One Today!!

I cannot believe that Daniel is turning one today. It is so hard to believe that a year ago today I gave birth to my little boy. He has grown up a lot from his 5lb 11.6 oz size when he was born. Where does the time go. I remember when he would sleep next to me in his bassinet and the getting up every couple of hours to feed him a bottle in the rocking chair, now he is dropping bottles and only wants two a day. A sure sign that he is growing up. He has gone from not being able to move around to walking-almost running around. He has gone from only being able to cry to saying a bunch of words. His first word being ba ba for his bottle.

I got all sentimental looking back at his pictures, saying I cannot believe how much he has grown and how adorable he is. His vocabulary now includes the following words, ma ma, da da, drink, eat, want, all done, tur ta (turtle), no, yeah, and dog. He has also said the following, but not really more than once or twice - water, babbles (bubbles), and bfast (breakfast). The baby babble is so cute and trying to figure out what he is saying.

He now likes to get into everything. If it is in a drawer or a cabinet then it must be for him. If something is plugged in an outlet that must mean it needs to be pulled out. If there is a glass in his reach then that must mean he needs to try to get it and drink whatever is in there.

Watching him just exploring his entire world and figuring out how everything works is an amazing thing. Having him learn how to put a block in a hole or how to turn a light off and on, is just amazing to me. It is so amazing to me how much a baby an learn in just their first year of life.

I love that he gives me hugs and kisses and that his eyes light up when I enter the room. He is a momma's boy and always wants mamma to be with him. If I am having a bad day, his smile can always make me smile and put me in a better mood. I love my little boy and his is the joy of my life.

I never thougth I would have a baby of my own. However, I was given the best gift in the world, my little boy Daniel who is turning one today.

It is Official we will be Moving!!

Well, it is official we will be moving next year. Dave and I need to get out of the small debt that we are in so that we can afford to move into a nice house in a nice neighborhood. To do this though we will be moving in with my mother for a couple of years. She pretty much will let us have the upstairs and she will stay downstairs. We need to do this for ourselves and for Daniel, as we do not live in the best area. Where we live right up the street is the ghetto and honestly on some of the streets around here you cannot walk them without fear of being mugged or sexually assaulted. Not to say that those things happen on a daily basis, but then happen enough. The mall that is not that far up the street (less than a mile) is a nice mall in the inside, but you really would not know that from the outside. This is also the mall that someone got murdered at a year or so ago. The neighborhood is just not safe, especially in the summer. During the summer hearing the police helicoper above our townhomes or in the vacinity is like a daily occurence on the weekends. Lets just say that in the last five years that we have lived here we have had the state police helicoper with its light down looking for someone in the vacinity that I live in probably at least a dozen times, who knows maybe more. I honestly have lost count. Specifically though we have had the police looking in the woods behind our house or in our yards I think three times. It was great to wake up one morning to the helicopter flying over and over again over our townhouse, so of course you have to see what the fuss is and what do I see, but a cop looking in our yards, looking in the woods, and they had the street blocked off. But the most memorable was when the cops shot some guy in the woods right out back of our house, oh happy days.

Then do not get me started on my neighbors. The people to our left, let me say just annoying. The man that lives there just gives me the creeps, as one day he had back out his car and just sat there and watched me take Daniel out of the car. Then there was that one day he was agitating our dog with a metal rod. The neighbors to our right have gotten better, but it has been quit there due to it being winter time. One time the younger son came to our house banging and banging on the door, as he was trying to get away from his older brother who was beating up his girlfriend. Yes, he is a winner. We have also seen him throw her against the shades once. Again, a real winner.

Now our neighborhood is not as violent as I am sure it sounds, but it really is not a great area. When a realtor will not do an open house in our neighborhood unless there is at least two realtor's what does that tell you. When my friend who is a realtor (who is not suppose to talk about crime in an area) just gives you a look when you say that I know I do not live in the best area, you think hey maybe I should move.

I do not want Daniel to grow up in this area, he deserves so much more.

Living with my mom really will not be bad at all, as she keeps to herself and does not get in your business unless you ask her. Also, Daniel will have a backyard, his grandma around all the time, and so much more.

It will be great to get out of debt and save up some money to buy a house that Dave and I will both love in an area where I will be happy to have Daniel grow up in.

Wow, I rambled on and on, better stop.

10 and 11 month old pics!!

Here are Daniel's 10 and 11 month old pictures with Pooh:

10 month picture:

11 month picture:

Not such a good day!

Well, Daniel did not have such a good day today. It was like it was just his day to get hurt. While we were getting ready to go to Gymboree, the dog was not looking where he was going and bumped into Daniel, which caused him to fall.

