ACTION PACKED SATURDAY

We had an amazing Saturday. It started at 2:45am when Jeff got up to go fishing with Marc out in Olcott. The salmon are running and the boys have to get up bright and early to catch them. Jeff headed out the door at 3:00. At 3:05 Carter was up and and ready for the day as well. Then at 4:00 Tucker is up and in bed with me and continued to kick me and flop all over the bed keeping me awake. So the day started a bit early. Here is my picture diary of the day.

While Jeff was catching this...

I was cleaning up this. (That is not pudding folks)
We paid a visit to the Halloween store to look at costumes. Tucker is not going to be the Joker this year, but loved the mask.
After picking Chestnuts in the front yard, Tucker found a way to bring them to the backyard. Not only is he a genius, he's a great one-handed driver too!
Marc, Amanda, & Poppy came over for pizza and wings. Then we headed out for a walk to the playground.
Amanda and Poppy on the swing set.

Tucker and Mommy on the top of the rock climbing wall. This kid knows no fear. See the top row of grips? He stands on those, I swear just to give me a heart attack.
He is currently on the top row and I am having that aforementioned heart attack.
Marc and Poppy loved the spiral slide.
And then at the very end of the night, Carter did something new. It brought quite a few tears to my eyes to realize that he isn't going to stay my little baby forever. He reached up and grabbed his bottle and fed himself the entire thing. I cannot believe it! He is getting so big.
Today we have nothing planned and I fear that if we did it would pale in comparison to yesterday.

NEURO UPDATE

After a 2 hour wait at the Pediatric Neurosurgeon's office, we found out the wonderful news that Carter is going to be just fine. He does have the extra-axial fluid buildup between his brain and its lining, but it will go away by the age of 2. Also, the neurosurgeon isn't convinced that he has a cyst in his brain at all, but maybe it is just a pocket of the fluid. So...we are going to be going back every few months for head measurements and they are going to repeat his Cat scan at the age of 2 just to check the "cyst". I was assured that Carter does not get headaches from this fluid. This was one of my main concerns because he wines a lot, but now I know I spoil him too much. And his head may get bigger over the next few months but it will go away. Thanks for the prayers and support!

FROM COMPUTERS TO CRIBS

For the past year Tucker has been very into computer games. Which is fine by me, because they are all educational. But we have been a little worried that it will inevitably lead to him crashing our laptop. We have an old desktop and a nice monitor. So we decided to get him his own desk and set up shop in his bedroom. He is in hog heaven. He feels so independent and like a big boy up there by himself, without us breathing down his neck with worry. He can do no wrong to this computer. Here he is playing a game.

Carter loves playing in his crib while I am doing laundry or putting away clothes upstairs.
That is a face of sheer happiness.
Our neurosurgery appointment is tomorrow morning so please put us your nightly prayers tonight. I will let you all know how it goes.

NEW PICTURES AND CUTE VIDEOS

Cute pictures and even cuter videos. I still can't figure out how to get my videos to turn upright. But they are worth the sore neck.

What a cutie!

Bath time is one of his favorite past times.
"I didn't break it, I swear!"
Do you think he could smile for me?
Carter loves his new net-feeding-thing. He loves it. I put a cold slice of apple in it and it really helps with his teething.




This is what Tucker does when I think he is sleeping. You can't hear it, but he is singing the "The bell on the bus goes ding ding ding" and overexagerating the "All through the town" to make shadows on the wall.

My little jumping bean!

ANOTHER WEEK GOES BY

Not much happening around here. Although Jeff's doctor felt that Jeff needed another week off of work to rest due to complications from last week's surgery. Yikes! So Jeff will be home for another week. I am going to try to get at least somethings done around the house. But it will be good to have him around, especially since I haven't been feeling well, and now Tucker is getting it. Carter continues to grow in leaps and bounds and do new things everyday. It is so fun watching him grow. Here are some cute pics from this week.

Waiting for the school bus. This is how we roll in the Morris house. Cool Dude!

