Thank Heavens for Good Sleepers!!

I recently discovered how much I take for granted the fact that Austin is a GREAT sleeper. Austin typically sleeps about 10 hours a night during the week and anywhere from 10-12 hours a night on the weekends. Straight through. It's wonderful!!
Until he got his first cold. He and I both had a cold two weeks before Christmas. I am not sure if I gave it to him or he gave it to me. At any rate, the poor thing was quite congested at night and began waking up about every two hours. He would then be awake for a half hour to an hour. It was AWFUL! I felt like a walking zombie during the day from feeling miserable myself and then not getting any sleep. (Luckily Nathan stayed well through the whole ordeal and he was a champ taking care of both of us.) We finally called the doctor when Austin's congestion didn't go away during the day and he stopped wanting to eat. Turns out he had a minor ear infection. We got some medicine and within 2 days or so, everyone was feeling better.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, I must give kuddos to my friend Allison, who spent all of Thanksgiving at the hospital with her little boy, Caden, who is 2 weeks younger than Austin. She was sick at the time as well, but their ordeal was much worse than the cold/ear infection we had. So to keep things in perspective, I suppose it can always be worse. But I'm very very glad that everyone in the Carr house is sleeping peacefully again.

Other exciting things in the Carr household include table food, teeth and house projects:
Table food - Austin has started eating some table food. He is turning into quite the little meat eater (wonder where he gets that from?!?) both in table food and baby food. This week he has starting eating like crazy, so I think we are entering another growth spurt.

Teeth - Overnight on the night before New Year's eve, his third tooth broke through. He has about five teeth that he has been working on for awhile, but the first of these finally came in. He is going to be very snaggle-toothed though, because the one that broke through is on the top, to the left of center. This one came in with surprisingly little fanfare (hooray!), so we didn't even realize it was there until Karie called me at work and told me it had come in! I will try to get some pictures of it but Austin is rather protective of it at this point in time.

House projects - Over the holidays, Nathan got a wild hair and pulled the carpet out of our bedroom. We were planning on pulling it out and putting down wood, so its nice to get the project started. Once he pulled the carpet out, he realized that we still needed to paint the walls before putting down the new flooring. So this past weekend he painted. Let me interject to say that I did, in fact, offer to help several times but was rejected. I think he does not believe that I have any painting skills. I am not too terribly upset by this rejection as I was able to take a nap on Sunday while the painting was in progress! We are very excited about this because our bedroom is starting to look more grown up (It was blazing yellow with teal carpet before. Icky. Believe me.) and is now going to look really really nice when the flooring is all done. I will post pictures as soon as it is finished.

That's about all the new news from the Carr house. I know the real reason you read my posts is for the pictures, so I will get some up soon, I promise.
Ta ta for now!

Lowry Park Zoo

Last weekend, instead of doing the crazy black friday shopping thing, we decided to take a trip to Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. It was so much fun! Austin was genuinely curious and looked at all the animals. We had a great time talking about the animals with him.

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.
Probably my favorite part was getting to see these two baby white tigers. They were eight weeks old and the zookeeper said that this was the first day they were out for the public to see.


There was a touch tank with sting rays, so of course we had to touch the rays!!





Washing our hands after touching the rays.


Excited to be at the zoo!


Where should we go first??


Only after taking this cool picture did I notice that the zebra is such a happy little critter....


Watching the penguins.






Here are a couple of other recent pictures.
Ready for a run in the cold!


The toy basket was empty so Tiger decided she should get in the toy basket.


Playing with my toys! Sitting like a big boy!

Just being cute!