Where to go from here

Well, Dan and I did it. We've played the perfect game of Contra. That means no deaths, no mistakes, straight to "Alien's Lair" to take on the Vile Red Falcon. It's been a long time coming. We've been so close so many times, and now we've reached the pinnacle of everything we've worked for. It's almost a let down. What now? Does society have room for us? We've proven ourselves to be masters, and I'm not sure what to do now. Go ahead, be awestruck.

What we've been doing

Hey, no one can accuse Dan and Jen Gilbert of not keeping busy. Or at least not keeping Harrison busy. Sometimes I let a ton of stuff fall through the cracks without mentioning it, so I thought I'd treat you to a slide show of some of the stuff. I also stole a couple cute pictures of Walker and Harrison from Jamie's blog. Holla, girl! They are from last weekend when we went up for Walker's birthday. He's one! The bathtub shot is from one of two baths they took together in the course of like five hours. They sure know how to get dirty!

Too big for our britches...err...crib

When this little saga started about a week ago, I found it amusing and was turning over in my head how to most wittily blog it. Then things got not so funny....

One morning last week I went in to get Harrison out of bed. I'd heard him playing for a while in there. When I went in, the lamp on the other side of the changing table had been turned on. To appreciate what I'm talking about, you need to know how Harrison's room is set up. He has a crib with an attached changing table. Then there is a bed set up in the other corner, and there is a floor lamp next to the bed and fairly close to the changing table.

Anyway, when I came in first thing in the morning that lamp was on. Weird. You have to turn it on by hand and I couldn't understand why Dan would have turned it on when he put Harrison to bed the night before. Needless to say, I turned it off and Harrison and I started our day. Morning naptime rolled around and we were right on schedule. H-man took a great morning nap and I went in to get him after hearing him play in his crib for a while. The light was on again. Now I was stumped. I KNEW I had turned it off. After pondering for a while, I came to a conclusion that made me laugh: Harrison had to have climbed from his crib up onto the changing table, and then leaned over and turned the light on, and then climbed back down into his crib. It was the only possible solution and it seemed comically surreal to picture it happening.

That evening Dan was gone and I put Harrison to bed myself. When I walked out of the room, I felt a little uneasy, wondering if it was really possible that H-man had done the acrobatics I imagined him to have done. It's one thing to do that in the light of day, but what if he tried in the dark? I stood by the door for about a minute listening to him cry and then opened the door to peak in. There he was in a pitch dark room standing on top of that table! I was scared out of my wits.


Anyway, I'm making this longer then it needs to be. Here's what ended up happening:

• I didn't put Harrison back in his crib, but kept him up horribly late until he fell asleep in my bed.
• I made Dan lower the mattress about 3 inches to the lowest notch.
• We thought our problem was solved and went a day or two with no further incident.
• Then I walked in on Harrison playing on top of the table.
• We were in a quandry.
• Harrison fell off of the table onto his head and got rug burn on his face.
• Jamie gave me the idea of putting something big and heavy on the table so that there is no room for him to get onto the table in the first place.
• We put a big rubbermaid container of books there.
• There have been no further incidents.

And that's that.

Below I've recreated what I saw upon entering H-man's room the other day--

All crib items dumped on the floor (this is customary)

An empty crib

A busy boy

Our little one

Well, we had the big doctor's appointment on Tuesday and now know a little more about the person making a home inside of me. Harrison is pleased to announce that he is preparing to train up his little brother with all the good things he needs to know. Like how to get so much nasty sand up your diaper that Daddy finally yells out for Mom in frustration in the middle of a diaper change. So, yes, it's a BOY!

We're so excited! It makes things seem a little more real now that we have an idea of who is in there. We're still not sure at all about names, so if anyone has any suggestions, we'd love to hear'em. I'm the kind of person who likes to figure the name out soon, because I like to talk to him and call him by his name.

If you're doubting whether we're 100% sure about the sex, I've included a pretty incriminating shot of our little man. The ultrasound tech was so excited; she said she hadn't seen such a good shot of "the little turtle" in a long time. Dan is proud.

