Throwback Thursday: Christmas Edition

This is me and my sister with Santa around 1987. Sometimes we couldn't be more opposite! I know my sister is going to kill me because I'm posting this, but I just love it so much! Hee hee.

Baby, it's cold season

sick Sam means lots of special cuddles and naps with mommy

Ah cold season. Where germs are just as giving as we are this holiday season.

Sam has had a cold for little over a week now. Our monthly cold. It's the norm right now and no reason to be upset because how do you prevent germs being spread at a daycare where babies learn about their world by putting everything in their mouth?

We ended up taking him to the doctors because he had such a bad cough. It was keeping him US up at night and he'd get so wiped out from all the coughing. But all is good. It's just a cold. His throat is very red, almost thought it was strep. It makes sense if you cough a lot, it'll make your throat sore.

Since he's a bit older, Sam's doctor recommended some tea for him to drink. She recommended Yogi Tea's Throat Comfort and echinacea tea. The echinacea tea will help him get over the cold and build up his immunity. We are to give him only 1oz 2 -3 times a day.

It makes me feeling good that we can help him now when he gets sick. Before all we could do was run the humidifier. I hope the echinacea helps. I'll be drinking that too because I still get sick when he's sick. How can I not kiss and cuddle this little guy even when he's snotty and coughing in my face?

Sam & Suzy This Week

It was so sweet putting up the Christmas decorations. We were all wearing Christmas hats and I had Christmas music playing and Sam was bobbing his head to the songs. I gave Sam some decorations to explore with, which he loved. He had fun holding a plastic snow globe. Sam was being extra silly and army crawling all over with such a happy face. He even went under the exersaucer and hung out there for a bit, hee hee. We decorated our tree, which Sam helped put the first ornament. Definitely a lovely memory I will keep forever.

I also did our mini photo shoot for our Christmas cards. I'm excited we get to do photo Christmas cards this year! The photos I took are just priceless and I can't wait to share them, but I will wait until we mailed out our cards because I don't want to ruin it for anyone. How about on Christmas I show you the photos?

Sam:
Sam is currently cutting a top tooth. We had a couple really bad nights this past week. What makes this a little bit tougher is that it's really swollen and I can tell he's rubbing his bottom tooth over it and irritating it more.

Suzy:
Do you know that since July I have yet to lose a pound?? That's 6 weeks of me running AND eating a salad for lunch every day and the green smoothies I had for breakfast for a few months. Wow...just wow. I was feeling so positive too! I was feeling good thinking that I was losing weight. Ok, I know, it's great to feel good...but you know I just wish I could see at least ONE pound go away, to let myself know that I'm on the right track.

I guess the reason why it bugs me so much is that I just want to wear nice clothes again! Right now I can't really wear my old pants and so I've been buying jeans at Good Will because I don't want to buy new pants if I'm going to lose weight. While I'm grateful I find jeans at Good Will that fit me, they are not the flatterning. So I just feel dumpy. All the girls at work look so cute and put together, doesn't make it easier sometimes.

Sorry for the venting! This is motherhood folks! Not some celebrity who is back in her prepregnancy clothes 3 months later!

Coming 2014...

In early 2014 I will be switching my blog back to Hello-Suzy.com !

I've had my little Hello Sprout blog for over a year now, documenting my pregnancy and Sam. While I still want to keep this blog about my family, I would also like the flexibility to expand to other things like maybe my drawings and such. I'd also like to make special sections about my struggle with infertility and my pregnancy and birth. Making it more of a website and a blog.

It's much easier to remember a domain too. I've had Hello-Suzy.com for a few years now and I hate that it's just sitting there being wasted.

I'm really excited because Rob and I will be trying a new blogging platform called ghost.org . It looks great and I can post using my iPad, which right now I usually write my posts on the computer and when I'm at home, I'm just too lazy sometimes to go upstairs.

Sam & Suzy This Week

I'm so eager for this weekend! It's the holiday season! I can't wait to bust out the Christmas decorations and make the house look festive. We also have a holiday party we are going to on Saturday. I wish we could do Santa this weekend too, but we have to get our house back in order. Poor Rob has so many leaves to rake up. Pfft, grown up stuff!

Sam:
He is on the move! Sam loves it too. He makes happy squeals as he's dragging himself across the room. It's crazy to see him go from the couch, to the front door and then to the other side and into the hall. That's a lot of moving!

