I’ve seen this on a few blogs and thought it was kind of neat but thinking up 101 things sounded a little daunting. It’s Friday though, and I’m stressed a tad at work so breaking every now and then to list a few more sounds like a good idea. Please by all means, join me if you want to. I’m eager to start crossing things off.

In no order of importance…

1. Open a savings account for Dash (I just did this one today. )
2. Expand my retirement portfolio to include more than just my 401K
3. Knit a sweater
4. Go to Hawaii
5. Have another baby
6. Be happier with my job or find another job altogether
7. Improve my photography skills
8. Actually sell something on Etsy
9. Scrapbook Dash’s first year (ha.)
10. Learn to cook the spicy beef dish from Surin (Thai) that I like so much
11. Learn enough Spanish to be able to talk to some of the hispanics that live here
12. Go to Houston
13. Lose 50 pounds
14. Finish John’s Christmas stocking that I started last December.

OK, I’ll be back for the rest. I want to make them good instead of just random things that I try to think up. Although they’re all pretty random…

So I guess I didn’t mention the dog earlier except in my 10 on Tuesday post, huh? )

So Friday, John’s coming to have lunch with me and when he goes to leave there’s this young, collarless, black lab by the neon. Very interested in John and Dash. John goes and gets him some water, starts driving over, texts me and tells me what happened and sends me this picture.

How many of you just said “Aw…”? I know, he’s cute. So I tell John to go back and see if he’s still there and if he is, to put him in the backyard and we’ll try to find his owners. I’d feel horrible if something happened to him.

So he goes back, sure enough the dog’s still there. We have a big power box behind our house right by our fence, so he sends me this picture.

I know. So that’s how Mannie / That Dog / Buddy came to live with us. Still no word in the paper, we have signs up, no word from anywhere. I can’t believe someone would just misplace a gorgeous lab puppy and not come looking for him, when we lost John’s dog we flipped out, roamed the neighborhoods, talked to people, ran an ad in the paper for 4 weeks. If he’s still ours by this coming Monday, we’re just assuming he’s ours.

A friend recommended reading puppies for dummies, and I like the idea of taking him to Petco to a puppy seminar.

Oh and Dash doesn’t like him. He likes the thought of him. He likes to watch him from inside. Mannie is too jumpy for him though, as soon as he jumps up anywhere near him Dash flips out and the only solution is to take him far away from the dog. I’m sure when the puppy stops being a puppy, Dash will love him, we went to a picnic and there was a dog there and Dash was nuts about him.

So I’ll keep you all posted. Really, he’s a nice dog. A little mischievous but just a puppy. He’s nuts about John and John’s nuts about him and he’s growing on me too. Its funny that Lucy just dropped a notch from the most high maintenance pet to the second most.

1. We saw Indiana Jones yesterday. I really liked it but a lot of people didn’t. I heard mumblings of it being a little far-fetched but they’re all far fetched, aren’t they?

2. Ironman is next on my movie list.

3. Followed by the Zohan movie with Adam Sandler. )

4. It’s POURING down here. It’s been raining since 5 last night. Gloomy but much needed.

5. Did I post about the dog? I think I did. Hm. He showed up on our doorstep Friday afternoon, sweet little black lab puppy. No one’s claimed him so he’s ours for the moment. Two cats, a bird, several fish, a toddler and a very excited black lab puppy.

6. Puppy casualties thus far - beach ball, plastic ball (the big swirly ones you get at Walmart) planter box of mums, green frog baby swimming pool (sorry, Dash) and big blue swimming pool (he bit the inflatable ring. John was able to patch it though.) I’m sure there’s many more to come.

7. May has a TON of stuff going on. Roz’s birthday, Erin’s birthday, Patrice’s birthday, Dash’s birthday, Mother’s Day, on and on.

8. I finished my first pair of socks. Yay! They’re for Dash, but still. They’re actually the same SIZE. ) I’ll post pics one day…

9. I ordered a new camera lens, a 50mm f1.8. The f1.4 was almos three times as much and a lot of buyers of the f1.4 recommended the f1.8. So we’ll see how it goes. I think it was 125 with free shipping at best buy. The f1.4 was 329.

10. Has anyone checked out the “Pounce” option on etsy? SO my favorite bored-out-of-my-mind thing to do. Go to “Buy” and like the third option down is pounce. You can set it for either recently sold or undiscovered, and each time you click it it will show you the three most recent sold items on etsy. So you can see what everyone else is buying and check out the other stuff from that store. Nifty little tool.

I could go on about other randomness but I’ll leave it at 10 for now. Happy Tuesday, everyone, hope you all had a great Memorial Day…

Turn your sound on for this one…

And ignore my chubbiness and schleppiness in this one…

He loves that slide. So cute. )

I know, it’s taking me forever to post this, and I still don’t have the pictures uploaded, but I have one I can put here, just to tide you over…

Dash had his 12 month appointment yesterday, he was supposed to get the hepititis A vaccine, the last of his miningitus vaccine and the chicken pox vaccine, but he was also supposed to get his finger pricked to do some bloodwork which I was really dreading. Our little goofball baby didn’t cry at all when they did the finger prick but go so frustrated with having a bandaid on his finger that he started crying after about 5 minutes of trying to pull it off! He cried for the shots but we were armed with some mni vanilla wafers, his new favorite, so the tears stopped about a minute after they started. Then he was back to his rowdy self by the time we got home.

