Just Another Thursday Post

I'm trying to be more "on the ball" when it comes to posting the happenings in the Marshall household, but I'm a few days behind on this story... I'd like to title it "The Mauling at the Daycare".

Tuesday I went to pick Clay up from daycare (Mark was in Kentucky) and walked in to find this:
Yes, those are multiple scratches... on my baby's face! (The picture doesn't do it justice.) Of course, it looks much worse to me because I'm his mama and I about flipped when I found out what happened. My sweet, innocent baby was minding his own business, sitting on the floor reading a book when another kid came over and attacked him! (Yes, I know. That sentence was a bit dramatic.) Basically, there's a little girl in his class that is slightly (ok, very) agressive and I've witnessed her agression on multiple accounts. This was her doing!

Now as a mama I must stand up for my child and find out what they are going to do to this 1 year old so that this doesn't happen again. I asked the director and she gave me a copy of their Biting and Scratching policy... and told me that from now on, the parents of the child must keep her finger nails trimmed all the way down and they would be checked every morning she came. If they were not trimmed the parents had to do it or take her home.

I'm satisfied with this... for now. I hope that this is going to help at least alleviate the marks left on my son. I've still witnessed her pushing him down and other bad behavior. She's a big girl for 15 months... she's the same size as Clay. And poor little Clay doesn't know how to defend himself! I think I may enroll him in a self-defense class... or maybe karate...

Anyways, the scratches have almost disappeared and there is no evidence of infection (you never know what's hiding in those grubby toddler finger nails - Ha!) and, of course, Clay was acting like nothing happened. I think it affected his mama more than it did him! He was over it in probably 30 seconds. Me... it's taking a while :).

He's Growing Up So Fast

This was Clay's very first Paul Frank Julius the Monkey shirt...

We got it for him last July and he loved it! We showed it to him in the store and he got all excited about it. Since then we've bought him tons more Julius shirts and he still loves that monkey.
This morning I put him in that same shirt... it's a bit snug and is bordering on being a belly shirt, but he still got excited when I pulled it out. He calls the monkey "money" - he hasn't gotten that "k" thing down just yet. But it's so cute to hear what he calls things!As I was watching him play this morning before he went to daycare, I couldn't help but think that he doesn't look anything like a baby anymore... he's such a big boy now!I can't believe that in less than 2 weeks, he's going to be 20 months old! Wow! Time is flying fast!! I'm also coming to the realization that the dream of having the "Choo-choo Clay is 2" birthday party may not happen due to this furry creature he is in love with...
I have been researching cute Sesame Street cakes and cupcakes and there are really a lot of cute ideas out there. Now I just have to find an Elmo costume and someone willing to wear it ;)!

The Most Exciting Weekend EVER!

And that title is supposed to be read with a hint of sarcasm...

The same person that told me I wasn't updating my blog enough also informed me that my last post was not very interesting and that I needed to amp it up. Then I think there was some mention of blowing things up to give me material to spice it up... or something like that. I would love to have exciting things to write about, so if trying to calm a toddler down while he's having a tantrum in the middle of the driveway for all the neighbors to see or running away from a bumble bee that was stalking me while I was trying to get some sun and read the newspaper (that just made me sound really old) then this is the blog for you!

So, on to my exciting weekend... well, we did a lot of this...

Yes, we kicked back and watched a lot of Sesame Street... A LOT!

Then dada left us for the ENTIRE day on Sunday to go to Redneck Mardi Gras... otherwise known as Talladega where he found the "redneck of the race" before he even entered the track! (see guy in yellow tank top below)

Yes folks, this guy is wearing high tops, scrunchy socks, a fanny pack, blue jean shorts, a yellow wife beater tank top... AND he's sportin' a mullet! I hated that I had to miss this in person! He's definitely bringing the 80's back! I miss my scrunchy socks!

The most exciting thing we did today was go on a run. HOLY COW!!! My run was a lot more difficult trying to wrangle 30 pounds of toddler and however much the stroller weighed up and down hills! We made it though and treated ourselves to Sonic afterwards... me getting a Diet Vanilla Dr. Pepper and Clay getting a apple juice slush (which leads to disaster later on!).

And MY was it a disaster... and it was all due to that darn slush!
Long story short... the sippy cup it was originally in leaked really bad, so I transferred to another sippy cup... AND HE DID NOT LIKE IT! In fact I thought the neighbors might call DHR because of the fit he threw in the driveway. And what better way to calm your trantrum-throwing toddler down then pulling out the camera to get it all on video!

