Friends fur-ever

When I was pregnant, we figured that our big cat Wally and Little Elvis would be friends. My third trimester was in the winter, and most nights, Wally would crawl under the covers and curl up beside my bulging belly. He would snuggle up and purr while Little Elvis kicked and wiggled.

Once Little Elvis was born, Wally would try to share my lap with him. But as Little Elvis grew and his kicks got stronger, Wally sought other nap locations.

As soon as Little Elvis started scooting, Wally would sit a few inches in front of him and move as Little Elvis got closer. He was a great incentive for our little crawler. When Little Elvis was finally able to catch up with him, Wally would typically sit patiently and endure the "pats."

Recently, Wally has decided that Little Elvis' crib is the place to be. We have to keep the door to the nursery closed, and he still finds ways to sneak in. He is capable of pushing the door open with his paws if it's not completely latched, or he will just make a break for it when I'm heading in for a diaper change.

Most nights, I tiptoe into Little Elvis' room to make sure everything is fine. Last week, Wally snuck in while I was sneaking in. The next morning I went in to get Little Elvis, and saw Wally sitting beside him! Crazy cat. Now, I look for Wally before checking on the baby. (We aren't encouraging this. I think they will end up sleeping together, but not until Little Elvis is much older.)

In honor of this sweet, blooming friendship, we made... a music video! I tried editing it a little differently, and like how it turned out. I hope you enjoy!

Ready for real food?

Wow has Little Elvis been busy recently. This will actually be a week of music videos I think (providing my computer is cooperative.)

Last week, I was eating a very ripe nectarine while Little Elvis played. He had already eaten his snack. But when he saw Mommy doing something fun, he just had to do it, too.

I held it out for him, and he took a tentative nibble. Then, he wanted more. So I grabbed the camera and tried to catch this cuteness, while holding the nectarine for him.



I know there are some new readers who might not be familiar with our penchant for Little Elvis music videos. There are links to the others on the right hand side of the page, under the ads. "Rice, rice baby" was our first foray into music videos, and it is definitely our best so far.

Walking to his own beat

I know we posted video of Little Elvis' first few steps, but an accomplishment like this obviously deserves a music video.

He's definitely getting a lot more sure of himself. And because of that, he's falling and getting dinged more. But after getting a quick kiss on his boo-boo, he's ready to try again.

I think our song choice is very appropriate.

The tooth, and nothing but the tooth?

We think we have found the reason for Little Elvis' fussy nights, maybe.

On Friday, we were going through our typical two-hour, late-evening fussfest. Bob was talking to his dad, who suggested that Little Elvis might be cutting a tooth. I felt around on his gums, and it does feel like tooth number 7 is about to rear it's little head.

I'm really hoping that we can lay all the blame for these frustrating nights on that tooth, but I'm just not sure.

Little Elvis is so great during the day. He pretty much only cries at naptime. Wouldn't his tooth hurt during the day as well?

And our bedtime routine is so established, that he almost always goes down without a fight at night. If his tooth hurt, wouldn't he fuss then as well?

All of that said, last night, he did a wonderful job! I don't want to write anymore, just in case I jinx us.

You can take the girl out of Mississippi...

But you can't make her put shoes on her baby! My mom and I have been "discussing" Little Elvis' shoe situation. She thinks he should wear them all the time, I don't.

When I was pregnant, I fell in love with baby shoes and bought him several super cute little pairs. He wore none of them. It's a pain to put shoes on a baby, and our little kicker always quickly got them off.

So, it's January and my baby pretty much just wears socks, much to my mom's dismay.

Yesterday, I dressed Little Elvis in some cute overalls and a little shirt. We then gave him some couscous for dinner. He didn't seem to think the couscous was too tasty, but he did think it would look great all over his little shirt sleeves.

Bob stripped off the shirt, but left the overalls on him. We then took off his socks and got some true "Mississippi boy" pictures!

I know, you can't see the feet. It's hard to take pictures of a moving model!

My just dezzzerts

I'm trying to be creative with my title, but I realize it will take some explaining.

Little Elvis does NOT like his naps. He fights them. It's truly a battle of wills, and on some days his will is a lot stronger than mine. (He has different stages of crying and when he brings out the blood-curdling, gut-wrenching one, well, I can't take it. I have to go hug my baby and try again at a later time.)

