A Southern State Of Mind: 3 months old!

Carter is already 3 months old! time is flying by and I dont like it! He has already gotten SO much bigger! I also feel like there is so much I have not shared yet!!

In the beginning Carter was not sleeping through the night at all. We would have to take him out in the middle of the night. John and I worked it out that he would go in the middle of the night and I would take him before I left for work. Carter only woke us up in the middle of the night a few times! He quickly transitioned into waking us up around 7 or 8am depending on when we put him to bed. It was MUCH better! Even though John would take him out in the middle of the night, I would still wake up, which made me not sleep that well at all. We also got in the bad habit of when I took him out around 7 or 8 and I still had time to sleep, John and I would just stick him in bed with us. It was better than him whining and not letting us sleep! Carter moves a lot when he sleeps, so we still didnt get to sleep well. We started putting him back in his crate in the mornings and have learned to let him whine it out.

The first 2 weeks we had him was the second time in my life I have been that tired. The first was when I was graduating college, getting married, working, and applying to grad school. That was EXHAUSTING! this was a very close 2nd. I think between him and having so many people visit us I was not getting any sleep. It got to the point where people at work told me to go and take a nap. HAHA. I have finally caught up on sleep now and am not nearly as tired as before! It helps that Carter sleeps through the night now.

One night, I believe it was the 2nd week we had him, we let him sleep in the bed with us through the entire night. BAD IDEA! He was super cuddly, but he moves SO much! and John and I didnt want to roll over him, so both of us refuse to let that happen again! Now our routine is I get up in the morning when he has to pee (luckily he whimpers to let us know!), put him back in his crate until I get up about an hour later, then I feed him and stick him in bed with John. Carter cant be in his crate for that many hours so when I leave for work and John still wants to sleep for a little while, I'll stick him in bed with John and he is fine. :D

During the day John has been taking him for walks and playing with him and then during lunch I get to spend a lot of time with him. After work we take him out and play too :D We found this huge field near us that is fenced in and it is awesome! It belongs to a school that is RIGHT next to my building, so we cant take him there during the day when school is in, but we take him there every night now and let him off the leash to run! He LOVES IT! We got him a dog frisbee to chase. It is so funny watching him try to pick it up. It's SO big next to his little head, but he tries so hard :D We try to keep him up pretty late so he sleeps through the night. It works for the most part. Around 10pm though, he gets grumpy and doesnt listen to us. We found out that it just means he is super tired. So when that happens I pick him up and put him next to me and rub his head and he passes out in no time!

Let's see what else do I need to catch you up on....food! Last week I was playing with Carter and realized that I could see his ribs! I was mortified! I thought we had been feeding him TOO much! We talked to a friend about it and they brought up a really good point- he sat around at the rescue all day and now we exercise him A LOT! So we started feeding him 3 times a day instead of 2 like they told us. He is MUCH happier now! He still wants to eat everything in sight though! haha but I think that's just because he is a puppy.

He has also gotten extremely better about being potty trained! He will bark now when he has to poop and start acting a little funny so we know to run him outside. He hasnt had an accident in our apartment in a few days now! SCORE! We have still picked up all the rugs in our apartment in case he has an accident. That seemed to be where he liked to go when he first got here. I wish we would have thought about that sooner. haha oh well.

I have learned that I really enjoy being a "parent." There is SO much responsibility though! I knew that, but it's still different when you go through it. He makes me the happiest and also makes me so frustrated sometimes!! He is learning a lot though. He also has not gotten into chewing too much still. We can tell that he is becoming more familiar with us and the area and testing his limits, but he's pretty good about not chewing anything. We decided to start a list of things he has ruined. So far, he has only ripped one of John's shirt and that was because they were playing a bit rough and his teeth caught it. I consider us lucky so far!

Here are a few more pictures of him. He's getting so big so fast!

I was taking a nap and John put Carter down next to me, he snuggled right up to me and we slept like that for awhile. lol