What? Christmas is really OVER?

After two weeks of non-stop Christmas celebrations, our life is just finally getting back to normal. Although it ended up being a bit crazy and hectic, our holiday season was very joyous and lots of fun! Sully did really well and really seemed to enjoy himself, even though he partied to the point of exhaustion! We spent Christmas Eve with the Griffiths at my Uncle Bill's house then hosted my parents and Rory for a pizza dinner on Christmas Day. We drove down to Frankfort the following evening, spent the night, then had Christmas at Stately Griffith Manor in the beautiful new room on Saturday morning. We went to Grandma Gerrity's Saturday afternoon for Christmas with the Gerritys, then headed out to Sherrard on Sunday for Christmas with the Willhites. We stayed in the Quad Cities until New Year's Day, and when we came home, the parties continued. Sully and I went to Therese's house to spend some time with my Girl Scout Camp gals on Friday, then went to Aunt Gail's on Saturday because Geny and Faisal and Aman were in from Colorado. On Sunday we had lunch with Priya, Melissa, and Julie (who lives in Illinois again, so we're going to get to see her a lot more! HOORAY!) then our celebrations came to an end. See - I wasn't kidding about the non-stop part!! So last week we did as little as possible in an attempt to get back to some semblance of every day life. Sully only left the house on 2 occasions all week- and that was to go the funeral home so Mark could watch him while I went to teach! He didn't even get out of his pajamas for 3 of the 7 days! (I'll admit it - I didn't get out of mine a few days too!) But as I said, he was a trooper and we had a really fun Christmas with him. He didn't sleep in his own bed for a week straight and was up way past his bedtime almost every night, but he kept on smiling, partying, and being just darn cute! And here are some pictures to prove it!

After six Christmas celebrations, Sully got really good at opening presents. And man, did the kid get a lot of presents. He was quite spoiled! In fact, our living room could be mistaken for Toys 'R Us at this point!

He was also really interested in the tree. He "helped" us put some ornaments up before he went to bed and the next day once the tree was completely decorated, he just sat in awe of it for awhile. He even started pointing at it after a few days to let me know I should turn the lights on. His favorite part, though, was the ornaments. He did well at first with "Don't touch," but after about a week, he spent most of the day just taking off ornaments and carrying them around the house. He loved Mark's boxing hippo - I swear I hung that thing back on the tree 35o times!

Sully also had to pose for many family photos, and although that wasn't his favorite holiday activity, we managed to get at least a few where he's looking at the camera! And we even had all of Mark's family in one place and got to take a Willhite family photo. We were overdue, since we hadn't taken one since Darrin and Miranda got married three and a half years ago!

Speaking of Darrin and Miranda, Christmas was a big deal for them because it meant they finally go to meet their perfect nephew! Sully pretty much spent our entire visit to Sherrard being the center of attention (much to his Uncle Todd's chagrin), and it didn't take long for him to win the heart of Auntie Miranda. (And Uncle Darrin's too - but since he is a Willhite so he had to be a little more nonchalant about how much he loved Sully...)

While we were in the Quad Cities, we also had a chance to see all of Mark's high school friends. We spent New Year's Eve with Sarah and Jon-Mychel and the boys (don't our dudes look so cute in their jammies?), and on New Year's Day the gang came over with wives and kids in tow. Claire is the only girl offspring among the bunch, and although she arrived in a really cute girly purple dress, she ended up in Riley and Connor's hand-me-down overalls after a very messy diaper change. So she fit right in with all the rough and tumble boys. And I enjoyed hearing the big boys discuss things like whether cloth diapers are worth it and the best way to get a baby to go back to sleep in the middle of the night instead of which girl in high school had the biggest boobs or reminiscing about the ridiculous things Mark used to do when he was drunk and single! (Next time you see him ask him about the jumping jacks....)

That's the overview of our Christmas craziness! I have to admit, I am a bit relieved that it's over. But thanks to the creative gift giving skills of Uncle Rory, Sully will be able to help me remember his second Christmas every time he strikes a chord. He's already working on a modern arrangement of a traditional song - check out his skills in this video!

It's Winter!

To commemorate the start of December, the weather gods apparently decided we needed about 4 inches of snow. It started yesterday afternoon and didn't really stop until early afternoon today. Sully just kept looking out the window and saying, "ooohh..." So since I had to scrape my car off (rather, I had to shovel the heaps of snow off of it), I bundled Sully up in his warm winter clothes, plunked him into his new wagon, and pulled him into the driveway where he sat and watched me clean off the car. I didn't get as many "oooohs" as the window, but he was still pretty captivated by the whole winter wonderland around him. He also had a good time watching Drogo jump and dig in the snow. So even though I am not ready for it to be winter (although it's looking like I don't have much of a choice), I think there will be some fun times ahead with my little snow bunny!

