Fall Festival

Our church has a Fall Festival every year for Halloween. We've never been before because we didn't have any kiddos to take, so I was really excited to dress Cameron up and go this year. In short, it was completely crazy. There were a TON of people there, almost too many. But we managed to push our way through the crowd and have a great time. We went with some friends and ran into several other people that we know (which doesn't happen very often at our church) so we had fun. It was awesome to see all the little kids dressed up in their costumes too, they were so cute. 

Cameron dressed up as a little 50's girl. I made the skirt...well actually, Grammy made the skirt, I just watched her do her magic. It turned out perfect and I absolutely love it. I'm bias, but I think Cameron was the cutest little kid there. We only got a few pictures. I plan on taking a bunch more on Sunday when we dress her up again.

 Ryan was laughing, but it was the best picture of Cameron's costume, so I posted it anyway.

 Me and my sweet little 50's girl.

 Eatin' candy. Cameron sucked on the wrapper of that Butterfinger all night.

This isn't a great picture, but you can kind of see trunk-o-treat in the background...and you can see Brianne and Makaela a.k.a. Buster the white puppy.

Giant jack-o-lantern...and I have awesome hair...and Cameron is still going to town on the Butterfinger!  

Guess Who's Sick Now?

So guess what happened after Cameron was sick last week? Yep that's right...I got sick! It was horrible. I haven't been sick like that since I was a little kid (thank goodness). I was so miserable. I suppose now we can be certain that it was the stomach bug and not something else. Ryan managed to slide by without getting sick which is a huge relief.

Since our week has been a little discombobulated with getting everyone back to 100%, I just have a bunch of random pictures to share.

We usually try not to have the TV on while Cameron is awake, but when I was sick I was just happy she was entertained.

Quite the little climber, she is so good at pulling herself up on things now.

See what I mean? I just turn my head and look back and think to myself, "how did she do that so quick?"

 Looking out the window.

 Giving me a sweet smile.

 Climbing in her book basket.

 Flushing the toilet...seriously, she actually flushed it!

I had a bag of vacuum parts sitting on the chair next to her, the next thing I knew she had this in her mouth! I was cracking up. Silly girl! 

 Eating mommy's cell phone...nice.

Our Sick Little Girl :(

Cameron hasn't been feeling very well the last day or so...poor little girl. It all started yesterday afternoon. I was holding her after she finished eating and the next thing I knew there was throw up all over the place. Poor thing, she was a mess. I put her straight in the tub got her cleaned up, cleaned up the couch where we had been sitting, cleaned up myself and put new clothes on. About 45 minutes later we got to go through the whole thing again.

Cameron was pretty mellow for the rest of the evening, which is very unlike her. Usually she is really busy investigating everything around her, but she was just sitting on my lap hanging out. I put her to bed at about 9:00 pm, which is a little later than usual, but I wanted to keep her up and give her some ice cubes to suck on so she got some liquids in her body.

I crawled into bed at about 11:00 pm, then decided I should go in and check on Cameron to make sure she was doing okay. When I walked in she was wrestling around a little bit so I found her pacifier and gave it to her. The next thing I knew there was throw up all over the place again. Same drill as before, clean everyone up, get new jammies on Cameron and new sheets on her mattress. Once we got everything cleaned up I sat and rocked her to sleep again. When she was asleep I laid her down...and you can guess what happened next, she threw up again, for the fourth time.

By this time we were starting to get a little worried so I called Children's Hospital and talked to a nurse. She asked me a whole bunch of questions. When I told her that Cameron hadn't had a wet diaper in 8-12 hours she told me I should take her into the ER to be seen by a doctor because she could be getting dehydrated.

Long story short (sort of), Cameron and I packed up and headed over to Longmont United Hospital. As I was driving over there I kept thinking that the last time I was driving there in the middle of the night I was having contractions. Anyway, the doctor gave her something that settled her stomach so she could keep some food down. They said that she wasn't too dehydrated, so as long as she was keeping her food down she should be okay. The doctor wasn't really sure what had caused the vomiting. He said it could have been a number of things—stomach bug, teething, bad food—sometimes you just never know. We got home at about 2:30 am and crashed.

Today Cameron seems to be doing much better. She still doesn't have a very big appetite, but I figure that is probably pretty normal. It's just so horrible to watch your little kiddo being sick. It breaks your heart.

