What's Up

• Remy is mobile, and I wasn't ready for it. Everyday I feel like I am discovering some new hazard I hadn't anticipated, and Remy is charging head long into every one of them. He is so excited about his new skills and barely bats an eye when he knocks his head into a wall or piece of furniture.
  
• Ross and I are going on dates every week! Real dates, with yummy food and fun and no baby!
  
• Things are moving along with the thyroid. My new endocrinologist also recommends surgery, so I have a biopsy and uptake scan this month, and then next month I meet with the surgeon. Feeling a little anxious about what the biopsy may turn up, since it has been so long since my last, but trying not to worry about it.
• We are doing a series based on John Ortberg's new book at Canyon Ridge which confirms once again that we have ended up at the right church!
• Ross is taking us on a three night romantic/family getaway for Valentine's day weekend. I am counting down the hours :)
• Remy's 9 month wellness check is coming up. I am hoping to hear that he has caught up a little in the weight department, and so happy that he doesn't have to get any shots this time!
• Mom and Dad have booked tickets to come down for Remy's 1 year birthday, just a few months from now! Par-tay!
  

A Good Reason to Keep the Blinds Open

Why Are We Letting this Happen to Babies?

'House of horrors' alleged at abortion clinic
Doctor charged with killing patient, 7 babies; no staff had medical training

The thinking behind the legalization of abortion was that women were going to get them either way so we might as well make it legal - that we can regulate the practice and make it safer for those women. (At least, that was the official thinking, there was also a strong undercurrent of racism in the movement.) Well, more than 35 years after Row v. Wade, women are still dying in deplorable conditions while the feet of their infants are being chopped off and saved in jars as trophies.

Vroom

Remy is not quite ready to use this toy yet but he was just so excited to try it out this morning I had to let him.

Sleeping Arrangements

As I have mentioned before, my husband is frugal. When it came to choosing a bed for the baby we hit a bit of a roadblock. While Ross didn't object to cribs in general, he balked at the idea of actually spending any money on one. But this Christmas a gift from Remy's grandmother allowed us to finally go out and get a crib for our eight month old son.

Up until then we had used a variety of sleeping arrangements for him. We started out with the Fisher Price Rock 'n Play Sleeper. Ross liked it because it was only $39 and I liked it because I could cart it all around the house with me. For the first couple of months, when we were splitting baby duty over the night, we would park the sleeper next to the couch and Ross would keep an eye on him while he played video games and then at 3 or 4 I would come out to the living room to feed Remy and watch a little Poker After Dark before falling asleep on the couch. When Remy got better at sleeping at night, we brought the sleeper into the bedroom with us. Unfortunately he outgrew it around the time he turned 6 months old so I put the sleeper in storage and wheeled the pack 'n play into our bedroom. I would put him to sleep in that for the first half of the night and then move him into bed with me for the second half of the night. At this point Ross moved into the guest room (which was meant to be the baby's room!) Eventually though Remy realized that the pack 'n play mattress is utter crap compared to Mommy's bed, and he decided he would like to just go straight to the big bed at night.

I was chagrined to realize, at this point, that I had become a full-fledged co-sleeper. Before Remy was born, probably around the same time that pregnancy caused me to stop sleeping at night, I decided that I most definitely was NOT going to co-sleep (co-sleep being the fancy name people use for sharing your bed with your child.)

To me, co-sleeping represented a kind of anxious, insecure parenting style that made me cringe. And while I would like to say that my experience with co-sleeping disabused me of that notion, I actually found that it made me more anxious and more clingy. I was waking up all night long to check his breathing, feel his temperature, flip him over, adjust his blanket, or even just kiss him and hold his hand. While there is nothing wrong with those things, feeling compelled to do them frequently throughout the night when Momma and Baby should be sleeping soundly is not so good.

If we had moved right from the sleeper to a crib, I think I would have been
fine, but after my clingy, anxiety ridden stint as a co-sleeper I found it really difficult to start using our new crib once we finally had one. Every night there was another excuse. The mattress is in the wrong position, the room is too drafty, the baby monitor isn't working properly, he isn't feeling well tonight etc., etc. What finally made me bite the bullet and put him in his crib was waking up one morning to find that he had kicked away the barrier of pillows on his side of the bed and was dangerously close to falling off the edge.

That night I put him in his crib. To my surprise he slept soundly until 5 in the morning, but I was an anxious mess, checking on him constantly, and finally brought him to his pack 'n play at 5 so that I could look at him without getting up. The second night I did better, probably because I was passed out from utter exhaustion and not even able to get up and check on him. And he did awesome as well, sleeping until 7:50 am in his crib!

So after 8 months of various sleeping arrangements, including an accidental experiment in co-sleeping, Remy and I will both be sleeping in our very own beds and, thanks to that, getting much better rest! That is, after I re-acclimate myself to Ross's snoring...

Saturday Afternoon Fun

One of our favorite places in Las Vegas is Red Rock Resort and Casino. It has beautiful architecture and decor, a bowling alley, movie theater, food court, arcade, gaming floor, nice restaurants, and, most intriguing of all, day care! We've been longing to use the day care since Remy was about 4 months old but between teething, minor illnesses, stranger anxiety, and the general busyness of life we've never managed to do it. Until today! We had recently got some coupons from Red Rock offering two free buffet meals and $15 in free slot play so decided to go use them before they expired tomorrow.

We took Remy with us to the buffet, thinking that if he handled that well we could try to put him in the day care. Red Rock's Feast buffet takes buffets to a whole new level. The space was really pretty and more romantic then most buffets, and the selection is so great it is actually kind of daunting. I went for the comfort foot - bbq ribs, baked beans, coleslaw, mac & cheese, scalloped potatoes, cornbread...and sushi. Ross and I shared cheese cake and some kind of mango chocolate mousse thingy.