I also wanted to show off how handsome my boys were on Thanksgiving. They sort of had matching outfits - unintentional, I swear! We had fun at my aunt and uncle's house in Crown Point, IN and Sully was a good boy all day. Although he needs to work on pacing himself - he kept asking for more bread and snacks before dinner (he has gotten really good at the sign language for more) so by the time we all sat down for turkey he wasn't hungry and refused to eat anything! Mysteriously, once the pie came out he was ready for "more" again!

In this picture Sully was watching Uncle Dave carve the turkey. Every time the electric knife was going Sully got that goofy look on his face like he was trying to figure out what the heck was happening! He's a funny little man!

That's about it - although hopefully there will be news on the walking front soon. On Saturday Sully took 2 independent steps before lunging toward Mark, and he stood alone for a good 10 seconds today. But he is still pretty lazy - or maybe just scared. He'd still rather just crawl everywhere than even attempt to walk. We'll keep you posted!

One year olds are difficult!

So we took Sully to get his 12 month portraits taken yesterday and we thought, "Let's get some family portraits, too." Bad idea. The whole thing was a debacle, as Sully refused to sit in one spot, didn't want to look at the camera, and kept putting his hand in his mouth. There were only 2 decent shots of him solo, and there was one ok family shot (and it was only ok after the salesgirl cropped it and shifted it to hide my muffin top!). Of course, after we left the portrait studio and took our little stinker to the Olive Garden for dinner, he was happy to say "Cheese" and even smiled for the camera. Here's some funny shots from the restaurant, all of which are better than his portraits. Boo. And the family self-portrait I took is so much better than any of the ones from the photo studio. Figures, huh?

My first video posting!

Here's a video of Sully taking his first steps on "his own"! He's got the car walker to keep him up, but this is the very first time he walked with it. He did great, but then he got bored and did some light reading. Enjoy!

Now that we've finally loaded the software to import videos from our camera, I will hopefully be able to put more videos up. There are some funny ones from Sully's birthday party and since he's growing and changing so much I've been trying to take lots of video so I won't forget how cute and funny he is at this stage. Of course, I can't promise to post videos in a timely manner, but at least I am now capable of doing it and that's the first step!

Someone is a year old!

Since I last posted, (which has been two months - oops!) Sully has gone on a lot of fun adventures, learned many new skills, and most notably - he had his first birthday! I still am not sure how it is possible that my little baby is one year old and is now a toddler. I was just looking at pictures of the day he was born and it really does seem like it was just yesterday! But at the same time it's hard to remember him being so tiny! Here's a photo comparison of Sully from birth to one year - what a difference!

So here's what the little man has been up to:

He went on his first museum trip to Science and Industry with Kathy and Piper. Those girls just love him! (Do you blame them?)

He went to the pumpkin patch with Grammy and Uncle Rory where we checked out the petting zoo, explored the corn maze, and picked some pumpkins.

He went to Bloomington to spend some time with his godparents and Sidney. The babes were so cute crawling around in their Halloween costumes!

He had his first spooky Halloween dinner, went trick-or-treating, and was so good about wearing his costume. He never tried to pull off the dog hat. Now the socks....that's a different story!

And of course, he had a birthday party and ate lots of cake!

He also took a Kindermusik class, got some more teeth, got really good at feeding himself finger foods and drinking from a sippy cup, started cruising on the furniture, and even learned how to give a belly foof! (Some of you may call it a raspberry - either way it's hilarious!) He's also pretty close to walking - he's started taking some steps on his own while holding on to his car walker. Hopefully I can post a video of that soon! But until then, enjoy this new collection of photos of the cutest one year old I know. He's especially cute when he's covered in frosting and being a ham.

I wonder who he gets that from??

A professional picture - courtesy of JCPenney

We had Sully's 9 month portraits taken last week (ironically on the day he turned 10 months old), and they unfortunately didn't turn out as well as his adorable 6 month shots, but there were some cute ones. He was a little tired and cranky, and now that he's so mobile it was hard to keep him in one spot. He also really liked the photographer's camera and got mad every time he tried to touch it and she wouldn't let him. But for the first time we had three different backgrounds and we even did an outfit change - he managed all that pretty well. It was kind of a bummer though because his smile has changed - he now has my squinty eye/squishy nose smile which is still cute, but it's not as charming as his leprechaun grin. So there you go, more on Sully...and it hasn't even been a week since my last update! GO ME!

