Family Photo!

I'm avoiding doing an official update because it will just take SO long, but I wanted the blog to at least LOOK updated, so here's a recent picture of us Wacky Willhites from our adventure to the Chicago Botanic Garden. We met my mom and her sisters and my grandma there and had a very lovely "Sunday Surprise" with the Gerrity girls. Sully is still talking about those fun Gerrity girls. (That's what he calls them, too - it's cute!)

It's Summer...Finally!

I know it's been ages since I've updated and there is so much to report on, but I just had to share these pictures because I am so excited to be able to take my crazies outside to run around and splash and burn off energy because we finally have our:

FENCE!!!!

Our yard is now fully fenced in so Drogo can go out to pee whenever he wants because I won't have to worry about him running down the street or biting the mailman. And Sully can run around and I don't have to chase him so that he doesn't go into the street! It just got done this morning, but already it's made my life so much easier - we were outside almost all day. The kids loved the pool and I love that they actually went to sleep without a fight tonight! So hopefully now that life will be a little less stressful I will be able to do some more catch-up posts - St. Patty's, Easter, baptism, birthday, etc. Yikes...I'm pretty behind. I blame Cecilia.

Catch Up #5 - February

Here's what February looked like at our house:

What a blizzard we had to start out the month! Although it was Cecilia's first blizzard, she didn't have the chance to go out in the snow. But the boys seemed to enjoy themselves!

Once the road's were finally clear, we did some more visiting. We spent the night with my parents and Cecilia went to her first annual Lion's Club spaghetti dinner in Lockport. She was really good at the dinner but she got tired and a bit cranky at Uncle Sean and Aunt Lin's afterward. Luckily, Grammy found just the trick to soothe her!

For our next visit, we spent my birthday weekend in Sherrard and Cecilia got all dolled up to celebrate! So even though it was my birthday, she was star of the weekend!

Along with being as cute as ever, Cecilia also started crawling this month. Really it's more of a creep or a drag, since she prefers the army crawl (even now), but she's pretty good at getting where she wants to go. (Much to her big brother's chagrin...) She also learned how to wave and got 2 more teeth at the top, so now she has 4 teeth total. They came in for my birthday - that was a stinky present since she didn't sleep at all and was super clingy! But she's growing well and is healthy and happy, so I guess I shouldn't complain. She weighed 20 pounds and 13 ounces at her 9 month appointment and was 29 1/4 inches tall. She's still toward the top of the curve for height (95%) but she's thinned out a little and is down to the 80 percentile for weight. She's still got the chubby cheeks going, though!

And even though it was very low-key, I suppose Cecilia's first Valentine's Day deserves a mention. (Plus this way I can get at least one picture of Sully into this post.) We celebrated with a candlelight dinner of heart shaped chicken nuggets and heart jello, but we couldn't do it until the day after Valentine's Day because I was teaching on the actual day. The kids didn't seem to mind, and Sully actually ate the chicken nuggets! YEAH!

That's pretty much it, and now I am almost caught up! Hopefully I will do a March post next week before March is over - what a shock that will be, right? So until then, here's a video that I think is hilarious. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my daughter has such powerful lungs...

Catch Up #4 - January

Compared to our crazy holiday season, January seems like a relatively uneventful month. We went to a few open gyms, but mostly we hung around the house and I tried to keep my crazy children entertained so they wouldn't hurt each other. (Hence the laundry basket ride.) The biggest change for Cecilia was graduating from the pack and play in our room to the crib in Sully's room. She seemed to enjoy having more space to roll around, but it was difficult to adjust our bedtime routine to get them both to go to sleep. Cecilia really liked that she could watch Sully so she would just lay there and stare at him - which of course encouraged him to show off and go crazy. They figured it out though and are now sleeping pretty well in there together. Plus Mark and I are both very happy to have our room to ourselves again! Cecilia also started eating meat and using a tasting spoon this month, but the best thing was that she started laughing and playing peekaboo! It's so fun when they want to play with you! That's pretty much all the important stuff, so here's some pictures!




We spent the second weekend of January at my parents' house and went to Winterfest in downtown Frankfort to see the ice sculptures. Back at Grammy's, Cecilia rocked a new look - the puff goatee!

Hey - is this my new bed or a prison??

Looking groovy in his leg warmers!

We had lots of indoor snowball fights with these snowballs I made - I think they are pretty ingenious so I took some pictures so I can send the idea to Family Fun magazine. Doesn't he look like a sweet boy? Oh, how photos can be deceiving....

And finally, here's a video of Cecilia knocking down some blocks, which she thought was hilarious. She has a pretty cute baby laugh, but it's a little understated compared to her brother's!

Catch Up #3 - Christmas!!

We had a very enjoyable (but long) holiday season for Miss Cecilia's first Christmas! We also managed to get through the whole thing without the tree falling over or Mark crashing the truck into the garage like the debacle that was Sully's first Christmas, so I was very excited about that! I was also very excited to be able to buy Cecilia a pretty Christmas dress (I couldn't decide, so she actually got 2 dresses and a cute little I Love Santa outfit!) and her first pair of patent leather shoes. Isn't she just darling? She was a good sport about getting dressed up and she did really well at all the events and gatherings. Sully had a great time too - especially since he got to open not just his gifts, but Cecilia's too. The hardest part was convincing him that she could play with her gifts and that just because he opened them didn't mean he could hog them! But all in all, it was a wonderful holiday and we made lots of good memories for Cecilia's first Christmas!

