Smile!..no it's not gas..

At least I'm pretty sure it wasn't gas this time, he's smiling and laughing a lot nowadays. You can't see it in this picture but there are bar thingies going over his head that have toys dangling from them and a mirror attached to one directly above him. He will lay on this thing for the longest time just staring up into that mirror talking and laughing at himself. It's so cute!!

He gets his first shots tomorrow! I was just thinking how happy he's been and now he's going to hate us! I'm going to go cry now. Love you all!!

Progress!

Well I think we've decided on a lot to purchase finally. I'm glad that we can now stop driving around Jonesboro becoming more and more discouraged as everything we liked or were even slightly interested in was either sold or way out of our price range. So it's exciting to have made a decision and agree on a lot that we want, however now that realty agent is not answering calls or returning emails. It's like they just don't want to sell anything to us. We may have to get more aggressive with this guy and show up at his office demanding attention. We just don't want to seem needy, you know? Kidding of course, I'm not above that. Anyway, we've also got a basis for our floor plan with a few modifications it's going to be great. So we have loans figured out, we know where we want to build, what we want to build and who we want to build it. Lots of great progress, just one little guy named Gary Black standing in our way. Geez!!

I was very excited when I realized the end of the search for property/ a house was nearing, then I remembered that we will have to spend hours in places like Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. picking out all of the things that will go in it. Oh and new furniture to fill the rooms that we don't currently have, but that can wait. I'm prowling the Internet now for a beautiful bathtub. Have you heard of this new fangled thing called, Bubblemassage bath tubs? It's like a whirlpool, but instead of recirculating your naked bath water and air back into the tub, it just continuously puts warm air into the tub via jets for a wonderful all over massage. Sounds marvelous!

Anyway..isn't my baby so cute?

This is NOT invisible Kristen..

Who cares about the title anyway, it's the body of the entry that you are interested in after all. Other wise I'm just going to start putting up titles and that is all.


Anywho.. this week has been eventful for us. We've actually been out of the house, to public places every day this week. Amazing!! We have visited several people at work and will continue to find places to go in the afternoon. It seems to work well in our routine to go out in the afternoon. Jack is happy, as long as he has slept the night before, and it's great stimulation for both of us. Monday Jack and I ventured to the grocery store. I was pretty nervous about going there by myself with him b/c I didn't know how to carry him (front pack, car seat???). It turns out that I forgot the front pack and had to opt for putting the carrier seat in the cart. It didn't quite fit right and was too tall for me to see over so I walked next to the cart pushing it. Not the easiest thing in the world. The baby did extremely well, cooed and smiled at my silliness the whole time. In fact, the only time he made a negative sound or face was when some old lady asked how old my daughter was. What the crap?! He was dressed in all blue, no hair bow, boyish blanket and I know that I probably said his name where she could hear it. Crazy lady. It did upset him a little though. Also, check out people are not helpful when you have a baby at Kroger. She was like um, you need to move him out of the cart, while she was ringing up my groceries. Where exactly was I supposed to put him??? We did make it through though and in the future will remember the front pack.
The next day we went to AHEC(the clinic that I was working at) to drop off some diapers that we couldn't use b/c Jack's bum is way too big for newborn junk nowadays. This was fun because I got to visit with all the nurses I used to spend all week with and find out how everyone is doing. A lot has changed there already and seems like it will continue to change rapidly as several people are about to leave or they are pregnant, getting married, etc. Everyone there was quite proud that Sam had finally let us come up, I had received several calls and texts about that and the comment was made more than once that people had just been asking if I was ever going to come back up there. So it was nice to know that I've been missed and still have a little work home there. I hope it stays that way for awhile in case I ever want to go back full time.
Wednesday was pretty fun, we went to visit Papa Jeff at work. Daddy promptly went into show off mode and took his grandson around to EVERY office or cubicle with a big smile on his face. All the ladies, as dad is one of the only two men that work in that building, agreed that Jack is gorgeous and smells good. I'm not understanding the need to sniff babies. It's weird and creepy to put your nose to someone's head, especially if it's someone you just met-baby or not. Everyone does it though. I mean I smell him every now and then, but that's because I want to make sure he doesn't smell like sweat. Which he does, a lot! Such a boy! So that was the afternoon, then since Sam was working that evening we went to his office! Can you believe it? It was fun and all the nurses and staff thought he was the cutest thing-ooed and awwed over him for a long time until Sam came out and asked if they were ever going to put his patient's back in rooms. I thought that Sam was going to throw up a little when Jack spit his pacifier out and it landed on the floor of the nurses station. He immediately yanked it up and considered throwing it away. Opted to wash it off and tell me I couldn't give it back to him until I sterilized it and then promptly dropped it in the floor again. Yeah, I bought new ones today. After that we went to my parents for a little Kat-kat cuddling. Long day! But he did so well, he's such a good baby.

