Calvin loses all sin

We made the trek up north so that Jon's uncle, who is a Catholic priest, could baptize Calvin in front of our family.  The ceremony took place after the general mass so we had the entire church to ourselves.  I think that Uncle Rev. Tom gave us the "friends and family" extended version of a baptism because I don't think I remember seeing other babies' baptisms lasting as long as Calvin's.  Pretty much every part of his body was blessed and he has a super clean slate.

Considering Calvin was reaching for his godfather's beer bottle during the reception, I think Calvin was feeling a little rebellious already!

We had a great day and enjoyed spending it with our family!

Calvin pictures -- an online picture warehouse!

So, our good friends at Shutterfly have this great tool that allows you to build a website and house all of your pictures there.  My mother in law, Joann, did this when Calvin was first born and it has been a great place for her to upload all of her pictures.  I will admit, I am horrible at keeping all of my Calvin pictures in one place.  I generally just upload them to FaceBook and call it a day.

In case you can't get enough of Calvin and want to see even MORE pictures of his cutie-pai face, here is the link:


http://welcomecalvinjames.shutterfly.com/pictures

Didn't know I was raising a baby tiger cub

The title of this post is in no way referencing the Tiger Mom though I think that raising your kids with an iron fist of discipline and high expectations is awesome, I can't bring myself to put a violin in Calvin's hands quite yet.  No...what I'm referring to is the numerous incidents my 6 month old baby has marred my skin with his tiny baby claws.

I know what you're thinking -- "well if you were a good mom, you would trim his nails! there! done! problem solved!" -- First off, I do trim his nails - when he lets me.  Which is never as often as it NEEDS to be done.  Sometimes I can only get 1 or 2 nails before he pushes me away and tries to crawl/womp on his face away from me. So, what he's left with is a hand full of stub nails and super sharp nails.  Secondly, even when you do get all of his nails, now you have fresh-never-touched-anything nails.  Those are sharp too!  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Last week, I traveled with Calvin up to Rhode Island for a work conference.  It was great because my mother in law was able to watch him while I went to the ballroom down the hall of the hotel and listened to outbreaks all day.  It was a win-win for everyone!

Apparently, during the night in the hotel, Calvin managed to scratch my face- - next to MY EYE!  Aside from almost blinding me, he left a nice scratch right next to my EYE.  Am I crying or bleeding?? I don't know!?!  I had to go back to the conference on Friday with what must've looked similar to those tear tattoos that prisoners get for shanking people.  The length of the scratch was around 1-1.5 tears so people probably thought I was pretty badass.

On the plane ride back to Atlanta, I was classified as "infant in arms" because he is still under 2 years and I'm going to milk those cheap plane tickets for all they are worth.  Well, they should've put on my ticket, "dangerous baby cub in arms" because in an effort to keep him from crying and annoying everyone in my near vicinity on the plane, I let him sit in my lap facing me and play with the front of my sweater.  He was getting a little excited and scratched straight down my neck/chest.  I swear, it looked like someone cut me with a knife!  I could instantly feel what I thought was blood -- or just that clear goop that comes out of scratched skin to heal it quickly.  He ended up leaving a 5 inch red angry scratch on my chest.

He may not look dangerous in this picture but neither does the baby tiger below.  Calvin knows how to leave his mark on you!

Calvin does Halloween

Halloween is definitely a holiday when kids can be kids.  Calvin doesn't yet know the joy of running around the neighborhood and getting as much loot as possible in his pillowcase but he will soon enough.  This year was his first Halloween and it also happens to coincide with his 6 month birthday -- a great age for his first Halloween.

I decided to make his costume because I couldn't bear the thought of spending >$40 on a costume for a 6 month old so I started searching the interwebs looking for something I could cobble together.  Fortunately, Martha Stewart has these wonderful ideas (or her team does) on how to make costumes out of pillowcases. We had decided to be ironic and make a crab costume for Calvin.  Jon really wanted him to be a lobster but that required more skill and time than I had available.  Crab it is!  I adapted Martha's pillowcase pumpkin costume idea, ran to the fabric store on a Saturday and created a crab costume in lickity split timing -- 4 hours or so.  That involved a lot of mistakes and re-doing so I bet I could re-do the entire costume in under an hour.  It really wasn't difficult I just had to think things through twice.

Mrs. Simmons sent some cute fleece accessories that arrived on Halloween - perfect timing!

On the way to the Brookners house for trick or treating with Nicky, Calvin had a complete meltdown in the car and cried the entire 10 minute drive.  Fortunately I hadn't put him in his costume yet so his crab was still minus tears.  We managed to let him sleep for a while before stuffing him into his crab costume.  He was really over the whole thing and we thought about taking him home.  We pushed him through and managed to get a few pics before he passed out.  Nicky was a rambunctious cowboy and it was fun watching all of the kids run up to the houses to trick or treat.

Candy face!

So cute I could gobble you up!

We swung by Dan and Whitney's house on our way home just in time for Calvin to start giggling again.  He must've known his time was almost up in his costume.  He was so good at staying in character!

Happy Halloween!