Despite it being SUPER cold, the whole family went over to the tree lot to pick out our tree, then we took 3 days to decorate it. But Sully was really interested in hanging up ornaments, and he did a nice job of putting them on. Plus he actually left them on the tree this year and since Cecilia wasn't mobile yet, once the tree was decorated, it stayed that way!

Our traditional picnic in front of the tree was also very successful this year. And although neither of my children ate the delicious Chicken Noodle Soup I made, my husband ate at least 4 bowls, so it wasn't a wasted effort!

Our first official event to celebrate Christmas was the Griffith Christmas Eve gathering at Bill and Bobbie's.

Mark was on call so I had to take the kids there solo, and it was of course snowing, but we made it there and back without too much trouble. Plus both kids slept the whole way home since they were exhausted from so much partying. As you can see below, Cecilia was exhausted from the partying well before we left. Even the shiny wrapping paper and naked time couldn't distract her for long...

Both kids slept pretty well when we got home though, so we actually got to sleep in a little bit on Christmas morning. Sully was more interested in the concept of Santa this year, and seemed really excited to see what he had under the tree.

He also got more into gift giving this year, so I was very happy about that. I wasn't planning on having him give Mark a gift, but when we went shopping, (I took both my kids to the mall for Christmas shopping by myself...CRAZY!) Sully really wanted to buy Mark a Hexbug, and I wanted to encourage his giving spirit, so we bought it and Sully helped me wrap it. He also got 2 weird finger puppets from Hot Topic for Uncle Rory, which he couldn't wait to give him. (I presume he picked both gifts because he wanted to play with them himself, but he was being generous - a rarity for him - so I went with it!)

We spent Christmas day with my family at our house since Mark was on call and mostly just lounged around. We had our delicious traditional Sausage En Croute as Christmas Dinner (which my wonderful mother pre-made and did all the work for so I didn't even have to cook!) and did lots of playing with all the new toys.

My folks spent the night and hung around with us the next day...longer than they wanted to, but I had to pull some only daughter tricks ("Please, Daddy?") to get them to stay because when I let Drogo out, this was in our backyard:

You can't see it in the picture, but there was a lot of drool hanging from the raccoon's mouth and it was only about 15 feet away from the back door. Needless to say, Drogo did not get to go outside. I called Animal Control who directed me to the Police Department (because we're in the village and not unincorporated) and told me the raccoon probably had distemper. Mark was at work (luckily - had he been home I think he would've tried to get the thing himself!) so I begged my parents to stay until the police came to pick it up because it freaked me out that it was so close to the house. Thankfully, even at 31 my Daddy still wants to protect me! The cops did finally come and take the poor thing, but it made for a strange day after Christmas!

The rest of the celebrating was thankfully free of wildlife...unless you count Sully. We weren't able to go to Gerrity Christmas this year because we were in Sherrard with the Willhites, so we went to visit Grandma Gerrity the Monday after Christmas. My mom met us there so it was nice to see her so many days in a row and Cecilia and Sully enjoyed having their Great Grandma all to themselves!

Then we were off to Sherrard for a week long celebration of Christmas, New Years, Mark's Birthday, and lots of crazy Willhite antics! It was extra special because Darrin and Miranda were able to come in for the week too (although Miranda had to go back early...boo!) so the whole family was together. As you can imagine, when all 3 boys and their father are together there is lots of laughing (along with some wrestling, lots of crude jokes, and more bodily function discussion and demonstration than I ever thought humanly possible - and that was just the first day we were there!) It was a lot of fun though, and Cecilia was very excited to finally meet and spend some time with her only aunt! Sully was excited too and kept asking Auntie Miranda to get nakey...he had obviously spent too much time with the Willhite males!

We had a delicious lasagna dinner and Sully was excited to open even more presents! (But he also gave some good ones, too!)

We had lots of time to just hang around, so the kids got to spend lots of quality time with Grandma and Grandpa. It was also unseasonably warm on New Year's Eve, so we even got to go out and enjoy the farm a little bit.




We had our bi-annual celebration with the Nelson's for New Year's Eve, although we had to leave around 9 so we could put the kids to bed. But Cecilia did get to wear her other party dress and Sully had a lot of fun with Ty, so it was a nice visit. (I did miss the olden days when we dragged out the Boone's Farm and plastic forks, though!)

We were also able to get together on New Year's Day with some of Mark's HS buddies and families, which seems to be becoming a tradition. It was fun to see how much all the kids have grown, and we're excited for more on the way!

We celebrated Mark's birthday with an outing to the John Deere Pavillon, where Sully had a blast sitting in all the big tractors. We had a nice lunch at Johnny's Steak House then headed home to rest up so we could gorge on Pizza Joynt for Mark's Birthday dinner.

We had a lovely time in the QC and it was really nice that we didn't have to rush the visit.

It was the perfect end to a very wonderful Christmas!