Alex's First Snow Day!

I just wanted to post a few pictures of Alex playing in the snow today. This is really the first time he's been in the snow. We only stayed outside for maybe 5-10 minutes, but I wanted him to feel the snow and see it. Simce, he was born in March, he's never had a snowday before! He wasn't too impressed! LOL. He just picked it up and looked at it, then dropped it and tared at our little windmill! Here are the pictures I took!

 

Goodbye Bootsie...9/15/1993- 1/24/2009

Unfortunately, I have some sad news to report. My dog Bootise, who lived with my parents died on Saturday. My Mom had her put to sleep, because she was suffering so much with the complications of old age. She had some tumors and could barely walk anymore, but at 15, she lived an amazingly long time for a dog.It was sad, even though I no longer live at home, because she was my dog for so long. I was about 9 when we got her, but Ican still remember riding in my Dad's truck and picking her out from a litter of puppies, then riding back home with her on my lap--fleas and all. She will defintely be missed by our family. In other news this week, Alex is now standing all by himself, but not taking any steps yet. He's talking  a mile a minute too--just not saying anything we can decipher! He mostly calls everything "Dada" or "Didi." Even when he yells at us, he says "Dadadadada!" LOL. It's too funny!! I can't believe he'll be 11 months old next Thursday. He's getting better at  drinking from his sippy. He holds it up to his mouth now, and is learning to tilt it so he gets the liquid. He loves to chew on the rubber tip especially! He also got another new tooth this week. It was his right lower lateral incisor, which is located next to his front bottom teeth. That makes a total of 7 teeth for the little man! Alright, well the time has come for me to turn my pajamas inside out and pray for a snowday! I would advise you all to do that same! Some pics below...

Alex chilling with his sippy

Our little conductor on his train

Cracking up over something

This is what he looks like when he's been busted for playing in the cat water..LOL.

Me and Alex cuddling

Look at this wild boy!

Relaxing on the rug

Alex and Daddy

 

Nephew's Birthday Extravaganza!

This Saturday we celebrated our nephews' birthdays together! Dylan, our oldest nephew, turns 9 on February 6th, and Daniel, his little brother, turned 7 on December 19th. In fact, from December to March is really "birthday season" for Abe's side of the family--After Daniel is Abe's mom, Jan.6th, then Abe and our nephew Matthew, both Feb.3rd, then Dylan, then Me and Alex, both March 5th, then David, March 12th! Oh and My grandparents will have their 60th anniversary this year on March 12th too! It's an expensive and busy time of year! So to celebrate the boys' birthdays, we went to their joint party at Ultimate Playzone in Cockeysville. It's a big gym where they have tons of bouncy houses and playground equipment for kids to just run around and go crazy! Alex really enjoyed himself in the bouncy house they had for 3 and under. He was a little clingy to me at first, but once he warmed up to the noise level, and the giant blow-up creatures, he crawled around in it and fell and giggled and grinned. He also enjoyed going down the slide three times in our laps, and playing with a little lady bug on wheels, while Mommy pushed him around--on her knees!!! He also LOVED crawling around and having so much space to explore! Dylan and Daniel both had tons of friends there and each had their own cake. Dylan had Star Wars of course, and Daniel had Ironman. Matthew didn't stop moving the entire time! And Julia just looked cute and showed off her almost crawling skills! She is 6 months old now--it's so hard to believe! After the party, we went to Towson Mall, and boy has that place changed since I lived in the area. There's a bunch of new restaurants and stores,and Rainforest Cafe is gone. We couldn't believe it had closed. We have a much needed day off tomorrow for Martin Luther King day. According to our nephew Daniel, Martin Luther King Jr. was "a priest who got shot" and when we asked him what famous words MLK said, he said "Peace be with you." LOL. I wasn't aware MLK came up with that! LOL. But seriously tomorrow, we will probably keep Alex home with us,and clean our upstairs closet! I know those size 3 jeans aren't fitting anytime soon, if ever again, so I think it's time to give them up! Some pictures from this weekend and the party follow. Enjoy your 4 day week!

Getting ready for a bath

Sleeping so peacefully in Mommy's arms

Alex and his side-swept hair

Corinne's baby girl, Charlye, is 4 months old now!

Corinne's other daughter, Rebekah, is 2 and as cute as can be!

A close-up of cute little Julia

Alex having fun in the bouncy house

Riding on a turtle!

Abe and Matthew

Mary with Charlye, Abe with Julia, and Medy

Daniel and his friends--Samantha and Armijote

Matthew riding not one, but two ride-ons

Dylan and Daniel with their cakes

Abe has the craziest look on his face here! LOL.

Alex can stand for about 5 seconds all by himself!

 

Cruising and Self-Feeding

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 As you all know, Alex tends to do soemthing new everyday. His newest "tricks" are cruising around and along furniture and feeding himself puffs and yogurt melts. He has become very skilled at holding onto the couch and walking from one end of it to the next. He also holds onto our leather chair, walks to the little table next to it an goes from there to the other leather chair. He's still holding onto everything as he walks, but we know he'll let go soon and take those first steps! Then we'll really be in trouble! Because of this, we bought a new snazzy pair of good quality shoes from Stride Rite. They were on sale for $12.95, which is an awesome price at Stride Rite. We actually had been wearing size 4 shoes on him that we got from Target, but we had his feet meaured today and he measured as a size 5! So we decided he needed a new pair, especially since he'll probably start walking in these shoes. He also starting feeding himself little Gerber Graduate puffs and yogurt melts just a couple of days ago. My aunt Glenna got him a little Cars tray for Christmas, so we just put his puffs in there and showed him how to out it into his mouth and he did all by himself right away. Now he sits in front of the TV with his tray on the floor and just watches TV and eats his puffs like a little man--it's the cutest thing! Not sure if this is a good thing or not, but Alex LOVES television. He'll stop playing sometimes just to watch! He's also just atrted to throw little temper tanturms, which we were defintely not looking forward too. If he wants something and doesn't think we're getting it for him fast enouh or if he doesn't want to be changed, he'll throw his back out and scream at the top of his lungs. I figure if he's started this young, the terrible two's are going to be a lot of fun! I think he's understanign the word "No" as well. His verdict on the word "No"--he doesn't care for it! So another week has come to a close, and we're gearing up for a fun-filled week ahead. Well once we get through Mon-Fri that is! We were soooo excited that our Ravens won Saturday, and we can't wait to see them beat the Steelers on Sunday! That's such a crazy match-up for me, because Steelers are a big team where I come from, but I have always been a Baltimore fan, even more so now that I have lived here for a a little over 6 years. Enjoy your week and go Ravens!

