MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Walk Hard

Here is a short clip of Will doing a little walking. He has been taking one or two steps for the past couple weeks, but just this past Friday he started to take longer walks. The other clip is him having a little fun during breakfast. Sometimes he just gets the giggles for no reason...Oh and you can see his new teeth in the clip. He has a total of 5 right now, 3 on the top and 2 on the bottom. Hope you guys enjoy!!!

Need Advice

Will had his 9 month checkup a couple weeks ago and he was in the 65th percentile for height but only the 20th percentile for weight! The doctor said not to be worried about it, but I AM!!! He is so skinny, I want a fat chubby baby! I still nurse him about 4-5 times a day and then I feed him baby food / finger food 3 times a day and sometimes a snack in the afternoon. He eats good and I know that he is probably just burning off all those calories crawling all over the house, but still there has to be a way to fatten him up. So, what was your feeding schedule/menu like when you were feeding a 9-10 month old? Any advice would be helpful!

Here is a little video showing just how crazy this kid is. He was scooting along the fireplace and his little legs looked so funny I started laughing at him and he started tripping out, so I pulled out my phone to see if I could get it on tape. It's not quite as funny as the first time and starts off slow, but still pretty funny!

Almost Lost

The other night I dropped off John to get a hair cut and then baby boy and I went to Lowe's. When I came out, I put Will in the car and then realized I still had the shopping cart. I ran it up to the nearest return stall. Then, driving back to pick up John I realized I had left my purse in the cart, AHHHHHH!! I flipped a U-turn and headed back. I got to my cart and my purse was gone, NOOOOOOO! I went inside and asked customer service if anyone had turned it in and they said no, then I looked in the trash cans to see if someone had taken what they wanted and thrown the rest away . . . Nothing. I looked around to see if I saw anyone with it and then checked the shopping carts again . . . Nothing.

So, feeling dejected and my faith in society crushed, and I left again to pick up John. I started thinking about all the things I have to do, cancel my credit cards, call the cell phone company (oh my poor iPhone, John will probably never let me get another one!), get new medical cards . . . and I just felt sick to my stomach, ugh! When John got in the car he said "let's go back to Lowe's some lady just called me. She found your purse and is turning it into customer service." Woo Hoo, Hallelujah!!! A big THANK YOU to the nice lady that turned my purse into Lowe's customer service with all the contents still in it!!! I'm not sure how I missed seeing her, but oh well, THANKS SO MUCH!!

This experience got me thinking about other times in my life I had things stolen. Like in 3rd or 4th grade when I brought my Zelda game to school to trade with a friend and someone STOLE IT out of my backpack, heartbreaking, or when I was a freshman and someone stole my purse off the bleachers in PE, SO MEAN! I'm just glad that this time someone was nice and saved me a lot of trouble and stress!

9 Months

Will turned 9 months yesterday and boy has the time flown by!! I can't believe how big he has gotten! He is a little rascal that WEARS ME OUT!! He is SUPER active! He is crawling all over the place and will probably be walking soon. He has two teeth and has already chewed notches into his crib! He is such a happy baby. He smiles and laughs all day long. He does have my temper though, I see that when he gets frustrated with his toys. We have had the best time these past nine months!! Ok, the first couple of months were a nightmare, but overall this has been the happiest and funniest times of our lives!!

Older and Wiser . . . NOT!

Where does the time go? This year has flown by!! Here is a blast from my birthday past, can you pick out the differences . . .

(Looks like we have a "Woo Girl" in the making!)

Baby Moves

The past few days Will has been crawling all around. He probably would have been doing this sooner, but the poor baby has been sick the past two weeks :(

Here are two cute videos of him crawling and standing:

Crawling Baby from Angela Haralson on Vimeo.

Standing (Kind of) Baby from Angela Haralson on Vimeo.

Rick Rollin'

So I was out on youtube looking up videos about the new iPhone 3Gs and all of the sudden I got Rick Rolled.

