Saturday, September 21, 2013

Matthew's Website

With 5 days left until the 6 year anniversary of Matthew's due date, I went to visit his website.

I discovered it wouldn't connect.

I did a google search.  Perhaps, they were having technical difficulties.

They were.  The difficulties were that the owner/creator of babyhomepages.net, the website I used for Kaitlyn and Matthew's first websites decided to charge everyone their fees, close down the site and take off.

It's gone.  Most cannot get any content back.

I'm fortunate in that there is a "way back machine" website that shows you cached versions of websites.  I'm doing my best to copy and paste it into word for now so that I can create a new website in his honor.

I cannot get back any of the pictures that were stored there.  Or the captions for each one.  Or any of the comments.  Many of the story pages are gone.  Fortunately, most of them are backed up on this blog already.

But.  I'm disgusted.  Annoyed.  Sick to my stomach. And incredibly angry.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

9 months!!!

I don't even know where to begin.  She's just so big.  So grown.  So on her way towards being a toddler instead of my sweet cuddly baby.



She has a face that you cannot say no to.  She hides her little face and smirks the sweetest way.


Charlotte is up to 18.4 lbs and    inches.  Her hair is growing like crazy and has this pretty ombre look.  It's getting blonder.  I think.  It's so hard to tell sometimes.  Her eyes are as blue as the brightest, prettiest sky and I wish I could get them to look in pictures even close to how they look in real life.



She loves her family so much.  She screeches so loud when daddy or one of her big sisters walks in the room.  She gets so excited when her little cousin is here.  She loves her grandparents and aunts and uncles and goes to just about anyone.



Charlotte is so fast.  She can crawl the length of the house in under a minute.  Which means the floors constantly have to get cleaned because absolutely everything goes in her mouth.  Everything.  Every string, every pebble, every possibly anything.  And Samantha is of absolutely no help.  She is pulling herself to stand and taking steps while holding onto things.  She is standing on her own for 30-45 seconds at a time.  A few times she has tried to walk off without holding onto anything.  She falls.  She hasn't realized yet she can't walk like the big girls.  But soon she will.  Soon she will toddle, walk, run and jump.  She'll be unstoppable.



Charlotte has said a couple of words.  Only if you ask Kaitlyn though.  Kaitlyn swears she says Bye and Mama.  I disagree.  I think she makes noises at the same time that would make sense for them to be words.  It's a bit of a debate in the house.



Charlotte is a hider and a pointer.  She is always pointing at something or someone.  And if you look at her, she'll hide her face into the carpet, or couch or me or anything for a moment.  It's so heartwarming.



Charlotte is a great eater.  She is still nursing (which is about a month longer than Samantha and a month shy of Kaitlyn), which is great.  But, I'm not going to lie, while I want to get to a year, we do supplement with one bottle of formula a day and I do kinda look forward to weaning at a year.  She loves pretty much all foods, but goes insane for a cracker.  We've been transitioning to fewer baby foods and more table foods.  She really likes bananas, avocados, chicken, cheese and little pastas. 



She still only has two teeth.  But, some nights, I think she's working on more.  Her sleep goes back and forth from great to horrible.  Last night, for example, she went to bed at 9 and didn't wake up until 4:15 and then went right back to sleep after nursing.  But, the few weeks before that, she was up every hour to nurse.  So, time, hopefully will help her have better sleep habits!  At least I can say we weaned from the paci.  We've never had a baby with a  paci so old, but, one day I just didn't give it to her and there wasn't an issue.  And I didn't go back.

She has started dancing.  All the time.  I love it.  She loves it.  She loves music and everyone singing to her.  She hates the car.  Still.  But, loves the ergo.  And baby dolls.  She's just such a great baby.