After Gymboree he got hurt pretty good. I was putting on my shoes sitting on the bench by the door and he was on the bench with me. Well this lady comes through the door and all's Daniel does is get this look of terror in his eye and starts screaming his head off. It took about a second for me to realize he got his hands caught in the door, at the hinged part. The lady quickly opened the door again, so I could get his little fingers out. When I first saw his middle finger it looked broken, but it was just the way he was holding his hand. His index finger and middle finger started to swell up immediately and you could see red coming to the surface on his middle finger and inbetween his middle and index finger. I felt so bad and he was just screaming and screaming. I felt so bad, I just wanted to take his pain away. He saw that another child had a bottle, so I made him a bottle and that calmed him down. So we sat there for ahwile, the whole time I was so upset as I hate seeing him in pain. When he was calmed down enough I put him in the car and he fell asleep on the way to the store. I had called Dave and told him and he says why did you have to call and tell me this as he will then just sit there and worry (which he did, all's he could think about was Daniel and his hand). Daniel seemed better, so we went grocery shopping, but then about 5-10 minutes or so into grocery shopping he had a breakdown. I had to take him home and get him some pain medicine. He actually just sat there and took the stuff like he knew it would bring him some relief. I then gave him another bottle. He finally went to sleep. He was doing much better tonight, like he did not hurt his hand at all. Goes to show you that our kidos are more resilent than you think.

Oh, then in the bathtub he decided to stand up and hold onto the faucet and then he took another spill, nothing major but after his day. I felt so bad for the guy. However, he is doing better.

Walking!!

Today Daniel decided today is the day that he was going to take his first steps. He took me by suprise. I was sitting on the ground with him and he just started to take a few steps, five in fact. He then did it again. See I go and complain about him not walking and then he has to show mommy different. He now is walking more, but his preferred mood of transport is crawling as he gets there faster. I have posted a link to his walking to the left.

Gymboree with Grandma

Today Daniel's grandma came with us to his Gymboree. Here are some pictures:

Here is a picture with Daniel and his girlfriend:

Oh, so that is how that works!

It was so cute in the bathtub on Monday. Daniel has always been facinated with the drain of the tub, wondering what it was. Well, on Monday he finally figured out how it worked. He was playing with it and finally got it to open to let the water out. He then stared at it in amazement.

My Non-Walker - Sort Of

When Daniel starting comando crawling early and was crawling early, I thought he would be an early walker, but he had other plans. I think he is just afraid to walk by himself. He will walk behind his walker for long periods of time, he walks along furniture, holding on to walls, doors, etc, but when it comes to doing it himself he just does not want to do it. Recently he has started walking holding onto just one of our hands, as opposed to holding onto both hands. Believe me I am in no hurry for him to walk and then run, it just had me a little suprised. I guess he is just afraid that he will fall and hurt himself. When he does walk though, sometimes I wonder if he has knees, as it just does not look like he bends them. The other night while he was using his walker he kept looking down at the floor while he was pushing it because he was looking at his shadow. It was so cute.

Invitation for Daniel's First Birthday!!

I cannot belive that Daniel will be turning 1 in a month and a couple of days. Where did the time go. I just wanted to share the invitation with everyone. I just wanted to do something that was a little personal.

Cuteness of the Week!!

I just wanted to share some of the cute things Daniel has done lately. The other day he saw me chewing gum. I looked at him and he was moving his jaw like he was chewing some gum. Invisible gum that is. It was so cute. Everytime I chew gum he watches so intently and mimics me.

Today he put his right arm into his shirt sleeve without me helping or saying anything to him. He actually shocked me.

He is starting to teeth again, so he is back to chewing everything and drooling more.

Waving and Saying Bye-Bye

Well, Daniel has waved bye-bye before, but starting Saturday as my mom was leaving he has started waving bye-bye a lot. It is so cute, as sometimes he will go bye-bye as waiving. On Sunday he was waiving bye-bye a lot.

The ups and downs of Illness!!

Well, yesterday Daniel was not doing as good as we thought. We went out to eat Saturday night and my mom was watching him. I got a call from here that said that he had puked up twice. So we went home and then for the rest of the night tried to give him little sips of water here and there and then we put him to bed.

The next morning (Sunday) he seemed alright, he took his bottle, but did refuse to eat any breakfast. He was difficult to get to sleep for his morning nap. He took another couple of ounces of formula. About two hours later he had diarrhea again and he did a good job of getting it up his back and down his legs. So we called the doctor again and we took him to the doctor yesterday. The doctor said that he has seen a lot of this going around. He diagnosed Daniel with Gastroenteritis, which he feel was caused by the Norwalk Virus. So he said just to give him clear fluids all night to keep him hydrated. You know how hard it was not to give him his bottle this morning when he so clearly wanted it. He did have another episode of diarrhea about 15 minutes after we got home. Poor thing as it had spilled out onto the carpet. We just have to make sure that he stays hydrated, as he has decreased urine, but no other signs of dehydration as he still has saliva in his mouth and still has tears when he cries, and his skin rebounds nicely, so we have been doing a decent job of keeping him hydrated.

