A new haircut...

Saturday was a pretty hot day and since Daddy had to work I took Eric to my parent's house to try out their kiddie pool. I can't wait to have our own house so we can play outside in a kiddie pool all day! So Eric was kind of tired/hungry when he was in the pool and wasn't totally enjoying it but he did splash around a little.



Everytime Eric needs a haircut I want to do it myself. I watch intently when the hairdresser cuts his hair to try to figure out a technique. However, everytime I always chicken out and end up taking him to the hairdresser instead of doing it myself... but not this time! I braved the haircut by myself and he ended up with a buzz cut because about halfway through I realized I was not talented enough to give him a little boy cut. The good news is that he will be cool for the summer and that it'll grow out by like next week. The bad news is that I will probably no longer attempt to save money by doing this myself again! His hair is too nice to cut all off!

Father's Day 2010

For Father's Day, Eric woke up to a big hug from the little guy. It was so cute, the perfect father's day present! In the afternoon we went to my sister's house for a cookout. Eric stayed for a few minutes but then he headed off to the Red Sox game with his dad and brother. All in all it was a very good day. However, now that I've uploaded my pictures I notice I have didn't take any pictures of the Erics or any with my dad. I will never be a professional photographer!

Eric has been really wanting to use a fork lately so at the cookout I let him go to town. I gave him a hot dog with ketchup and a fork. For dessert he had this really yummy cake-like thing with angel food cake, cool whip, strawberries and blueberries. He really enjoyed it. You can tell by these pictures of the ketchup and whip cream caked all over his face! My mom sent me another cute picture of him covered in his dinner but my computer is being stupid and won't download it. I need a new computer!!!



For Eric's father's day present I spelled out "happy dad day" with masking tape and had Eric paint over it. I had to help a little to make sure it was all covered. Then when it dried I took the tape off. Which makes me now realize I should have taken an after picture of the final result but you get the point!

Eric LOVES animals. Lucky for him my sister happens to have two dogs that love to be loved. So I took this little shaky video of Eric's interaction with Abby and Katie on father's day.

Happy 30th Heather!! :)

One of my best friends, Heather, turned 30 on June 16th. I wanted to spend time with her for her birthday. At first we tried to plan a trip to Boston with the two of us and our other friend Amber but that hasn't quite happened yet. I had talked to Heather's mom about what they were doing for her birthday and I decided to surprise her and show up at her family party. So last friday Eric got home from work, showered, and off we headed to CT! It was so nice to see Heather and celebrate her birthday with her and her family. We began our friendship as college roomies freshman and sophmore year and have continued to stay friends over the years. Even though we don't see each other much when we do it's like we see each other all the time.

Eric thinking about jumping in the pool with Heather's aunt:

Heather and her yummy cakes.

The Guerettes

Eric using a shovel in a pot full of dirt

Besties :) if I had a picture from college on this computer I would do a comparison shot. Lucky for us all I don't!

Heather, always surrounded by the kiddos

aww :)

Where did he learn that???

For dinner tonight I gave Eric a cut up hot dog. I had gotten up and went in the other room for a minute. Eric called me back into the kitchen to see this happening:

We have not taught Eric how to use a fork yet. I have done many assessments on children and I know that utensil use usually comes a little bit later then 15 months old so I couldn't believe he figured this out all by himself. What a smarty! However, I told Daddy that next time let's try a smaller fork so he'll be less likely to poke his eye out! And for the record, let us all take note of which hand he is using his fork with :)

I love the randoms

Daddy Eric has been helping my brother-in-law build a porch on my parent's house. We had gotten my nephew Dylan a new tool set to replace the one that big Eric broke and the tool set has remained at my parent's house. Eric Charles thoroughly enjoys these tools. He likes to "help" Daddy and Uncle Mike build the porch. Here he is, hammering away. It's a little blurry because it's an action shot with my cell phone:




Today I had a few friends over including my friend Melissa and her son Thomas. Eric normally doesn't notice Thomas too much but we were out on the porch and every time Eric walked past Thomas, Thomas would crack up laughing. I had never heard him laugh that much before! So Eric quickly figured out that he was laughing at him and started trying to make him laugh. It was so funny i had to get the camera!

15 months old

When Eric turned a year I said I didn't know how long I would take monthly pictures of him after that. It has become increasingly more difficult to take these pictures. First I wasn't aware of the date on sunday and that he was 15 months old so that day was a wash. Then Monday when I had time to take the pictures he was in need of his silky and I couldn't get any quick pictures. Today I managed to get a few but now that he can quickly and easily climb off of chairs it was quite a task! So here we go, 15 months old:

the thumb sucker

Rock Star

I took this video in case Eric becomes a famous guitar player. We can have this embarassing video of him playing Daddy's guitar at 14 (almost 15!) months old:

doctors updates

We went to visit my gramma today and she told me that she looked to my blog to get an update on Eric's doctors visits this week and I hadn't updated my blog. Sorry gram! Here it is:
On Monday Eric had another VCUG. I was nervous because he had a little stomach bug so I wasn't sure if they would be able to sedate him. Fortunately they were and he actually didn't have the bug that day and it hasn't made a reappearance since then. The unfortunate part was that the sedation wore off before they even started the procedure so he screamed through the whole thing. He had enough medicine in him to keep his body still but not to keep him from screaming. It's tough to see but I've almost become numb to it and I know how important the VCUG is in keeping track of his urinary tract so I just try to comfort him through it and hope that they move a little bit quicker to get it done. The plan for the next VCUG is that they will give him the sedation medicine as well as an IV so that if the medicine wears off they can immediately put something in the IV to calm him down. Thankfully if all goes well he will not have to have another VCUG for a year which is a nice break since he's had 3 in the last year, two of them being in the last 2 months.
On Thursday we went to see the Urologist to go over the results of the VCUG. He does still have reflux but it is improving. The reflux that went away in his left kidney has returned but the doctor wasn't surprised by that so I guess we won't be either! He feels that now that he's had the surgery he will most definitely grow out of the reflux eventually. The best news of that day is that unless there are any complications, we do not have to go back to UMass for 6 months. No more tests, surgeries or anything for a solid 6 months. This was music to my ears. By the time he has his next ultrasound he will be almost 2 so I will be able to explain more to him about what's going to happen to prepare him better. It may not help him relax during the ultrasound but at least he will know what to expect because that's the worst part, not having him know what's going to happen to him ahead of time.