How I found the binkies

People are inspired in strange ways. I'm not talking about spiritual inspiration, but more like the way you feel after watching Rocky or The Biggest Loser. I get that kind of inspiration when I read any of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. I know, it's weird. I also know that they're for children. I can't even lump them into the Adolescent Lit genre that I still justify reading "in case I go back to teaching, I'll know what's out there." Right. Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, and Lemony Snickett just rock. That's why I read them.


So anyway, in the last week/week and a half, I've read: Little House in the Big Woods, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and then this morning I read These Happy Golden Years. Laugh if you must, but I can't hide how much I like these books. As a result of reading so much in such a short time, I keep finding myself thinking about how Ma and Pa and Laura would respond in my situation and what they would say about my work ethic and house cleaning habits.


And that brings us to how I have found two lost binkies in the last week. One came when I was doing an extra thorough sweeping (with a store-bought broom, nonetheless--no homemade hickory one for me) and found Harrison had hid one in a never-used trashcan that slides under his little table. My really exciting find came when I was doing a random vacuuming and organizing of my utility closet and found one amongst extra vacuum attachments. If I hadn't been reading Laura Ingalls, I don't think I would have found that till Harrison was well done with the bink.


So thank you, Laura. You are an amazing woman that led an amazing life. I got butterflies when I read about Almonzo proposing to you this morning. You deserve such a man.


Here's a pic of Harrison enjoying the newly-reacquired binkies (note the smokin' hot haircut):

Downtown

Super quick, I just wanted to get this down so I can come back and remember this morning. Harrison and I were playing and wrestling on my bed, and I had the oldies radio station turned on fairly loud. We were hiding in the blankets and sheets and laughing pretty hard. The song "Downtown" was on and whenever the lady would sing it (she sings it a lot in the song) Harrison would yell after her, "Down-Down!" He had this little staccato pause between the syllables. It made me laugh and him too. Afterward, when we were both lying there catching our breath, Harrison would every once in a while giggle and softly say, "Down-Down." I love being a mom.

Dan's shoutout!

This is a great video that reminded me of my youth. Also, this is my first blog update ever. Notice it has nothing to do with my family and Harrison still likes me more than he likes his mom!!!! Just kidding. But seriously, he is a daddy's boy and likes me the most. Just kidding. But seriously......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMR7veI78f8

Does it get any better than this?

I've been feeling more blessed than ever lately with the weather getting so nice. It makes parenting a lot easier somehow; Harrison loves exploring outside and I just look on to make sure he doesn't fall in a ditch or anything. That's right--you can call me SuperMom. (Note that I didn't say a word about making sure he didn't swallow any big rocks...I like to pick my battles.)

So twice last week we went on morning walks with Britt and Hunter down to see the horses. We even brought carrots with us the second time. They were the kind of postcard-perfect kind of walks where you wouldn't change an element of the weather or your surroundings. It was really fun.

I keep getting surprised by how big H-man is. He insisted on standing on the fence on his own and he did a pretty good job. He even managed to give the mule and horse some baby carrots without losing any fingers.

Fortunately, Britt is a much better documenter than me, so I have video and some sweet pics to always remember those mornings.

Kind of like our first Easter

Though Harrison was around 7 months last Easter, he wasn't super AWARE of things yet, if you know what I mean. For that reason, this time around kind of felt like a first for him. As soon as he realized there were yummies in the eggs, we didn't have a problem getting him to walk around the yard looking for eggs. A difficulty did arise once he had one in each hand. He was reluctant to put any in his basket; I guess he didn't trust that he'd get them back. So we didn't end up with too big of a hoard. Which was fine with Momma.

There were too many cute pics to put them in one-by-one, so I'm including a slideshow of our favorites. I'm also throwing in one from last year (also celebrated in Birmingham) so that you can see how much our chunky monkey has slimmed down and grown up. Enjoy!

DEEE-troit BASKET-ball

I can't even begin to tell you about our fantastic Easter until I say a little something about our trip to Detroit. Harrison proved that he can handle flying no problem and we met Mom Gilbert at the airport. How lucky were we to have a grandma willing to give up her spring break to hang out in a hotel with Harrison? (Pretty lucky is right.)

