Sick of being sick

February has been a banner month of sickness in the Shaffer household. I don't remember a time when Dave and I were sick so often. Carter has been sick a lot too, poor baby, but he's been a trooper. His pink eye lasted about a week in early February and right when we got over that he had a stuffy nose for a bit. Then last week Sunday he started waking up at night and crying like crazy. We thought it must be teeth and did everything we could to soothe his gums. A few days later with no luck calming him down (and very little sleep) we took him to the Dr. and found out he had ear infections in both ears. (Happy 6 month birthday!) He's been on the antibiotics for 5 days now and he has drops for pain. He's sleeping like normal again and seems to be pain free. We feel horrible we ignored his poor ears for 3 days before taking him to the Dr., it's so hard to tell what's wrong when he can't tell or show us!

We hope that March brings some relief and some decent weather. Carter's 6 month appointment is this Friday so we'll have some new updates on weight, height and if he's over his ear infections very soon!

Not Quite Crawling...

We have been "practicing" our crawling a bunch lately...which consists of us putting Carter on his tummy, placing toys slightly out of reach all around him, and encouraging him to move to get the toys. He pushes way up on his arms as you can see from the pictures and sometimes he can even get one knee pretty close to underneath him. But that's the full extent of the crawling for now. He moves his legs around a lot (like he's swimming) and he seems to be concentrating hard to get those toys. He really likes to do this game too!

Other recent pictures...

Curls!!

Mr. Personality

Carter's personality is really emerging now days and it's so much fun to see it. He is a happy, goofy, laid back baby. Not much rattles him to the point of crying lately. Dog licks him in the face, no problem. Going to daycare, no problem. Stuffy nose, no problem (unless we try to clear it with the snuffer thing...then he has something to say for himself). Pink Eye, no problem. A new food to eat, no problem. (He eats pretty much everything we put in front of him so I think we avoided the Shaffer picky-eating trait!). Being quiet in church, no problem. Another great new thing is that when he wakes up in the morning and we're not there right away, he doesn't cry or fuss, he just talks to the mobile animals until we get him up.

He also started making this crazy new sound - kind of like a drawn out high pitched hiccup. When I first heard it I thought he was gasping for air and I think my panicked reaction was so funny he decided it's definitely a crowd pleaser. He does this noise a lot now.

He also seems very energetic and active - but this is nothing new. He goes crazy in his exersaucer - the thing almost takes off the ground when he gets rocking and rolling in it. He also finally figured out how much fun it is to actually jump in the Johnny Jump Up and he loves bouncing all over. We can tell he wants to crawl (or run) all over the place when he plays on the ground. He's itching to move but just can't seem to get his limbs to cooperate yet. He also loves to stand and play...he still buckles after about 30 seconds but he's getting pretty good at it!

Here he is practicing his standing.

His "I'm too cool to smile" face.

Apparently we don't feed him enough...

Pink Eye

Tuesday afternoon we learned that Carter has pink eye. We took him to the Dr. on Tuesday due to symptoms which started on Monday evening (goopy eye). We’re not sure where he got it because he hadn’t been to daycare since last Thursday and we didn’t go anywhere with him all weekend. But sure enough, he has pink eye and it’s apparently very contagious. We had to forget about daycare the rest of this week so Dave and I have been juggling our schedules around to stay home with him. On the up side Carter seems to be the same happy boy as always – he doesn’t even notice (except when we try to give him eye drops). Not a big fan of the drops. Dave and I are busy washing our hands constantly and everything else not nailed down that Carter may have touched (I know, maybe a bit overboard but we don’t want it spreading). His eye doesn't even look out of the ordinary anymore other than a little redness on the eyelid so I think we caught it early. As my boss put it, “Don’t worry, this is just one of many things to come which will put a wrench in your normal schedule.”