I just want the virus to go away and it looks like it is. Today he had close to his normal amount of formul, a little juice and he only ate a couple cherrioes and some crackers, so he is doing better. He did have one diarrhea episode, but it was not that bad. He has been playing, which is great. It is so great to see my little one smile again and do his play scream.

On another front though he weighs only 17 pounds. He has lost some weight this week as before he got sick he weighed more than that. Well, I guess I should just be happy he has gained 8ozs since his 9 month check up, but he really could not of afforded to lose that weight.

Doing Better

Daniel is doing better today. He has not throw up in a day and a half. Now though he is dealing with diarrhea. Poor thing, he goes from one thing to another. He had one diaper so bad this morning that he was looking at me when I put him in the bathtub like what am I doing in here now. He usually gets his baths at night. He actually ate a decent lunch as well, which makes me happy because he has not eaten that much in the past 4 days. We did not go to Gymboree today of course as he is not completely better. I just want my sweet baby to get better, as I feel so bad for him.

He was so cute today. He was sitting on the floor and he looked at me and said "want eat." It was so cute. It is so cute to hear some of the words that come out of little one's mouths. He is building his vocabulary. I cannot remember everything he says, but he has said the following, hi, eat, dink (for drink), ma ma, da da, dog, no, what you do with it (said it once, both Dave and I just looked at each other), want, done, yeah... I cannot remember if there are anymore.

This morning he fed me a cherrio. It is the first time that he has fed either dh or I. It is amazing to watch my little one grow up. Now I just need to get him healthy.

Sick House - Poor Daniel

We have been one sick household. It started with dh about a week and a half ago. He had diarrhea, so he did not feel good. We thought it was something that he had eaten, but now that both Daniel and I have caught some version of what he had we know that is not the case.

Daniel got sick starting on Tuesday. He woke up and got his bottle as usual. He was acting fine. I was upstaris working and I heard Dave saying "Honey, come here." As I started to go towards the stairs I could hear Daniel throwing up. Poor guy he had this look of being so scared. So that was throwing up episode number one. He proceeded to throw up another five times that day, three times on Dave and three times on me. I guess he wanted us to feel that he loves us both the same. Let me tell you that the last throwing up episode on me was not fun. We thought he was doing fine, we had given him a couple crackers and it had been a couple of hours and no puking, but he decided that was not the case. I was sitting on the floor and he was behind me playing with my hair, oh you see where this is going, and the next thing I know he is expelling the entire contents of his stomach all over my back and it even ended up down my pants. Not pretty. By the end of this day he was totally exhausted. He only wanted to cling to mommy. He was so exhausted that after his bath he fell asleep on me immedaitely.

The next day I was hoping that things would get better. He got his morning bottle and was doing alright. Well, that was until I put him in his high chair for breakfast. It was like Niagra falls. I honestly did not think that much could come out of someone that small. At this point I was getting worried about him. I know that he was not dehydrated completely, but I knew that he was getting there as he was having hardley any wet diapers. Though according to the nurse nothing to worry about until they have no saliva in their mouth and no tears. Well, this day Daniel would not let you put him down at all. He wanted you to hold him and walk with him and then he wanted to take his naps on you. Not that I minded as I felt so bad for the little guy. Well, on this day he puked another four times. We were doing the things you needed to to keep him hydrated and they seemed to be working a little bit.

On to Thursday, I was really hoping he would do better. We really felt that he was doing better. He had his morning bottle. He had a couple little spits ups, but nothing major. Then he had a medium size spit up. I was like geez. Then he started with the diarrhea. He had two episodes of that on Thursday. At this point I was starting to feel sick myself and was having episodes of diarrhea. I was also starting to get very tired as Daniel wanted to be held all day and most of that he wanted you to walk with him, as sitting was not enough. I guess I can understand as the moving helped him go to sleep a couple of times. He did have a little lunch and a little dinner on this day, but some of the lunch did end up back. When I say little I mean little in a little bit of crackers. I was just happy to get something in him. When you have a child that weighs as little as he does for his age you know that he does not have much weight to give. From Tuesday to Friday he had lost 5 ounces or so. He is pretty much back to weighing 17 pounds.