Dan and I got to see the Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons play. We loved every second of it...except for the humiliating Piston loss. But even that was fun, just to be in the same arena with these guys that I've come to love.

We also did a day trip with Dan's Uncle Fred to the Henry Ford Museum. It was such a fascinating collection of innovation from the beginning of America to the present. Also, it's a Gilbert family rule to go to any IKEA that is within 50 miles of where we are, so you know where we spent several hours. Dan tries to be supportive, but I've never seen him leave an IKEA without being a complete grouch. It is a tad overwhelming, I know, but four hours just doesn't seem like enough.

Harrison had a ball with Grandma. He quickly became a master of pillow-fights and tickle wrestling. He's go looking for with a wicked little grin on his face, looking for trouble. Below you can see him with a treat she indulged him with. That's what grandmas are for, right?

Those east coast girls are hip...

Harrison got to learn firsthand just how cool Boston girls can be when we went and visited Brenda and Robin over the weekend. We had so much fun and my only regret is that I somehow walked away without getting a picture of Robin and Harrison together. Sad. Things started out well with H-man proving himself to be an enjoyable travel companion. He was especially willing to get the feel of New York during our short layover by laying down in the grime of JFK airport.

As Brenda pointed out, I really am more of a laid-back mom than I realize. The picture does not do the filth of that floor justice.

Once we got there, we headed out to Boston's North End, where we stopped at Mike's Pastry Shop to load up on cannoli. (I'm really glad I checked that on dictionary.com--can you believe that's the plural form--singular is cannolo. Oh, and if you haven't had one, here's the definition [which doesn't taste nearly as good]: tubular pastry shells stuffed with a sweetened filling of whipped ricotta and often containing nuts, citron, or bits of chocolate. )

Mmmm. Bren Bren knows how to treat weary travelers. To make a long, sad story a little shorter, this is the point in the trip that Harrison started experiencing (I'm guessing here) some emotional trauma from all the unusual-ness of the trip. We had a long string of melt-downs for the next couple of days. Luckily, he's an excellent sleeper and I had brought along a few Baby Einsteins, so he was able to achieve a little stability.

Plus, our hostesses were fantastic at distracting him and helping him calm down. Having piles of dirty old snow to offer him worked in their favor.

Overall, it was really relaxing and a good catch-up for me. It'd been way too long since I'd stayed up way too late talking about way too lot of nothing while eating way too much junk food. (Your homemade carrot cake counts as a vegetable though, right Rob?)

Obviously, Harrison got in on the girly stuff too.

Anyway, after a couple of days at Bren and Robin's, we got to hang out at Aunt Trish and Uncle Scott's house. H-man immediately felt at ease there. They had pulled out all kinds of fantastic toys that he couldn't get enough of. He also seemed to automatically bond with cousin Nick. He just kept pointing at him and smiling.

As always, I was completely impressed by my little cousins. Sometimes I forget how young they are when I'm talking to them because they are so on-the-ball. We played a rousing game of "Park-N-Shop" that Michaela handily won while Anna had one of the worst strings of luck I've ever seen in a board game. I wish we could have had more time together; it was such a treat.

Harrison also took to the Morrow's cat, Princess. I'm not sure which he liked more, Princess or her chair.

Everything ended well, and even though we had several hours' worth of delays, Harrison stayed happy the whole way home. That's more than I could have hoped for. Check him out watching the planes. He loved it.

Surgery update

I know I need to be posting pictures of the cutest little boy I know, but I'll try to get some good ones up this weekend. For now, I just wanted to publicly thank all our family and friends who were so sweet and supportive with Harrison's little surgery. Everything went very well and he seems much improved. I was just feeling so blessed because we had SO MANY friends and loved ones call to check on him. That's what makes life sweet, isn't it? Having people you care about care about you and what's going on in your life. So thank you. Harrison is blowing you all kisses RIGHT NOW (watch out, they're kind of snotty).

