Holiday update

We haven't been terribly busy, but I've still been neglecting this blog lately! Sorry about that.

We're still in NC, and we've had fun seeing lots of family. Here is a slide show of pictures taken so far.



Carter is having fun with his grandparents and playing with his cousins. It's a lot of fun to see the kids together. My sister and I had cousins around the same age and played with them a lot as kids, and now we both have kids the same age, along with one of those cousins!

We were at my dad's house on Christmas Eve, and then relaxed around my Mom's house on Christmas Day. On the 26th, we headed up to Mount Airy for Christmas with my mom's extended family. So there were three days of opening presents! I had suspected Carter would really enjoy opening presents this year, and he absolutely did. He opened many of them himself, and kept saying "more presents"!

He got a LOT of toys. Most of them were trucks, and most make noise, heh. He loves his vehicles, though, and he will have a blast playing with them all in the next year. I need to do a serious purge of the toys we've got, because there isn't room for everything. I swear I never had that many toys when I was little! We're going to have to ship some big boxes full of toys back to Austin. Maybe I won't open them all up at once, so we spread out the new stuff for a while.

Carter picked up a cold somewhere along the line, and it's running through him very rapidly. Yesterday he had a runny nose, then started coughing in the evening, and coughed all night. I was up with him from 1:30-2:30 while he cried at every cough, poor baby. Then this morning he seemed a lot better. He still has a rattling cough, and his nose has stopped running. I'm hoping the coughing portion of the cold will be done just as quickly.

I can't help but wonder if he is more susceptible to breathing problems because he was a preemie. He was never ventilated in the NICU and always breathed on his own, but his lungs were exposed to air two and a half months early, and that has to have an impact. Since he's my only child I have no idea if he gets more colds than normal. He's only been sick enough to go to the doctor twice in his whole life, and the pediatrician always remarks how healthy he is for a preemie. It's hard to know what's normal. :-P

We're spending a few more days here in NC and then heading to New York for a week. It's supposed to be crazy cold there, but hey -- it's January. We're going to look for things we can do with Carter inside. Any suggestions are appreciated!