All boy

Cash came home from daycare yesterday with a busted nose.  Like caked with blood, swollen on top with a cut busted.  Apparently he was playing trucks on top of the playground "stage" and took a tumble off of it flat on his face.  He cried a bit and they put some ice on it, but apparently after that, all was well.  This is one day after me going to pick him up on the playground and watching him get whacked in the back of the head by a little girl on the swings after he ran directly in front.  That mishap flattened him on the ground and caused about 30 seconds of major crying before he begged me to get down and hang off of the monkey bars with his best bud Ethan.

In general, Cash just "plays hard" as Ross and I like to say.  I took a picture of his banged up legs since this is pretty much what they always look like nowadays.

He's just starting to become such a rough and tumble, climb up high just to jump and crash down little dude.  He'll whine a little if whatever he did stung but then he just gets right back up and does something crazy again.  Plus, he's always making a mess, either with all the sand in his shoes from playing or from constantly wiping his face during dinner.

We love our little man so much but if Austin takes after his big brother, I am in for it!

Austin Devon Inman

Well we have a name for the new one...and it's not even close to one of the two names that I mentioned in the previous post.  Ross and I had a bit of a name epiphany on our trip to the Berkshires for our friends' wedding and we (me) realized that I wasn't in love with either Travis or Lucas.  I had tried to get fully on board but something was holding me back.  Ross wasn't so passionate about either of them that he was amenable to my next suggestion: Austin.

Austin has been on my list for a long time as a name that I love and always come back to.  I almost did a last minute switch on Cash's name to Austin when I thought that Cassius/Cash was a bit too out there.  However I'm glad that Cash is Cash and now, that this little guy will be Austin.

There's no real reason behind the name, although I did recently find out that it was the name of my grandfather Watson's youngest brother.  However Ross is content with the fact that it can reference a "hero of Texas":

Since that really doesn't matter to me, I like to kid him and say that this is our son's namesake:

He's pretty easy on the eyes.



We've told Cash about the name of baby brother and he was immediately on board.  He talks about "Baby Brother Austin" often and can say the name well.  However, we do think that he may believe that this is the baby brother that is coming his way:

Good old Austin from the Backyardigans who is now referred to as "Baby Brother Austin" whenever we watch the show.  Cash is in for a big surprise when a tiny baby, and not a fun-loving purple kangaroo, shows up at his house in January

Skype time with Daddy

Ross has been traveling for work this past week so this is the best way we have to get some Daddy-time in the evenings for Cash.  Cash is pretty used to Skype - we use it frequently to talk with Old Grandad and Beep Beep Baba - but it's not the same as having Ross home with us.  This is the last of his week-long work travel trips for awhile (though he still has shorter ones on the books through the end of the year) so for that we are thankful.  Unfortunately, I'm off to NYC for work next week so I guess it will be Mommy Skype time for Cash for a few days.

We often wonder about the effect that our work travel has on Cash since there hasn't been one month go by this entire year where one or both of us hasn't had some sort of trip, usually more than one.  I would say we travel more than any other full-time working parents I know and when I've described our situation to other people I'm usually met with faces of concern, or confusion, or the phrase "Oh, that's a lot".  I usually just smile and say, "yeah, well, neither of us really has a choice and Cash seems to handle it really well," and I can honestly say that's the truth.  Cash does handle it well for the most part - we always explain where we are going and how long we will be away and he doesn't seem to get terribly upset about it (more often, just a little mad) and he loves checking in with our daily phone calls and Skype sessions.  But I'm more than thrilled that we are under 24 hours until Ross will be home and I know Cash is too!

Recent videos

Just a couple of recent videos of Cash.  Above is Cash and his babysitter the other night.  She's great and made this for us while we were out.

Below is us at dinner the other night.  It perfectly illustrates that while we try to feed Cash a balanced diet, he will always just eat whatever has the most cheese on it.

Last summer outdoor tubbys

We sometimes do outdoor bath time with Cash and tonight we had probably our last one of the summer times.  Cash generally loves tubby times but he loves outdoor tubbys even more.  Next summer he'll get to have outdoor tubbys with baby brother which will make it even more fun!