All things Camden

Camden is 9 months old today. Where does the time go? This boy is light of my life. I am so in love with him, so in love. And he has such an awesome dad! I love to watch the two of them together. I can ell I am going to have my hands full with the two of them as Cam gets older. They will conspire against me. I've had a lot of random Cam related blogs floating around in my head lately, so in honor of his 9 month semi-birthday, I am going to post them all at once.

Names I call Cam - This kid will be lucky to ever know his real name
Cam Bam, Camaloo, Cammer Bammer, Bam Bam, Little Man, The Boy, Chubba Bubba, Tubbers, Worm (short for silly worm or wiggle worm), Wiggles, Big Guy, Bubba, Cowboy, Cama Lama Ding Dong, Cama Lama, Cammers, Calabama, Goose, Moose, Happy, Smiley, Handsome, Handser Pandser, and the most common - Cam.

Kid Funny
Cam says a few words very clearly. The other day I was cleaning his room and putting away his mountain of clothes (the boy has a ton because Mom is an eBay addict). I just bought him all the 12-18 month stuff because he is growing out of all his 6-12 month items and I didn't realize quite how much I had bought until it was all together in this pile. I was talking to him as I folded this Mt. Everest of clothes and I kept saying, "Who bought you all this stuff?" He looked at me and clear as day said, "Mom." Mark, in the other room, busted a gut because it's true. It's all Mom's fault that this boy has enough clothes to clothe a small country.

Changing - All the time changing
And not just his clothes because he pooped through them. He's starting to eat more solids - not baby food (veggies and fruits yesterday). He's really trying to crawl. He's sleeping better again (not through the night yet, but waking only once - knock on wood so I don't jinx myself). He's so happy. He smiles, giggles, and talks all the time. His new favorite way to be carried around the house is in what we call the Superman position - perched on Mom or Dad's shoulders with his legs kicking behind him while his hands fly in front of him. He loves his bath. He is becoming very vocal about what he likes and doesn't like. If he is enjoying something and you take him away, he cries for a bit. He's just a ton of fun!

To end with - new pictures of Cam.

Camden and his Christmas stash



Happy Smiley Cam. My brother says he has never seen a picture in which Camden doesn't look happy. Those pics are rare.


Camden just chilling out.

Thanks for indulging me in all things Camden this morning!

Revamping my resolutions

I pretty much suck with New Years resolutions. I already failed at the whole diet thing and we're barely 3 weeks into the new year. So I decided to take small steps instead in terms of weight loss. I really need to get the weight off, not just for vanity reasons, but for getting pregnant reasons as well. I ovulate better and respond to fertility medications better when I am eating well and losing weight. Since we're starting to think about ttc again, I need to get back to eating healthy. I fail when I try to change all at once, so here are this week's goals (sure it's Wednesday but my week starts the day I go back to work which happens to be Wednesday this week).

1. Track EVERYTHING I eat. If I taste it, I write it down.
2. Eat at least 2 fruits and 2 veggies each day.
3. No chocolate and limit sugar to one small tiny serving each day (instead of a whole ton).

Stay tuned for next week's goals!

I've been tagged

I've been tagged by the most awesome Shelah. I'd link you to her site, but it's ultra private. You have to give a pint of blood and two chocolate cookies before you can get the secret password.

Seven things to do before I die:
-Visit Italy
-Try to get a book published - maybe a whole series!
-Have a few more children
-Go to Brazil with my husband and see the places he served his mission.
-Learn to be a gourmet cook - or at least some really cool recipes that will knock the socks off others
-See my children raised and be successful
-Get out of plus sizes once and for all

Seven things I cannot do:
-Not go more than a few day without checking my boards
-Eat any form of salad dressing, mayo, or miracle whip without gagging
-Do a cartwheel or any gymnastics
-Be graceful
-Go to bed without a glass of water on my night stand
-Not embarrass my husband with what he calls my "soft spokeness" (much sarcasm there)
-Love the city I currently live in


Seven Things that Attract Me to My Spouse(not necessarily in this order!):
-His height (the man is 6'8"!)
-His strong spirit
-Those guns!
-The way he made me feel
-My spirit recognized his spirit
-Those lips!
-The way he made me laugh