STILL ON CLOUD NINE

So we are still over the moon with joy that Carter is going to be OK. We had many prayers being said for him. And thanks again to those of you who prayed for him and had many encouraging words for us. We will keep you posted on how things are going after the Neurosurgeon appointment on the 25th.

For those of you who don't already know...Jeff had a vasectomy on Friday. We had made the decision that we did not need to get pregnant anymore due to everything that we have been through with my pregnancies. This was a very hard decision for me. Jeff was on board with it from the get go, but I was even having second thoughts in the waiting room at the Urologist's office. We have decided that if we feel the need to be parents again, we would explore all of our options and adoption would definitely be one of them. But that would be many years down the road. We want to give the children that we already have, all of our attention and love. With Tucker's hearing impairment, and who knows what Carter will have to face with this cyst, we have enough on our plate for now. All of that being said, Jeff has been home since Friday. Having a stay at home husband is not all its cracked up to be. I enjoyed having some adult company during the day, but what a distraction. I couldn't get anything done around the house, and as soon as I would pick something up, something else took its place. We did have some great quality time together and watched a bunch of movies because it was free HBO preview weekend.



Tucker is still excited to go to school every morning and gives me the daily weather report as soon as his little eyes open. "Mommy it is sunny today" or "Mommy it is rainy today, I cannot play on the playground. I can go to the bike room." He is a constant source of surprise these days. I never know what he is going to say. This morning, I went into his room to wake him up, and like every morning, I opened his shades. I gave is tummy a rub and said "Wake up Tucker, it is time for school." He kindly replied "Good Morning Mommy." rubbed his sleepy eyes and said "Give me my sunglasses, it is too bright." AWWWW, how cute. Daddy bought Tucker an ant farm this weekend, so that is his newest obsession. They are quite interesting to watch. And did you know that if you put ants from two different colonies in the same farm, they will start a war. No, we did not do it. But its sounds kind of fun!



Carter is still cutting those same two front bottom teeth and miserable. I did invest in hurricane jelly for him. And he seems to like it much better than orajel. Alright, enough talk. Here are some cute new pics.

This is a face we quite often. Half Happy/Half Surprise. Eyebrows go up, smile on his face, and hands up and at the ready for balance. As if to say "Look what I just did!"

TEST RESULTS ARE IN. CARTER IS A HEALTHY BOY!

Now that we have Carter's results back and know what is going on, I feel that I can share what happened...

A few weeks ago at his routine 6 month check, his doctor showed concern for the size of his head. Well, my reaction was the same as it had been for the last 3 doctors appointments when they were concerned about the size of his head. I said "It's okay, you should see his dad's head!" Half joking. She stated that it wasn't the size of his head that was the problem, but the rate of it's growth. She showed me a normal growth curve for head circumference, then showed me Carter's. Carter's was not so much like a curve, as it was more a straight line up. She told me she was concerned about hydrocephalus (or water on the brain). So she said that we would wait a month and remeasure his head and if it continued to grow rapidly she would send him for a Cat Scan. At the time, I was thankful that I am not a super hyper mom and could maintain myself until I got home. I told Jeff about it and explained to him what we were up against and all was well. Well, after letting it soak in for a couple of days and doing some research online (which I don't suggest for ANYONE to EVER do) I really started to panic. If you are concerned about something, just check it out now. So Jeff called the doctor's office and started the ball rolling. Long story short, they scheduled him for a Cat Scan 2 days later.

My poor baby! At 6 months of age going for a Cat Scan? This is nuts. I took him by myself because if anything showed up, I needed Jeff to take the day off then, not now. They called his name and I carried him down the long hall that was going to reveal Carter's future. I know it sounds dramatic to you. But I was dieing inside. I got him out of his car seat and handed him to the tech. She kindly said OK you can have a seat in the hall. In the hall? What? Yep, I wasn't allowed to stay. But after papoosing him to the table with Velcro, putting foam blocks around his head, and taping his head foam and all to the table, she did the test in 5 minutes and came out to tell me that he was the best baby she'd ever scanned. He never made a sound. Little did she know, I was outside bawling like a baby. Shaking and holding onto his security blanket for dear life. She told us the doctors office would call us in the next couple of days.

