Nickerson News

We are back from New England after spending a whole week visiting family and friends. It was so great to get away for that long and just relax and not have to worry about work and having a schedule.

Abel decided since he was turning 7 months old that he wanted to grow up. (Note: This next portion will be sappy, so if you aren’t in the mood for sap, skip over.) When we left for Boston he was my cuddly little baby and when we returned he is now my big, rough playing boy. While in Boston, Abel decided he didn’t want to nurse if it meant missing out on the action. All the sudden, after a few days of being there he acted like I was torturing him if I tried to nurse him. Forget trying to put a blanket over his head, that was like playing a game with him. I decided I wasn’t going to fight it and gave him a bottle so he didn’t have to miss out on the fun. I can’t believe he is weening himself. I thought FOR SURE I would be the one who would have to initiate the weening. I had prayed that he would ween himself, so you would think I would be handling this situation a lot better. I thought I would be so really for the day he stopped nursing. Like, I would imagine the days when I would actually have my body back…as mine, and not having to be someone else’s food machine. But I guess I wasn’t ready for it. I guess I am not ready to accept that my baby is growing up. What happened to my little infant baby? If he does decide he wants to nurse, he has to be sitting up. Lying down would be too much like a baby. He now only wants to nurse in the early morning and bedtime…and maybe for his mid-morning nap. Pretty much, he only wants the goods if we are ALONE in a dark room where no one else can see him and ONLY when he is tired. Other than that, if there are people around, he tries to act like a big boy. So much to the point that he doesn’t even want me to hold him when he takes his bottle. He wants to sit up all by himself and drink it. However, he still wants me to hold his bottle for him so his hands can be free to…you guess it…grab his feet. Holding his bottle would take precious time away from playing with his feet. He figures mom used to feed me so why not hold my bottle. He is fully capable to hold his own bottle, but he would rather multi-task then waste time holding his bottle to eat.

Thankfully, we are finally back to his sleeping schedule. He got all messed up while in Boston, but he is back to sleeping through the night again. PRAISE JESUS! How true when parents tell you…just when they have a schedule down, they either get sick or you have to travel and the whole thing gets out of whack and takes days to get back to their regular schedule. Hopefully, we aren’t going anywhere for awhile and hopefully he will not get sick anytime soon.

In closing, HI to all my new New England friends! I love going to Boston and meeting new people who read this blog. Thanks for coming up to me and letting me know. I love knowing I have readers from all over.

I think I will be unpacking for the next week…

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas. We sure did. We are still in MA with Seth’s family. We got the whole week off so we are taking advantage of seeing Seth’s family and just enjoying the New England weather. I have been loving just sitting on the couch all snuggled up drinking tea and reading my new books. It is always great to get away from everything and just enjoy family. Although, I miss my family. We plan on celebrating Christmas with them when we get back to VA.

Guess who was up at 5:45am on Christmas morning all ready to go…Yup, my little love bug. His croup has turned him back into a TERRIBLE sleeper, but thankfully his Grandma Nickerson has been taking him bright and early in the mornings, so I can get a little more snooze in.

Abel enjoyed his first Christmas. He loved all his new toys and books, but his favorite was the wrapping paper. He couldn’t get enough of it. All he wanted to do was eat it. He got lots of goodies and we loved watching him take it all in and experience the joy of Christmas. It is so much fun having a little guy around for Christmas.

That’s it for now. More ramblings and pictures to come.

Happy New Year!

Thanks for all the helpful and encouraging comments about the frustration of jeans. I’m glad I am not alone, but sad we all have to deal with this very unfortunate issue. I would totally design them if I could actually sew. I mean, I can hem a pair of pants (had to learn that early on if I was going to save myself some money), but making jeans…now that seems a bit tough. Do I have a seamstress who wants to partner with me?

Last Sunday, our little guy starting saying dadadada. I know it technically isn’t his first word since he doesn’t really get that Seth is dada, but still this is huge for us. It is precious. He starts opening and closing his mouth before he says the word (almost like he is practicing first) and then you hear da…da…da…da… Oh, it is just music to our ears. Today, he actually turned to Seth and said dada. It was precious. Funny, how he spends every waking moment with me, but yet he says dada first. I know, it is usually a baby’s first word. It was my niece’s first word and she would call everybody dada. Can’t wait till I can hear the sweet words of mama come out of his adorable mouth.