Today was the Stallings' Annual Fishing Derby!! For some reason Sam always gets volunteered to grill for this event so we were kind of obligated to go and if we didn't take Jack with us I am pretty sure that we would have been tortured in some way. It ended up being fun though, got to see a lot of doctors and staff that weren't at AHEC on Tuesday. We were there for a couple of hours and outside most of the time-which was humid and ucky but Jack was so content and just watched everything that was going on. He is so alert for his age I think. Watching all the other kiddos fish got us all excited about taking Jack out there when he gets bigger.
Also today Jack and I went to Home Depot. It would have been fine had we gotten prompt service at the paint dept. instead of having to wait for 30 minutes and having someone paged 4 times! During that wait some guy was stocking aisles and had one of the forklift dealies backing it up and it seemed like he would follow us to every aisle we went to. That loud, shrill beeping was so insanely annoying. Jack at one point looked up at me (from the front pack that I remembered, see I learn) and made a sound like "owoo" which I took from the look on his face meant, " shut that guy up mom, he's driving me crazy! why did you bring me here? gosh!" other than that it went pretty well.
Tomorrow Sam has the afternoon off, so hopefully we will have some fun family adventure. Anyway-jack is calling to me.

I just want to say that Conway Twitty is magical.

sleep......please just sleep

Since I've not posted in a few days I will catch you up on the goings on of the Palmer Household. Mostly we've spent the last few days and nights struggling for good restful sleep. I obviously spoke way to soon about Jack learning the ropes of night time sleep. I've been trying hard for a couple of weeks now to stay to a good routine throughout the day of sleep, eat, play and then a regular routine at night..just like everyone says your supposed to do, still the kid just did not want to sleep in his own room for more than an hour or two. That hour or two being divided up in like 15 min intervals of course. I would go back and forth from the living room or our bedroom to cribside and just stand there. For some reason that's just what he needed to sleep was me standing next to his crib, never had to talk to him, touch and sometimes he wouldn't even be looking at me; he just knew I was there. After waking up one night with my face stuck to the crib rail I decided that enough was enough. I sat down and thought as hard as a person can at 3 AM with approx 45 minutes of sleep, " what does he need to fall asleep and stay that way without me??" We had been playing the special lullaby music since he was born and it was just not working out-I think some of the sharp notes were actually waking him up. Then we got a sound machine that plays heartbeat tones and that just creeped me out in the middle of the night and didn't do much to soothe him either. Finally I realized the difference between our room and his room is the voices from the tv, I can't sleep without the tv on. So while he's fussing and wondering where I am and what I was thinking for leaving his side, I fumbled over to the radio and turned on some good ole country music. Magic I'm telling you...he slept the best he has probably in weeks and best thing of all I got to actually lay in my own bed and not get up till he was actually hungry. He was all smiles and hardly even got fussy today!! By the way in the past week he's been to not just one public place but 5-to include walking through the mall with everyone and their brother. Everyone say "Good job Sammo for relaxing a bit!! YEY!"
I have more to post about, but I have to go right now because the silly teenage realty show I'm addicted to just came on and I can't miss it!!!

any advice?

Sam and I have decided that it is time to buy property and start building a new home, which means putting this house on the market. I'm kind of nervous about all the finances (mostly because I've never done anything that big) and the steps that go in to getting a house ready to sell or settling house plans. Anyone have any advice on the topic?

too early for separation anxiety?

Last night we decided to let Kat-Kat and Papa Jeff babysit so that we could actually go out. All went well while he was there and the outing was productive for me as well. We went shopping and apparently having a baby did something for my figure because I've never put on so many pairs of pants that fit, let alone the shirts that didn't look like empty bags in the chest area. Anywho..the point of the story is that once we returned to Mom's house Jack decided that he needed to nurse-though he had just had a bottle. The fussy baby act continued once we got home and he was not happy unless he was nursing or laying just at my chest sleeping. Anything else was less than acceptable and he let us know by crying the most horrible cry I've ever heard. Fast forward to 3 AM and the two of us are awake, I've given up on him sleeping in his own room at this point and have him laying in the little crib in our room. He's all nice and sleepy, quiet and barely able to keep his eyes open at this point. That is until I move out of his line of sight, then the crying continues. The only way I could get this child to sleep and stay sleeping was laying with my head at the foot of our bed and my arm stuck through one of the slats in the crib to put my hand on his stomach. I laid there for over an hour with him clutching my hand with both of his until he finally relaxed his arms. So one hour of sleep later and of course it was time to nurse again. I think I jinxed myself with that crazy post yesterday...routine...HA!