This is actually the tail-end of the tantrum... the beginning was much worse! But he got over it and I let him eat lunch while watching Sesame Street - which is a special treat... (DISCLAIMER: We very rarely let him eat in front of the TV).

Then he took a wonderful nap... and I was stalked by a bumble bee who wanted my chair. We've been having a bumble bee problem lately... and they like to burrow into our wooden adirondak chairs and won't go away! I was trying to enjoy the beautiful weather and read the paper and the bee WOULD NOT go away! So, he won and I went inside. (See, exciting stuff I tell ya!)

So now my child is destroying our living room, which is fine with me because I'm able to have a few minutes to type up this oh-so-exciting-post! This is a picture of the room a few minutes ago...

Oh, it's about 100 times worse now...

And to close this post off on a good note... my little baby can be pretty sweet... most of the time!

Hope everyone had a fun and exciting weekend like we did!!! Off to check on the monster (I hear the ball pit being drug across the den floor) and put the Party Pizza in the oven for dinner (Betty Crocker is so jealous!). Have a great week!

My Fitness Endeavor

First, I'd like to mention that my husband informed me the other night that I was not posting often enough to my blog. Yes, I know... and I'll do better, Mark.

Now, to the title of my post... for the last 4 weeks I've been doing a running program called Couch to 5K. This program is basically a beginner's running schedule that is designed to get you running 3 miles in a matter of a couple of months (or 9 weeks). I'm starting week 5 today and so far I'm loving it! I am NOT a runner and never have been. In fact, I HATED running... until I started doing this program. You basically alternate walking and running, gradually increasing the time you run. This week I will run a 1/2 mile (5 minutes) and then walk 3 minutes and will repeat that 2 more times. I've downloaded an app to my iPod that tells me when to run and walk. I don't think I've ever stuck to a workout program longer than a couple of weeks, but for some reason, having that app on my iPod, has made me stick with it! The program has you running 3 times a week, but I feel like I need an additional one in order to keep up with losing some weight.

And in the process I've lost 5 pounds my first 4 weeks!!! I haven't even been dieting - I DON'T diet... it's doesn't work for me and I won't stick to it. I'd much rather work my butt off and be able to eat like normal (and have my Dr. Peppers on the weekends!).

If you are interested in see what this program is all about you can go here.

So, what are we doing this weekend?? NOTHING! I've got to make it to Publix sometime because just about everything my son loves is a B1G1 this week and I've got a ton of coupons burning a hole in my pocket! The hubby is going to Talladega on Sunday so it looks like a fun-filled Sunday of trying to find something to entertain a toddler. I'm just thankful that it's only supposed to rain tomorrow... we'd go CRAZY cooped up in the house all by ourselves!

Have a great weekend!!!!

Please, Please, PLEASE Pray!

I just found out from one of my aunts that my cousin, Jay, who has cancer has been moved to the ICU and they may have to intubate him. He's been battling an infection that is causing a high fever and the doctors are having a hard time bringing it down. He can't take certain medicines because on top of cancer he's got a bad gall bladder and some stomach issues. His white blood cell count is extemely low, which is typical of someone going through aggressive chemo.



This is such a terrible turn of events because just last week we were celebrating the fact that his largest tumor had shrunk 75%! He had been on the chemo for 7 weeks and they did the first scan to see how things were going. They told them to not get their hopes up since the first scan may not show that much improvement... but I think the largest tumor shrinking 75% is an amazing improvement!!


Please pray for him and his family and pray that the doctors can rid him of this infection so he can get back to fighting! Thanks!!!!

I stole this picture from Facebook, but I think it's adorable of Jay and his little girl, Camille!

Photo Friday

Very rarely do I capture a sweet, quiet moment of Baby Clay (unless I take a picture of him sleeping), but this morning before he went to daycare, he managed to sit still for 1.5 seconds and allow me to take this picture of him.

I could just eat him up!!! And then he attacked the blinds on our window right after I took this picture!

Nothing wild and crazy planned for this weekend. Just a quiet weekend hanging out with my little family with a boat ride sprinkled in here and there. I do have to get new tennis shoes and, believe me, that is going to be quite a feat! I HATE to buy new tennis shoes. Tennis shoes are like your favorite pair of jeans... they are the most comfortable when they are broken in and well-worn. My tennis shoes - well, let's just say that they are now so broken in that they are cutting into the back of my heels so I have to wear band-aids when I run. The shoe strings are also on their last thread... I have to be careful how hard I pull them when I'm tying my shoes so that they don't break! AND I've been running in them... 4 times a week! You'd think I'd have all kinds of leg/shin/knee problems running in horrible tennis shoes. Yeah... I think it's time for a new pair! Anyways... my quest for the perfect tennis shoes begins tomorrow. If I find some this weekend it will truly be a miracle! I am P-I-C-K-Y when it comes to tennis shoes!

