Today we made the four hour drive to my parents house to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. As Sweet Pea gets older it only gets harder and harder to drive places with him. He was grumpy the entire time we were driving. He cried ad grunted and tried very hard to get himself out of the carseat. We left right before his naptime in hopes that he would sleep for at least an hour, but that didn’t happen. We only got a little bit of peace when he finally fell asleep. Of course something startled him awake twenty minutes later and we were again serenaded with whining. Hopefully the trip home won’t be so bad….

A few weeks ago Sarah over at Tales from Oakbriar Farm posted about an art project that she did with her daughter and I decided to try it out with Sweet Pea.

We started the project last week and it has taken until today to get it done! Sweet Pea was not at all interested in sitting still long enough to get his hands and feet traced that many times. But today I got him more interested in it by letting him try to trace my hand before I traced his. This he absolutely loved and it paved the way for him wanting the same thing done to him. So I traced his hands and feet and glued everything together to make the turkey shown in the above picture!

Sweet Pea loved the finished turkey as well. He carried it around for quite some time after we were done. Every now and then he would stop and look at it and then move on again.

Today I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Mommy Life, and she posted this video. Basically some Obama voters were asked the same 12 questions about election/government. Here is the breakdown of the answers from http://howobamagotelected.com:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Here are my thoughts:

I am not huge into politics. However, when election time comes around I find it important to research a candidate and make an educated decision. This survey just goes to show you that most people out there make uneducated decisions at the polls. It is so frustrating! The fact that most of those people didn’t even know that their own party controls congress is just plain sad. Most of them seemed to answer that the Republicans were in control of congress because they needed someone to blame and they sure weren’t going to blame their own party.

In spite of all that, I don’t even really blame the voters. I blame the media. Lots of people pick up the newspaper every morning expecting to read something resembling the truth. While the paper may even state the truth, the will somehow twist it to their own liking. It is so obvious that all the good things about Obama/BIden and none of the bad were pounded into their heads, while all of the bad and none of the good was reported about McCain/Palin.

I just wonder if the media had reported fairly if the outcome would have been different. Even if it was same at least it would have been fair.

So a while back Maria over at I Love you more than Cookies tagged me for some awesome blog fun! It has taken me a while to actually put this up on my blog to answer (sorry about that), but here goes!

1. I HATE chicken. I have tried it baked, boiled, fried, and pretty much every other way you can fix it and it still does nothing for me. I always get a lot of weird looks about this and one time someone actually told me I was unamerican because I don’t eat it. That was a little much…but whatever.

2. This may shock some people but my political views fall mostly in line with the Libertarian Party. The government is in our lives way to much and for the most part they need to just butt out. It’s to bad that there will never be a major libertarian candidate and I will have to choose between two dumbos.

3. I can’t spread my toes apart. Yup. That’s right.

4. I put ketchup on steak and shrimp and pretty much every other meat there is. Don’t know why but it makes the meat taste soooo good!

5. I nursed my son for 14 months and the experience has caused my to become a HUGE breastfeeding advocate. I am most likely going to try to become a lactation consultant. This could take a while since I want to stay home with my kids but it will happen someday….

6. I don’t wear makeup. I never have. At this point I am so glad that as a girl I never had an interest in it. Turns out in can actually do your skin more harm than good…

7. I love to take bubble baths!!! They are so comforting and relaxing. When we finally get to buy a house the master bathroom will be the most important room. The tub will be huge!

Ok…there are 7 random facts about me! Now it’s your turn:

Jessie

Charles

Ryan

Sarah

Nell

Heather

Erin

So for those of you who don’t know we are right in the middle of International Babywearing Week. I am a HUGE fan of babywearing. It is so comforting and snugly for both mother and baby. Sweet Pea probably spent the first six months of his life (at least until he learned to crawl) cozied up to me or Elmo. Whether he was just lying on our chests, next to us in bed, or all wrapped in a sling.

In honor of this week Adventures in Babywearing is hosting a contest to win a new sling from Nonny and Boo. Just pop over to her site to learn more about the contest and about babywearing!!

I tried four different slings and wraps before I found this moby wrap. For me, it was the most comfortable. I was sad that I didn’t find it sooner. And I just spent ten minutes trying to find a picture of me and Sweet Pea using it, but I couldn’t find one!! But I did find one with daddy and Sweet Pea using the baby bjorn. There is something a little more manly about a baby bjorn and Daddy always used that one.

Ok. So we are past the tooth debacle and definitely feeling much better about it. I think Elmo and I took it a little harder than Sweet Pea did. Thanks so much to everyone who shared their own stories with me. It was good to hear stories of people going through the same thing. Stuff like that always makes your own situation much easier.

So now I am going to move on to something a little more cute. Sweet Pea has never really been one to eat things or put things in his mouth. That is probably because he has either had nursing or his pacifier to satisfy his needs. To this day he is incredibly addicted to his pacifier, so I have never really had to worry about him eating random things. Until a few days ago….

I don’t know what changed or flip flopped in his head, but now he must eat everything! Here are some examples:

1. I had just bought groceries and loaded everything into the car. I am half way home and decide to take a peek at little Sweet Pea in the backseat. And what is he doing? Munching on a hamburger bun!! He had taken the package out of the grocery bag, opened it up, and was eating the bun. I can’t even tell you how he managed to do that.

