I would do a new post....

but Cal is in to EVERYTHING!!!! And I haven't had a chance yet. He is moving everywhere and pulling up on everything, Hank included..... post to come :)

We have a mover!

Mr. Cal started moving today....I can't really call is crawling, because what he is doing isn't really crawling, but he is moving across the floor! He keeps one foot in front of him at all times (?), and uses his back leg to push off. When he gets frustrated, he puts both feet down and straightens his legs, with his arms on the ground too- I think in yoga it's called a downward facing dog? I have been trying to get a good video of it and I will post one tomorrow.

But today will go down as the day Cal started moving across the floor! Oh, and he moves across the floor to the nearest thing to pull up on...go figure!

Standing in the kitchen after dinner:

Patty Cake

ignore my voice....

Sunday Night Fever!

Yesterday evening, the Country Club had an event called "BBQ, Blue jeans, Beer and Blues!" It was basically a band and some BBQ. We all decided to go and ended up having a great time! The weather turned bad right before we left, but they had the band inside and there were a lot of kids and we took over the dance floor. I had a great time "dancing" with Cal-- I was holding his hands while he stood there and bounced his knees along with the beat-- it was TOO precious! Several older women were watching and had to come over to comment.

A little Dennis the Menace

Cal woke up with some mega bedhead yesterday, and he was wiggling all over the place when I was trying to get him dressed....reminded me a little of Dennis the Menace. :) Hope you are having a great weekend!

Work It!

I can't imagine where he gets it from.....

Play Date

This afternoon, we had a late-in-the-day get together with some of Cal's buddies (and their awesome mommies too!). The mom's had a little wine/champagne while the kids played. I think we had 9 kids total: 7 boys and 2 sweet little girls! The kids had a great time all playing together and staring at each other and "talking" back and forth.

I tried to get some good pictures, but you know how it is when it's 6:00, the kids are worn out, and the moms walk away to get the camera..... some not happy babies!

Practicing for football season

Cal will be watching quite a bit of football this fall and I have been working with him on what to do when TCU (his Poppy's team) scores...

A picture is worth a thousand words

So here's a few thousand words for you:

Having lunch with Wyatt, his buddy.

A new, cheesy smile... not sure how I feel about that one...

My little Beach Bum!

Angel Face :)

8 months old!

I can NOT believe my little guy is already 8 months old! That is IN SANE to me!

We had a doctor's appointment yesterday for a well visit and everything is looking great.

Milestones for now:

Weight: 10 pounds, 5 ounces 50th percentile (almost 10 pounds exactly from his birth weight!)

Height: 27.5 inches 50th percentile

Head circumference: 46.8 cm...95th percentile!!! (all those brains....)

Sleeping: doing soooooo much better! He takes a morning nap, an afternoon nap, and will sleep through the night, unless something major is happening, like a tooth breaking through or a cold making him cough. You have seen two of the pictures from some good nap times. Here orHere.

Food: we are down to nursing 4 times a day (today I am trying for only 3). We are trying more
solid foods (as momma gets braver...) and he loves everything! He is a huge fan of Whole Wheat Ritz crackers. I think he likes to lick the salt off. I need to find some without the salt! Cal will pretty much try anything and seems to like it. I gave him a some shredded cheese yesterday and he loved picking it up with this fingers and eating away. We tried some of the baby yogurt and he liked the apple flavored, but wasn't a huge fan of the blueberry flavored. I love trying new foods. Thank you to Stephanie for encouraging me to try more solids! Cal and I met a friend for lunch yesterday at Moe's and he ate some of my rice and LOVED it! I think he had a blast picking it up and trying to get it into his mouth. It can't be easy to eat rice with your fingers!

Sippy Cup: Cal continues to drink from his sippy cup (only the one brand that he likes-- he won't use the others yet), but he really really likes to drink water like a big boy out of a Tervis Tumbler. We have a bunch of those and he gets the biggest kick of drinking away with those. He makes the biggest mess you've ever seen, but it's cute to see him drinking water that way...with lots of help from mom, of course...