Not only does he fight his naps, he's been waking up in the middle of the night with an extremely wet diaper and then refusing to go back to sleep. It takes a good two hours to get him back down. I will sway with him and rock him and sing to him until he's just about asleep. Then when I start to put him back in his crib, he starts bawling. I made the mistake of looking at him while I covered him up the other night and that just gave him more incentive. I ended up rocking and swaying with him until my back hurt and then going into our room to turn off the monitor.

I was telling my mom about this yesterday and she snickered! She says she didn't, but she did. I don't think I fought sleep so much when I was Little Elvis' age, but apparently around age 3 or 4 I decided that I was a night owl. I would do whatever I could to squeeze a few extra minutes out of my parents.

I think she was also laughing because Little Elvis seems to be aware which cries will get me running to his rescue.

Either way, I guess his hatred of naps comes from me. And this current situation could possibly be payback for what I put my parents through.

Seven things about me

I have been tagged by Marla, and it seems like a fun one. I'm supposed to list seven interesting, true or weird things about myself.

1. Before I had Little Elvis, I tried to start my own little clothing line. I called the pieces I created completely from scratch MereWear, and the pieces that I embellished M-bellishments. I made a few hundred dollars from my pieces, which included purses, dresses, skirts, shirts, etc. I tried to sell my stuff at craft fairs, but they weren't a good fit. We tried to design a website, but website design and sales are definitely NOT my strong suit. And the fact that all of my pieces were one-of-a-kind made putting stuff up on the site or taking stuff to sales very tedious. I'm trying to empty out what's left of my stuff through craigslist now, (and since my salesmanship is not good, not having too much luck at it) and then I want to start fresh. I'm thinking severely edited, but several different colors and styles. We still have the website, so I just need to sell everything in our garage and then get Little Elvis to nap in increments of longer than 30 minutes.

2. I am allergic to most fruits and vegetables. We didn't find out until I was 24. It's typically easier for me to list what I can eat than what I can't. Crazy, huh? Some of the crazier ones include lettuce, corn (I really miss corn) and celery. We were worried about Little Elvis having food allergies, and I really debated starting him on rice, (yep, another allergy) but he's done well with everything we've given him. None of my allergies are life-threatening, they are just frustrating.

3. I LOVE football. As I type this, I'm wearing my new Peyton Manning jersey that my Dad made me for Christmas. I was incredibly frustrated with my beloved Colts last week, but am so thrilled about the Giants! I seriously thought I might have Little Elvis on Super Bowl Sunday last year, because I was so excited about the Colts going to the Super Bowl and winning. Thankfully, Little Elvis decided to wait a week.

4. I am a terrible friend. At least I think I am. My mom still does yearly trips with her three best friends from high school. Bob is still close with two of his friends from college. I occasionally email one friend from high school, and don't really talk to any of my friends from college. We've moved several times since we've been married and I manage to lose touch with my friends with each move. And although I was fairly close to a couple of my co-workers at my last job, now I only email with them sporadically. This frustrates me, and as a stay-at-home mom, I get lonely. It's one thing I worry about pretty much daily. I really hope Little Elvis doesn't inherit my issues with keeping friends. I know they are important. One caveat here -- I did intentionally drop some of my friends, because they weren't good friends to begin with. And even though those relationships were toxic, I miss the comraderie sometimes.

5. I always thought I would love being a mom, but I didn't think it would be as enjoyable as it has been. There are times when I'm so exhausted and drained, but when I look into those sweet, beautiful brown eyes, I get enough energy to keep on rocking or singing or breastfeeding.

6. We had to have an emergency C-section with Little Elvis. I have never been so scared in my entire life. For the first two weeks after we got home, I was convinced that it was my fault because I got an epidural. And I still feel like less of a woman because I didn't have my baby naturally. I joke that the doctor saw my reaction to the catheter and knew I wouldn't be able to handle it.

7. For something much, much lighter, Bob proposed to me while performing with some friends at a party. He and two of his co-workers had a band they called Uncle Jesse's Still. He was moving to Tennessee, so this was his going-away party. For the last song, the girl in the band came and got me and then Bob played "Question" by Old 97s and got down on one knee. This song is really beautiful. They played it on Scrubs when Turk proposed to Carla (you can actually hear part of the song on this clip) and it was played on some other sitcom as well. Bob performed it at our wedding. He's such a romantic! I am so, so lucky.