Watching Daniel go through all this broke my heart. I so wanted to take his place and go through his pain. It hurt to see him cry out in pain. It broke my heart to not let him gulp water down, as we had to give him sips every five minutes as if we did not he would throw it up. At one point he crawled over to the table where his cup was stood up and started crying for it. He actually made me start to cry, as I so wanted to give it to him, but I knew I could not as I knew he would puke.

Last night he did throw up in his crib, and he had one diarrhea diaper.

Today, he is doing much better. As of right now no throwing up. Yeah. He actually went through one of the drawers in my nightstand and seemed happy. He ate a little bit of breakfast. The best thing is he actually took a nap in his crib. He even played with Pooh. It seems like my little boy is on the mend. That makes me so happy. I did enjoy though the extra cuddle time and him not crawling everywhere, but I will be happy when he is eating again and getting into trouble. We are having chicken tonight in hopes that he will eat some of it and it will stay down.

Oh, yeah, supposidly on Wednesday night he took a step again. I was not there, but Dave told me.

Loves His Chicken

At times Daniel is not the best of eaters, but you give him some chicken and he eats that like there is no tomorrow. As soon as you put it on his tray it is gone. Sometimes you just do not put it on there fast enough and he looks at you like hey where is it. He is the same way with ham, but tht takes extra chewing on his part. We had gotten Popeyes the other day and gave him some and he had the meat off of a thigh and he ate it all, plus some more that we gave him. He is like the Hoover vacumn with it.

Short Entries

I have some short entries in my blog and they are mostly due to me going back and adding them after looking at what he was doing that day. After adding some I figured I would just stop, as I do have them written down in a book for me. I will just keep up with his blog from this point in his life.

Gymboree

Well, today I took Daniel to a preview class of Gymboree. I wanted to see how he would like it. When we first got there he did not want me to put him down. He was just taking everything in. When I first put him down he just sat there. I gave him one of those air disc things they had and he perked up a little, but was still so unsure of everything. The one lady then came by with a ball, which Daniel liked. However, when she came to sit by him and talk to him he just looked at her like who the heck are you. He finally started to perk up a little bit when it was time to look at the toys that were in these boxes. He loves to pull stuff out of his toy box or any other container that we have. There was another girl there that kept taking the toy that Daniel had and the girls mother keep giving it back to Daniel. At one point they have this parachute that we put them in the center of while we walk around in a circle, effectively turning them with it. It was so cute, Daniel grabbed on to this one girl's hand and arm while we did this. Towards the end of class is when he was like O.K. lets get to playing. I decided to sign him up for the classes as I feel that it is good for him and he seemed to finally enjoy it at the end, once he was able to take everything in and understand most everything. One more thing to note is that Daniel is the smallest one there, some of that has to do with his age is he is at the low end of that in the class, but some of it also is due to his weight. When I looked at him I realized how tiny he still is, even though he has grown so much since his birth.

While I was watching him at Gymboree I realized what a kind natured little boy he is. He would just sit there and let the little girl take the toys from him and he did nothing. I realized that at this point in his life he does not have one mean bone in his body. I realized how lucky I am to have such an amazing little boy and how truly wonderful he is.

Looking for a New Home

From today on I plan to be more vigilant about keeping up this blog. It will be much easier for me to remember what was going on that my notes in a journal. Today Daniel learned how to open one of my flip open lotions. Of course that meant he needed to chew on that. He is so cute when doing it and then when you tell him no, he looks at you like why not.

Today we went to Pennsylvania to check out some new homes they were building as they were cheaper than where we live now. Well, we found out the grass is not always greener on the other side. The first homes we tried to find, lets just say it was the white getto to the right and the industrial park on the other. When I say white getto I mean it. It looked the the slums. As we were driving by a probabtion officer and cops were knocking on one guys door and then another job had someone pulled over. We then went to the second place and there was a factory basically right across the street from where they were building the homes. Now who wants that across the street. So we went home. The commute was to far anyway for Dave and I really did not want to live that far away from my mother and Dave and my family that lives in MD and VA. We have decided that we want to live in Howard County and that is where we will live.

One of the main problems of living near two major cities your whole life is you cannot live more than 10 minutes from anything. So that is why we have decided to just stay in the area that we live, just move to a safer and nicer neighborhood.

Rolled a Ball Back and Forth

Today Daniel rolled a basketball back and forth with me a couple of times. At first I thought it was just by accident, but he kept doing it. This is so different that his normal throw something sideways or in a different direction than you or my favorite, drop it or throw it behind himself. He so enjoyed rolling the basketball.

Bumper is now out of the crib

Well, I have officially taken the bumper out of Daniel's crib. When I went in to get Daniel after his morning nap he was standing on his bumper to use it to get to a higher position to chew on his crib. I was like the bumper has gotta go, as he is such a climber that I do not want to give him any advantage on trying to get out of his crib.