Crawling: Cal is still not exactly crawling, but he is right on the verge of it. He will get in the position and rock and then just push himself back onto his bum, or try to put his feet flat to stand up. He pulls up on EVERYTHING now. I walked into the bedroom yesterday for bath time and when I left, he was on the floor in his diaper playing with a toy. When I came back in, he had pulled himself into standing position by hanging onto the side of the bed. He was grinning ear to ear when I walked in. That's my little naked boy! He much prefers to be standing than crawling...

Words: Cal loves to talk. Last night for an hour straight, he would not stop saying DaDaDaDa over and over again. Eddie was beaming. It was so sweet. We called both of Eddie's parents so they could hear it too and they were beyond thrilled. He still says up and waves bye bye and says bye bye. He will say Mommmma some, but not often. He loves riding down the road in his new car seat "talking" to ever car and truck that we pass.

Walking: No so much yet. BUT, he does pull up on everything and he would so much rather stand and "cruise" around a sofa than sit down!

Thunder and the Dog: a timeline of events

(someone told me that putting a t-shirt on a dog when they are scared will calm them down.... it didn't work.)

7:00 Cal goes down without a fight--sigh!
11:00 Carrie and Eddie go to bed (I know-- we are some wild ones on a Sat. night!)
12:00 Hank hears thunder
12:05 Carrie gets up with Hank and gives him Benadryl
1:00 Eddie hears Hank howling and isn't excited about him being up
1:05 Eddie puts Hank in the bathroom with the door shut
1:06 Hank starts headbutting the door over and over again, apparently not excited about being in the dark room alone.
1:15 Carrie takes Hank downstairs to the guestroom to calm him down
1:30 Carrie is on the ground holding Hank and finally gets him calm and asleep
1:35 Cal wakes up. Eddie stands at the top of the stairs letting me know that he's awake. This upsets Hank, and thus the howling starts all over again.
2:00 Carrie gets Cal down
2:30 Carrie gets Hank back calm
3:00 round 2 of the storm passes through-- even more thunder
3:05 Carrie gives Hank yet another dose of Benadryl
4:00 Carrie finally gets Hank asleep
6:00 Cal wakes up and is ready to start the day!

PS-- I should mention that both Eddie and I have the cold that Cal had all last week-- horrible cough, etc..... this night did not help things :)

Weekend Update...

(I just watched SNL from two weeks ago with Betty White and I love the weekend update segment...)

So, our house is officially on the market! We put the sign in the yard last Sunday, one week ago today. We have had a few calls on it and had a showing on Friday! I cleaned our house top to bottom and strategically hid all of Cal's "stuff" to de-clutter things. In other words, I filled up the back end of my Explorer with a TON of Cal's toys! It was really funny- I didn't have the time/energy to unload them all before running an errand so I was driving down the road with about 10 different toys making noise/singing songs/honking- it was typical something I would do!

The showing went well. The girl really liked our house and loved that the master was on the top floor. She had all positives to say about the location and the house. Her house is for sale as well, and she can't do anything until her house sells. So, we will see what happens! I am praying for a repeat visit from her and maybe a few other showings as well. Now that I got the house "show ready," I want some people to get in here!

Cal caught a little bit of a cold last week, and I showed the picture/video from him napping earlier in the week. Here is a picture from the next day's nap:He was sitting up and crying, not wanting to give in, and then finally fell asleep, and just kind of toppled over- still in the sitting position! HA!

Saturday was the MOST perfect day. Cal woke up pretty early, but he took an excellent morning nap. While he slept, Eddie went to the golf course, and I sat out on the back deck with Hank listening to my book on tape-- it was PERFECT out! Once Cal woke up, I got him dressed in his swimsuit, sun shirt and loads of sunscreen and we headed to the pool!

Sunscreen in the hair: check! Quicksilver bathingsuit: check! Big smile: check!