If anyone who reads this wants to participate, please do and let me know so I can go read your list of seven!

Thanks Marla!

Snowbaby

We got about three inches of snow on Thursday, so we decided to take Little Elvis sledding for the first time.

I think he enjoyed himself.



Don't you just love his little sled? We got it for $5 somewhere this summer. Always good to get those off-season bargains. Most of his outfit is an off-season bargain, actually. I guess he's our little bargain snowbaby.

One small step for Little Elvis

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a walker!

Miss Pissypants

I am in a mood, a foul mood. I know why I'm in a mood, and I also know that I should not punish others for my mood. But sometimes it's hard not to be pissy.

Lucky for both of us, Little Elvis rarely puts me in a mood. Usually he can reverse my moods.

Today, I got pissy with a certain someone (For no reason? Maybe.) and I was walking around the house fussing. This upset Little Elvis. He can sense my moods, (like he needed to sense it, I was, um, talking loudly to a camcorder) but he didn't realize that my mood was directed at someone else.

So, he cried. And I felt guilty.

May the fours be with you

I am probably jinxing us, but we think we have solved Little Elvis' pee-out problem. He usually wakes up between 1 and 3 every morning wet, cold and very upset. He has to endure not only a diaper change, but a sleeper and sheet change as well. It's not easy getting him back down after all that.

We had a little luck with Huggies and with Diaper Doublers earlier, but as soon as I wrote about them being a godsend, they stopped working. I, personally, didn't want to write about our latest discovery, but Bob was proud of his title...

This weekend, we decided to use a size 4 diaper overnight. Little Elvis didn't wake up until 5!! And he wasn't wet when we went into get him!

I know size 4's start at 22 pounds, but as big cheapies, we decided to wait until he was 28 pounds (the cutoff for size 3s) to upgrade. He's about 24 and a half pounds, and with the addition of the Diaper Doubler, his size 3s were pretty tight.

So now he wears size 3s during the day and size 4s at night, with the reinforcement of Diaper Doublers. And he's slept until 6 for the past two mornings!

And now I am fully expecting to wake up to a wet and unhappy baby early this morning.

Mommy's secret, exciting life

Little Elvis here. Mommy shares her thoughts on me, so why can't I do the same?

My mommy has a secret, exciting life. I just know that she does. Sure, she plays with me, changes my diapers, feeds me, you know, all the normal stuff. But once she puts me in my crib (ahem, jail) for my nap (torture time), I know that all the mommy-stuff changes.

I bet she takes down all the baby gates and chases the cats all over the house. She probably even goes back to her bedroom and pulls out all her necklaces and puts them on. Then I bet she jumps on the bed. When she's tired of that, she probably goes to the bathroom and flushes the toilet a few times (oh, how I love to flush the toilet!) and pulls out the drawer full of fun stuff that I'm not supposed to open.

I know she pulls out the computer and taps all the keys. She knows how much I like to do that!

How can I sleep when I know she is out here having so much fun without me? Do you blame me for crying and crying and crying and crying until I either pass out in exhaustion or she finally feels sorry for me? Of course not.

The weird thing is, when she comes to rescue me from my prison, the house looks the same. Most of my toys have been put up, but that's the only difference I can find. That just means she's good at hiding her secret, exciting life.

Don't worry. I will catch her being fun and super-exciting. And when I do, I will report all of the fun, amazing stuff she's doing.

--Little Elvis (sleepy, sleepy baby)

Look Mom, no hands!

We've been doing lots of videos lately. I guess because Little Elvis is giving us so much more to work with, and he truly LOVES the camera. No, really, he thinks it looks tasty.

That's a digression. Little Elvis has been standing on his own since before Christmas. It's taken us this long to actually catch some of it on camera, because of the aforementioned love of the camera.

In honor of such an outstanding event, this music video is special. Remember my friend Shameika, who was on the reality show "I want to look like a high school cheerleader again"? Well, she did a special stand up cheer for Little Elvis. And since we had stockpiled some extra footage, we added a little Elton John in there for good measure.

Whatever baby gets, Mommy gets too

I thought it was weird when some of the comments in the last post told me to take care of myself. At least I did until Tuesday night. Then I realized why. I caught the stomach bug as well.

