He's growing so fast

Well we have two new cool things going on lately.

First we got that really neat Bumbo chair thing, and Nicky loves it! I put several pictures of him in the new chair under Nicky's Photos, but here's my favorite:


The other cool thing is that we've finally found the replacement toys that fit in the exersaucer that we're borrowing from Gayle (we tried replacing the batteries in the old ones but they're soldered in and can't be fixed). So we clicked in the new ones and tried it out. Nicky loves it! He can only stand it for about 10 minutes at a time right now, because it requires a lot of upper body work to hold himself upright, but his little legs and feet have a great time.

(Question for Gayle: Wasn't there something about how high you were supposed to set this? Are they supposed to be able to be flat-footed or only toe-touch?)

Here he is in his new exersaucer:


Anyway, that's the new cool stuff happening at the Mott house. Tom's been sick yesterday and today, but I stayed home with Nicky yesterday and Donna came up to stay with him today (and tomorrow at least, maybe longer). I just got word from my Dad yesterday that he's now officially retired. That feels kind of weird to say my Dad's retired. I guess I'm grown up now or something. I'm hoping he'll get bored fast and have to come visit us soon.

Let's see, on the home front Tom's dad and JM have the property we're staying on up for sale, so we've got to find a new place soon. I'm hoping Tom will feel up to doing some house hunting this weekend. Maybe Donna and/or JM can go with him during the week while I'm at work too.

Can't think of anything else really going on. Next Friday (one week and one day) we have Nicky's 4 month appointment! He gets more shots, and we'll finally find out how much this boy weighs! I'm also going to ask if we can start him on some cereal for one meal a day. He's so interested in watching us eat I think he might be ready for it. I'll give you the blow by blow after his appointment. I might not be able to post it till Monday though. I usually update here during lunch or after work because my stupid dial-up connection is just soooo slow at home! Have I mentioned that dial-up sucks?

Traveling for the weekend

We went to Tom's mom's house this weekend. It was very nice! Donna watched Nicky while we went to brunch at Oystercatchers and it was just wonderful to be so spoiled for a few hours! We spent most of Saturday at Gayle and Thad's house visiting. We hadn't seen them since Nicky was only a few weeks old. I think they like him...


Colin was facinated by Nicky and said Nicky was his "best friend," he was "so cute," and he was "precious" and "beautiful" too. I actually only got one picture of them together. Gayle snapped a few, so maybe I'll get some to put up from her. (Hint-hint!)


I did snap a few photos of Nicky in his new "Bumbo" chair. It's a great invention that allows babies to sit upright all by themselves as soon as they can support their heads. Nicky loves sitting up, so I wanted to get one for him. He loves it! I'll put up a photo as soon as we figure out how to get it off the camera card. My computer won't read RAW files, and for some reason those photos were taken in that format. So more photos coming soon! Oh, and I put up a bunch more photos on the Photobucket account. Click "Nicky's Photos" to see them!

Father's Day was fun!

First, I just have to show you how cute Nicky looked on Father's Day Eve.

How cute is my baby?

Anyway, on Sunday we had a lovely brunch over at Tom's Dad's house. JM and Donna cooked up a storm! I mostly just cuddled my little munchkin and then finished his blanket that I've been knitting since before he was born! I'll have to take a picture and show you.

Tom got 5 Father's Day cards! A card from me, one from Nicky, one from Sampson, one from Abbey and one from Benjamin. 5 cards! I finally decided on his gift too. We're going to go to Oyster Catchers next weekend. It's a restaurant in a hotel near Clearwater Beach that has a Sunday Brunch buffet that is just amazing. It's expensive though (28$ each) so I usually won't let him go, but this is a special occasion, and I knew he'd love it. (And he did! He's very excited!)

After brunch we headed home and Tom got to take a special Father's Day nap. Then we took a little walk after the rain. It was fun!


We walked down to the barn and the 'girls' came over to check out the new guy. Nicky was pretty intrigued by these ladies.


All in all a fun day.

New photos on the blog! Nicky just started watching TV this week. Donna was here visiting (and it was sooo nice to have her watching Nicky during the nights! Tom and I actually got to sleep in the SAME bed together for the first time in 3 months!) and she was watching the morning news when I noticed Nicky was WATCHING the TV! So Donna picked up a Baby Bach DVD for him and Nicky and Daddy were watching it this morning. (I took a few pics, and I think you might suspect these guys are related somehow...)