We had a great time there. He played so hard in the water. Our pool has a "beach entry" in the shallow end, which means it gradually gets deeper as you go in. We just sat in the water and Cal splashed and played so hard. He was practically begging for a nap after all of that! I changed him out of his wet clothes and into something dry and quickly nursed him. I loaded him up in the jogging stroller and pushed him around the pool deck until he fell asleep (I was getting great sun while strolling the deck too! ha!). I parked him in the shade within my eyeshot and sat back in the water and relaxed-- it was heavenly! After Cal woke up, he got back into his bathingsuit and played some more. A few of my girlfriends showed up with their babies so we all sat in the water playing away. To end the perfect day, we all had a margarita while playing-- again, it really was perfect!


(until Saturday night....)

I was pretty exhausted on Sunday and feeling pretty under the weather. Thank goodness Cal took a great nap so I could rest a bit. I am super excited for his check- up tomorrow morning. I love love love our doctor and always look forward to seeing her. Not sure if Cal is getting shots or not, but he hasn't had any issues with them in the past, so I am sure he will be fine tomorrow too. I am interested to see how much my little chunker weighs. I am betting around 20 lbs. I am also curious about what the doctor says for food for Cal. It's hard to know what to feed him and when.

Hope y'all had a great weekend too!!!

Video update....

Here is a video of the picture from the last post..... it cracks me up! Apparently he was worn out from a big afternoon!

http://gallery.mac.com/cewilliamson#100382

PS-- Cal has started a pattern of waking up at 5 am, feeding and then going back to sleep HARD until 9:00! Then what am I supposed to do about nap time? Does that count as his morning nap? He has taken a good afternoon nap the days that he does that, so I am really not complaining at all.... would I rather him wake up at 7 and take a morning nap? Or would I rather him wake up at 5, and then sleep until 9, with no morning nap? What do you think?

*This* is tired....

Cal's first golf lesson

We had dinner out at the club this past weekend. Afterward, Eddie took Cal out on the range and the putting green. I am not sure who was having more fun....Notice the "Got Golf" shirt? Eddie dressed him. Shocking, right?

Coming up to the putting green looking at the ball.

Catching a ride to the car-- he was tuckered out!

He learns from watching...Hank?

wonder if anyone will catch me....

just.....trying....to....get....a.....sip...of....water..... (16 candles? Anyone???)

What???

hehe-- I was caught!

SO big!

Cal loves to play on the ottoman.....

Mother's Day

It was my first *real* Mother's Day and it was quite special. I feel incredibly blessed to have such a loving family around me. I am super blessed to have my mom so close to help me with this rollercoaster that is motherhood. In fact, I wrote her a letter apologizing for being such a brat when I was younger and giving her such a hard time growing up. I can understand now how she loved me throughout it all, but I can also understand how much I must have hurt her along the way. She is an incredible woman and I can only hope and pray that my kids will look up to me the way my brother and I look up to her.

Sunday was a great day. The previous post explains the morning. After Cal's morning nap (actually, I think he was too excited about the lot to sleep. He opted out of nap time.), we went over to the new neighborhood and walked over to the new lot! I loved being with my boys and just walking and talking-- perfect for me!

We spent some time outside then headed home for Cal's afternoon nap (all of 45 mins....). After he woke up, we went over to my parent's house to celebrate with the family. It was such a special day. Here are some pictures from the afternoon...

"He got me....A LOT!"

The new lot!

No, really.... an actual LOT! We are building a new house!

Let me back up. Happy Mother's Day to all of you Mommies out there! Hope you had a great day.


I woke up on Sunday morning when Eddie jumped out of bed (he has a pattern on special holidays/birthdays. He gets up before I do, runs to the florist, picks up breakfast and wakes me up when he comes back). When he returned, he had a dozen of the most beautiful white roses-- those were from Cal :). He gave me Cal's card and then a card from him too. I was getting up to go eat my cinnamon roll (yummmmm), and he handed me a gift: wrapped in the home section of the newspaper was information tube--the thing that you stick in your front lawn with flyers in it.

