Trips, Ike and Laryngitis

Before I get any further, I want to first thank all of you who remembered my birthday! Second, I want to apologize for the thank-you notes you have not received...I promise I will get them out before Thanksgiving!

As I post this it's after midnight and therefore officially October. I can't believe it! Where did September go?!?!

For those of you keeping track, we were out of town the last two weekends in August, and we were only supposed to be out of town the first and last weekend of September. No such luck thanks to Ike.

Considering the hour, I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version of our Ike encounter:
We were very fortunate - minimal damage is an overstatement. In the short 10 days we were put out, our friends and family did so much for us, we were reminded again and again how blessed we are, and we really got to know our neighbors. All-in-all our Ike experience was filled with a lot more positives than negatives.

So Carter's first weekend out-of-town segued into 6 weekends in a row plus several weekdays in between. And considering he's only 4 and a half months old, 6 weeks on the road was a decent chunk of his life. Needless to say he didn't take any time off from growing and dare I even say thriving given all the extra time with grandparents and aunts and cousins! He even did his first ever back to front flip! (a skill he now does with the greatest of ease as you can see from this video :).

Drum roll please.....


Unfortunately as soon as we got home Carter developed a case of hoarseness that worsened over the last week...doctor thinks he probably picked up a little virus somewhere along the way that caused him to lose his voice, but it's hard to say. We'll just have to wait - if it's a virus it will run its coarse in a few days and go away. If it doesn't, it could be a side effect of his prolonged reflux and require a trip to an ear nose and throat specialist so let's hope it's just a little laryngitis! :)

Smiley Magoo

It seems somewhere along the way Carter picked up the nickname "Smiley Magoo" - I'm not positive where the name originated, but I'm sure the fact that Carter's adorable friend Reese is called "Squeaks Magee" had something to do with it. Not to mention that with his bald head, round nose and toothless grin, Carter really does bear a striking resemblance to the lovable Mr. Magoo. All that aside, I think the main reason the nickname stuck is, when our little guy isn't dealing with digestion issues, he's really a VERY happy baby. He smiles ALL the time at just about anyone and everyone - it's ridiculous. If not for his reflux, I think we'd truly have the happiest baby on the block. And even when he's not the happiest, he's always the cutest :)

Anyway, enough gushing, here are some great pictures of our little Smiley Magoo!

Excuse me, I'm talking.

Ladies and gentleman, we have a talker on our hands! Yes, that's right, Carter has found his voice, and I'm afraid he's going to take after his momma in how liberally he uses it.

Coos and goo-goos don't even begin to cover all the noises he's making. Play-time on his mat no longer consists of swatting at things punctuated by the occasional shriek of delight. No sir, now he holds all-out filibusters with his captive audience of the giraffe, elephant, parrot and monkey. It's hilarious - he changes the pitch of his voice and has very thoughtful hand gestures to boot.

Much to the dismay of his future teachers, he often interprets other people talking as a cue for him to start talking. He'll babble away stopping only when you stop to stare inquisitively like "why did we end this fun and noisy game??".

No use trying to talk over him either because if you get louder, he gets louder! The other day I was having so much trouble talking on the phone, I caught myself telling him "excuse me, I'm talking. It's my turn, and you can talk in a minute."

Carter's response? He laughed.

Here's a short video I took last week - it really doesn't do his jabbering justice, as I was scrambling around trying to find the camera for five minutes before he stopped talking, but it's pretty cute. Something tells me we'll have ample opportunity to catch him in action again, though!

I seem to have lost something....

Carter did something cute today. I would have taken a picture of it, but I couldn't find the camera.

This shouldn't come as a surprise considering I can't find my husband. I mean, if I can't find a person why should I be able to find the camera (which is considerably smaller)?

I did eventually find it tucked safely in the diaper bag (the camera, not my husband) where I specifically put it so I wouldn't miss anything cute Carter did.

As for my husband, I'm pretty sure work stole him - if you should see him, please return him to the Childress household lost-and-found.