Father's Day is coming up!

Well this Sunday is Tom's first Father's Day! How the heck am I going to top what he did for my first Mother's Day?? I don't think there's any way to do that! I have a few ideas for gifts, but I don't know how much I can spend. Maybe we'll go out for brunch since he probably would rather not eat my cooking. (Heck, I would rather not eat my cooking...rubber eggs anyone?)

Here's a pic of Nicky doing his favorite game with Daddy. Stand up - Sit down. It's a blast for him!



That was taken on Wednesday (hurricane day) evening. Those are his Pooh PJs. He looks so big in them! He's already on size 2 diapers and I don't think it will be long before he's in size 3's! I've got to get a new weight on him. He must be well over 15 pounds by now. But what a sweetie he is! He's starting to vocalize a lot more now. He says "Ah-goo" to me a lot. I just love this baby!

Alberto has come and gone

And other than losing power for a few hours we did just fine. It rained really hard and the wind blew very impressively as the bands passed over us. We lost power probably around noon-ish and had it restored by 5-ish. The wind and rain helped keep it cool enough and we did get to fill up one of the bathtubs with water so that we could have used that to flush toilets and stuff if needed. We had plenty of water and formula and some non-perishable foods so we were ready for a longer outage. BUT we won't complain! I was awfully glad I had the day off since I would not have wanted to drive in that weather! That would have knocked me off the road for sure! All in all it was a relatively uneventful storm for us, thank goodness! Now let's hope they're all that mild this year!

Here's a photo from NOAA of the storm. Alberto never did make it to hurricane status thankfully!

A is for Alberto

So the first named storm of 2006 is on the way: Tropical Storm Alberto. I made Tom buy a bunch of hurricane supplies on Friday when he told me there was tropical weather in the Gulf. Now we have hurricane pudding, hurricane cookies and canned fruit and tuna fish. Yum! Of course the cookies are more than half gone at this point, but at least we've got plenty of formula stocked up! I've been clearing the shelves at Publix, CVS and Walgreens for a few weeks now. You can see some of it behind Grandmomma in this pic.



This was quite the weekend for little Nicky! His Grandmomma, Aunt Liz and Aunt Jodi came to visit on Saturday and spent the night. Then Sunday his Nana came to stay with him (and sleep in his room AND do binky duty all night- thank you Nana!!) for a week. And on Sunday we all went over to his Grandma and Grandpa's house for barbeque ribs! Lots of visiting going on!

I've put up some new pics in the online photo album. Click the link to the right that says "Nicky's photos" to see them. In the meantime though, you have to see these baby blues! Look at these eyes!



Just beautiful! Oh, and he's growing like mad! He's now wearing his 6-9 month clothes, and he just turned 3 months old on Friday! Gigantababy indeed!

How's this though, we have had rain since Sunday morning and yet we actually haven't lost power yet! WooHoo! A new trend possibly? I hope so!

This is starting to become a tradition

Ok, yesterday, Sunday, we lost power. Again. What is this? Does the entire staff of Clay Electric go to church Sunday evening and turn off the power to all the atheists who want to stay home in the a/c and play their Xbox games and surf the net? Sure seems that way.

Anyway, this time we just stuck it out at home for the 2-3 hours it took to get power. It wasn't as bad this time since it had been raining a bit and the sun wasn't coming in the windows so brightly. But Nicky was getting pretty warm. So we gave him a nice bath and he really enjoyed it!



Then the power returned and we were all able to sleep in peace. Well, except for Tom, who is on binky-duty all night on weeknights. I did it Friday and Saturday night so don't feel too bad for him now. ;) On that front, Nicky has now spent every night since last Thursday in his crib all night! He's really good about it as long as someone helps him out when his binky escapes. I can't wait for his hand/eye coordination to improve! I've read that playing video games helps improve hand/eye coordination in kids, so we've started a training program to speed things up:



I'm not sure it's helping yet. But we'll keep trying.

Nicky's Grandmommy and Granddaddy from Georgia came down to visit on Saturday. Nicky was terribly cute the whole time, which was to be expected. ;)

Here he is with Grandmother #4 (Think he has enough?)



And with Grandfather #2 (Much more manageable number I'd say.)



All in all, I think Nicky enjoyed the visit. Hope they come again soon!