Well, croup has struck our house again. I feel like he just got over croup. My mom tells me I had croup all the time as a baby, so he is just following in his mama’s footsteps. We went to the doctor’s today and he got some meds and the dr. said he should start feeling better by the time we leave for Boston. My Pediatrician swears that they get sick every time you are about to travel. Abel is sure living up to that. Which reminds me, if you don’t hear from me for a few days, we are taking off to MA for a whole week. I’ll try to get on, but if not…MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

I’ll leave you with this photo of my two babies. This is a typical morning in our house. Abel jumps around and harasses Allister and Allister desperately tries to eat as quickly as possible so he doesn’t have to deal with Abel’s silly antics. Abel is getting tested for cat allergies today. This will not be pretty if the results come back positive. I really will then need to post a Want Ad for Allister.

I guess I need to design women’s jeans that are made like men’s jeans. Why do men’s jeans have every size available in waist and length? If you need a 31 x36, yep, they make that size. If you need a 42×30, sure, they make that size too. This makes NO sense to me why women’s jeans are not designed this way. Do they think all women who want to buy a nice pair of jeans have long, skinny legs? So they thought they were being clever by giving us 3 options: “Short, Regular and Long” sizes available. However, just because I have a size 4 waist (at least in some stores) doesn’t mean I should have longer legs then a size 0 waist. The bigger the size the longer the pants get. Why is this? And how many size 0′s are out there? Come one, they shouldn’t even have a size 0, or the new thing is “double 0″-sorry to my readers that are a size 0, but I just can’t understand how a waist can be that small. My one thigh wouldn’t even fit into a size 0. As my friend, Elaina once said, “Size 0 sounds like you don’t exist.” Again, sorry to my tiny, skinny readers, I don’t mean to sound harsh, it just is bizarre that their is a size 0 that was created. I guess they did it to make us feel better because they have made the sizes bigger and marked the sizes “smaller” to make women feel better about themselves. Like a size 4 would probably be more like a size 8 thirty years ago. Why am I going off on jeans, because I just got back from jean shopping and every time I TRY to buy jeans I get so FRUSTRATED!!! I have short legs and those jean designers DO NOT realize their are SHORT people out there. I have to buy the “short” jeans and STILL HAVE TO GET THEM HEMMED. Hello, what are you telling me? That I am so short that you couldn’t even imagine making size 4 jeans that short. Come on designers, there are short, curvy women that DO exist, just like their are double 0 size women that exist.

Ok, enough jean talk. Thanks for letting me rant and rave about it. Jean shopping is just so frustrating!!! Can I get a “what, what” on that one.

Onto another VERY frustrating topic: My cat’s health. Guess what we discover on him yesterday? Yep, you guess it…another abscess. ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! Dr. Julie had to take care of it this time since I was not dropping another $150 on him. This time it was on his folded ear. We have had more problems with that folded ear. Other cats know it is a weak spot for him and always attack his poor, folded ear. Last night he walked in the house and Seth noticed something on his ear. He thought it was just dirt, but when I got a closer look I knew we had a bigger problem on our hands. Since Seth can not handle blood, Dr. Julie had to step in. I have also had to remove ticks from this cat since my dear hubby doesn’t do well with those kinds of things either. I always tell people if I wasn’t an organizer, I would be a nurse. Of course, that means lots of medical schooling that I don’t have, but you get the idea. Anyway, I have no idea how so much “yucky” stuff can come out of an abscess. I hope my readers never have to take care of this kind of thing. It is so fowl and don’t even get me started about the awful smell.

I’ll leave you with a happy ending….some photos of the two loves of my life: (This one was taken a few weeks ago. How precious is this sight!)

Guess who can sit up all on his own…

The famous-open mouth, drool dripping down his chin-face: (EDIT: Thanks to Seth, I forgot to mention Abel’s ONE long hair. Look closely-you can see it sticking out. We are very proud of this one piece of hair, being that it is the only visible hair he really has.) I love my bald headed baby!

Lovin’ on mom