The random and the happy.

I've been tagged by a fellow blogger and now I'm supposed to tell five random things about me and six things that make me happy. Here goes:

The Random

1. I just tried to work on weeding my flower bed, but it was chillier than I thought and windy as heck. I felt like some crazy pioneer lady until I realized that no one was making me stay out there in misery. I flung off my gloves and came in. I love being the boss-lady.
2. I am pondering a significant change in my hair style.
3. I have a strange interest in shopping via your television. I have never exercised the option to buy, but I like to watch fairly regularly. My favorite things to tune in for are home storage/organizational stuff (I like to think about getting organized) and women's clothing (I am fascinated by their selling techniques and the obvious following that have of people who seem to buy all their clothes this way.)
4. I have a trashy side to me that honestly prefers cheaper, more juvenile versions of things than nice stuff. Case in point, McDonald's honestly is about my favorite restaurant. You could never take me there and have me be disappointed or tired of it. I'm not exaggerating. I think that this part of me is generally contained within the food category, but it sometimes rears is bizarre head in other areas of my life as well. Sometimes I have to hide this trait in front of people I'm afraid will think I'm gross. Only Dan has seen it all. I've even been known to bring my own artificial syrup to Cracker Barrel cause their real stuff doesn't do it for me.
5. We went to our first dog show yesterday. It was so interesting. There are some wild and crazy looking dogs out there. We went in support of our neighbor who is a Rottweiler, Nashville. He's a gorgeous dog and we cheered wildly for him. He didn't take best-in-show, for which we felt righteous indignation. He was by far the superior dog.

The Happy

1. Harrison is getting surgery in less than 48 hours! To some, this may sound alarming or at least not happy, but at this point I CAN'T WAIT. His ear infection is out of control, not responding to the strongest injections of antibiotics. It breaks my heart to see him dealing with this on a daily basis, and I just want it fixed. As nervous as I am about my baby having surgery, I don't see any other options at this point.
2. I am married to the sweetest, most thoughtful man in the world. Words don't do him or his smokin' hot good looks justice.
3. H-man has this special "na-naah" sound that he makes whenever he's holding two of something. It must have started when he would find two binkies and celebrate, but it's moved on to anything he can find a pair of. I can be in another room or upstairs, and if I hear his specially intoned "na-naah," then I know if I go find him he will be victoriously holding a pair of something above his head. I don't know why this makes me so happy, but I grin from ear to ear every time I hear it.
4. I get to go to Boston and see my favorit-o girls Bren-Bren and Robin in a couple of weeks. Harrison is coming too. We're also going to get to see Aunt Trish and Uncle Scott and my sweet nieces and nephew while we're there. I can't wait. And almost as soon as we get back, the whole family is headed to Detroit to see the Tigers, Pistons, and Red Wings.
5. I mowed the yard for the first time this season a couple days ago. We have so many wild onions growing that it really smelled like I was mowing down an onion patch. The weather is beautiful and we love being outside. (If you're wondering, I wrote #1 of the randoms over a week ago and left it as a draft unfinished till now. Hence the change in my feelings about the weather.)
6. Dan and I are feeling so blessed to be welcoming the newest member of our family this September. This is obviously a very happy thing, but it belongs here doubly because I'm now 13 weeks and should be out of the pukey stage soon. Yeah!

I now tag: Jamie, Becca, Flee, Cora, Shell, and Ender

And there goes February....

Where the heck did the month go? If I had a nickel for every time this month I've had a magical little moment with Harrison and I made up my mind to blog about it and then DIDN'T, well, let's just say I'd be able to take you out for dinner...to McDonalds...dollar menu only, please. But that's still impressive if you figure I'm getting paid in nickels. Anyway, H-man melts my heart on a daily basis. I don't want to get used to it and I don't want it to stop being a big deal, so I better brag him up a little bit.