The good news is, Little Elvis is much, much better. Actually, he was feeling a lot better on Tuesday. By Wednesday, he was raring to go. Unfortunately I couldn't keep up with him.

I'm one of those people who can count on one hand the times I've had a stomach bug. That's going to change, though. Isn't it? I remember that one time, when I was in the 5th grade, I got a stomach bug. I felt better after a day. My mom caught it from me, and was sick for a week.

I don't remember my stomach bugs ever being this bad. I wasn't able to sleep on Tuesday night, although I finally did attempt to sleep in the bathroom, intermittently covering and uncovering myself with my bathrobe.

On another plus side, I cleaned the toilet. I bought some fancy toilet cleaner a few weeks ago, but hadn't managed to use it. It worked very well.

Bob seems to be doing fine, which is good. (I promise, no ill-will. I just realized how mean that looks. I truly am happy that he is doing well.)

I miss my healthy boy

Little Elvis isn't feeling well. He has a stomach bug, and this is a new experience for all of us. He's never been sick before.

Last night I went into his room to check on him, and it smelled really sour. I rushed back to our room and got Bob to come verify my sniffer. He confirmed that it did really stink in Little Elvis' room. And after further sniffing we realized that Little Elvis' crib was blanketed in vomit.

Our sweet baby was so quiet and passive while we changed his sleeper, sheet, mattress protector and undid his bumper. He patiently waited while his mommy and daddy tried to get all of the stinkiness out of his room.

Then he rested his head on my shoulder while I rocked him.

This morning, everything started out as usual, except that Little Elvis did not pee out of his diaper -- he pretty much always pees out of his diaper. In fact, the diaper and diaper doubler weren't even full.

Bob fed Little Elvis breakfast, we played. Then, around 10 a.m., Little Elvis decided to put himself down for a nap. I was organizing his bookcase and looked up to find my sweet baby lying down on the floor sleepily staring at me.

As soon as he woke up, I started feeding him lunch, and he started spewing out lots and lots of food, it even came out of his little nose. After three big heaves, he seemed finished and quietly watched while I called the doctor and tried to mop up some of the mess.

I bathed him, tried to get him drink water or Pedialyte, put him down for another nap and fretted.

He woke up from his nap hot and fussy. He refused his drinks and just wanted to be held. I placed him on the floor to get something for myself to drink and when I came back he was lying on the floor. He didn't even have the energy to sit up.

We ended up going to the doctor and by the time we got there, his temperature was 101.9.

But he wasn't one to let a temperature and upset tummy to keep him down. While we were at the doctor's office, Little Elvis flirted with a teenage girl in the waiting room and clapped and grinned for the nurse.

I attempted nursing when we got home, and he threw up again, but we were able to get some Tylenol down him and his temperature wasn't nearly as high by the time we put him to bed.

It was nice holding my sweet boy all day, but I miss his busyness. I miss his chatter. I miss chasing him around the house. I miss his cute giggle. I miss my healthy boy.

Don't fence me in

Little Elvis has it pretty sweet. He has total run of the living room, and sometimes even the hallway. But that's not enough. He is always looking to broaden his horizons.

Yesterday, he discovered that our doorway gates are malleable. And this discovery merits a music video -- with music from The Doors no less.

We're moving!

We're moving! Actually, we're just shortening the website address.

Some people might be visiting Pregnantly Plump through the website http://www.pregnantlyplump.com/blog/pregnantlyplump.html. That's a mouthful and it doesn't exactly roll off your fingers.

So, we're shortening the address to http://www.pregnantlyplump.com.

If you are subscribed to the blog, or have bookmarked it, please change the address to pregnantlyplump.com.

Pretty baby

Little Elvis is a beautiful little boy, and apparently he agrees!

Starting the New Year off on the right foot, literally

How did I ring in the New Year? By dropping a jar of 3rd foods on my left foot, specifically my pointer toe. (That is, if you consider your big toe to be the thumb of your foot.)

I jumped around the kitchen yelling, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" and blinking back tears. One of my resolutions this year is to stop cussing, and I think refraining from yelling out all sorts of colorful combinations is a really good start.

Little Elvis stood on the other side of the gate and laughed as his mommy hopped around and yelled "Ow!"

Please pity me. Bob clucked a little on the phone for me, but my mom didn't seem to think possibly breaking my toe was a big deal. And my baby thinks the situation is laughable. I need sympathy.