Wikipedia defines Rickrolling as:

An Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a web link that he or she claims is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled" (also spelled Rickroll'd).

Here is a Rick roll of our president that I found hilarious!! Be careful of the Rick Roll, if it can get the president, then we are all at risk.

My Boys

Will's first pictures with all his cousins on my side of the family. His cousins love him and they all wanted to be the one to hold him in the pictures!





He loves his daddy! He gets so excited when John gets home and entertains him in the afternoon!


I can't believe how big he is getting, he was so tiny when he was born!!

Pa Pa Pa Pok O Reel

So, I listed this
Pok-O-Reel on Ebay for my dad. He's been begging me for weeks to try to sell it for him. For those of you that don't know, my dad is a junk dealer, at least that's what I call him! He has a booth out at the flea market and sells junk every weekend. He is always going to yard sales, estate sales, and auctions looking for stuff. He told me I could have 40% of whatever I sell for him on ebay. Pretty sweet, huh! I just hate Ebay, so I have to really get motivated to start listing some stuff for him.

So for the past couple of weeks every time I've thought "Oh, dang, I gotta list that Pok-O-Reel!" I immediately think of the Lady GaGa song Poker Face and so I am singing Pa pa pa pok o reel pa pa pa pok o reel ALL DAY!!! Ahhhhhhh! Hopefully I will be able to sell it soon and be rid of it and the song for good!!!

Protecting Images

Ok, so it looks like Carrie is trying to find a way to protect her images. She found a way, through javascript, to disable right clicking to stop people from copying/saving the images, but that doesn't stop people from left clicking on the image link and bringing it up and then right clicking on it. Discussions here and here. So instead of writing this up in a comment on her blog, I thought I would just do a post.

First I'll tell you how to remove the image link, then I'll tell you the bad news at the end. Oh, and here is the link to the right-click disable javascript.

After you add the image, click on the "Edit Html" tab instead of the "Compose" tab. The code that blogger added for your image looks kinda like this:

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3541/3469291724_43de7c65b0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 333px; height: 500px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3541/3469291724_43de7c65b0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>

Which gives you an image like below that lets you click on the image. If you remove the <a ... > </a> tags that surround the <img ... > tag (the text in purple), then that will make the image un-clickable.


Un-clickable image:


The bad news: So this along with the javascript right-click disable code will protect your images from some people, but not people that are tech savvy. As Jennifer pointed out, it doesn't stop people from viewing the source code of your page and getting the path to the image that way. All they have to do is view your source code and look for the <img> tag and that will give them where your image is and then copy and past the path into the browser and pull the image up that way:

<img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 333px; height: 500px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3541/3469291724_43de7c65b0.jpg" alt="" border="0" />

I did a Google search and it looks like there is really no easy way to protect your images unless you host them on your own server and do some techie things on your server to hide/protect them. Some more bad news is that the right-click disable code can be bypassed if you just disable javascript in your browser. I tested this and sure enough, it let me right click on the images.

So, anybody else have any ideas . . .

Vision Correction

Well I've been on my last pair of disposable, only supposed to wear for two weeks contact lenses for about the last two months. Last week my eyes finally had enough and my left eye started hurting and got really red. I had to wear my glasses all weekend so my eye would heal, ugh! Of course it has been over a year since my last eye exam, so I had to get another eye exam before I could get more contacts. I went and did that on Monday. I hate eye exams!! All that, "is this clearer, or is this clearer? one better, or two? better now, or worse?" I DON'T KNOW!!! They all look pretty close to me, my prescription never seems to come out right anyway! And of course, "read the lowest line you can see." Why do I always feel like a loser when I can't see the tiny lines??? I should have those lines memorized by now, but along with my bad vision I also have a bad memory! Oh, and you gotta love getting that puff of air blown in your eye!

