My Middle Name Must be Trouble...

Abby is always doing something. She makes us laugh all the time, because you never know what she is going to do next. There are times when she will be over playing with a toy all by herself, then run over to us and start laughing, then run right back to playing with her toys again! She is always on the move and she moves much faster than her pregnant mom these days!! The only time you have to worry about her is when you realize that it has been quiet for about 30 seconds... It doesn't take long for her to find trouble... Here are just a few examples from this month. At least these were the ones we were able to capture on camera...

For starters, Abby loves to crawl under our end table and come to you by the couch. She then reaches up to get things off the table you have told her she can't play with. I finally got smart (or so I thought) and moved the couches closer to the table and the table closer to the wall so "she can't fit in there anymore." So much for that idea...

Next, apparently she is getting taller and the tissues that i put up on the kitchen table "out of her reach," well I guess they are no longer out of her reach!!

and lastly, Seth was getting his golf clubs ready to go to the range and apparently he forgot to zip up the little pocket that has his gum in it... Yeah, she was really happy when I took that stick of gum from her, let me tell you...

What am I going to do in 3 months when she figures out she will have me out numbered???!!!

Happy Birthday Mommy!!

Daddy and Abby decided to give mommy a special treat for her birthday! Boy was she surprised... Sorry for the long video, but it was too cute to be able to cut much out...

Abby 11 Months

Can you believe it? This is the third post this week!! I am hoping to start a new trend... It is so hard to believe that Abby is almost a year old! Abby is such a happy baby, and quite the eater, as long as you don't try to feed her any of that baby food!! She is constantly on the move and loves to play. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

What goes up, finally comes down!!

Abby LOVES to climb the stairs. If we forget to gate off the bottom of the stairs she immediately runs to the stairs and is halfway up before we can get to her! Sometimes when she is being cranky, and we can't distract her with a toy, we go over to the gate and take it down. It is a surefire way to make her smile. She always drops everything, smiles and runs for the stairs. She loves to go up them, but down has always been a different story... until this weekend!!! She can now climb up and down all by herself!!

The Worst Night of My Life...

So it is official, I am an overreacting mom!! I never meant for it to happen. I always swore "I will never be one of THOSE moms." Well it happened this week. I had a truly scary night Thursday, then I totally overreacted later...

Abby had been "sick" for 2 weeks. She was acting totally normal, she just had a runny nose and would cough every once in awhile. Of course with those symptoms I couldn't let her be around other kids because I didn't want to be one of those mom who drops their kid of in the church nursery with snot running down their nose. So Abby and I just stayed home for 2 weeks even though she not shown any other signs of sickness. On Tuesday night Seth and I had a class at church that we usually put Abby in the nursery for, but that afternoon when I put her down for her nap I noticed she was a little warm. So I called Aunt Whitney to see if she and Uncle Kevin would watch Abby so we could both attend our class. They came over and Whitney said by the time they put her to bed she was pretty warm, but wasn't able to take her temp. (I didn't even think to tell her where the thermometer was, great mom, I know...) Anyway, she slept through the night but woke up with a fever. We took her temp and it was over 102. We gave her some Tylenol and thought that would help bring it down, but when I took it about an hour later it was over 103. We called the pediatrician and she said to start giving her Tylenol and Motrin, and watch for any other symptoms that would require antibiotics. So we continued to monitor her temp and gave her the Tylenol and Motrin and were able to get her fever down. By Thursday afternoon she was doing great and I thought she was finally starting to get better. Seth and I had plans on the other side of town and since her fever seemed to be gone we took Abby to my moms and went out for the evening. When we got home my mom told us her fever was back and she had given her some Tylenol. Well not long after we got back Abby woke up crying. We went in to get her and she was burning up. We immediately gave her some Motrin and took her temp and it was 104.7!!! OK, now it is time to FREAK OUT right??? We stripped off all her clothes and my mom ran to get a wet washcloth to use to cool her body off. We noticed a difference in how warm she felt right away, so we took her temp again about 20 minutes later and it had gone down to 103.6. Ok, that is still higher than I would like to see, but not scary.

We are such a lucky family. Abby has one Aunt who is the best labor and delivery nurse, and her other Aunt is now an awesome pediatric nurse, who just happened to be working that night. We called and talked to her at the hospital and she got very concerned when we told her how high her fever got, but calmed down when we told her what we did and how quickly we got it down. She assured us that we had done everything right that evening and we just needed to get her to the doctor the next day, and let told us to let her know if her fever goes back up and not down.

We drove home and she slept the entire way. When we got home we took her temp again and it was 98.6! So we just put her back to bed and climbed into bed exhausted. I was just about to fall asleep when she started crying again. This is not normal for Abby. She is always easy to put to bed at night especially if she has already been asleep. I went in to check on her and see if I could get her to go to sleep. She wanted nothing to do with sleep, so I decided to take her downstairs and see if she wanted to play for a little bit then go to bed. (by this time it is about 1:30am) I don't normally do this, but hey she was sick and schedules and routines go out the window when your child feels bad. Anyway, I was downstairs with her and noticed that she was acting funny. My 11 1/2 month old child who has been walking since she was 9 1/2 months would take 2 steps then fall over. She had NO balance at all!! Ok, so here is where the overreacting parent comes out. I was freaking out! Why couldn't she walk??? I called Seth to come downstairs and see what was going on and I told him I was scared that when her fever got so high something bad could have happened. I made him get me my phone so I could call Whitney back and tell her how she was acting and ask if she is going to be ok. I left her a message, and we decided to see if maybe she wanted her bottle. She drank her bottle and FINALLY fell back asleep. Whitney called us back and told us she was probably fine, but to see how she was acting in the morning and get her to the Doctor as soon as we could. I could hardly sleep that night. All I could think about is how my child can't walk anymore...

Of course she woke up the next morning and she was her normal self. She still had a small fever, but she can walk just fine. We got in with the Doctor that morning and she has an ear infection. She started her on antibiotics and by that evening she was so much better. By Saturday her fever was officially gone and she is back to her normal active self!!!

Up to this point we have been so lucky because Abby has hardly ever been sick. So our first major sickness led to my first major overreacting... I hope I don't start a trend... It really was scary... I am just glad it's over!

Sorry for the long post with no pictures, I just knew I would want a record of this later. Abby's slide show will be up soon with a months worth of pictures soon!