His 12 month stats are:

Height - 31.5″, 90th percentile
Weight - 24.5lbs, 75th percentile

So he’s doing really well. I’ll be back later with more birthday pics, I promise. I have a ton since we kind of spread it over 4 days )

I’m not one so much for letters but I am one for lists… )

Things I’ve Learned and Little Dashisms
1. This by far has been the coolest, fastest, littlest-sleep-filled year ever.
2. There really is no sound better than a baby laughing, especially when it’s your baby.
3. All of your phases, no matter how cute or stressful, fade away.
4. There is nothing cuter than your little baby butt waddling when you’re trying to crawl really fast.
5. John is a fantastic father
6. My Dad turns into mush around his grandbaby
7. Our friends and family are awesome with their love and support
8. Babies make a lot of people want to talk to you anywhere you go. And they always want to grab his feet for some reason, poor kid.
9. The way you raise your baby is your business and whatever you’re doing, you’re doing a great job. Some advice you just have to smile and nod your head.
10. Apparently hurting ourselves and shouting a bit is hysterical. So is fly swatting. And putting balls in your mouth and blowing them out like a human ball popper.
11. The best toys really are the random ones you make.
12. My heart melts when I lay down on the floor and you come over and crawl on top of me and lay your head down on my head. Sniff.
13. You are a waterbaby.
14. I’ve never seen anyone squirm during diaper changes like you do.
15. Cloth diapering isn’t that big of a deal.
16. Mulch tastes really good. And dimes. And foil wrappers off of chocolates. And chocolate.
17. If you can’t reach something and you want it really badly, you’ll throw whatever is in your hand at it, like it’s an extension of your arm. I still can’t get myself to not laugh and teach you not to do that.
18. You like oranges and strawberries like I like chocolate.
19. You’re going to get in a ton of trouble in kindergarten for knocking down what other kids build up. Grandpa builds houses out of dominoes and you think it’s awesome to plow through them. Of course, we think it’s funny, too…
20. You truly are the coolest, funniest, sweetie pie kid we could have ever hoped for. Love you SO MUCH.

That’s my verdict. What a nifty gadget.

Here’s our first video…

Turn your volume on if you can, I think I actually caught Dash saying Hi for the first time. )

The video quality on my computer is pretty good. It’s cruddy here because of uploading it to youtube, I think…

So I ordered my Mother’s Day present today…

I had no idea what I wanted and this morning I woke up and thought, “that little USB video thing!” (also known as The Flip). But the big one (that holds 60 mins of video) is like 150 bucks, pricey for Mother’s Day. Although John would like it too and will probably use it more than me…

So I go online, look around, remember I have 30 bucks in reward coupons from Best Buy so I go to their website and they have it marked down to 129.99. So I end up getting it for 103.99! Even after shipping (since it was free). Yay!

If you haven’t seen these yet, they’re handheld and they plug into your computer and upload themselves. The picture quality is supposed to be really good (better than my digital camera, I’m sure). And it’s a heck of a lot easier to get videos off of here than it is from my real video camera. So I’m excited. I think it’s going to be here Monday or so.

For the record, we’re also going to either The Greenery or the Huntsville Botanical Gardens (although I think they’re closed on Sunday, we might go Saturday) and I’m excited about that, too. ;o)

Erin is doing bedtime routines over at her blog, and instead of filling up her comment page, I thought I’d post about it here instead…

So check out her’s here…

Erin’s blog

Then let me say this. If there’s any part of figuring out what works for Dash and for us that we don’t quite have figured out, it’s this.

Man, we’ve had some bumps in the road.

1. First, Dash slept in our room, in the pack and play, in a double lined cloth diaper. So many things ended up being wrong with this its ridiculous. (not wrong in any other way than “didn’t work”)

John snores and the pack and play would shift if Dash moved at all. So both of those thigns would wake him up.

The cloth diaper just wasn’t cutting it. It would get us like 6 hours, max, then he’d wake up, I’d change him and nurse him back to sleep. I thought he was hungry but I’m pretty sure it was the cloth diaper.

2. Around 6 months I moved him out of our room, and changed to using Huggies Nighttime diapers. Both were lifesavers. He went from waking up twice to waking up once and sometimes not at all.

3. At eight and a half months he weaned completely and we switched to formula. He’d get a bottle at bedtime and that would knock him out, and he’d get a bottle when he woke up around 4, if he did, which he probably still did around 70% of the time. We could have let him cry it out here but we didn’t, because I didn’t want to, and because he was barely getting formula during the day and the extra bottle at night boosted him up into the recommended daily amount.

