Thursday, June 12, 2008

Week one of NC vacation

We're back! I meant to update this earlier, but I came home from NC with a cold and haven't had much energy for anything but the basics. Fortunately, Carter doesn't seem to be getting it. Yay for all those lovely antibodies in breastmilk!

When I last posted, we were about to head to the beach. I'll talk about that week in another post; first I want to post some pictures and videos from the week before.

My sister Nicci graduated from high school the weekend of Memorial Day, and we attended a huge party for her at my Dad's house. Here is a picture of Carter lying on a beautiful quilt that was made for him by Miss Brenda, a friend of the family and Nicci's former nanny. It's completely handmade and SO gorgeous!



Here is a video from that night of Carter with another baby. She is older and was very curious about him, but he just laid there and flailed. At the end of the video, he makes her cry! Way to score with the ladies there, kiddo. :-P



Here Carter is being held by Grandma Christian (my stepmom Barb) and Carter's cousin Emma (my sister Donna's daughter) is being held by Papa Christian.



It's so strange to look at them and write "Grandma and Papa Christian". To me, those names mean my father's parents, my beloved grandparents who passed away in 2002. It still seems weird to think of my parents as grandparents, you know?

On Memorial Day, Mom, Carter, and I met up with Carla and her son Wyatt, who was in the NICU at the same time as Carter. I got to know Carla and her husband Doug while our babies were in the NICU, and it was so great to be able to talk to people in similar circumstances. They're very sweet people, and their little boy Wyatt is precious! He was born about a week and a half before Carter was, and under almost identical circumstances.

Carla and Wyatt:



Me and Carter, who spent much of this day asleep:



Wyatt and Carter, almost the same size! Again, Carter was pretty much asleep, while Wyatt was curious and alert.



It was really amazing to see them again, and to see that they are both doing so well. There's something about being in the NICU that makes the babies seem eternally fragile and tiny in your mind, and seeing how big and happy Wyatt was was really great. They look like just normal babies now. You'd never know what they went through just by looking at them.

Here's a video of Carter and Wyatt together.



On Tuesday I had lunch with Erin,my best friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in nearly a decade. She lives in New York now, but just happened to be in town visiting her family at the same time, so we got together for lunch. It was great to catch up with her, and to learn that the core of who we were in high school (liberal, free-spirited, independent hippie-types) was still there. Even though we live so far apart, I got the feeling that we could become friends again, which was very cool. Here she is holding Carter:



On Wednesday afternoon we did the photo session, which I blogged about earlier (last post, I think). After that Carter and I headed up to Mount Airy and spent a couple of nights with my grandparents before heading to the beach on Friday morning.

It was really fun to spend the night at my grandparents' with Carter. Even though I'm 36, I've spent time with my grandparents every summer. My grandma has said that I'm the only grandchild who's spent the night in years! I didn't want that to change just because I had someone else along, and they were thrilled to get to spend some time with Carter. It was really neat to be there with him, and also a bit nostalgic. And strange to think that the last time I'd stayed there was when we'd happened to discover my blood pressure was high, a discovery that probably saved Carter's life, and maybe also mine.

And now here we are. Carter is five months old -- where did the time go??? -- and weighed in at 12 pounds, 1 ounce this morning. He's just started wearing 0-3 month clothes in the last few weeks, and is already too big for some of them! Amazing. :-P

1 comment:

Primrose said...

I don't think I've noticed before how much Carter looks like you. :D

If you think it's strange that your parents are grandparents, just wait until you're one yourself. It's awesome, in a literal sense, but it's also really weird.

(I commented over at the LJ feed, but I'm not sure you read that, so I c/p'ed here)