So, they always ask me if I sleep in my contacts and I always say "um, sometimes", knowing that I sleep in them about 95% of the time and knowing that they know it too. I thought for sure that John would hear through the door the optometrist asking me this and bust through the door and tell on me, luckily he was preoccupied with Will! I had been trying be better about taking my contact out this last year, and then I had a baby. Those first two months there was no clear definition of sleep and awake, plus I HAD to be able to SEE my baby at all times (paranoid first time mother for ya), so there was no taking my contacts out AT ALL. I probably aged my eyes a couple of years in those two months. My question is, am I the only contact lens abuser out here?

Oh, and my eyes did get worse this year, my prescription changed, DANG IT! I am going to have to get lasik surgery pretty soon while I still can . . . I am resolving now to take better care of my eyes and not sleep in my contacts anymore. So far this week I have done pretty good!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I have been wearing contacts since I was 12 years old. I have a lot of eye exams stories, including some about my previous old old Chinese optometrist, but alas this post has gone on long enough!

Ok, just one more. This one time they were doing the pressure test and my eyes were watering sooo bad because I had again gone too long with old contacts. The tech that was doing the test said "you totally look like you have been smoking marijuana!" I was shocked, but I just kinda laughed. No way was I going to admit the truth, I just let her think what she wanted to . . . sad, I know.

Roll Baby Roll

Will rolled over for the first time last Tuesday!! John and I were cleaning, so I put Will down on his back on a blanket on the floor. I looked over at him a minute later and he was on his stomach!! He became a pro at it the next day, rolling over a bunch. Now whenever I put him down, he wants to roll over, which is aggravating!! Well, this weekend he learned how to roll back off his belly onto his back, so now I have a little rolly polly!!

Here is a video clip. The first part has him rolling both ways, I added the other clip on the end because it was cute, he only rolls one way in that one, but does some good tummy time!

Roll Baby Roll from Angela Haralson on Vimeo.

Today is . . .

my friend Candi's Birthday!!


I hope you have an awesome day!

Baby Steals

For those of you that don't already know about babysteals.com it is a cool website that has great deals on baby gear. They feature one steal/deal a day that is usually at least 50% off the original price. I have an alarm set on my phone everyday to remind me to check the site to see the new steal!! I first found out about babysteals by seeing it on Tara's facebook, so thanks Tara I'm addicted!!

Here is a cute Kee-Ka onesie I got from babysteals:

Will's Room

I just remembered that I never posted pics of Will's room. We worked really hard on it and I love it so I thought I would share. Yeah, I went a little vinyl letter crazy, but I had to put my cricut to good use!! The paint on the walls went from beige to baby blue, to baby blue on top and chocolate brown on bottom, to beige on top and chocolate brown on bottom before I was finally satisfied, poor John! Of course, Will has never slept in here since he is sleeping in a cradle in our room, but soon enough he will get to enjoy his colorful room!

Bumbo

Will is two months old now and I think we are finally starting to ease into this whole baby/parenting thing! He's turned from a grumpy grunting baby to a mostly happy baby! He likes to smile a lot after he eats and I finally started hearing all those coos that people talk about. He loves to have conversations and is constantly kicking his legs and moving his arms. He is such a wiggle worm! Oh, and he is finally sleeping much better at night! Hurray!

I bought a Bumbo last year at the consignment sale thanks to my friend Candi who said it was a great thing to have. I didn't even know what it was!! Well, we decided to pull it out today and see if Will would sit in it. He loved it and it was so much fun to watch him that we thought we would share!


!Bumbo from Angela Haralson on Vimeo.

Buddies

My friend Jessie and I had babies about 2 weeks apart, so here is a pic of the two little guys (Cole and Will)! Hopefully they will be best buds as they grow up. Nick and Jess, please don't move any farther away than Atl!! It's been so fun to go through pregnancy and the newborn stage at the same time with a friend!

