Gray's First Trip to the Emergency Room & Haircut

The last 12 hours have been very eventful for the Smith Family. Grayson had his first trip to the minor emergency clinic last night after he nose dived into the coffee table at about 8:00 last night, and came home with two stiches. While we have the coffee table with rounded edges, it does have wicker drawers and one was sticking out. He fell at just the right angle to get a cut right between his eyes. Keep in mind, he probably nose dives into some piece of furniture or the floor at least once a week, and usually much harder than this, but this time, he had a real battle wound:( The doctor shortly realized that glue wasn't going to work since the spot kept opening up every time Grayson moved his face. So, we had to do the whole strap him down, numbing injection, stitches thing. Poor baby! He took it like a champ though. I'm sure it was harder on Mom & Dad watching than it was on him. The forgiving, never holds grudges, little boy even gave the doc a high five after the procedure, forgetting all about the screaming he had been doing right before hand. I of course took lots of pictures to mark his entrance into boyhood since I have a feeling, this won't be our last trip to the emergency room.




And only 12 hours later, Grayson got his first hair cut. We put it off until 21 months because we love his curls, but the curls were starting to turn into a shag, so we knew it was time. Sadly, the lady gave him much more than a trim. But, with a squirmy toddler, I think it's hard to do just a trim. It's sad, between the stiches and hair cut, I think Gray went from a baby to a little boy over night :( The sad thing is, I think I wanted to cry more over the hair cut than the stiches and Gray was about as equally unhappy with both. Between the two, we should have some great Christmas photos this year!

Videos of Gray

If anyone reads this consistently, you're probably wondering what has gotten into me, and frankly I don't know. I've just felt inspired to blog recently. I decided someday I would print this blog and use it as a family scrapbook (when I have plenty of money to take it to kinkos and print on fancy paper and bind). Therefore, I don't want to miss marking precious moments that I will forget happened in just a short while.

I've also been wanting to post video for a while, but didn't really want to use YouTube and I didn't have any other suggestions, until I realized you could use Smile Box. Anyway, here are a few clips of our precious little boy. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox collage

It's frightening when you realize that at only 21 months you can already hear your child repeating things you say and doing things like you. I went to take Gray's shoes off for his nap yesterday and I just set them on his diaper changing table because we were getting out later and he would need them on again. But, when he saw that I put them there, he went and got them and put them in his shoe basket under the crib....clearly letting me know that "that's not where they go Mom" (in his own little language of course). It looks like I'm successfully passing my OCDness onto my child :) Scary, I know!

Editing my Blog

So, I decided to try and spice up my blog yesterday by making a banner. I spent what seemed like forever working on it. Because Paint is the only image editing program we have on our computer and I was too lazy to download anything else, I was very limited on what I could do. I learned that Paint is the worst program of all times! It is extremely unforgiving and won't let you go back and edit pictures of text boxes once they're placed. Before anyone points it out to me, I know the pictures are fuzzy and the title looks funny, but I decided I didn't want to waste anymore of my life making it better. So, feel free to leave comments/lies about how cute it looks so I won't feel like my hard work was for nothing :)

I think editing my blog may be my way of avoiding doing the things I really need to be doing....like reading a 100 page relocation package that Brad's company sent us. I've never understood why it takes so many pages to communicate basic information. If I was ever in charge of an instruction manual, it would be five sentences and it someone couldn't figure out what to do from that, they shouldn't purchase my product.

And we're off to take Grayson Christmas lights watching with the Roberts....

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas time has always been one of my favorite times of the year, as I am sure it is for most people. Although I am a big "no Christmas stuff until after Thanksgiving" nazi, when the day after Thanksgiving arrives, it's all about Christmas. I love Christmas trees, lights, cards, music....the list goes on. But one of my favorite things is that I usually get to reconnect with friends that sometimes I haven't talked to in a year. It all starts with the "What's your address?" emails or texts when I'm working on Christmas cards.

P.S. If you get a Christmas card, please forgive the 1900s virgin Mary stamps as they were the only ones left at H-E-B. We haven't converted to Renassance Catholisism in case you're wondering :)

This is also our first year with a full size Christmas tree. Because we never wanted to deal with storing one in an apartment, we've always had our 3 and a half foot Charlie Brown Christmas tree until this year. We even put out outside lights for the first time (as this is the first year we actually had a house to put them on), and by we I mean Brad, which was no easy task since our roof is very steep. It is totally worth it though (at least to me since I didn't do any work on those :) every time we drive up to the house and see them and when we look back and see Grayson's eyes light up as we pull in and out of the garage.

I took Grayson to the library today with his two girlfriends, Isabella and Megan, (since none of our friends have boys) for a toddler story time. They sang Christmas carols and read Christmas books. At first, he had this look on his face like, "what is up with these crazy people?" but by the end he was dancing and clapping along. He is talking all day long now and asking me lots of questions, not that I understand them except for a few words here and there, but he still looks at me as though he's expecting an answer. Sometimes I fear what I am answering yes and no to exactly.

I thought he'd be shaking the ornaments off our Christmas tree, but for whatever reason, he hasn't laid a hand on it. It could be that he recenlty broke an ornament in Pier 1 and learned his lesson from that, who knows, but we've been grateful.