Summer of Sully

Ta Da! I've finally caught up! I apologize for taking so long, but it was daunting to try to sum up Sully's entire summer in one sitting. Plus, it was difficult to decide which pictures to include because he's just so darn cute all the time! Before we get on to the pictures, let me tell you a little bit about all the tricks our boy can do. He's 10 months old now and he seems like such a big boy! (I just took this one of him in the rocking chair today - doesn't he look more like a boy than a baby? How did that happen?) Sully has definitely mastered crawling and he's so quick. I can hardly keep up with him! He's also figured out how to pull up to standing and he's gotten good at that too. He can even let go with one hand and stay supported! He's done a bit of cruising, but he's more interested in the up and down game at this point. He's pretty good at taking steps when someone is holding on to his hands, though, so I'm thinking it won't be long before he's walking like a pro. YIKES! He also has 3 teeth and is chewing bigger food - he loves cheerios and sweet potato chunks. I'm trying to expand his finger food repertoire, but I'm slow to move on because I'm so scared he's going to choke! He's pretty vocal, too, although he mostly babbles and makes sounds rather than words. He can say da and ohh, and he's even started saying uh oh a bit, but none of the sounds ever come with a corresponding meaning. He's got a great laugh, though, and he's really happy most of the time, so we've been having fun playing games with him like peekaboo, pattycake, How Big is Sully? and lots of tickling! The best is watching him play with Drogo - they kind of chase each other a little bit, although it seems Drogo would prefer just to lick Sully. Every time Sully sees Drogo he smiles, and we're working on how to pet him gently rather than pulling out his fur and tugging on his tail. I think that's most of Sully's recent accomplishments, so let's get on to oohing and ahhing over how cute he is! I decided to go back and start with pictures from June and work my way up to August. You'll have to check back later for September (mark your calendars to visit sometime in December - it should be up by then!), but hopefully this will tide you over for a bit!



Sully became a budding artist this summer and made a few different works of art. All were finger paintings, but we experimented with color schemes and as he got better at his crinkle the paper technique he was actually able to cover more surface area. He created his first masterpieces for Father's Day then made a birthday piece and get well piece for his favorite babysitter Emily and her dad. I'm looking forward to expanding our art projects - I think we'll tackle coloring next!

Kathy gave us a bath seat to use in the bathtub, and Sully likes it (see the next picture) but he had more fun sitting in the box it came in. I of course took tons of pictures - he was in the box for at least 15 minutes - but this was by far the cutest.

Here's Sully during his first bath in the big bathtub. He loves to splash and kick his feet, and I love the seat because he's stationary and it's less likely that he'll drown. It does make it hard to clean his boy parts, though.

We signed Sully up for swim lessons this summer, and while he didn't really learn much technique, he seemed to enjoy being in the water, splashing, and kicking on the kick board. He wasn't a fan of being on his back or being underwater (as we inadvertently discovered when he slipped out of Mom's hands...oops.) but overall he enjoyed his experience, so it was worth it.

Here's some shots of our big eater! He's pretty much a bottomless pit. I've heard from a few other mommies with boys around the same age that Sully eats way more than their sons. But yet he stays so skinny - he must have gotten that from his dad...

Once camp ended in early August we were actually able to do some fun stuff outside as a family. These are some pictures from Sully's first picnic in the grass. There's a really great forest preserve near us so we ate and walked around and had a delightful afternoon. (The new family photo in the profile is also from this picnic.)

Shortly after our picnic at the forest preserve we took Sully on another picnic to the small beach on Gray's Lake. We wanted to go swimming and take him in the lake, but it ended up being too cold and rainy, so instead Mark did baby tricks and Sully ate sand.

This is just a cute picture of our little man in his Exersaucer. He likes it lot and I realized I didn't have any pictures of him in it - so here he is playing and drooling away.

He can't quite climb stairs yet, but he gave it a good try last time we were at Grammy and Grandpa's. I snapped this picture right after he fell back on his butt. The look says, "Hey, Mom - I'm going to learn to do a bunch of stuff you're not ready for me to do yet. Isn't that funny??"

Well, there you have it. A brief look at Sully's summer. We did a bunch of other stuff too like go to the zoo with Grandma and Grandpa W and the Williamson family, attend some graduation and birthday parties, play at the splash park, explore Grammy and Grandpa G's new addition, and spend a few days on Grandma and Grandpa's farm, but I didn't put all those pictures in because then I never would've got this posting done. Thanks for your patience with me - I will try my darndest to update more regularly now that I am back to teaching only 3 evenings a week. I'm sure there will be lots of news since our little peanut is almost a year old!