Have a great weekend!!

Maiden Voyage

This past weekend we finally put our pontoon boat in the water and took it out for it's Maiden Voyage. Clay loved riding in the boat... he hated wearing his life jacket and his hat, but loved the boat! Obviously my photography skills were lacking the day I took these pictures. I didn't even get a picture of the boat... but it's a pontoon boat and they pretty much all look the same. Ours does have a few nifty features like a built-in grill (which I kind of feel is a fire hazard) and a porta-potty (it's pretty neat - you basically lift up part of the back and it turns into a porta-potty-like bathroom). I have a feeling we will be spending lots of time on the boat puttering around the lake! All we need is a name for it...

Here are a couple of horrible pictures I got of Clay on our boat ride. He wasn't very cooperative with the camera.

He's trying to get his balance here... we were going warp speed (all of 10 miles an hour - Woa!) so he's working on getting his "sea legs".

Managed to snap a picture of him in his hat that lasted all of 2.5 seconds.

He liked to look over the railing at everything passing by.
Then Sunday Mark and some friends went to the Indy Car (or whatever type car) race while Clay and I hung out around the house. It was a lazy day for the both of us! I even managed to fit in a 2 hour nap for myself while Clay napped. When he woke up I decided since his organizational skills are so fabulous that I would get him to organize my shoes.

This is what I thought I was going to get...

See how everything is lined up and facing the correct direction...

And this is what I got...

Actually, his new favorite past time is taking all my shoes out of my closet and throwing them into the bathtub. I've come in my bathroom the last 2 days and have had to fish them out. Thank goodness he doesn't know how to turn on the water yet!

Hope everyone is having a great week!!!

19 Months Old!!

So Baby Clay has made it over the 1 1/2 year mark... less than 1/2 a year to plan the big 2 year birthday bash! Just kidding... I'm not even thinking about it right now... Ok, that's a lie! Actually, I've been trying to figure out how I can make a Sesame Street themed birthday party not horribly cheesy!!! I've always known that my son would eventually want a "character themed" birthday party... but I thought I was going to have at least a couple more years to do what I wanted to do :). Oh well, at least it's not Barney!

Anyways... back to the reason for this post! Clay is 19 MONTHS OLD!!!! He's growing up so fast... sniff...

It's amazing the vocabulary on my child lately! He's spouting out new words almost every day! Just this morning I was making him a blueberry waffle for breakfast and he clearly said "WAFFLE". Besides the word waffle, he says "all gone" when his plate is empty or he's finished eating. He says "more", "baby" (everyone small is a baby, including himself), "juice", "banana" (yes, he says the entire word), "ball", "moon", and he says something that sounds like Monte when he's referring to the dog. And of course he says all the Sesame Street characters names... Elmo, Grover, Ernie, Cookie, Abby, Oscar, Big Bird... just to name a few :). He's even picking up his colors! He's learned yellow and purple. Just the other day he brought me one of his Sesame Street books that has Telly on the front. He doesn't know who Telly is (he's a purple monster for those of you who do not watch Sesame Street on a regular basis) and he was showing me the book saying "Purple"... I guess since he didn't know "Telly" he knew he was purple, so he called him that!

He still LOVES to read his books. He will sit forever going through all of his books. He's got a new favorite and he wants us to read it to him every night. It's called "On the Moon" and Mark got it for him at the Space and Rocket Center. He used to call the moon "ball" since it was round and everything round gets labeled a ball around here. He now knows it's a moon! Yesterday there was something on TV about a rocket and Clay got all excited. I think we may have a little astronaut on our hands!

He's still a picky eater. Although, the things he does eat, he eats them pretty well. For breakfast he loves waffles, veggie sausage, Multi-Grain Cheerios, bananas, strawberries, oranges, and bacon. For lunch and dinner we alternate between pizza, chicken nuggets, cheese and fish sticks. He will eat green beans from a can, avocados, and sometimes steamed broccoli, but that is about the extent of his veggies. He LOVES Strawberry Banana V8 Fusion and Apple Juice. He will also eat any chip/cracker/snack cake that you put in front of him. He's going to be a snacker like his Mama.

My sweet baby is so much fun! He loves to ride in the jogging stroller while I attempt to run and he loves bubbles, playing outside and going for wagon rides. He sings and dances and loves to play Ring-Around-The-Rosie (although, he thinks the "all fall down" part is where he pushes me down).