Homemade

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!
My choice. For you.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It’ll be done this year. {Translation: you may be waiting a little while}
4. You have no clue what it’s going to be … it may be cards, vinyl lettering, a bookmark, something knit or crocheted or a complete surprise to you (and me!) … Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
6. Most importantly, you must offer the same deal on your blog - the first 5 people to comment on your blog (or if you do not have a blog, facebook) get something made by YOU! If you’re not the kind of person that wants to make something tangible for others, how about some kind of service for them, any type, any size...

Snow Day

It snowed here on Sunday, which was so crazy because it was pretty warm the day before. I couldn't resist getting Will dressed up and snapping some pics outside, but he did not like the cold, so we were only outside for about a minute!

The snow was beautiful and I took a bunch of pictures, because who knows when we will see it again! My dogs went crazy for the snow, they loved it! They ran around and around the yard playing in it!

A Name and a Blessing

Will's blessing day was last Sunday. I have been thinking and dreaming about this day for a long time! John gave him a beautiful blessing and we were so happy that some of my family and our friends could be there. We only wish John's family could have been here, but we are so excited for John's mom to come and visit later this month!! Since my family are not members, I was so excited for them to come. They really enjoyed it and thought it was so special!! Most everyone came over later for lunch. It was so fun, but I was exhausted at the end of the day! I'm sure John was too, he did all the cooking! Oh, and thanks to Jessie for the orange fluff recipe, it was a big hit!! Here are some pics from the day. Thanks to Candi for taking such great pics!

Grumpy Baby

Will is almost six weeks old now and is turning into a grumpy baby!! He started making this grunting noise when he was about 3 weeks old and he does it all the time now, where are the coos at LOL! No, he really is a pretty good baby, especially during the day, and especially when other people are around. He still fights sleep at night and doesn't sleep well, but hopefully that will get better with time. He does get some major boogies in his nose that we have to suck out with the nasal aspirator. Is that normal? I hate doing it and he screams so much, poor thing! The past couple of weeks have been tiring, but fun, and Will gets cuter and cuter everyday. I have about a million pics on my phone, because I snap pics of him all day long and email them to John at work! Here are some pictures we have taken over the last couple of weeks.

He always has to have a hand up by his head or face, just like in the womb!!

This is not a social smile, as they call it, but one I guess brought on by gas while he was in a milk coma!

Hope I Win

Carrie Stroud is giving away a free photo session on her photography blog, check it out:



I love her photos, so I hope I win!! Well, I hope I win this or the dream home on HGTV, fingers crossed!! :)

Exhausted!!

We had our baby!! William Edward was born on Jan. 9th, weighing 6 lbs. 7 ozs. He is beautiful and sweet and we are so very happy!! I've been too exhausted to post any pictures until today. I think I've been averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a day!! I will write more and post more pictures when I get some more sleep!! :)



Here is a link to the hospital photos also:
http://www.our365.com/NewbornPortraits/BabyDetail.aspx?birthid=f076fd86-7871-4ba5-ac19-41e506048684

Almost Done

For those of you that don't know, I'm not in the hospital anymore. My doctor let me come home for Christmas and my fluid levels actually stayed up this time, so I've been able to stay home on bed rest. I have never loved my home more than I do now. Just not being hooked to an IV 24/7 is wonderful!!

John had the house spotless and he had pulled out and put up our Christmas decorations, so everything looked so pretty when he brought me home!! He has been so great, cooking all my meals and getting everything for me, so I can stay in bed! I know it's because he really hated always being at the hospital and he's been doing everything he can to keep me outta there! :) I feel sorry for the poor guy he has to go to work, take care of me, do all the shopping, do all the cleaning, get everything ready for the baby! Whew! Hey, does this mean I have to change all the poopy diapers as payback??

Well, I thought this baby was going to come early, so these last few weeks seem to be stretching on FOREVER!! Look what a difference 10 weeks makes in belly size. My belly finally popped out in the last two weeks. The pictures are 28 weeks, 37 weeks, and 38 weeks (today). I also cut my hair short between the last two pictures. Hopefully we will be posting baby pictures soon . . .