So that's the trips to UMass for the week. Next week he has his regular pedi visit and then we can relax for a while which will be really nice.

On another note at the end of June I will be going back to work. As of right now I am going to be picking up more hours at the May working on the south shore. It is not ideal but my unemployment is running out and I knew I couldn't stay at home forever. It is going to be absolutely heart breaking to put him in daycare but at least I got to be home with him for over a year. We will all have a really hard transition putting him in daycare but we'll make it through just like we have everything else that goes on in our crazy life. We are interviewing a woman who does home day care tomorrow so hopefully that goes well because I don't have a lot of time to shop around for daycare providers. If I do work at the May as planned I will only be working 4 days a week so he will go to daycare three days and one day with my parents. However, no matter where I work, come september he will be without me 5 days a week because school starts and I have an internship to do. It's going to be a lot of change going on around here. I'm not looking forward to it. However, I am not winning the lottery anytime soon so I have to do what I have to do for our family to financially afford to someday be in a house.


Pictures:
Eric has been eating at the table lately instead of me putting his tray on his high chair. He looks so grown up when he eats at the table. Check it out:


As most people know, Eric is a very huggy snuggly kiddo. We went to visit my Gramma today and although he was talking to her he didn't really go near her. However, when I told him that we had to leave he went right over to her, arms stretched out for her to pick him up, and he gave her the biggest longest hug. I know from experience that his hugs are so nice so I'm sure my gramma really enjoyed it :)

Eric didn't want me to blog this video because he thinks his voice sounds "gay". However, since he never reads my blog anyway, how is he supposed to know that I put this video up?? And I had to, because it's really cute. Check it out:

Funny funny

Funny story #1: As we were leaving the timeshare place yesterday Eric Charles was walking around with his hand on his hip/thigh and I was wondering what the heck he was doing. I thought he was hurt or something until he made his next move... he put his hand in his pockets haha. He found his pockets for the first time and was trying to figure them out. It was so cute and I foolishly didn't get a picture of it but I'm sure there will be more opportunities since he walks around like he has pockets when he just has a diaper on and got upset today when he had no pockets on his shorts.
Funny story #2: So Eric has had a little stomach bug for the last few days which really stinks because he's supposed to be sedated for another VCUG tomorrow. We had been out and about all day and there were no explosive diapers thankfully the whole time. However, his diaper wasn't wet either which of course sets paranoia in that something is wrong. When we got home we put him in the tub for a quick bath. The minute his body hit the bath water he was peeing in the tub. So I drained the tub and re-filled it and finished his bath. I let him run around after his tub for a few minutes to let his bum air out since he had had several explosive BMs in the past few days. I was standing in the kitchen and I knew he was behind me but I didn't know what he was doing... Until I felt something warm on my feet and discovered that he was peeing all over my feet and the kitchen floor! I guess he was just holding it in all day! So we cleaned up the mess and got a diaper on him before anything else happened. Just as Eric was about to put him to bed we noticed that he had a BM. Eric went to change him but he took the diaper off too quickly and he paid the price for it! Poop everywhere including on Eric! So in a span of less than a half hour we had been peed and pooped on. What a fun end to the night. However, I'm not going to lie, I was glad that he waited until we got home for all of this to happen. Imagine if we were out and Eric took that diaper off too soon in a public bathroom. What a mess that would have been!


Eric Charles took a shower this morning and we decided to put his bathrobe on him for the first time. It's a little small because it's not his size but it was still so cute, ribbit ribbit!

So these two videos are just some cute ones. One is of Eric helping Daddy clean the bathroom by attempting to sweep the floor. The other one is of him playing out on the porch during a rain storm this afternoon and just being silly.

"Though the Berkshires seem dream-like on account of that frosting. With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go..."

Yesterday we decided to go an adventure after we went to see Eli play t-ball. Eric had received a post card in the mail saying he won some prize which obviously was a ploy to sell us something. They gave us an address to go to which was at a resort which made it even clearer that they were going to try to sell us a timeshare. We have no intentions of purchasing a timeshare but Eric wanted an adventure and he wanted his prize. So we needed to go to the town of Lee, MA and when I looked at the map I saw that it was in the Berkshires. So at least we were in for a scenic ride. Along the way we drove through 2 thunderstorms and lots of rain but it made for some pretty cloud and rainbow pictures.
So for all who are wondering the prizes were some trips that we'll probably never take. One of them is to Florida with everything included but it's only for two days and you can only use it monday through wednesday and you can't use it on a major holiday. As much as I love Florida I'm going to need more than 2 days and Eric can't get time off from work during the week right now.
The other vacation was to Hawaii for 5 days but airfare wasn't included and what are we going to do with a one year old in Hawaii anyway? We were hoping for some money or something but no such luck. I secretly was hoping to win the BMW or Mercedes prize but I guess it's Hondas for life :).
So here are the pretty pictures from our adventure: