Good Noggin' News

First of all, I'd like to apologize to anyone who may have been worrying all weekend because I never updated on Carrie.
.
I am glad to report, she is doing great! Friday night after the CT scan, no news was good news. The doctor told us if there was anything serious going on (like a brain bleed or something) they'd call us immediately after reading the results. No phone call meant she just had a concussion. The doctor called me this morning to confirm that everything was A-OK. It seems strange to be relieved she had a concussion...
.
Anyways, Saturday morning she was back to her old self. Running and playing all day. This picture is from this morning. She found Justin's ear-clip-on headphones so I put them on her. She walked around with them on for about 10 minutes, no music, just headphones. :)
.
Saturday, we actually revisited the "site of injury", the furniture store. I took Justin back with me and we bought our new sectional! I'm so excited! It's huge, but so is our family room!
. .
We are in the final stages of getting ready to close on our house. We should be moving in in 2 or 3 weeks! Yeah!

Trip to the Doctor

So this is Justin writing (yes I am a part of this family even though you hardly even see pictures of me lately). So I was reading the last post about Carrie's strange sleeping behavior and everything and thought I would do a follow up post.
.
So Carrie has continued to be very whiny and have very weird sleeping schedules. This morning she didn't wake up until almost 11 and then she fell asleep again on our bedroom floor like 45 minutes later. She was not her normal, active, running everywhere little girl self, so we were a little worried. That's when we remembered that she had hit her head pretty good on Wednesday night. Rebecca's mom then said we probably should get her in to the doctor and just have her checked out.
.
Well Rebecca went to the doctor and she said everything looked fine, but she wanted to do a CT scan just to make sure. So for the next 2 hours we sat at Cardons Children's Hospital waiting to get authorization from our insurance to get this done. We finally got authorization and Carrie did great getting her scan done. Poor girl, she had to be "strapped in" so she couldn't wiggle. The Rad technician said she did the best of any of his patients today. (Three times between the doctor's office and getting the CT scan done, she fell asleep either in Rebecca's or her mom's arms; very out of character for her). The doctor put the order in as STAT so we should be hearing back from them today if there is anything to worry about.
.
Carrie is already in bed sleeping and probably will sleep well into the morning. We are crossing our fingers and saying our prayers that everything is OK.

Bye Bye Bottles!

I know it's a little past time, but we are officially bottle-free around here. The last few days Carrie has been less and less interested in them. A couple of nights ago, she actually went to bed without taking ANY of her bottle. I was so worried she'd wake up in the middle of the night hungry, but she didn't. :)
.
Even though she's 13 1/2 months old, we've still been strictly on formula because we had some leftover. When we were on WIC, we were fortunate enough to get free formula. We ended up having several "extra" cans after Carrie's first birthday (the traditional "switch to whole milk" date). We decided we'd just use up the formula since it was already paid for and will expire before we would have another baby to use it.
.
We still have a couple of cans left, but sippy cups don't have ounce markings on the side so it makes it pretty annoying to try to mix. Therefore... formula went "bye bye" with the bottles. We are full-on, whole milk in a sippy cup; like a big girl.
.
.
I haven't figured out yet if her whiny behavior and messed up nap schedule the last couple of days is her not feeling 100%, or just a new phase of toddler-hood. I'm hoping the former, and hoping that it will pass.
.
Today, she did not take a nap. At all. I tried three times. All three times, she would be quiet for 15 minutes and then fuss and whine for a few; repeat this pattern for an hour or two and there you have today's nap schedule. In between naps, she was into EVERYTHING she wasn't supposed to be. Pulling the computer keyboard off the desk, pushing buttons on the printer and TV and worst of all, pulling cleaning brushes and dish-washing soap out from under the kitchen sink.
.
When Justin got home, I told him "She's driving me crazy!!" As I was relaying my day to my mom later, she told me something me dad apparently said when I was really little. "It's a good thing you were home with her then and not someone else. Just think how much you love her and she's even driving you crazy! Imagine how crazy she'd be driving someone who didn't love her as much! Lucky lucky girl..."
.
Thanks for reminding me of the bright side dad. I love the days I get to stay home with my baby girl.