We still don't have our house up for sale, but a move to Houston is still in the works. We should be putting our house up for sale this month, but who knows. I've decided I'm not too big of a fan of corporate America and their inability to tell me where I will be living this next year :) We'll keep you posted though!

Here are a few recents pics....Merry Christmas from the Smiths!


This one is from Thanksgiving! Grayson was very excited to play in my sister's dryer. The sad thing is both my sister and I could both fit in it too :)


Brad did a great job hanging out lights without breaking anything! We also inherited a beautiful "JOY" sign from my parents, which adds a nice touch.






Here is Grayson in his Christmas sweater, something that is only cute at this age, and should not be worn by 40 year old men at office parties :)


Grayson got to open a few presents at Thanksgiving with my family since we will be with Brad's this year for Christmas...presents including his first set of legos and a tri-cycle....of course he still had the most fun with the box.


And he loved putting that bike together with his Daddy!

Baby Hargrove

Two of our very best friends, Luke and Stephanie Hargrove, became parents yesterday to a beautiful little boy named Calvin.....and as funny as it is they picked the name from Calvin and Hobbs :) I just finshed watching a video on their blog (http://www.stephanieandluke.com/) of Calvin's first 15 minutes of life. He is beautiful and we are so excited for them!

I grew up with Luke and he was/is one of the most mischevious kids on the planet, which is why the idea of him being a Dad and a Dad of a boy no less, is very humorous. I could tell story after story about Luke...like the time he accidently toilet papered my next door neighbor's house thinking it was mine, or when he stole my tires and put my car up on jacks so I couldn't leave the house, or when he decided to roller blade holding onto a rope tied to the back of our friend's mini van...oh how the list goes on. :)

Luke and Stephanie are going to be wonderful parents, but watch out world, there is another Hargrove on the lose! Welcome to the world Calvin! And good luck Steph! And Luke, just remember when he comes home from school and tells you that he got in trouble for making dry ice bombs, he can't help it because it's in his genes! :)

Fall Festivities

Sometimes I don't blog because I feel like I have nothing new to report and other times (like recently) I don't even know where to start. October was a crazy month for the Smith family. Elaine (Brad's sis) got married, so Grayson now has a new Uncle Josh!!! (Sorry, Josh Roberts, we're going to have to teach Gray to call you something else now.) We went to Colorado to visit Evan and Lauren Perkins who are in seminary there and we did our usual fall festivities such as the pumpkin patch, weekend company, and Halloween. I had to make a little slide show (below) for those of you who are not on facebook or haven't already seen our pics. Lauren is an amazing photographer and took some wonderful photos, which is really quite amazing when you consider the incooperativeness (don't know if that's really a word) of our grumpy little toddler. I was framing some of the pics today which required taking some of his baby ones out of frames :( and couldn't even believe that he was the same child who was born 2 months early and couldn't even breath on his own. Now, he is this little crazy thing who is all over the place and doesn't stop unless he's asleep. I had to try really hard not to cry when thinking about it. He is growing up too fast!

Taking Grayson on an airplane was probably our biggest adventure of all. When you put a little boy who doesn't like to sit still in a confined place where there's really no way to mask the screaming or take hime outside, it can be quite a challenge. The best part was when Grayson first started squealing and Brad tried to fix the problem by covering Gray's mouth with his hand, which just turned the noise into an even louder, yet slightly muffled, scream. I thought for sure the people next to us were going to call CPS :) We made it there and back though. I'm sure everyone on the plane hated us, but we'll never see them again, so we're not too worried.

Despite all of our crazy activities, for those of you who don't know already, we found out that we are moving to Houston (we don't know when and we don't know where yet) because Brad got a promotion with his job. I'm SO proud of him, but still sad to leave our San Antonio friends :( We are excited about reconnecting with some of our old peeps in Houston tho! We're guessing the change will most likely happen around the first of the year, so please keep us in your prayers! Hopefully it won't be another two months before I find time to blog again, but I make not promises :) I just don't know how you weekly/daily bloggers do it!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

18 Months

Grayson turned 18 months on Wednesday. Wow, how time flies! The past few months have proven it to be a very fun but exhausting age. Even as I type, he came running up with something in his mouth. I have no clue where he got it from, but it looked like food and it smelled like food, so I'm just hoping it was food. When I picked him up from the gym yesterday, he was putting his finger up another child's nose (lovely, huh?)

It has become so evident lately the differences between a boy and a girl toddler. He is all boy from running everywhere to "discovering himself" :) to bumping his head ten times a day without even acknowledging the fact that it hurt. It's an age where there's really no reason to go to the gym because you're burning so many calories chasing him around, except for the fact that you need to already be in pretty good shape to do all that chasing.

He is chattering away non-stop, not that we know what he's saying because except for the 10 or so words we recognize, it's mostly his own language. But everything he says, he says very passionately and he knows what he wants when he wants it. It's beginning to sound more like English every day. I'm asking myself if we really want to know what he's saying because when the kid is mad, I'm afraid of what words might go along with all that screaming :) It's funny, I remember looking at parents with kids this age, thinking, oh my gosh, they have no control over their child, have they ever heard of discipline? Now, I understand!