Seven Things I Say Most Often:
-Freaking awesome! (Mormon cuss words here)
-Oh my hannah
-I love you (to my husband, baby, and dog)
-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (to my junior high classes to get them to be quiet)
-It's ok (consoling Camden at various moments, especially right now when sick)
-Oops, Uh-oh, Yikes (as I trip, fall, spill, etc. with my uber-gracefulness)
-Dumb butt (in reference to my dog and whoever else annoys me)

Seven books I love:
-Harry Potter Series
-The Work and the Glory Series
-The Giver
-Jane Eyre
-Ender's Game
-The Book of Mormon
-Shopaholic Series

Seven movies I could watch over and over again: (I'm not a big movie watcher, so this is hard)
-Ever After
-Phantom of the Opera
-Tommy Boy (Thanks Mark for that one)
-Secondhand Lions
-Aladdin
-Miss Congeniality
-Most Disney cartoons

Seven people I want to join in:
-Jess
-Nina
-Sara (whose blog I've never been allowed to see)
-RickandAmber
-Mark (start a freaking blog already)
-Emily A (you too - start a blog!)
-Nikole or Nicoel (my two friends who both have their names spelled wrong and who both need to start a blog)

Where is my Magical Mother Wand when I need it? And other ramblings

My little man is sick - sicker than I have seen him in his short life of almost nine months. He started coming down with a cold on Wednesday night and it has just gotten worse. He has such a hacking cough, stuffy nose, hoarse sounding voice, fever, etc. He is miserable and sounds so pathetic. He isn't sleeping well and will hardly eat a thing. He just cries pitifully every now and then, and a few times, I have cried with him to see him feeling so bad. I am scared to death of anything bad happening to my son, and so am watching diligently for any sign of RSV or croup.

His getting sick is one of the things that sucks about having him in daycare. Since he has been going to daycare, he has caught one cold after another. On Monday when I went to pick him up, another mom was picking up her baby. At our daycare, they have children separated by age, so all the babies are in one room. The baby she was picking seemed fine, but her other son (who is not in the baby room but does expose his brother at home) had a distinctive seal-like cough. And I was thinking, nice, expose my son because you aren't responsible enough to keep your child at home with a cough like that. And now Camden is sick.

Besides being irritated with that lady, I'm a little mad at my breastmilk. Why? Because it's supposed to protect him from things like this! One of the many reasons I chose to breastfeed is to provide my son with as many antibodies as possible, especially since I knew he would be entering the daycare environment. He had exclusive mommy milk for almost 6 months for that reason. I've had to supplement as he's gotten older, but he still gets mainly mommy milk. Apparently those antibodies in my milk suck. He caught his first cold at 3 months old, before even going to daycare, and has since had so many I have lost count.

I hate to watch him suffer. It's one of those mommy things I didn't expect - that it would hurt me to see him hurt. I would take his illness upon myself if it would spare him. When I was going through the infertility, my mother told me on more than one occasion that she wished she had a magic wand that she could wave and take away my pain and my trial and make it all better. She couldn't, but with all her motherly love, she wanted to do that for me. I understand that now. I wish I had a magical mother wand I could wave and take away Cam's sickness and pain.

I realize a cold is small in the realm of sicknesses that can afflict a child. I think it bothers me so much because we worked so hard for him, waited so long. And I don't want anything bad to happen to him. My husband lost a son from his previous marriage. I watched my husband go through that loss before we were engaged. And I know from watching that and from having Cam, I doubt I could handle such a loss. So even a minor illness still freaks me out (it's the new mommy syndrome). Hopefully one day I will get over that fear, or at least get a better handle on it. But for now, could somebody please return my magical mother wand or at least tell me where to get one?

National Delurking Week

In reading other blogs, I have discovered it is "National Delurking Week." Don't know who started it. I just know it's out there. So if you stumble upon this blog, please delurk and leave a comment!

Is this a compliment?

One of my best friends just told me that, "You are facinating in a side show freak sorta way."

Should I take that as a compliment?

I'm being stalked

By my own husband!

He just called me at work questioning some comments I had made on other blogs. Apparently he followed some of the links on my side bar to other blogs I visit. He knows me well enough to know what kind of entries will get me to post a comment. So following his instincts, he read some of my comments and now I need to clear the record.

First of all, not all men are stupid. Just some of them. My husband is not one of them unless he is blog stalking me or watching movies from the 80's.

