Surf City Sink or Swim!

We had an awesome time vacationing with family at Topsail Island this week! Unfortunately, the sun decided to take a few days off with us! While it was wet and rainy for the majority of our stay, we did manage to squeeze in a few fun moments in the sun-there's nothing quite like the beach for a few relaxing days off! See...

The blustery weather kept us indoors a lot, but we sure did enjoy our beautiful ocean front beach house! Puzzles, Wii dancing and good food and great views kept us entertained in the rain. Chris was with us for just a few days, but was excited to squeeze in some skim boarding and colorful kite flying! Hopefully we can do this again next year and get more use out of our sunscreen-in any case, a very smiley Evan and I enjoyed spending some quality time with family-grands and great grands too. :-)

A big thank you to mom and dad for a wonderful time at the beach!

Evan at 5 Months...Already?!!

 I can't believe my sweet baby boy is 5 months old today! Where did the time go? We are miles and miles away from the lovely, limp, always sleepy and wholly dependent newborn we took home from the hospital. Evan is such a big baby now-super alert, smiley, standing, sitting(almost) and gagagooing all the day long. He is so much fun! Just recently he's been grabbing out for everything within arms reach-including Piper! He is ticklish, very social and loves being around people-such a ham already!

Toys are becoming funner by the day now as he becomes more and more interactive with them. And true to the boy within, it's no surprise that balls are most captivating. Also captivating his attention like none other are the "Backyardigains." We don't watch too much tv, but he loves him some backyardigans. We like to sing songs dance around the living room with them-Pablo the penguin is his favorite. :-)

Lastly, while Evan is a sweet & snuggly mommy's boy through and through, no one can make him laugh quite like Daddy. :-)

(Warning: The rest of this post is going to be terribly boring-I just wanted to write these details down for my personal reference and remembering.)

Our schedule at 5 months:
To sum it up, Evan is nursing every 3.5 hours, and takes two good naps a day with one shorter, less structured snooze towards the end of the day. The biggest change to our routine has been the addition of solids, which I've added at more traditional "breakfast, lunch & dinner" times-rice cereal at breakfast, a fruit at lunch and a veggie at dinner. The introduction of solid foods hasn't changed our nursing at all, but rather acted as an extra complement-a cherry on top if you will. :-) Evan just LOVES to eat, and is giddy even at the sight of his highchair. Here's what a typical day looks like...

7am-Rise and Shine!
7-7:30am-Nurse, topped off w/ a spoonfull of rice cereal
8am-Morning walk outside folllowed by playtime
9-10:30-Morning nap
10:30-Nurse
10:45-noon-Playtime, errands
12:00-A fruity jar of "Earths Best" organic baby food for lunch. Apples this week-pears next!
12:30-2pm: Afternoon nap
2pm-Nurse
2:30-4:30 Playtime
4:30-5:15ish Last little snooze of the day
5:30-Nurse
6ish-A veggie for dinner-so far Sweet Potatoes take the cake!
Then playtime(and bathtime) until...
7:30-Bedtime!

Of course work, church, and life in general often shake up the schedule a bit-and that's okay! Now that our routine is pretty well established, I can kindly welcome flexibility into our day...you know, as long as it doesn't interfere with naptime. ;-)

Happy 5 months little love of my life!

Toes for breakfast

beat scrambled eggs anyday!

Peas Please

The picture says it all...

Going on week 3 of rice cereal and day 2 of peas, I'd say solids are going swimingly! No allergies or irritations to speak of so far-save the general ooey gooey grossness that comes along with baby food. My baby boy has been to the swamp and back with these peas-Shrek anyone?

I'm seeing lots of Oxy Clean in my future...lots and lots.

Lessons Learned

This week, we learned a few lessons around here....

Lesson #1. The jig is up. It's official, my name is not Bobby Flay and I canNOT cook chinese food. This one is best left to the experts-thank you Jumbo China for saving the day.

2. On the foodie note, Chris is a bad bannana picker. ;-)

3. Ponytail holders are a mommy's best friend, and I should have one handy in every room of the house.

4. Evan may be the cutest little camel ever!

Orange is definitely his color. :-)

Re-enactments

So, before these Scott family happenings become old(-er) news, I present to you some random "re-enactments."

A few weeks ago, a very special package arrived at our doorstep. And this apple isn't red!
That's right folks, we got a brand new, totally awesome MACnificent computer. Chris has been saving up for this computer for a while now and after graduation, we were finally able to order it. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty amazing. Plus, I got a free Ipod out of the deal thanks to Apple's back to school specials! :-) We are so thankful to have a reliable family computer to enjoy for years to come.

On the house front, were officially on the market for rent. After a sit down with our realtor, we decided that because of the current real estate slump, the most advantageous thing for us to do at the moment is to rent-to wait for the market to turn around, and continue to build equity. While this wasn't the ideal situation, we're happy to move forward and hope to find the perfect renters-and soon!

Soon because Chris is now officially working in Wilson-woo hoo! Perhaps the most exciting new happening around here is that Chris started his job with BB&T a few weeks ago and is really enjoying it. We can't wait to make the move and finally be closer to our church, our family, and work. :-)

Last but not least, we narrowly escaped a new car payment in an unfortunate turn of events with my car. Long story short, we've been having an ongoing issue with the beloved Honda of mine, but it finally decided to kick it, and on Chris' first day of the new job no less! Almost 2 weeks later, I'm happy to report that it found the will to live again! Having the car towed and driving a rental during the many days it was in the shop was definitely not a welcome surprise, but hey life happens! In the end, I'm thankful to have a safe, dependable car to drive now-and no car payments certainly cushion the blow a bit!

Cars, computers, new jobs, renting the house...I think that covers the catch up. Tomorrow were headed to Campbell, my Alma mater, for a wedding!!! :-) No doubt many pictures to come.

Hello Highchair

On Saturday we ventured to "BabiesRUs," armed with anxious anticipation and a google of knowledge on highchairs and feeding firsts. With great excitement we fandangled the very big box into our (not so big) car and headed home to assemble Evan's brand new adventure-a highchair!

I'd originally intended on waiting until Evan was at least 5 months to start solids, but with some encouragement from our pediatrician at our 4 month well baby, we decided to go ahead and start, very slowly, at 4 and a half months. Rice cereal and Gerber spoon in hand, and outfitted with new colorful bowls just for the occasion, Evan took his very first big boy bite-and loved it!

Such a big boy!

Happy in his highchair!

We're now on day 3 and he's become a quick pro-no surprises here, this boy loves to eat!! I thought for sure that he'd be more interested in chomping the spoon instead of his food, or that he'd have trouble swallowing, turn into a major gassy pants or just downright be not interested-of course my worries were all for naught, and I'm happy to report we've run into none of the above!  I'm so thankful to have had a great experience meeting this new milestone with my growing baby boy, one teaspoon at a time. :-)

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Family Ties

It seems that life has taken over for a bit and pushed the blogging to the backburner. I hope to catch the blog bug again soon-new things are happening everyday and I've got so many updates. To start, we've been happy to have some good family time over the last few weekends. This past weekend, Evan and I took a trip to Goldsboro to celebrate my dad's birthday...

and the weekend before that Chris' mom and sister took a trip to NC for one last visit before Paige's big college debut.

Yay for family :-)

Posts to come...Chris' new job, broken down car, one apple that is'nt red, happy house renting and more!