Harrison's "personality" seems to really be coming through, which is fun...most of the time. The kid knows what he wants. The good thing is, he is naturally such a loving, sensitive boy that showers affection on us. I've never met a better kisser, and believe me, I've been around the block. I can gauge how much he's enjoying his dinner by how many times he stops what he's doing, closes his eyes, smiles, and puckers, just waiting until I swoop in with a kiss. He LOVES cuddling with blankets and stuffed animals. Just today he found his stuffed monkey in the diaper bag at the doctor's office. He felt the need to immediately lay down on the cold tile floor and cuddle with monkey. I didn't know whether to take a picture or freak out from him wallowing on the germy floor.

Okay, so if that put a smile on your face and you won't actually be encountering Harrison in person anytime soon, then I encourage you to walk away right now. Everything I said was completely true....

It's just I feel I should warn you in case you will be spending any time with my monster soon. He has mastered the fit along with the kiss. The fit can be seen when you try to make him do something he doesn't deem as cool. This could be guiding him away from the street, suggesting he take a drink when he doesn't feel like it, or having the audacity to make eye contact with him if you're a stranger. Okay, the last one doesn't result in a fit, but it does produce this aggressive stance accompanied with a forceful throw of the binkie onto the ground.

I'm experimenting with how to handle this. Basically I've been trying to walk away or at least completely ignore the crying. I haven't tried timeouts yet, but I can see them on the horizon. The worst is that he tries to scratch and hit some too.

In his defense, he's had an ear infection for over a month at this point. He's frustrated and so am I. We're working on it.

Oh, and PS--has everyone been watching American Idol? I've seen quite a bit of it so far and am digging Blake. He'll be the next Justin Timberlake. Shell and I decided we're leaving the kids to become BLaker Girls.

We're still here

We don't have time for stinking blog updates, people. We're dealing with EAR INFECTIONS here. Our sixth one in ten months, to be exact. Unless you consider that the fifth one from two weeks ago never cleared up, but my logic is placing me at six. Adding to the excitement was when we quickly discovered Harrison's penicillin allergy during the treatment of #5. H-man wanted me to thank you for the weak genes, Dad.

We also accompanied Dan on his little work-related trip to Orlando for the National Home Builder's Convention. Despite an infection and hives, Harrison seemed to have a blast. He met Shamu at SeaWorld and was riveted by all the shows we saw. It was a first for all of us at SeaWorld and we had a really great time. We went with our friends Michael and Jessica and their too, too cute little Clayton. Clayton told me he's going to be a marine biologist when he grows up; Harrison wants to be a dolphin trainer.

Anyway, like any successful vacation, we were just too absorbed in having a good time to actually document any of the fun-having. I swear we did. I've got a couple random shots, but I know all will be disappointed to find not-a-one pic of Harrison sporting his camo swim shorts.

You write the songs, Barry.

My mom was talking to me about a book she's reading involving the "five languages of love." I don't know much about it, but it got me to pondering how I express love to Dan. He seems to be so much better than me at showing me his feelings, but I did hit on something. The more I've grown to love Dan, the more I have taken to loving things that he loves. Case in point:

Early in our relationship, (I don't remember if we were dating, engaged, or just married) we took a road trip and had the rule that whoever was driving got to pick the music. This led to one of our first real fights because I found myself trying to actually assign meaning to Lionel Richie lyrics, which can only lead one to feeling irritable and grouchy. I simply could not fathom why someone would choose to listen to intellectually insulting lines like, "Say you...say me...say it together...naturally.... Hello? Is it me you're looking for?"

Anyway, I've evolved. Not that Lionel is at the total top of my list now, but Dan and I do have a song on one of his cd's where we've assigned parts and do a pretty sweet duet together. Everybody does that, right? Where I really see the change is in my appreciation for Barry Manilow. I was never a Barry Hater. I simply only saw the genius in two of his songs, "Mandy" and "Copa Cabana." But after Dan told me how much he loved another of the ballads, (and hearing it about 30 times) I realized last night that I actually LOVED that song. Weird, huh? Same phenomenon with the Pistons and Dan's guilty pleasure Boston Legal.