So, I've now had my first mommy trip to the emergency room. Sorry if that was more than you wanted to know. I'm just thankful that everything turned out okay and that Cameron seems to be doing fine now. Thank you Jesus!

This video was from when I went in to get Cameron up from her nap yesterday morning (before she got sick). It's so fun to go in and get her when she wakes up because she is always so happy and excited to see us.

Fall's in the Air

Fall has made its way to Colorado. The leaves are changing colors, and the temperature is dropping. Today was a rainy day with the highs only reaching the mid 50's. I'm not a big fan of the cold weather, but I love this time of year. It's fun to watch the season change, anticipate the first snow and get ready for the holidays. This is the tree across the street from our house. Isn't it pretty?

Today is my mom's birthday. I tried to teach Cameron how to say happy birthday, but she's hasn't quite mastered that yet, I guess you'll have to wait until next year to hear that one Grandma! For now this will have to do (it's a happy birthday candle if you can't tell):

The other piece of exciting news that we have to tell everyone is we're going to have another little baby in our family soon...no, it's not what you're thinking, I'm not pregnant! ;-) Cameron is going to have a baby cousin. Nick and Annie are expecting in May. They made the big announcement when Annie and Cole were here last weekend. We're so excited! Here is a picture that I stole from Annie's blog.

Cameron has definitely been my little helper lately. Here is a picture of her helping me make dinner and another one of her helping clean the bathroom. (We had to throw that toothbrush away, it ended up with hair stuck in it because after she was done it went on the floor, yuck!)

I haven't posted very many videos lately because I haven't had a chance to get them off the Flip. I finally got a bunch of them downloaded today. Here's one of Cameron playing on her music table. A friend of mine let us barrow it and it's been a big hit. Cameron loves standing at it and pushing the different buttons to make noise. She'll even make noise along with it sometimes.

Well that's all that I've got for right now. Hope everyone had a happy Monday! 

Bayler Bear Cub

Check it out, Cameron is famous! This was in the lastest issue of Baylor Magazine.

Eight Months Old

Cameron is Eight Months Old!

October 13, 2010

Weight: 15 pounds 4 ounces

Length: 27 inches

Head: 43 centimeters

Our little Cameron is another month older and wiser. She is getting more and more mobile everyday, so she really keeps us on our toes. Gone are the days when we could just leave her laying on a blanket and run into the other room for a second. Now if we do that we come back and she's playing with the radio (which is a big no no) or getting into some other sort of mischief.

The measurements above are actually from last week. I took Cameron into the doctor's office on Wednesday to get a weight and measurement check. She is such a little peanut that the doctor wanted to do a check to make sure she is growing like she should be. Luckily, they said that she is growing fine, she's just little. She is in the 20-25th percentile for weight, the 55th percentile for length and the 45th percentile for head circumference. I asked my mom about it and she said that both my sister and I were the same way when we were babies.

So Cameron, what are you up to at eight months old?

• You are eating solid foods twice a day now and you've really gotten the hang of eating. You generally eat between 2 and 3 ounces of "real" food at a time now.
• You've tried patty pan squash, apples, avocados, pears, pumpkin and acorn squash this month. You seemed to like all of them except for the avocados—I don't think you like the texture of them very much.
• You started pulling yourself up to your knees and feet and you do it extremely well.
• We found you standing in your crib one day so we had to move the mattress down to a lower level.
• You climbed up a few stairs all by yourself. We don't let you play on the stairs too much so you haven't had much of a chance to really master that skill yet, but you do pretty well when you have the chance.
• You made your first trip to the library for story time this month. We got to sing songs and hear stories, so you enjoyed it.
• You take two naps a day, one in the morning from about 9:00am to 11:00am and another one in the afternoon from about 1:30pm to 3:00pm. Every once in awhile you'll take a short little cat nap in the evening that will help get you though until bedtime.
• You usually wake up at about 7:30am and go to bed about 8:00 or 8:30pm and you almost always sleep through the night.
• You are still wearing your 6 month clothes, but getting pretty close to graduating up to 9 month clothes.
• You love to play with the radio. We've had to start telling you "no no" and you don't really like it. It's funny to watch the wheels turn in your head as you decided whether or not your going to listen to us when we tell you no.
• You are beautiful, funny and very smart. We really enjoy seeing you explore the world, learn about how stuff works and push yourself to accomplish new things.

