Grayson Has a Lovey

Everyone talks about how their child has a special blankie or animal that they carry around with them all the time, or that they just have to sleep with. Thus far, Gray has not really cared about any of his stuffed animals, which is why I questioned why he kept getting them as gifts. But, all of a sudden a week or two ago, he decided he was attached to one of his stuffed animals. Which one.....BOZ....now for those of you not familiar, Boz, the big green bear, is a Christian series of books and videos. They teach not only family values and the love of God, but also numbers, colors, shapes and all the educational things you find on Sesame street. It's by far one of both mine and Grayson's favorite things that we've discovered.

So, for Christmas my sister and David added to our Boz collection with a couple new videos and a stuffed animal Boz. Grayson at the time treated it like any other stuffed animal he owns (ignored it) so I stuck it up in his stuffed animal holder on the back of his door. Just the other day, I heard him in his room screaming something that started with a "B". Now, you have to understand, everything in Grayson's world sounds a lot like "Ba"....for Ball, Bottle, Bath...the list goes on. But, when I went in there to check on him, he was standing behind his door yelling "Ba, Boz, Ba" and pointing to the green bear. I got it down for him, and every since the thing has been attached to his hip.

Boz comes to the high chair for breakfast, he rides in the car with us, he goes to pre-school, and out to dinner, he is truly one of the family! Yesterday, Grayson woke up with a disastrous diaper (which happens on occassion) but the lovely part about this morning was that it had actually come off of him and was all the way down his leg by the time he woke up. So, of course, we had to do an emergency load of laundry with not only his PJs but blankets, sheets, matress cover, and oh yes, Boz. Well, during the time it took for Boz to finish his cycles in the washer & dryer, you would have thought the sky was falling. Every 15 mins, Gray was walking over to the laundry room asking if Boz was done. He was having a very hard time understanding why Boz's bath was taking so much longer than Grayson's baths normally take.

But, we survived and in just a few weeks the Smiths, including Boz, will be starting a new life in Houston!

Terrible Twos....Here we Come

A few days before Christmas, we had our first incident of Grayson climbing out of his crib. We knew it would happen someday, but we didn't think it would be as early as 21 months. Luckily, thus far, it was a one day fluke, but we're trying to prepare outselves for it to become habit. I mean, what do you do when a child climbs out of their crib? Do they make cages to keep them in? Don't worry, we would never really seriously cage our child, although there are moments where the thought crosses our minds.

After having a wonderful, healthy Christmas, Grayson rang in the New Year with a yucky case of RSV. For those of you who aren't parents, it's an upper-respiratory bronchial virus which in our case requires daily breathing treatments. The good news (haha) is that the medicine in the breathing treatments is a stimulant, which makes our already very active boy into a tornado. Seriously, we're giving a child who is already 110% boy a stimulant, it's really quite a hilarious concept. I don't know if the med is giving him super-child powers too, but he started opening up our child locks this week that we have on our doors. Child proof locks were the best invention ever from the time Gray was about 15/16 months until now.....now nothing is safe, I mean NOTHING! Some children are early at speaking and reading...ours is a little Houdini protege.

Besides getting into EVERYTHING, Gray is becoming such a little helper. Tonight when I was dumping our smaller trash cans into the main one, he insisted on carrying the smaller ones and dumping them for me and then taking them back to their original rooms. It was so cute! He was huffing and puffing trying to carry our heavy bathroom one, which I'm sure is great for him when the poor thing is already struggling to breath. But, I think having a boy may come in handy with house hold chores as he gets older :)

In other news from the Smiths, Brad and I celebrate four wonderful (most days anyway)years of marriage tomorrow! I can't belive it has been four years! And in those four years, we have lived in three cities and about to move to our fourth, plus three apartments and a house, about to move to our fifth dwelling place. That's got to be some kind of record. I have informed my husband that I'd rather not keep up this migrating record in the future. Our house goes on the market on Thursday, please keep us in your prayers for a quick sale. While we love our San Antonio friends and are not excited to leave them, Brad will have to start traveling to Houston soon regardless if we've sold our house or not. We do not want to do the long distance family thing for long!

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! :)