Here's the funny part. This love of Delilah-esque music seems to be genetic. Harrison absolutely loves "Copa Cabana." Truly. Today he was throwing a fit because I had him out too far past his nap time. I threw him in the car and cranked it up and he got his groove on immediately. Luckily for me, it's a super long song. It got us most of the way home.

Go ahead, make my day.

Okay, so it's been a little while since I posted. But the most amazing thing happened to me yesterday and I have to share. I haven't been feeling great lately and have been doing a lot of lying around (Harrison is starting to expect a daily Baby Einstein). My sweet sister knew I've been having it a little rough and she drove up from Birmingham and surprised me yesterday. It was so sweet of you, Shell. She brought Leah and Jake with her and Harrison had a ball. Not only did she just hang out with me, but she made dinner before she left. It was no ordinary dinner. It was only the most delicious chicken and dumplings EVER. To top it all off, she cleaned up Harrison's play room when I wasn't paying attention, so when I went in there after she'd left it was just one more fabulous thing.

I just wanted to say thanks publicly, because I'm not usually the recipient of such flagrant service and I didn't know how else to show my gratitude. You made my day. If you want to make it again today, then email me your dumplings recipe.

No Haircut

I've got to say, I was surprised by the passionate views held on Harrison's hair. Obviously there are those out there who are a lot more sentimental than me. Even though I technically won the agreement with Dan (I had more than 25% of the vote), I decided against cutting right now just because I didn't want to gain any enemies.

Harrison went to work with Daddy this afternoon, giving me a chance to get caught up on some things. Those two crack me up. They really like to hang out together and seem to relish their boy time. I heard talk about stopping at McDonald's for a McFlurry while they were out doing their manly-man work. I guess I'd relish boy time too if I got paid off with Oreo McFlurries.

They're also really into building together. Whenever Harrison goes down for a nap and Dan is around, Daddy makes sure to have a cool castle built from his blocks because, as Dan explains, "He really likes to wake up to a good castle." It's hard to find such paternal intuition. Harrison is getting better and better at the building thing. His lastest thing is to find other toys to stack along with the blocks. Such creativity.

A couple of firsts

Hmmmm. Yesterday started on a pretty bad note for poor Harrison. I'd had trouble sleeping the night before and had resorted to turning on the humidifier in our room in the middle of the night. Usually when I do that, Dan turns it off as he leaves for work. There is a reason for that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to hear Harrison if he yelled. And yelled. And yelled.

I'm sure you see where this is going. The humidifier didn't get turned off. Mommy slept and slept. I feel so guilty. I woke up a few minutes after eight. I'm not sure how long the little guy had been up, but he clung to his little stuffed froggy all morning after. Froggy usually just sits in Harrison's crib and doesn't really get much attention, but Harrison dragged him around for a couple hours after the incident. Weird. I took a picture of them after Harrison finished his breakfast. He usually wants down immediately after eating, but yesterday he just pointed at a book and settled down with froggy to read in the high chair. It'd be cute if it wasn't so sad.

The other (and much more positive) big first we had yesterday was Harrison's first real (meaning paid) babysitter! Dan and I had a little date night and went to the temple. Harrison stayed with his very good friend Mallory. I guess he stayed up WAY past his bedtime flirting and cuddling with her. He carried a big blanket over to the couch for them to snuggle in, and they played peekaboo and found each other's noses and eyelashes for hours. He even fell asleep on her for a little bit, which he NEVER does with Mom and Dad. I've got to say, I was a little jealous.

Get out the vote....

Okay, this is probably a product of our church meetings moving to the afternoon; we have way too much downtime on Sunday mornings. Anyway, I was trying to convince Dan that we should use his hair clippers to trim Harrison's hair. He didn't agree at all. We usually don't completely disagree like this and Dannyboy came up with a solution. He said if I put a poll on the blog and at least 25% of the readership agrees with me, then we can give him a hair cut. I'm thinking this will be a shoo in. He's got all kinds of crazy little wisps and a puffy little thing going on in the back. I think his hair might look a little thicker if we cut it.

We'll let this run for a week and reconvene next Sunday morning to take action based on the results. Happy voting!