Sam's also starting to dance. When you play him a song on one of his toys he starts to bob up and down. I knew this boy loved music, but it's even more apparent now.


Suzy:
Thanksgiving break was just what I needed. I've been a nasty ball of stress lately. Just so much going on and trying to do so much..and hormones, always the hormones. But being in New York and not having to worry about anything other than myself and Sam, it felt great. I'm learning to just cut out the stuff that's stressing me out. I also told Rob I need to start cooking more to help me feel better. Rob's been doing most of the cooking because I take care of Sam when we get home. It used to be because I would breastfeed him as soon as we got home and that's not the case anymore. So now it's time for me to start cooking, which I really enjoy!


Have a great weekend everyone!

*oh and excuse the varying sizes of my images. i'm trying to come up with a consistent size to use from now on.*

8 Months

8 months! 8 months! I can't deal, hee hee.

he loves his bathtime

socks are so yummy!

sam love my camera

always smiling

hello

Our Thanksgiving weekend

(I wrote this on our way home from New York. Nothing like writing a blog post at 1 am in the dark,hee hee)

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday and weekend!

Our's was quite nice. We drove up to New York to spend Thanksgiving with Rob's family.

We left Wednesday night, right at Sam's bedtime. Rob had worked from home that day and slept for a while before we headed off. Sam and I slept in the back seat while Rob drove through the night. 10 hours never went by so fast! It was awesome. Sam did great! He slept practically the entire time. He woke up just as the sun came up and just chilled for another couple hours before we got there. He even held out to get his bottle! Although I will admit, I missed mine and Rob's road trip conversations and pointing out the places with the funny names and singing The Office theme song while driving through Scranton, PA.

We spent Thanksgiving at Rob's cousin's house. Sam got to meet his cousins Abby and Danny. Danny is just a couple months younger than Sam. It's crazy to think that Sam was that small just not too long ago. It's also crazy because Sam is usually the youngest when we go places, hee hee. It was a lovely dinner and get together. I always enjoy spending time there.

Friday we went over to Connecticut to the huge grocery store Stew Leonard's. This place is ginormous! The great thing is that throughout the store, there are animatronics of butter, bananas, chickens, cows and even Twinkie the Kid. It's so silly and fun. We thought Sam would like it.

Rob's mom's good friend came by to meet Sam later that day and then Rob's aunt came a bit after that. It's sweet to see Sam meeting relatives. He's always to happy to see new people and doesn't mind being held. It makes me happy too because I know Sam won't get a chance to see a lot of his relatives often and I'd like these moments to be happy ones. It'd be different and a bummer if Sam didn't like being around new people. He knows he is loved!

Saturday we left Sam with the grandparents and me, Rob and his brother went to Greenwich, Connecticut. We went there to go see the 3D printers at the Makerbot store. (Oh yes, we are that geeky) It was actually really cool to see a 3D printer (a machine that uses plastic spools to make 3D objects that were designed on the computer.) Rob is currently learning how to design things. I'm going to learn too once I finish up some projects of mine. I actually have some 3D rendering knowledge from high school. FunFact: I enrolled to learn computer animation in college, but I  changed my mind before I started. Anyways!  We are not getting a 3D printer any time soon, but it's something we thought would be fun to do on the side one day. After visiting that store we walked around a bit and went into this real awesome toy store. It was like Fab.com's kids section. They had such great toys, the kind of toys I'd like to get Sam. A lot of wooden toys, toys that encourage imagination, thought, and independence. We didn't buy anything because Sam was still a bit young for it, but I have a lot of great ideas of toys I'd like to get.

Another thing we did, we looked at old baby pictures again, now that we have Sam to compare. We all came to the conclusion that Sam has Rob's eyes and nose. Sam also seems to have Rob's happy personality, always smiling and looking so genuinely happy. I can't wait to visit my family one day and look through our old photos and see Sam in them.

It was a nice little trip. I am so proud of Sam for how well he did. The car ride, the craziness of meeting relatives and sleeping in a different house. The key, I think, is just to keep it and familiar and normal as possible. We drove during night, during bedtime. We stuck with his night time routine, even reading Good Night Moon in the car. I brought the white noise machine, stuffed animals and blankets that all smelled like home.