Pillow Perfection

Time for another craft project! I've been eying the decorative pillows at Walmart (and a few other places) for our new couch/family room. Well, the "other" various places, the cheapest I found was like $30 on sale. So I resorted back to Walmart (my home away from home). No help. How can one little pillow cost $13? When I'm planning on having either one very very large couch, or multiple couches in one room, the pillow count starts to climb. No way am I spending that much.
.
I went to Hobby Lobby for the first time yesterday and found some fabric that was awesome! I had an idea of the color "scheme" I wanted, but I also wanted some bold patterns and more than one pattern. This is the end result of my labors yesterday.I probably didn't end up saving all that much money, but now I have exactly what I want and get to say "Yeah! I made those!" The backs are either a light brown, a bright green, or the pale blue (interchanged randomly).
.
Oh the satisfaction I get when I turn around from my computer and see them sitting on my couch. I'm almost giddy (it's probably unwarranted, but whatever) :)
.
One thing that for sure makes me giddy though is my darn cute little girl. She's growing up so much! She will now take a few toys and walk to somewhere else in the apartment to sit and play with them. She'll jibber jabber to herself with her toys for a few minutes and then come up to me and yammer off baby talk like she's trying to describe to me what she and her toys were just talking about.
.
She laughs all the time, and sometimes, it's just while she's playing by herself. She loves to read books and will actually sit and flip through a book, front to back by herself saying stuff like "yabba goo hee bab nene ooo gee" etc. I'll try to catch it on video sometime, I promise.
.
This next picture isn't any special cute smile or anything. Just look at her eyes. Totally beautiful blue with a dark blue ring around the edge. I love it.

Late Nights

Thursday night, Carrie had a rough time going to sleep. She went to bed around 7:45 and over the next couple of hours she woke up 4 times. Twice, she had gotten her leg stuck between the crib bars. And I mean really stuck - above the knee, totally can't get it out on her own... We finally went to bed about 10 and right as we were about to fall asleep, she woke up again. This time she was full-on crying, and totally awake. It only took a second to get her chilled out, but as soon as I tried to put her back in her crib or leave the room, you'd think I was abandoning her the way she cried.
.
We've all been a little sick around here lately and Carrie has had a little bit of a stuffy nose, so I gave her some tylenol and a drink of water thinking it should help. No luck. I closed her bedroom door and let her play in the dark while I half slept on the floor. I know this is starting to sound like a habit, but unfortunately apartment living isn't really the greatest situation for letting her scream herself to sleep for hours. We let her cry, but after about 20 minutes we have to do something before the neighbors complain. When we get into the house if she needs to scream herself to sleep, we can let her.
.
I fell asleep before she did, but when I woke up a few minutes before 2am, I found Carrie sprawled out asleep on the floor. (After pulling all her toys, blankets and dirty laundry out) Hallelujah! Back in the crib for her, and back in bed for me!
.
Friday was a much more fun version of a late night. We got to hang out with some of my girlfriends from high school and meet each others' husbands. We had a yummy dinner, played games and had dessert. (I made angel food cake for the first time and it turned out beautifully! I'm so proud!) It was awesome! It's been a while since we've really been out on a date and it was fun to have friends to be with. We've become such old fuddy duddies going to bed by 8:45 usually, but last night we didn't even get home until 10:30! Woohoo! Party Animals... or something like that. Lucky for us, my little brother loves to babysit for us and we get to pay him with Quiznos. :)

Who Me? Couldn't Be!

Carrie pulled every box of cereal out of the cupboard at my parents house. When they found her she was sitting in the middle of the pile. By the time my dad clicked the picture, she had chosen this pose... "Who me? I don't know what you're talking about! They just pulled themselves out of the cupboard!"

I Love Bargain Deals

I just love finding good deals. Looking (or bargain hunting as it's usually called) can be hard and frustrating, but when you find what you're looking for, or what you didn't know you were looking for, it's all worth it. For example: Craigslist + the Dollar store + Goodwill =Everything in the picture cost $38 dollars total. :)

The dresser will be re-painted, and used as a sofa table behind our yet-to-be-purchased sectional couch in our family room. I'm not exactly sure yet where the "treasure" plaque will go.

The antiquey picture frames, I'm super excited for. I'll be continuing to collect frames and pictures for our "ancestor wall". My parents have one in their house and I love it, so I'm going to copy them. It will be a wall in our living room with pictures of us, our parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc.... All in black and white and all in beautiful old-fashioned picture frames (from the dollar store).

I'm getting excited about all the fun decorating I'll get to do in my new house. We'll be closing sometime in the next month most likely.

***Random side notes***
-I did my Jillian workout DVD again yesterday! Twice in one week is quite an accomplishment for me!
-Yesterday when I told Carrie "no no" for doing something she wasn't supposed to, she turned, looked at me and said "yea yea"...... OH NO!!! She's way to young for that!!