2. Sweet Pea sits and plays on the bathroom floor while I am taking a shower. I peer around the shower curtain every now and then to see how he is doing. The other morning, I noticed he was be particularly quiet so I took a peek and he was eating the toothpaste! How he managed to get hold of it I have no idea, but he was certainly enjoying it!

3. Our bedroom is off limits to Sweet Pea. So when he does get to enter on rare occasions he is very excited. It’s almost like entering new territory for him. Because he is not allowed in there we don’t worry as much if we leave food or drinks in there. One night Elmo popped some popcorn and left it on the floor. I accidentally left the door to our room open the next morning and when I went looking for Sweet Pea he was sitting on the bedroom floor chomping away on some popcorn. Now we are very strict about what he eats and popcorn has never made the list before so he was extremely happy with himself since he was in the forbidden bedroom and eating something totally new.

It is a big change for us to have to just now start watching out for this. You would think that he would have gone through this stage a little younger or not at all. Oh well…it just makes life a little more interesting.

Sweet Pea has a little chair and table that he sits at to eat, read, play, or do whatever strikes his fancy. He has used that table and chair everyday for the past month or so. He has even fallen out of the chair before. Never has it been bad. He always picks himself right up and moves on.

Today he was sitting in his little chair eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch at his little table and boom…he falls out of the chair. We didn’t think to much of it at first. He was crying a little and we walked over to help him up. Then we noticed a lot of blood around his mouth. Needless to say we freaked out. We scooped him up and rushed to the kitchen. It was really scary. We had no idea what was happening or where the blood was coming from, therefore we didn’t know how to make it stop.

And then, something caught Daddy’s eye. He picked it up and lo and behold it was a tooth! Ahhh!!

Somehow Sweet Pea’s right front tooth had popped out in his fall. This helped in knowing where to put pressure with a wash cloth and we were able to get the bleeding stopped. We decided to take him to the minor emergency room to have a doctor check him over to make sure nothing else was in his mouth and to make sure the tooth had come out all the way. By the time we made in there Sweet Pea had calmed down and was actually in a cheery mood. The doctor okayed him, but suggested we take him to a pediatric dentist this week. There is nothing they can do about the tooth. It was a clean break. It is almost like the tooth just slid right out of his gums. Sweet Pea will just have no tooth there until he grows in his adult teeth.

I have to say I have been going between wanting to cry and being relieved since this happened. It’s amazing how something that we do every single day turned into a visit to the doctor. I guess that just shows that we really have no control on what is going to happen. We have to lay our complete trust in the Lord. I am so glad that losing a tooth was the worst thing that happened in his fall.

But on the other hand I still can’t believe that this happened. I keep asking myself stupid things like why did I let him sit there instead of the highchair or even the floor? Why wasn’t I sitting next to him? Why didn’t I make myself and sandwich and eat with him? I have no idea!! I know I can’t play the what if game but the thoughts just keep entering my head. My baby’s smile will never be the same and that makes me cry. I can’t even put into words how sad that makes me. He had the cutest little gap tooth grin and now it is gone.

I can’t even tell you why this makes me so upset. I know it is just a tooth. But I feel like a part of him is gone. I know that is not even true. Even after getting back from the doctor he was the same Sweet Pea. Running around and laughing. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be better. Sweet Pea doesn’t seem to care at all that the tooth is gone. I need to just take my direction from him. Whatever he is feeling about it I need to feel, and he obviously doesn’t care. The only change we saw in him tonight was that he would take his tounge and rub it in the spot where the tooth used to be…almost like it felt really cool. Here are some pics of him from this evening after the doctor visit:

I know he is still the same old Sweet Pea. I part of me just needed to grieve a little. Thanks for listening.

The last day of our trip was filled with meeting many of the Disney characters!! We wanted to be sure and get in line to meet Mickey early because the line to see him can get ridiculously long. We had gone the night before to check the line and it was a wait of over an hour!! So we decided to go the next morning and beat the rush. We got there twenty minutes before they opened Toon Town and decided that when they opened the gate Elmo would run to the line with Mickey and Sweet Pea and I would catch up. It worked magically! We were second in line to meet Mickey and Minnie. So instead of waiting over and hour we only waited twenty minutes! Woo hoo!

Sweet Pea had a blast yet again! He walked right up to Minnie and gave her a hug!

And of course he showed Mickey where his nose is:

Sweet Pea also had a lot of fun with Donald Duck! He gave him a big hug and a huge kiss!

On our last day at Disney we got to go to a character breakfast at the Grand Floridian hotel. Basically while we were eating breakfast the characters came around to our table and we got to meet them. We met Pooh Bear, Tigger, Alice (from Wonderland), the Mad Hatter, and Mary Poppins. Sweet Pea had a blast! He ate waffles shaped like Mickey and got to give kisses to all the characters.

Sweet Pea enjoying his yummy breakfast:

Giving Pooh Bear a big kiss:

Giving Tigger a high five:

Showing Tigger where his mouth is:

The little fam:

The extended fam:

The Mad Hatter and his nose:

My Dad aka. Papa T and Mary Poppins

The character breakfast was so much fun!! It is such a great way to get up close and personal with the characters. I definitely recommend it.