As far as what he weighs or how tall he is... I have no no idea. He's tall and skinny and can wear every single pair of shorts he wore last summer. He was so fat last summer that he was already in 12 - 18 month clothes. This summer he is so tall and skinny, he still wears 12 - 18 months. I was so excited when I tried them all on because now I don't have to buy him a brand new summer wardrobe!

I just scrolled up and saw how long this post is getting, so now it's time for me to quit typing!

Happy 19 months, Baby Clay!!!!

Just a few pictures from this morning... Clay does not like to eat alone, so now he eats with 4 of his closest friends - Grover, Cookie, Ernie, and of course, Elmo.

And don't think that they just watch him eat... they eat too. Sometimes if they eat something and like it, Clay will eat it! Worked last night with the green beans! :)

What's on our agenda this weekend... Not much! We're going to look for a few summer shirts for Clay since belly shirts are not in style this season for a little boy. We're also going to take our boat we bought a while back when it was cold for it's Maiden Voyage tomorrow! I have my boater's license, but have never driven a boat before. I'm assuming it's pretty easy. Those of you on Lake Guntersville... watch out! Have a great weekend!!!

Happy Easter!

Holy Cow! We packed a lot of celebrating in the last 3 days! I'm going to try and make this post as short and sweet as possible...

Saturday we headed over to Florence to visit Mark's grandfather. We just recently found out he has stage 5 Parkinson's. This has been really hard on his grandfather because he is always on the go and very independent. He will be 86 in July and is Clay's only living great grandfather. We had a great visit!

(Papa's reflective jacket didn't work well with my camera flash! He's "glowing" in all my inside pictures!)

While we were there, Mark's cousin, her son and his uncle came over to visit. Clay and Marshall had a great time hunting Easter eggs... actually they didn't really "hunt" them... but enjoyed transferring them from one basket to the other and then throwing them all over the yard!

Showing off his "loot"...

Mark, Papa and Uncle Larry

On Sunday we went to eat Easter lunch at a local restaurant with Mark's mom, his sister and her family and then went back to our house for an Easter Egg Hunt.

I think this is the only family picture I have of us since last Easter! Oh look... Elmo has also joined the family...

We made the mistake of telling the Easter Bunny that Clay needs more of those little Sesame Street toys and he brought him Ernie and Cookie Monster. Now he has to carry all 3 of them around! He still favors Elmo.

This is his serious, down-to-business look... he's hunting some eggs!
He didn't really get the whole gist of an Easter Egg hunt so his cousins, Ellie and Grace, helped him out.

Then today, Clay and I went to visit my side of the family at my Granny's house. My cousin and her family are in from Alaska so it was great to see them! My mom, sister and her 2 girls came over from Georgia and my Aunt Carole and Uncle Larry came up from South Alabama. It was a big time.

This was the side I mostly saw of Clay the whole day. He was determined to get every single toy out of the toy box.

Here is Cadence, my cute little red-headed niece.
And this is Hailey and Maddy. Hailey is my other cute, little red-headed niece and Maddy is my cousin's little girl.

The day was filled with visiting, eating, fishing, playing with toys, chasing toddlers, chasing toddlers who were chasing the 175 pound Great Pyreneese dog (who really should be classified as some species of bear - he's HUGE)... and NO NAP... until we got in the car. And he CRASHED!

I only wish I could have taken a nap like that!!

We had a fabulous Easter weekend and had a great time spending it with family!

Flashback Friday - Clay's First Easter

It is hard to believe that we are about to celebrate Clay's 2nd Easter! I loved the easter pictures we took last year. I've got so many cute ones!! We did an amateur photo session in our backyard complete with white sheet backdrop and quilt covered boppy so he would sit up. I think they turned out pretty cute!


Is it just me or does my child have the roundest head?!? It's perfectly round!
This one was my FAVORITE! I still have it up on my fridge. It cracks me up every time I see this face. For Easter Lunch we met Clay's nan, Mark's sister and her family at Cracker Barrel. Then we went back to their place and took more pictures! This is my favorite family picture. I've got this one up on my fridge too and every morning I point to it and ask Clay who each person is. When I point to Mark, he exclaims in his cute, enthusiastic voice "DADA"!! Then I point to myself and he says "Elma". Nice... at least he doesn't call me "Elmo". When I point to him he says "BABY". It's very cute!
And he was a chubby bunny this time last year!!! He's just about as plump as the bunny he's sitting next to.
This year we are planning on going to early church service and then the family is meeting at a local restaurant. After that, I've got some cute eggs for his cousins to hide so he can go on his first Easter Egg Hunt. They have Sesame Street characters inside the eggs... he should LOVE them! Hope everyone has a Happy Easter!!