Merry Christmas 2009

Here is a look back on 2009 for us. It was a year of a lot of firsts: first crawls, pulling up, walking, running, birthday, etc. We hope you and yours had as good and blessed year as we did. We hope you enjoy your holiday season. Merry Christmas!

Late Thanksgiving Post

I know what I'm thankful for right now: being done with school! I finished up my semester last week and am also enjoying some days off from work. With the craziness of the end of the semester I really slacked off on posting the pictures from our trip to Alabama for Thanksgiving. It was a great weekend of relaxing and enjoying family time around an outstanding (as always) meal.

Cade decided he liked his cereal so much he wanted to wear the box as a hat.

Susie was able to reconnect with a friend from childhood, Brandi, and the rest of her family as they were passing through the area on their way from Michigan to Florida.

I was pretty impressed when I found out they had just driven about 12 hours with four kiddos under the age of six (the youngest two are nine-month-old twins). These four kids were very well mannered, but no matter how good all the kids were, it was pretty tough to get them all to sit still for a group picture. We have multiple shots of kids in various positions and degrees of escape, but this one turned out pretty well all things considered.

Cade in the tupperware palace with the light-up tambourine. Very suave.

VeeVee and Cade outside on the swing. The weather was great over the weekend.

Now that's a handsome family!

Since the semester's finish, I've been able to spend a lot more time with Cade, especially over the last couple days as Susie finishes up her grading and schoolwork. He continues to become more and more of a rough and tumble playmate. He's always throwing something, or running somewhere, or banging one toy with another (if we're lucky he's not banging something breakable around the house). He loves to climb. Just this afternoon I turned away for what seemed like two seconds and when I turned back he was up on a folding chair leaning way over onto a card table. Last night we lost track of him very briefly and the next thing we knew he was almost two flights up the stairs. No fear. He loves being thrown around and hanging and swinging upside-down; we know when he's up for that because he'll come up to us and says "Bat Baby."

Cade's language skills continue to grow and grow as well. It's a lot of fun to actually talk back and forth with him now. In some ways it's almost a little frustrating for all of us at times. Because we can understand so much of what he's saying it can become difficult when he repeats something over and over and we just can't figure out what he's trying to say. I think it's more frustrating now because we used to be able to just pass his talking off as baby talk and not really have to try and decipher it and now we sometimes can't tell if it's just baby ramblings or if there are words in there that we should be picking up. But overall he's getting better at enunciating words and we're getting better at understanding his "dialect" and helping him speak better.

I'm not sure how early is too early to start looking for his two-year molars, but Cade has been early with all his teeth and he's showing signs of teething again. He's not even 18 months old yet, so I'd be surprised if he's getting more, but he's had all his teeth including the first molars for a while now, so I don't know. He's been drooling like a shaken up soda can, he's pulling at his teeth a lot, his nose is running big time, he's got a congestion cough, he's not sleeping well, he doesn't want to eat much, opting instead for lots and lots of milk, and he's working on some pesky diaper rash. These are all things he dealt with when teething with his last molars, so it would appear that he's got some new ones on the way, but if so it's extremely early. We'll see; I got my wisdom teeth all the way in at 14, so maybe it's hereditary.

Other than the teething(?) thing, we really do have a lot to be thankful for, and it's hard to find reasons to complain. We are blessed with a healthy and vibrant son, and he continually finds ways to keep us entertained and on our toes. Thanks for checking in, and we hope the Chrismas season finds you as greatful and thankful as we feel.

Buying time....

We hope your Thanksgiving was as great and relaxing as ours was. We definitely have a lot to be thankful for. I don't think blogger would allow me enough space to list it all. God is good. I have a number of pictures from our Thanksgiving weekend in Alabama, but........I'm in Bloomington this week with Susie and Cade and the camera transfer cord is in Owensboro. The picture above was one of many taken by our friend Meagan. So I haven't been a total slacker lately. Ok, I have, but I have a good excuse. So here's my peace offering in the meantime: a completely dark video of Cade. Let me explain.

Tonight Susie, Cade, and I went out to eat with a couple of Susie's classmates. We went to a Tibetan restaurant, and it was outstanding. On the way there we drove around the square in downtown Bloomington. Bloomington is like a lot of towns in Kentucky and Indiana (and elsewhere, I'm sure), where the downtown area is built around a square with a government building like a courthouse in the middle. The square in Bloomington is full of all kinds of restaurants and stores and coffee shops. It's a lot of fun to walk around. And every Christmas they decorate the trees with lights and string lights from the buildings around the square to the courthouse in the middle.

Let me take a minute to tell you that Cade LOVES Christmas lights. Over the last week or so he's taken every opportunity to point out the Christmas lights when we've been out and about. It comes out like "pee-tee-dites." It didn't always sound like this. For a while it was just three unintelligible syllables that were shrieked at an excitable pitch. The syllables were constantly changing, but the excitement and finger pointing pretty much told the story. In the last couple days the excitable pitch has settled down (unless he sees an impressive display) and he's settled in on "pee-tee-dites." Close enough.

Quick aside: because it's now dark when we pick him up from the babysitter he's also been pointing out the moon and stars on the way home too. If you get a chance, ask him to say "moon." I don't know if "n" is a tough letter or not, but it comes out "moot" with heavy emphasis on the "t." Hilarious. It's so hard not to laugh at him because it's so stinkin' cute the way he says it. Each time I tell him, "That's right Cade, that's the moon," with heavy emphasis on the "n." I'm sure he'll catch on soon.

He's also getting pretty good at identifying buses and trucks, which he does in this video. Sorry there's no light, you'll just have to imagine how cute he is. I posted a picture at the start of this post in case you forgot what he looks like. We think he looks model-rific in this picture; does that make us conceited parents? I hope not. I kinda figure it makes us like about 99% of parents out there. Who doesn't think their baby is the cutest? :) Thanks for stopping by.