A couple of days to a worried parent is like a couple of years. After a few phone calls to hassle the nurses at the doctor's office, and a few dozen nerves frazzled, the doctor called this morning. This is what she said; Carter does have water on his brain, but it is the good kind of water on the brain to have. Instead of having a shunt put in to redirect the fluid, his fluid will absorb by the time he is about 3 years old. HALLELUJAH!!! That is the cause for his rapidly growing head. She said that she would not be worried about it even if it was her child, BUT...but, but, what do you mean but...but they did find something else. They found a cyst in the left frontal lobe of his brain. Oh, here we go! Well, evidently this is of little concern, but she is still referring us to Children's Hospital Neurosurgery to monitor it and see what we do next. So I assume as long as it remains the same size everything will be OK. We will cross other bridges as we get there. I cannot think of anymore "what ifs" I will go crazy. The doctor assured us that it is definitely not a tumor and that the Neurosurgeon will take good care of us. We have that appointment on Sept. 25th so I will keep you all posted. Thanks for all of the continuing prayers.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Just as millions of other moms blog about their children's first day of school, so shall I. Tucker bopped down the stairs at 7:45am and said "Good morning Mommy, it is morning, I am ready for school today!" See, the only way we could get him to go to sleep the night before, was to tell him that when he woke up, he would go to school. This kid is in love with school. As we were getting dressed and ready to go, I said "Are you ready to go see Mrs. Laura and Mrs. Tracy?" and he said " And Willow?". Oh no, I thought. Willow is his really good friend, some would say girlfriend. And she graduated after summer session to move onto kindergarten. So I, in a sweet loving voice told him that Willow goes to big girl school now and he wouldn't see her any more, and I prepared for the worse asked if he understood. He got a super sad face and just said "Oh", I waited and then he said "I play with Willow?", I reiterated that he could play with her at the playground but not at school. And to my surprise, he was okay with that. So off to the bus stop we go...

Can you feel the excitement oozing from him?

Out waiting for the bus

While Tucker was at school, Carter took a nap. This was the first time he ever slept on his tummy.

As you can see Tucker is equally as enthusiastic to come home, as he is to leave.

Tucker had a great first day of school and can't wait to go back. He had tales of teachers and new kids. And he even came home with sidewalk chalk, colored pencils, and a doodle pad from the teachers.

WINGFEST 2008

What a whirlwind of a weekend! It was action packed and fun filled. We started our weekend with our family's favorite end of summer festival--Wingfest! We went with our friends Mike and Trish, and the boys stayed their grandparents house so we were free to roam. We are Wingfest professionals! We don't do it like anyone else. Instead of standing in front of each booth, giving them 2 tickets for 3 wings and savoring the flavor in bits and pieces standing in a crowd shoulder to shoulder, we do it a bit different. We brought a backpack filled with Wingfest essentials, such as; lots of water, chap stick (so your lips don't fall off from the heat), extra napkins, and trays to put about 50 different kinds of wings in. We grab the wings, a big tub of blue cheese, and some beer and head over to the picnic tables. Everyone that was at the festival was envious of our genius idea. They asked us at least 100 times where they could get a tray too. Here are some pictures so you have some idea how serious we are about our wings up here in Buffalo!

From this angle that looks like a Thai Peanut chicken wing.

It's tough work eating that many wings! Bobby from Hells Kitchen was a judge for best wings. On Sunday we went to Jeff's parents house to have dinner with her brother, Uncle Tom and his family. We had a blast! Everyone was there and we ate the best ribs ever. Jeff's dad slow cooked them over the course of two days and the meat just fell off of the bone. (Can you tell I like food? Wings & Ribs?) All of the kids swam in the pool and ran around the back yard while the adults caught up on recent happenings.

"Daddy, you are so funny!" Two of my boys
Tucker and Sidney chilled inside for awhile watching TV
Melynda loved the garden fountain.
Poppy had fun too. She got to meet a whole different side of the family.
And just so you can see my baby sitting up again. And look at big bro Tucker helping out.