He must take aftef his mom a little bit though because he loves his shoes. We took him shopping last week and got him two new pairs of shoes since he's growing like a weed. Today, he brought them to me to put on him and when I told him he didn't need shoes because we were staying home, he started crying. Maybe someday he'll enjoy shopping too :) if we can find time after all sports his Daddy has planned for him.

Below are a few photos of our recent adventures with Gray to catch up since I haven't blogged in a while!


We took Gray to feed the ducks, but they were getting a little too close, plus Gray kept eating their food. He really only understood the concept of looking at the ducks while feeding his face.


Here is Gray meeting my sister's two HUGE dogs and we were worried THEY might hurt HIM...ha!


Here is Gray in his superman PJs....Super Grayson, Away!



Gray also started pre-school one day a week at the start of this month. He loves it! They call him their little monkey because he climbs on everything (shocking I know. Here he is on his first day, he was ready to go to school!


Speaking of our little monkey, we found the most adorable halloween costume, which we returned the very next day after realizing it just wasn't going to happen.


Happy 18 months Grayson!!!

Happy Birthday Brad!!!

In honor of my wonderful husband's 26th birthday, I have dedicated this blog post as a tribute to him wishing him a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Because our birthdays are only 2 days apart, Brad likes to give me a hard time that his birthday sometimes gets overshadowed since girls like to have birthday weeks :) So, this year as to not let the day slip by without making a big bang out it, I declare Monday (July 27) NATIONAL CELEBRATION OF BRAD DAY!

For anyone who knows Brad even a little bit, you know that he has a little hobby of taking pictures of himself by himself making the most goofy and sometimes sickening faces. As a public birthday message, I have taken the liberty of putting a few of those photos together to share with anyone who might be reading this! You are welcome, Brad :) For those of you thinking I have entirely too much time on my hands, I assure you as sad as it is, there are SO many of these pictures that I was able to compile them in a matter of minutes! So, please take a few minutes out of your day to wish Brad a Happy Birthday!!!

































As goofy as he is, I know I have the most wonderful husband in the world. Happy Birthday my love!!!

P.S. I'm glad you don't look like this all the time :) And I will never understand how someone so skinny can have a double chin in photos

July 4th

We spent July 4th weekend in Austin with Josh and Courtney Roberts at Courtney's parents lake house. Our philosophy on parenting has always been to mold our kids as much to our lives as possible, instead of molding our lives to theirs. We truly tested our theory over July 4th weekend when we took Grayson out on the lake (keep in mind he's only 15 months). I think the first half hour of the excursion, we were all thinking (including the Roberts and Bakers) what a mistake it was, and Brad and I were pretty much counting on never being invited back :) Luckily, our little man fell asleep and after a little power nap, he woke up a different kid with a new found love for his life jacket. He even tubed behind the boat with Brad like a trooper (don't tell the Grandmas)!






Grayson also encountered about 15 ducks at the pier, but when I asked him what sound the duck made, he replied (Ruff, Ruff), which made me realize that he may have down the sound that the dog makes, but it apparantly is becoming his universal animal sound. Among his first words (besides barking like a dog) are "Ta" for Tag, "Ba" for Ball, "Da Da" for Daddy and "Dis" for "This." Still no Ma Ma :( Where are this kids priorities, really???




And....don't you just LOVE this pic of Josh and Courtney? :)

Grayson hit one more milestone during his July 4th weekend (aside from his duck/dog encounter and boating adventure) and that was his first bloody nose. No, it didn't happen on the boat, but when Brad was chasing him around the house and Gray fell just right on the tile. But, I thought I'd capture it anyway considering it may only be the first of many having a little boy running around the house!

VACATION!

Here are some pics from our cruise with the Hargroves. We had so much fun! We hung out on the boat, and went to Jamaica and Grand Cayman. In Cayman, we swam with the sting rays, visited a turtle farm (yes, we must be five years old because it was one of our favorite things), visited hell (the city, not the eternal place you go if you don't know Jesus) and laid on the beautiful beach! In Jamica, we went jungle river tubing, but Luke, Steph and Brad have to admit that their favorite part of the day was when I made them (along with our entire tour van) go to the beach in the pouring rain!

And yes, while he took his first steps about five weeks ago (14 months), our little man decided to all out walk/run 2 1/2 weeks ago (14 1/2 months), and yes, we were on vacation when it happened :) Things always seem to work out like that, but at least we got to see his first steps! Anyway, I've been trying to post a video of him walking ever since, but can't compress the video to where it will work. So, that will have to be still to come (once Luke has time to teach me :), but in the meantime if anyone knows, I'd love suggestions!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Aunt Abby and Uncle Dew

I also can't leave out April and Drew's visit just a few weeks ago! Thank you guys for coming to see us, or should I say thank you to the Texas Basketball Coaching Association (yes, I'm totally making that name up because I have no clue what it's really called) for bringing you here! You guys were so cute with Gray, and it was so fun watching y'all interact with him. You guys will be great parents one day (hint hint Drew....JK, I mean whenever you're ready)!