Finally! A few Christmas pics!

Should I be excited that I’m only one month behind?  As hectic as things seem to be right now – I suppose that I should be happy that I have a few minutes to post anything!  But the alternative is to be taking a quiz for my class.  Blogging is WAY more fun than that!

Our Christmas was very different this year.  “The Mom” had finished teaching the fall semester and decided to bring Mike up to Cincinnati to visit with “The Dad”!  While it was strange to be spending Christmas in a temporary apartment in a temporary city – it was fabulous being able to spend it as a family!  We even went to the effort of decorating a Christmas tree!  After all – what kind of an example would we be setting for Mike if we didn’t have a tree…

We woke up Christmas morning and opened up our presents.  Mike is at the age where he will tear the paper off – but then he is more interested in playing with the paper than he is with what’s in the box!  We had a lot of fun watching him…

After Christmas, we spent a couple of days visiting “The Mom’s” family – then a couple of days visiting “The Dad’s” family.  Perhaps it is the holidays, or perhaps it’s that we don’t get to spend much time together as a family, or perhaps its celebrating Christmas with Mike – but this year seemed to be extra enjoyable.  We had an absolutely wonderful time visiting everyone!

It was also great to be spending a couple of weeks together rather than the usual weekend.  All in all, we couldn’t have asked for anything more…

And without further ado – here are some pictures from Christmas day!

“I can’t wait to get the paper off of this box!”

 

Tickle-me Elmo was a big hit.  “La la” is one of Mike’s favorites!

The “Pillow Pet” was another favorite.  He loves to crawl over and lay on it!

Mike tried putting on some of his new clothes…

…he may need some more practice at it!

“I hope you all had a merry Christmas and happy new year!”

I know…

I know I know I know.  Excuses excuses.  We said  that we would keep you updated and we have failed miserably!

And there were so many things that we wanted to share with you, but most of them seem so long ago.  And I know that we should have already had a Christmas post with lots of pictures – but I can’t do that either.  A small technicality.  The camera (with the pictures on it) is some 300 miles from the computer.  Hopefully, they’ll be reunited this weekend and we’ll have something posted next week!

In the meantime, I’ll share a story about a Christmas party.  This happened a couple of weeks before Christmas.  We had it all planned out.  “The Nan” was going to come down and watch Mike while “the Mom” and “the Dad” went out to the party.  An adult night out!  And not just any Christmas party either.  This was our church’s Christmas party.

Now many of you might be wondering – “church Christmas party?” and immediately be filled with thoughts of fried chicken and green bean casserole in the church basement while Christmas carols play on an vintage 1945 radio in the corner.  However, while our church does indeed have some events like this – the annual Christmas party is not one of them.

And many of you might still be questing.  But you need to remember – the pastor of our church is an Irish priest who loves to dance.  So instead of thinking of it as a church Christmas party – think of it as a party that your old Irish buddy planned for 600 of his closest friends.

There was much eating and drinking and merriment.  And dancing (of course) until the wee hours of the morning.  Every year we watch in amazement as Father Michael dances with everyone he can coax out on the dance floor.  He’ll whirl and twirl the girls until they are panting.  Then he’ll let them sit back down and rest while he finds another partner.  He truly is an amazing little fellow – and his dancing ability is just on of the smaller reasons why we like him so much…

So – until next year!  Perhaps we should start looking for a baby sitter now…

It’s been a while!

Howdy folks!  It’s certainly been a while since you’ve heard from us!  We’ll try and get you all caught up.  There has been so much that has happened since the last post that it will certainly take a few posts to get all caught up.  But have no fear – we will get you all up to date!

Remember that last post?  If not, it was about Thanksgiving.  A whopping six weeks ago!  And it’s here that we will begin our journey from the past to the present.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Mike had his one year checkup.  There were the usual questions, poking, prodding – and the shots.  For this visit, Mike’s “awareness” of the shots changed.  He now recognizes what is going to happen as soon as the nurse walks in the room with the needle.  And he will let you know that he’s not happy about it!  The interesting part is that he was crying before the shot – but once it was over he looked around with an expression like “that was no big deal” and the crying immediately stopped!  That’s much better than him wailing for 5 minutes after the shot is over!

His checkup was fine.  He’s in the 45th percentile for both his weight and head circumference and a little lower percentile on the height scale.  The doctor paid extra attention to his ears since he’s had a history of ear infections.  Again – it was great news!  All clear on the ears!  No signs of any residual infection or fluid build up.  Yippee!  So all the news was good and all was right with the world and we packed up our bags and headed home.

Then came the weekend…

A few short days later (the following Friday night), Mike woke up several times crying.  Uh oh.  We have learned that this is one of his “ear infection signs”.  So Saturday morning, we load up and head back to the doctor’s office.  A quick look in to his left ear and we got a “yep – this one’s got it”.  The other ear was clear, but that gave us little comfort.  Just more proof that it only takes a few days of just slight congestion before the fluid builds up in the inner ear and gets infected.  We are still hoping that he won’t need tubes.  And at least the ear infections are getter fewer and farther between.

And remember that every cloud has a silver lining!  And this one does too.  Our pediatrician (and I’m sure that most other’s are this way too) has kids books in the exam room so that you can keep your little tike somewhat entertained while you are waiting.  On this particular “ear infection” trip – Mike had only a passing interest in the kids books.  Only the Sesame Street book (Elmo is his favorite) held his attention – and that was only for a few seconds.  But what happens when you give him one of the info packets in the room that is meant for the parents to read?  Why he will sit on the exam table like a good little boy and read it himself!  Interestingly enough – he paid the most attention to the diagram of the ear…

“I like this ‘grown-up’ reading material.  It’s much more interesting…”