I didn't take this picture. I wish I could have found a picture of the dining area, it's quite pretty.

Remy did awesome, so next we took him across the casino to the Kid's Quest daycare center. I was still feeling nervous about it and warned Ross that if I didn't like what I saw when we went in we would just bolt! However when we opened the heavy blue doors and went inside we were greeted by a kid's paradise - a jungle gym, sports area, video games, an ice cream machine, a designated area for babies, a bunch of friendly staff and, most importantly, a some very happy kids. We decided today was the day! They took Remy's info and made a copy of his immunization history for their records, and by the time we'd finished checking in Remy was grinning at the girl who came to take him out of my arms. He didn't take a second look at us.

So we went out to explore and enjoy some free slots and free drinks! I didn't want to leave him for too long so after we'd won enough money to pay for the babysitting we cashed out and went to get him. He was asleep when we got there and, most importantly, didn't give us any reproachful looks. We grabbed a flier on the way out for half-off the normal rates on Valentine's Day!

I foresee us having a lot more dates in the future! :)

That's the moon up there. Why does the moon always look so much bigger in person than it does in pictures?

(I am not being coy, I am tucking my extra chin where you can't see it. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.)

It's January and the pool was actually open. Some kids were brave enough to try to swim in it, but it was only 67 today.

8 Months Old

Remy is 8 months old today. 8 months is nearly as long as I carried him in my womb (and considering how much he grew over those months is the only thing that makes his growth over the last 8 seem less staggering!)

• He has 5 teeth and a 6th one on the way.
• He finally has a full head of whispy brown hair.
• He can get himself into a sitting position, crawl, and pull himself up to a standing position.
• He can say Dada, but his new favorite thing is to make a high pitched wheezing noise while slowly inhaling.
  
• He loves to get a mouth full of formula and gargle.
  
• He eats solids twice a day and has started eating puffs and arrowroot cookies (the cookies are frightening because he tries to put the entire thing in his mouth at once.)
• He has outgrown his infant carrier and now has a convertible car seat and sits in the shopping cart like such a big boy!
• His love affair with his blanky continues. He holds it tenderly to his nose while he sucks his binky or his thumb, just like his mom used to do.
• His right hand is dominant.
  
• He still has some stranger anxiety - when people talk to him at the store his face turns red.
• When we walk into the bathroom these days, he is less interested in the mirror and more interested in playing with the faucet. He loves water and shiny metal so the two together are just irresistible.
• Thankfully, he still loves to snuggle with his mama in the rocking chair.
  

***edit, 1/15/11***
Oh, and I forgot to mention the teeth grinding! Now that he has top teeth and bottom teeth he likes to grind them in a side to side motion. It makes my skin crawl!

The Southwest in Winter

On Sunday we drove up to Mt. Charleston on a whim. It was gorgeous. But since it was on a whim, we were sans camera. So instead I have a picture of the Grand Canyon from our flight home on the 1st. (At least I assume it's the Grand Canyon...otherwise it is just a really great canyon.) It demonstrates the same thing we experience here in Vegas...higher elevations, snow - lower elevations, no snow.

New Year

Obligatory balcony shot.

My Year In Review

Wow, I was just looking back at my blog from this time last year...Ross was 14 months unemployed and we were picking out paint for the crooked little upstairs bedroom that was to be Remy's nursery, with no idea that the very next month we would be apartment hunting in Nevada. What a year it has been! Ross's job, Las Vegas, Remy's birth, adventures in breastfeeding, ER visits, late night swims, flying to and fro, and family flying to and fro...a blessed and full year!

New Years Resolutions

Ug, this part is hard. The nice thing about keeping one's ambitions private is that one can also hope to keep one's failures private. But at 32 I'm fairly used to public embarrassment, so here goes:

• I resolve to go to weekend services at church AT LEAST twice a month. (When I was pregnant my resolution was that after the baby came we would go every week...that didn't exactly happen, so I am starting small this time.)
• I resolve to learn one new recipe a month.
• I resolve to limit myself to one impulse buy per grocery trip (stole that one for askmoxie.org. Brilliant, right?)
• I resolve to find ways to be creative on a regular basis. (This one is a little vague but I will work it out as I go.)
  

This Time Next Year

As 2010 proved, you really never know where you will be in a year, but it would be nice if it looked something like this:

• Ross continues to do well at Petroglyph and is either wrapping up his current game or starting on a new one.
• We will have recently moved into a house, preferably with a pool and a lot of extra space for guests.
• I will have had my thyroid out and perhaps be trying for baby #2.
• Remy will be walking and talking and delighting us daily.
  

We are the Champions!

Winter is not easy. Even in Vegas. So you have got to pause and celebrate the little victories. Here are ours:

• Remy has learned how to get into a sitting position all by himself!
• Remy has learned to say Dada! It is a great relief because before this the only thing in his repertoire was screeching and that gets kind of old. (He went through a phase where his whining would sound like mama, but I don't think that counts.)
  
• Remy crawled forward for the first time on Saturday night! For now though he still prefers to get around by rolling and wriggling.
• Remy has a new tooth!

And my less impressive list of accomplishments:

• I am down a pants size! Woot!

Back in Nevada

We're home! We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year in Raleigh, but I think I am too tired to do the trip justice in this post so I will save that for later. In the meantime, here are some pics from around the apartment today:

It snowed this morning! Very pretty and all, but I am ready for some sunshine.

I set up Remy's new crib this morning. His New Year's resolution is to sleep in his very own room - right Remy? (The other bed is for Remy's guests.)

His first guest says she prefers this bed.

Almost forgot to post this one! This was Remy posing for his picture after I came in from taking snow pictures. He loves the camera and he won't let me put it away without taking a picture of him and showing it to him.