, but that doesn't seem to deter him. We got him a huge exersaucer to play with and he has he best time playing with everything on it. It keeps him quite entertained. Patrick and I have actually gotten to eat dinner together once or twice.