We had been talking about moving to this new neighborhood for a while. We didn't think it was feasible money-wise, so we looked in other surrounding neighborhoods. We couldn't find anything we liked. Everything that was big enough, was wayyyy out dated and would need loads of work. We just kept going back to this new neighborhood. Last weekend, we drove through it (as I do every single day on my way to walk), and the real estate office had gone through an updated all of the SOLD signs. There were very few lots remaining....! Eddie and I had been talking about it a lot since then, and every time I could see him get a little panicky when the financial side was brought up. We would be able to swing it fine, but Eddie was a little nervous because he tends to worry/stress about that stuff-- he is a Financial Adviser, after all....

Back to the story: after I unwrapped the information tube, Eddie said we should probably go ahead and list our house since we were wanting to move. Then the second "gift" was the sticky numbers to stick onto the sign, and he said the 3rd gift was in the back of my car: it was a For Sale By Owner sign! Stuck to the sign was a letter from the neighborhood broker office officially signing over our lot! WOOHOO!

We will meet with the builder next week to start the next steps of the building process. They are totally custom built homes so I am going to have a field day picking it all out!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone!

Our current house

Craziness and Cal

(my family with my sister-in-law's parents after the baptism)

Sunday was a beautiful day that was action-packed!

My dear friend, Julie, was having a shower in Raleigh at 1:00. At 3:00, my mom and my sister-in-law's mom threw a "Sip 'n See" in honor of their new Granddaughter, Catherine. So far, no problems! My sister-in-law wanted to kill two birds with one stone and figured that since her parents were going to be in town, they should go ahead and baptize Catherine.

Talk about a filled day! We went to church at 10:30. It didn't start until 11:15, but we were going to put Cal in the nursery and wanted to give him some time to get used to it. Plus, we were honored to be asked to be Godparents and I was not about to be late for that!!!! The service was a....lengthy one...we didn't get into our car to leave until 1:00.

If you are following along, my friend's shower was starting at 1:00....in RALEIGH (30 mins away)! Oh, and I had to go home, change clothes, feed Cal, etc, etc....

I made it to the shower and had a great time. I can't wait to meet Julie's little guy: Fenton! Cal is going to love having another little boy around!

(Cole, me, Julie and Andrea at the shower)

After the shower, I hauled it back to Chapel Hill for the Sip 'n See! I made it there at 4:00-- phew!

Eddie called me after the shower and said "You aren't going to believe what your son just did..." We are on high crawl watch over here so I was sure that he was crawling (and that I had missed it!), but instead.... Cal was in his crib (Eddie was watching on the video monitor), and sat himself up-- first time he got himself seated, then proceeded to PULL HIMSELF UP. Once he was standing, he let go and toppled over into the crib. This is his new favorite trick. Needless to say- the crib was lowered last night!(here's Cal's big ol' head in the video monitor. He's supposed to be napping here, but it is so much more fun to scream when sitting up then laying down)

Saturday fun!

We had SUCH a busy weekend. Sunday was incredibly crazy, and Saturday was perfect :). I had an appointment with my friend Saturday morning, so I left when Cal was down for his morning nap. While I was gone, I got a few text message pictures from Eddie of what Cal was up to. He woke up and Eddie got him all dressed (shirt says "Dirt Makes Me Cuter") and they went outside to wash Eddie's car and power wash the house. Eddie dragged the walker outside and put Cal in it in the grass. He loved it! I think he actually liked watching his Dada, but regardless, he was a happy camper!

When I came home, I brought him inside to feed him lunch and play a little. He has a toy that rotates around so that when he was little he could lay on his back and play with it, but it grows with him. Now he can sit in front of it and push the buttons, etc... but it is MUCH more fun to PULL UP and play with it instead! I couldn't believe it! I mainly played on his knees, but he did manage to get to his feet with me right behind him to help him..... who is this kid??

He wasn't really into an afternoon nap so we took a drive and he crashed! The pictures above pretty much summarize the day. I loved every minute of being together!