what a difference a year makes

from rice cereal,

to twix bars

 from a flat bald head,

to nicely rounded and full of hair

 from my baby,

to my toddler.

and right here my friends,

is one of the many reasons for my blog.

looking back and reminiscing.

carpe diem

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beautiful weather & a busy bee

we had another gorgeous day last week.

and it finally landed on one of my days off!

parker absolutely loves to be outside.

so i packed up a huge plastic tote of some toys

and we headed out back to our patio.

but that only lasted a mere minutes.

who needs toys!

he was off to be a boy

and play in the dirt.

 many, many trips

he took picking a handful of dead grass

crawling it across the patio and throwing it over the little ledge.

if only i knew what he thought he was doing.

"i'll help mommy move this grass"

or

"wait til she sees what i've done now!"

 so busy he was.....

just like his daddy,

always working,

and never sitting still.

busy bee took an awesome nap for mommy

after all that hard work in the fresh air.

bring on summer!!!

carpe diem

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scariest moment to date

maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration,

maybe not.

i can't off the top of my head think of a scarier moment in my life,

not as a mother at least.

for all documentation purposes,

i'll tell you about my lovely friday afternoon.

every day as danny gets off work he texts my mom

to see if parker is awake for him to go pick up, or still napping.

on friday he was sleeping a littler later,

so danny went to his cousins to visit and wait for him to get up.

(yes, we have a pretty sweet situation)

as parker woke up my mom heard him on the monitor

coughing/gagging.

she ran upstairs thinking he was going to throw up

and realized he was actually gasping for air.

you know that seal-like barking croupy cough noise,

well it sounded like that, only he wasn't coughing

he was struggling to breathe.

she immediately called danny who flew over to her house.

in the mean time calling me at work

and i could hear him in the background breathing.

i told her to call 911, kids should never be struggling to breathe,

and me working in the medical field

hear the horror stories of kid's throats closing completely off that quickly.

as d walked in and saw parker struggling, they decided he needed

to be seen by a doctor asap.

they rushed out the door without even a diaper bag 

and poor pj in his nap soaked pee diaper.

(obviously the least of their worries)

on the drive over he started slowing his breathing and doing slightly better. 

 i grabbed my purse and ran out of work to meet them at urgent care.

i spent the next hour praying and reasoning with God

to help me get there safe,

and to be with my baby when i couldn't.

my life flashed before me, realizing i couldn't go on

if something seriously happened to my son.

and maybe cussing at the slow pokes in my way.

i was on a mission!

when i got to urgent care he was doing much better,

still looked sickly and when he tried to talk

he sounded like a 2 pack a day smoker.

they diagnosed him with croup and an ear infection in his left ear.

predinose and breathing treatments for the croup,

amoxicillin for the ear.

luckily he didn't inherit my allergy to all penicillin's.

 on our way home,

pj chatted up a storm. like nothing ever happened!

totally, totally bizzare.

fine all morning for my mom, can't breathe for about 30 min,

and then fine all evening.

 after a sleepless night on my part

worrying it would happen again,

the next morning he did develop a bad cough and runny nose

that's pouring out in buckets.

which we're are pretty sure the entire franklin county has 

the same sinus infection right now.

but this is a deep congested cough, not a croup cough.

so we are a bit baffled by the whole thing.

d told me that night he's never been so scared in his life.

it was like 2 hours later and he was still shaking.

life is so precious

and can be taken from you in a flash.

so we're hoping it really was just a quick case of croup

and not some kind of asthma

and weird throat spasm.

either way, i'd like for it to never happen again, mkay?

carpe diem

SEP

is it seriously march?!?

time is flying by!

and i have so much to update on.

parker's insurance decided it didn't want to pay for

him to have physical therapy 

and didn't approve it as 'necessary treatment'

so he can't going back.

i got a call last evening from first steps

and he didn't qualify for the program

because he didn't score low enough to be eligible.

good! 

my kid isn't totally screwed up

BUT...

they graded him physically as a 10 month

seriously, that's almost SEVEN months behind?!

she did say that he did score 'pretty average'

in all the other categories.

she's mailing me the score sheets so i'll be able to see more when i get them.

i'm super curious to see what he's excelling in

and what he's not.

so we have exactly 1 month and 2 days to get the boy walking!

bc according to his pediatrician

there isn't much concern until they aren't walking at 18 months.

i'm debating taking away his naps

and making him exercise for 12 straight hours a day.

totally kidding, chill out.

d and i do think he has gotten a little more steady on his feet.

the other night he got on all fours,

like on his hands and feet not his knees

like he was trying to stand up not grabbing onto anything.

which he's never done before.

so d and i start cheering for him and yelling

which i think kinda freaked him out.

because he immediately looked up at us with this terrified look

like he was doing something wrong.

haha.

and we were practicing with him walking between us

when we THINK he may or may not have stood for half a second

and took his first official step

before diving head first into the carpet.

 i bought him some beans the other day

while i was grocery shopping.

trying to give him a little 'texture play'.

 you'd think i bought him a puppy!

i'm totally getting over my ocd of messes and letting him a kid.

he spends a good 30 min digging in these beans

and it only take me like 30 sec to clean them up.

plus it's like finding quarters in the washing machine,

we have secret beans hidden all over the house!

double bonus!

 we're working on not throwing them

 it didn't take long to figure out how to dump them

carpe diem

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We've been busy...