A 3/4 Birthday!

Adam spent his 3/4 birthday at our ward Christmas party. He was quite a trooper considering it fell right in the middle of his nap time. He loved the musical performances and sat, listening quietly, the whole time. Those of you who know Adam know that this is highly unusual for him. Here he is listening to the music.
Later that night we went to Dorothy's house to celebrate his 3/4 birthday with cake. He loves all the fun things he finds in her kitchen drawer.
Adam and Scott played on the "Tupperware Drums". I think I've mentioned before how much Adam loves to drum.
His newest trick is standing unassisted. This was taken on the 15th. On the 19th he took his first steps in the Discovery Room at our local library.
You may be wondering where the pictures are of his 3/4 cake. Well, the cake didn't turn out so well. It was so moist (thanks Betty) that when I put the top layer on it split in half. I frosted it anyway and we did take pictures. My pride, however, prohibits me from posting them. Sorry.

We Rock!

As I mentioned earlier, we bought the game "Rock Band" for our Xbox 360 after playing at our friends' house. We LOVE this game. It is so much fun and a great reason to have friends over. Adam is obsessed with all of the Rock Band accessories. His favorites are the microphone and the drum. This kid loves to drum. He will drum on anything, with anything. Lucky for us we have a cool drum set. This is Adam and I rocking out. Adam prefers to rock sans pants. Hmmm, I wonder where he gets that from...
We have been having great fun. It's the best present we've ever given ourselves. We're givers. 'Tis the season, right? Check out my friend Deborah's blog to see pictures from our last jam session (see I even use rockin' lingo, I'm so cool!).

Caught in the Act!

I posted previously about Adam's love of the dishwasher. He literally starts breathing heavy when I open it. I am usually pretty careful about closing it so that he doesn't get into it but, as I also posted earlier, I am sometimes neglectful in the "baby-proofing" department. Well, I left it open, and this time I had the presence of mind to take a few pictures for posterity before concerning myself with Adam's safety.


I s this the look of a happy child, or what? I'm glad he's benefiting from my negligence...this time.

Shoe Fetish?

We visited our friends, the Haymores, in Syracuse last weekend. We had a fabulous time stuffing our faces and rocking out to the new Xbox game "Rock Band". Scott and I liked it so much, we decided to make it our Christmas present to each other. We're super mature.

Needless to say, Adam slept in a pack 'n' play all weekend. He did well but was a little distracted by his surroundings...his crib was in the Haymore's walk-in closet (because it was dark and quiet, not because we're mean, lock-your-kid-in-the-closet people).

When I put him down for his first nap I left the room and was downstairs for a few minutes when we heard a bunch of thuds. Being the responsible Mom that I am, I waited 'til he was asleep to check it out. This is what we saw...


He had pulled several pairs of Veronica's shoes off of the shelf and into his crib, and onto the floor. Such a funny kid. By the way, I love how he sleeps. I could watch him sleeping in this position all day.

Dancing Machine

Tunnel of Fun

I have so many toys from my days as a speech therapist. Every so often I go through them and pull out stuff that Adam might like. The other day I pulled out The Tunnel. This was the preferred toy of almost every child with whom I worked. I worked with a non-verbal child who actually said the word "tunnel" (okay, "tunn-o") when I had the gall to walk into his home without it one day. That's right, this thing is magic. I think it's safe to say that Adam agrees.



I expect him to be talking any day now.

Why am I Not This Cool?

Ellen showed this video on her show today. So. Stinkin'. Funny.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry it took me so long to post our Thanksgiving pictures, I had some technical difficulties. We spent Thanksgiving with Scott's family at his Mom's house. Scott's sister, Alyson, came with her kids from Maryland. And his sister, Megan, came from Buffalo with her family. Apart from the typical festivities (i.e. stuffing our faces) we also played games, chatted, shopped, and saw movies. It was so fun to be together as a family and watch all of the cousins enjoy each other so much.
Shortly after Adam was born, Scott was daydreaming about one day playing all sorts of fun games with him. During one of those daydreams he found this marble set. It is truly extraordinary. The older cousins had loads of fun building different structures and watching the marbles course through them.


Colin loved it so much he stayed home with Uncle Scott while the rest of the kids went to the movies.


Adam created his own brand of fun.

This is Adam with Grandma. What can I say? The kid's got a big mouth. Those of you who know Scott, know that this is definitely his gene.


Dorothy took all the girls to get our hair cut. I LOVE mine. I was growing out a particularly bad cut and this was the perfect fix. Thanks to our family for a wonderful holiday and especially to Dorothy who blesses our lives everyday.

I'm It!

So my friend Heather "tagged" me. Which means that I am supposed to post 6 interesting facts about myself. Seeing as this is a family blog I decided to share the wealth with Scott (you probably know all you care to about Adam). So here we go:

Scott:
1. As long as I have known him, Scott has had a deep desire to one day witness a monkey riding a pig. When Adam was born, Scott's Mom made him a sock monkey and bought him a pink pig. This is what Scott did with them. While these are only stuffed animals, it satisfied him until he can one day see the real thing.

2. He is able to finish a Rubik's Cube in about a minute and a half. He's wicked smart.

April:
1. I MUST read before I go to bed. This has frustrated Scott on occasion for many reasons. One may be that I will often have the light on when he would like to be sleeping. The other is that if I have finished my book I will steal his just to have something to read. I got through the whole Ender Series by Orson Scott Card this way.

2. Since I have been pumping I have become addicted to playing Settlers of Catan on our Xbox 360. The game is the perfect length to get an entire pumping session in. Some women have letdown when they hear a baby cry; for me it is when I hear the opening music to Settlers of Catan. Can you say "freak"?