Alex in his snazzy new shoes

Eating his puffs

Giving us a big smile!

Another cute smile

Alex sure does love his ninny and his rockstar hair--no receding hairline on this boy! LOL.

Playing with the phone--with the spaghetti cat on inthe background!

Abe looked away for second and Alex was on the fifth stair chasing Oscar! Yikes!

He loves our cats--this is him "petting" Lexie

Playing in his corner

 

 

Check out my Slide Show!

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Alex's first Christmas..followed by Alex's first stomach flu!

I know it's been forever since I wrote anything, and you are all thinking I have no excuse, since Abe and I have been off of work since December 23rd, BUT all 3 of us are finally recovering from a very bad bout of the stomach flu! So much has happened since my last post,so I'll break it down by day for you.

Christmas Eve: Abe was working all day, and Alex and I were both home, so we just hung out at the house together and played all day. Around 3 we headed down to Abe's mom's and then to a children's mass at Sacred Heart. It was really nice, but SUPER crowded! We were very lucky to be able to squeeze into a seat. Alex was so well-behaved. He actually fell asleep about halfway through and slept through the end of it. I was very much relieved! Abe joined us about halfway through the service as well, somehow managing to find us in the standing room only church. We then headed over to Abe's Mom's and had a feast.

Christmas Day: Alex woke up around his usual time (being only 9 months old, he wasn't in hurry to open up his presents he didn't even know he was getting! LOL) Abe and I opened his presents for him. We tried to get him to rip the paper once we started a tear for him, but he was uninterested and kept crawling away! He got a dancing tower, whch is probably one of his favorite toys so far, a push toy to help him learn to walk, and a baby grand piano (Alex really loves instruments--he's obsessed with the xylophone Melinda gave us). He also got some clothes, feeding items, sippy cups and a kid's ice pack for those falls that I know are coming with his first steps being just around the corner. We also got him some personalized rubber labels to put on his sippy cups at daycare and such. Abe and I also opened out presents to one another. His "big" present being a GPS navigation system and mine being a winter acket and a beautfiul necklace with a little boy charm and Alex' aquamarine birthstone. After packing frantically and running out the door around 9:30 AM, we went to Abe's mom's, ate breakfast and watched the chaos unfold as the kids tore into all of their presents. Alex got so many nice things there! I couldn't begin to name them all! We rushed out of there around 1:30 PM and drove the 3  hours to visit my family. We arrived and immediately opened our gifts before my Dad had to be out the door to work by 5! Alex once again got many,many nice gifts--too many to name! My grandparents came to visit later that night and brought him even more stuff! We went to bed that night exhausted but so grateful for all of the nice things Alex got from his family members and all of the nice things we were able to provide for him and for each other.

Fast forward to Saturday night 12/27: Alex wakes up in the middle of the night throwing up. Only does it once, so we are thinking it's probably from too much excitement that day. Uh-oh!

Sunday-Today: We come home with big plans to send Alex off to daycare for the week and accomplish so many tasks around house, especially cleaning our closets and painitng Abe's Mom's kitchen for her. We send Alex to daycare Monday, but I wake up feeling pretty crappy. I spend the day pretty sick and in bed most of the day, while Abe tries to clean one of the downstairs closets. In my haze of sickness I attempt to help him, and we get a little bit accoplished before I am too sick to do anythin else. Tuesday, we keep Alex home because he was sick at daycare the day before--I feel a little better, but Abe feels terrible. Wednesday, Ms. Joanna, our daycare provider calls--she is sick (surprise,surprise). It doesn't matter anyway though, Alex is still too sick to make it to daycare. We take him to the doctor and wait 2 hours for them to tell us everyone has a stomach bug and give him pedialyte every half hour in a syringe, he'll get better soon. Thursday--we all feel a little better, so we got some cleaning  and laundry done. It was much needed!

Weekend--Running around and then Abe'm Mom's 60th borthday party today. It was a surprise and I think she was definitely surprised!!! We all chipped in to get her a digital camera, so she can take lots of pictures of her now 5 grandchildren! So tomorrow it's back to the norm. Oh and Alex will be 10 months old tomorrow! Can you believe it??? *sigh* Some pics below..I'll put together a 9 month/christmas slide show later this week to show them all.

Daniel, Alex, Dylan, Matthew and Julia geting ready for Santa!

Mary and Julia hanging out before Christmas

Dylan at his chirstmas program--love the robe!

Daniel at his program

Abe, Maria, Mary, and Ms. Medy

Alex found my mom's potatoes, so he had to try one! LOL.

Alex opening up a Christmas present

Walking with the help of his new walker he got!

Sitting with Uncle Brandon

Abe with Dylan and Matthew at Ms. Medy's party

Ms. Medy and Dave with the cake and all of the kids

Looking very serious at the party

         You can sort of see his two front teeth here--he now has 4 on the top and 2 on the    bottom!