Second of all, he, NOT ME, put up AND took down all our Christmas decorations all by himself. I was too busy shopping on ebay to be of much help.

Now I have set the record straight.

Randomness of the Day

I'm such a good mom.

My son is sitting here chewing on one of the dog's toys and I am letting him. Yup, that puts me up there for Mother of the Year. It's actually kind of cute. Camden chews on it for a minute and then hands it over to Tai Beaux (our Shih Tzu) and lets him chew on it for a minute. It's great how he's learning to share at such a young age.

Who taught my 8 month old to read?

Ok, so he can't really read, but somebody must have read him my "Melancholy Mother" entry because he has decided to start doing everything I said he wasn't yet doing.

For example, he is finally eating Gerber Puffs and not making a face of death. He puts them in his mouth himself! While he doesn't love them, he will eat them. That's progress on the solids front.

He finally rolled from his back to his tummy. Yup, 8.5 months old today and just barely doing that. He's rolled from tummy to back for months, but only this week has he started making it back the other direction. Now he does it repeatedly, entertaining himself for hours by rolling back and forth.

He's trying to army crawl. He can't quite do it, but he is sure working on scooting around. He's also trying to pull into a standing position and get himself into the sitting position by himself. Overnight he turned into a little gymnast who loves exploring what his body can do.

I think he might actually be getting some teeth. Again, 8.5 months old and no teeth. But he is being fussy and his gums are bulging, so maybe in the next few weeks we'll actually see teeth. Then we'll see how fun breastfeeding becomes!

I guess somehow Camden must have found out a bout my last entry about him and is now out to prove me wrong and grow up even faster. Maybe just posting about what he is not doing here makes him want to do it. Let's try an experiment. Camden doesn't sleep through the night yet. Will whoever read him the last post read him that line and see if he'll prove me wrong again? One can always hope.

Hand over the Chocolate and nobody gets hurt

I'm three days into the new year and my resolutions and right now, I'd almost kill for some chocolate. One of my resolutions is to lose weight and so far, all I can think about is chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. This is not helping my weigh loss efforts. I just tore my classroom apart looking for an elusive piece of chocolate - all of which I cleared out before the break - so my craving goes unfulfilled. It's all Camden's fault. Lest you think badly of how my angel boy must be acting in order to make me crave chocolate to such a degree, let me explain.

Before getting pregnant with Cam, I went on Weight Watchers and had lost 15 pounds when I found out I was expecting. Because I had been doing Weight Watchers, I had totally kicked my sugar addiction. The first trimester of pregnancy, any processed sugar made me sick, so it was easy to keep eating healthy. Then the holidays of last year hit and along with that, a sweet tooth like no other. Along with that sweet tooth came a new found love of chocolate. You see, before pregnancy, I didn't like chocolate all that much. I ate it occasionally, but it was something I could live without. I know that is shocking to many of you chocolate lovers who cannot go a day without it, but for me, chocolate was just there - something to eat a small piece of now and then.

During the third trimester, all of a sudden, chocolate became life to me! I couldn't go a day without it. Before, if we had chocolate, I'd eat a little and Mark would eat the rest. Now I was wrestling the chocolate out of his hands. My favorite excuse was "The baby wants it." I thought the craving would go away after delivery, but nope, it didn't.

While pregnant with Cam, I gained 20 pounds and I lost 30 after his birth. I thought I was doing pretty good, until the cravings wouldn't go away. Tired combined with no will power, causing me to gain back 5 of the pounds I lost. As I realized that, I once again vowed to break my sugar and chocolate addiction with the new year.

I knew it wouldn't be easy, so I made sure to clean out as much sugar and chocolate from my house as possible. I also promised not to beat myself up if I couldn't stop cold turkey in the beginning. And I've had a few pieces of sugar here and there over the past few days when the cravings get bad - mainly Lifesavers candy. But no chocolate.

And so I sit here at school, wanting chocolate. One of my teacher friends across the hall has a stash, but I am keeping myself from going over to ask for some. I am going to make this resolution work. I will break this addiction. Surprisingly, writing this entry has taken a bit of my craving away. Maybe I should try this whenever I get a craving!

Side note from Mark: So if you should hear or read a news story that speaks of a masked woman rampaging through the chocolate aisles of the local grocery stores just smile and nod and HAND OVER THE CHOCOLATE!!