15 months-Full Steam Ahead

Carter just turned 15 months old on the 19th and I figured it was time to share with you what's been going on in his life. He finally started walking at about 14 months and although I kept urging him to do it for a long time, I'm now wishing I hadn't rushed him into it. Needless to say, we have 5 baby gates up now, including one on our bedroom door, because he has learned how to turned the handle and open the door. And we don't have round knobs, so the gate was our only way of keeping him out. He has also become quite the climbing machine and I can't seem to keep him off of anything. He climbs on everything!! He climbs on his play table, he stands up in his rocking chair, and he even climbs on the shelves of our built in media center. He's a little monkey, I tell ya. With all this climbing, he's also done some falling, but that doesn't seem to stop him. Anyone got any suggestions on how to stop all the climbing? It's rather nerve wrecking.The only time I get him to sit down and give myself a break from chasing him around is when it's bathtime. He loves the bath! I swear I could leave him in there for hours and he'd be pefectly happy. He has even gotten used to me tipping him back in the water to rinse out his hair. His daddy also helps with baths and likes to give him bubbly mohawks.
Carter is quite the social butterfly as well. He has never suffered from separation anxiety and he definitely isn't shy. I credit this to him being exposed to lots and lots of people since he was born. He loves daycare and gets along with the kids great. He is quite the ladies man if I do say so myself (but that might have something do with the fact that there is only one other boy there).
He went to work with me a couple of days last week, because his daycare provider was sick, so needless to say I got zero done and ended up leaving early. Here he is sitting in his seat next to me.
So I have to say, this past month our lives have really changed. We can go outside and play more, we are wearing shoes all the time (except in the house), we have gotten our first moler, we are ordering off the kid's menu, we have been expressing our strong will more and more each day, and we have kissed the paci good-bye for good. Although some nights I wish we still had the paci, but I refuse to cave after he's been without it for a few weeks. Brett and I feel more worn out at the end of the day, but we are loving every second with our little man more and more each day. All the chasing Carter around has kept my pregnancy weight down. I'm 13 weeks along and have yet to really gain any weight. The doctor's scale said 1 lb, but that was right after lunch and my scale says none. By this point in my first pregnancy I had already gained like 5 - 10 lbs (yeah I know, shut up!). So we love you little man and we are looking forward to watching you grow up!!
*Note the obnoxious look on his face. I'd say that describes his personality well; he's a very strong willed individual. Kind of like his momma.*

Ticker's a Tickin'

Well tomorrow I will be 12 weeks pregnant and I went for my second checkup today. They weighed me in (always my favorite part....barf) and I only gained 1 lb. I guess I can live with that. According to my scale I hadn't gained anything (and actually lost a couple since I was so sick the last couple of days), but I blame it on eating a pretty hefty lunch right before my visit.

The doc went to listen to the heartbeat and picked it up right away. Success!! I guess since I haven't had most of the terrible pregnancy symptoms I had with Carter part of me has been thinking "knock knock, you still in there baby?" I'll take today's visit as a yes.

So we're just plugging away. My mom has already been gracious enough to purchase new bedding and a new convertable crib for Carter. We have decided to do his bed in the Dr. Suess theme and found some really great bedding at Pottery Barn. My plans for his room look a little like this:

Except he's getting a Chocolate finish crib, because I just couldn't bring myself to putting him in a white crib. White would be great for a girl, I'm just not sure about it for a boy. We're going to keep the nursery just the way it is. Except I will definitely need to buy a new sheet for the mattress. Carter has been pretty rough on it.

The only thing I'm finding that I'm dealing with a lot more than I did when I was pregnant with Carter is that I'm sick a lot more often. Partly because they say having a kid, a miscarriage, and another pregnancy all in 14 months is a lot for your body to handle. So I guess I'm pretty depleted, but then I have Carter in daycare and the kids in there are constantly sick. So he's constantly sick, so I'm constantly sick. He actually managed to not catch a stomach bug that was going around daycare, while I did catch it. Out of nowhere, I became violently ill on Wednesday morning and pretty much didn't get out of bed for the next two days. It was miserable.

So I guess that about wraps it up. We've got a healthy baby so far and now I just need to worry about keeping him/her healthy and keeping myself as healthy as possible. Here's to hoping winter comes to an end very soon!! (please don't remind me of this when i'm bitching about the heat in August).

25 and already having EKGs run

Well yesterday proved to be a kind of scary day for me. It started off like any other day, but around 11:00am I started to feel pretty weak, so I decided to eat lunch early in hopes that would make me feel better. Well it didn't. I found myself struggling to catch my breath and feeling worse by the minute. I then started to feel a flutting in my chest and after about an hour, it dawned on me to take my pulse. That's when I noticed every time I felt the flutter in my chest, my heart was skipping a beat. It wouldn't have bothered me, except that it was skipping a beat about every 5 seconds or so. I called my dad and told him what was going on and he said he'd be back to the office in a few minutes.

Once my parents got back to the office, I let my mom feel my pulse and within just a few seconds she felt my heart skip two times. So we decided it was best that I go to the walk-in clinic to have them take my vitals. Well, we went to 2 different clinics and they were really backed up, so my mom just told the nurse practitioner what was going on and that's when she referred me to the E.R.

So it was off to the E.R. we went. It's amazing how when you tell them you're having heart problems, you get rushed right in without even having to wait 5 mins. It wasn't long after I was there that they ran an EKG to see if my heart was okay. That came back normal, so they hooked me up to a monitor to watch my heart beat for a while and they took some urine and blood. They also tried to listen for the baby's heartbeat, but it wasn't loud enough to get a good count. I also went for a chest X-Ray and that came back normal as well. After a couple of hours, my heart went back to normal and the doctor said he saw it skipping beats, but couldn't watch it long enough to see if anything was abnormal. My blood work did show that my potassium level was low and that could have very well caused the irregular heartbeat. So they gave me 4 big potassium pills, a referral to a cardiologist, and sent me on my way.

They also recommended that I drink Gatorade and eat a banana everyday. I just hate when things like this happen. I leave feeling like I just spent a whole lot of money to be told "we don't know what's wrong with you". Awesome. I also feel very frustrated because I feel like I'm falling apart. Two visits to the E.R. within 6 months. Really? I mean, my OBGYN did express concern that 2 good pregnancies, and a miscarriage all within 14 months is a lot for my body to handle. But I never expected this. I just feel like my body has been completely drained of all the "good stuff".

Anyhow, I guess I will make a follow up appointment with the cardiologist and she if that leads anywhere. My guess is my heart will act completely normal and he will not see anything like what was going on yesterday. I guess that'd be a good thing though.