Pictures from the past months:
September, August, July, June, May, April, March

The Amazing Race

I mentioned the MOPS and POPS Amazing Race in my last post, well here are the pictures! We were Team Orange, so we got bonus points for taking pictures with orange stuff. :-)

Busy, Busy, Busy

We've been really busy the last week. I've been getting a new website ready to launch for the company I've been working for and that has been time consuming and a little crazy. But all work and no play makes Rachel sad, so we've managed to fit some fun things into our schedule too. Here are the highlights:

Saturday Night: We decided to go to church on Saturday and then we met up with some friends for dinner after. The other couple has a little 4 month old girl so we're hoping she and Cameron are friends when they get bigger. Taking Cameron out to eat is starting to get kind of difficult. She is so busy that we have to really work at keeping her entertained. But spoons seemed to do the trick on Saturday, at least for most of the time we were out, so the evening was a success.

Sunday: Ryan and I took Cameron swimming at the Longmont Rec Center. I've never been there before so I wanted to check it out. It's not quite as cool as my mom and dad's rec center in Broomfield, but they do have a really fun slide and lots of kids stuff.

Sunday Night: My little sister just finished decorating her apartment, so we went down to check it out and then after went out for dinner to celebrate her birthday at a restaurant called the Elephant Bar. The restaurant had a lot of fun African style decorations, so we busted out the camera!

Monday: I can't even remember what we did on Monday...gosh talk about mommy brain!

Tuesday: Cameron and I met some friends at the library for story time. They have a special group for birth to 2 years where they read stories and sing songs. It was really neat and I think that Cameron liked it. After story time we had lunch with friends. Cameron loves playing with bigger kids right now. She is just so amazed by the things they can do. I think I'm in trouble once she starts walking.

Wednesday: BSF was Wednesday morning. I'm really enjoying it so far. We're studying the book of Isaiah and I have to admit, it has been pretty intense for me. The first part of Isaiah talks a lot about the Last Days and the Day of the Lord and I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about that before.

Thursday: We went to the zoo because I wanted to see the baby orangutan. Well, the baby orangutan wasn't out when we were there, BUT we did get to see four baby tigers. They were so cute running around playing. It was funny to watch the mommy tiger pace around keeping an eye on the cubs.

Thursday Night: I went and met a friend for coffee. It's actually kind of funny, I went to middle school with her and we recently ran into each other at church. She is expecting her first kiddo in December, so it was fun the catch up and talk about baby stuff.

Friday: Annie and Cole are here from Texas, so Cameron and I got to hang out with them, Grammy, Papa and Uncle Ross on Friday. Cameron thinks Cole is pretty cool. She loves climbing on him and watching what he's doing. Last night she kept trying to steal his sippy cup, which she almost did a couple times. Cole you better watch out!

Saturday: This morning I went to a ladies breakfast at our church. I'm really trying to be a little more proactive about meeting and connecting with people at our church. It's extremely hard because the church is so big, but I figure doing things like this is a start.

Saturday Afternoon: This afternoon my MOPS group had the MOPS and POPS Amazing Race Boulder for the ladies in our group and our spouses. It was basically like a mini version of the Amazing Race competition on TV. Ryan and I were going to go and be on a team with our friends Ryan and Brianne, but at the last minute Ryan ended up having to go to urgent care instead because something funky was going on with his elbow. (Turns out it's elbow bursitis, poor guy). Anyway, another girl ended up joining our team instead and we had a blast...AND our team won! I was just sad Ryan wasn't able to come an play with us.

We'll that just about brings you up to speed on everything that we've been up to. Ryan has been really busy at work and probably will be for the next few months, so keep him in your prayers. Here are some pictures from our week. We took a lot of pictures during the Amazing Race, but they weren't on my camera so I'll have to see if I can get copies.  

 Cameron with the birthday girl, Aunt Jenna

 Jenna made this cute little dress for Cameron

Cameron sticking her tongue out...I think she was trying to eat the packaging for Jenna's new Nook

Ryan and Cameron with the elephant at the Elephant Bar

 Cameron riding on the giraffe

 The mommy tiger at the zoo

Three of the cute little baby tigers

 Mr. Elephant

Cameron chilling in her stroller at the zoo

 Cameron and Cole, he is so good at smiling for the camera 

 Helping with the laundry...she climbed in the basket all by herself, silly girl

Cameron loves pulling up on things these days, this is one of her favorite places to play right now



Daddy's Girl

I don't really have much to say, but I thought this was a pretty cute picture so I thought I'd post it for everyone to see. Happy Friday...and Happy October!