4. Finally, around 10 months, a lightbulb came on and we added an extra feeding around 8 o’clock (his bedtime is 9) So he eats dinner with us around 6, and then at 8, we give him as much as he’d like to eat. Usually a banana, a hot dog, and a waffle. Sometimes all of it. He’s a freaking machine. Anyway, now he sleeps through the night around 90% of the time. I think it really was a matter of him just being able to hold enough to get him through the night.

So here’s where we’re lacking. We have a hard time getting him to bed. A bottle doesn’t do it, (and I’m a little glad, I didn’t want him to have to have a bottle and we’re ditching them cold turkey in a week and a half) he’ll drink it and then roll over and stand up and giggle. Like “ha, ha, I made it!” Stinker. Rocking worked for a while, driving works everytime and John and I enjoy it. We go and get a dip cone from Dairy Queen or a frosty from Wendy’s. I know, we’re bad.

So I’m torn here. Part of me says, no, Colleen, you have to make him go to sleep on his own. And I know this would involve crying it out and I know eventually it would probably work. We let him cry it out for an hour one day though and he never, ever did go to sleep. I just don’t want his day to end that way, even if it’s only a few days. We’ve tried a few times, too, not only recently.

The other part of me says he’ll grow out of it, and I don’t mind driving being a part of our nighttime routine. He’s grown out of every stinking thing I was worried about, pacifiers, nursing, whatever. Mom used to let me lay down on the floor and we’d watch I Love Lucy together and I’d fall asleep. She said it was a good time for both of us, and I wasn’t miserable while she was establishing a bedtime routine. I still remember laying on the floor in my sleeping bag watching Mr. Ed on Nick at Nite. And now I sleep with the best of them.

So there’s part one of my possible horrendous future pitfall.

Part two is the few times that he does wake up, what do I do? It’s usually because of something different in his routine, if you can call it that. He eats early so he doesn’t want to eat again when he should eat again. John comes home and opens the garage door and he wakes up (almost ALWAYS happens. John’s started coming in the front door.) Goes to sleep in between my parent’s house and our house and wakes up and doesn’t know where we are. (ok, this might just be my interpretation of it)

I’ve let him cry it out before, and it was a mess. Think crying for 45 minutes at 4 in the morning and then not going back to sleep until 8 AM (which sucks, by the way, because I’m the one up with him from 4-8 and then I have to go to work and John gets to sleep when Dash takes a nap finally at 8…) I usually give him a bottle, which works most of the time, but I’m seriously ditching bottles next week. So, what, milk in a sippy? Cry it out for real? Drive at 4 AM? I’m still working on this one.

So there’s my summary of where we are with Dash’s sleeping habits. What helped us the most was finally figuring out what some problems were (diapers, pack and play) and getting enough food down him to hold him over the 12 hour long-haul. You know how it is when you wake up at 3 AM starving. I usually go get a sandwich (or cookie, usually that) and I imagine Dash would do the same if he could walk. I don’t know how strongly I feel about making him wait until the morning if he gets hungry. I’m a little tougher on him after he’s had something to eat, I’ll usually stand out in the living room for 15 minutes or so if he’s crying and see if he’ll work it out himself. And most of the time he does.

And for what it’s worth, I don’t run into his room EVERY time he wakes up and fusses around. I’ve been known to turn my monitor way, way down, too. I usually listen and if he fusses, that’s fine, but if he starts hard crying then I go in there.

And another disclaimer, I think whatever you do to get your baby to sleep well is GREAT. Seriously. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I’m pretty content with Dash’s sleeping habits, even if they aren’t perfect.

Sorry I’ve been MIA, I’ll get to that in a sec…

I mostly wanted to tell everyone that Roz’s birthday is tomorrow! Happy Birthday, girlie! Hop on over there and wish her good times…

In other news, I’ve been swamped at work which is my key blogging time. Sorry for the absence. We got our annual reviews and mine was fine but he noted on there that we needed extra effort and commitment (read: working longer hours) as we get to the end of this thing we’re working on and frankly I’m not up for it. I can barely get my butt in here for the 8 hours I work now.

So, I started looking around and like the day after the guy from a job in Decatur that I had looked into in like November of last year sent me an email and said they were hiring again and wanted to meet with me, blah, blah, blah. So I think I’m meeting with them Monday. Their company is 5 miles from my house, my company is 23 miles, and it took me 12 minutes to get to the Decatur one compared to 30 to get here. So I could save a ton of gas and a ton of time. I think the benefits will be the same, I’m worried about the job security because it’s a start up company but they’ve been in business for 4ish years now. So we’ll see. I’ll keep you updated.

In other news, Dash’s party planning is going well, I sent out the invites yesterday (I know, late) We decided to skimp on the decor in favor of beer and food. So it should be fun. So we’re T minus 2 weeks now, and I’m freaking out by the day.

Here’s a pic because I know I’ve been lacking, warning, baby bootie ahead.

This one is taken with a flash, but it turns out my bathroom has PERFECT afternoon lighting. Why didn’t I figure that out a year ago? Oh yeah, because the blinds are always down because its HOT in there. So I think this will be the site of our smash cake photo shoot. I have a hat for him that I love so much that Dash loves not so much. So hopefully it won’t end up in the cake.