Both of Us
1. When we were dating Scott accidentally kicked a rolled up newspaper at me and it hit me in the head. He still laughs about that whenever it comes up. I don't laugh...

2. Someday when Scott and I have more disposable income there are a few places we'd like to visit. They are, in no particular order, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands and the Pyramids in Egypt. Now we just have to hope that the disposable income comes before acid rain eats them all away...

That's it for us. I'm tagging Deborah and Joanna. You're it!

A Fraction of a Birthday

Those of you who know us well know that we have been celebrating Adam's "fraction" birthdays since he was 3 months (or 1/4 of a year). I know. We're lame. On that note, today was Adam's 2/3rd birthday, or 8 months for those of you who are not too good with fractions. You know who you are.

Now, I would like to say that I have been happy to make cakes each quarter, but the 1/3 and 2/3 birthdays were Scott's idea (I put my foot down on his 5/12th birthday). I think it might just be a ploy to get me to bake a cake. And I know you're thinking "they're never gonna do this with all their kids". You're right, but we have one child right now, and we're enjoying it. So there. Anyway, here are the pictures to prove just how weird we are.

Adam was fascinated with the cakes while they were baking. He's fascinated with the oven in general, which is very scary for me.

Notice how it's 2/3 of a cake, yeah I'm clever like that. Check out our photo album to see his other cakes.


Scott tried unsuccessfully to keep him from touching it. I guess it is a little cruel to put him so close and expect him to just look. Well he certainly did more than look...

What you don't see is Scott and I frantically cleaning the butter cream frosting off of his hands so as not to activate his horrible milk allergy. Good times, good times...

The Importance of Child-Proofing

Our talented son has developed a sixth sense. It's not the creepy "I see dead people" kind. It's more like a "I sense something is 'unchild-proofed' at the moment" kind. Leave the toilet lid open? He'll find it. Didn't close the baby gate to the stairs? He feels like a climb. Didn't latch the cupboard with all the extremely dangerous cleaning supplies?

He will sense your negligence and seek out the forbidden fruit (or Lysol). See the lock dangling there uselessly? Yeah, I'm a good Mom.

So, What are You Trying to Tell Me?

Adam has a pretty rigid nighttime routine. He eats dinner, has a bath and goes to bed. Well, we had plans on Friday night and Scott was late getting home so I was trying to get several things done at once. I fed Adam dinner but didn't have time to bathe him right away so I put him in the living room with a couple of toys and went back to what I was doing. I noticed he was being very quiet and so I peeked in the living room only to see that he wasn't there. I finally found him in the bathroom.


Do you think he likes his routine? After all that work to tell me what he wanted, I had to oblige him.


Just how excited are you Adam?

That's Our Boy

No big events to blog about, but we had some fun pictures from the last week that I wanted to share. Adam loves to go to our local library. They have an amazing children's playroom. Adam's favorite thing to do is watch the other kids. His second favorite thing to do is to suck on the toys.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this nose is a result of all that sucking. Oh well, it helps build his immunities, right?


I wish I had thought to take a picture one minute before this. Instead I panicked and removed Adam from his perch atop the dishwasher door where he was happily chewing on the top shelf.


Can you tell he is in a "climbing stage"? Anything he can get on top of, he does. On a different note, this was taken in his new playroom. We were tired of having his toys strewn about the house so we cleared out the computer room and made it into a playroom. Don't get me wrong, his toys are still strewn about the house, but now we have a place to throw them at the end of the day (and when we have unexpected guests).

Pumpkin Update

I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their respective seats wondering the fate of our once lovely pumpkin.Remember how cute it was? Perfectly carved and ready for Halloween.

This was the morning after Halloween. It was attacked in the night by an angry mob of squirrels who are responsible for multiple atrocities in our neighborhood.

This is how it looked this morning. Apparently the war wages on, and it's not looking too good for the pumpkin.

Halloween Festivities

We had a busy Halloween week. We started it off with a Pumpkin carving party then a Halloween party, followed by our ward's trunk-or-treat then finished it up with the big day. Adam was all anticipation.

See how cute our pumpkin is? That was before it was attacked by an angry mob of squirrels that patrols our neighborhood wreaking havoc.

This was what it looked like post angry squirrel mob.

I bought Adam this monkey costume. We decided that he couldn't be just a plain old monkey....

since his parents are obviously superman and supergirl. Thus, he was transformed into a "super monkey".

Niagara Falls and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weather

We took a trip to Niagara Falls while Melody and her family were here. The weather was truly atrocious; wind, rain, cold, you name it. We managed to have a pretty good time despite the bad weather.


We parked on the strip and used an arcade as shelter while we bundled up. Adam may be getting a bit big for the Moby Wrap.


The good thing about having him in the wrap is that I could multi task. Scott found this very amusing. The bad thing about having him in the wrap is that his tree trunk-like ankles were exposed to the elements.


Here we are in front of The Falls. I am beginning to understand why everyone was staring as I walked around with Adam in the wrap. I look like a scene from the movie Alien.


This is my sister Emily and her husband Jim. Isn't her sweater pretty? This was before I dumped about a quart of hot chocolate on it. She called today to let me know she finally got the stain out. Sorry Emily.

Here is Melody and her husband Paul. They did the "Journey Behind the Falls" and as a reward for such a daring feat were given these fancy rain ponchos.


But seriously, aren't they so stinkin' cute?

The Boys

As mentioned before, my sister visited with her family. It was a lot of fun to watch Adam and Noah interact. Noah is such a calm, sweet, observant baby whereas Adam is , hmmm... gregarious? Unrestrained? Burly? Pick your adjective.

This was their first meeting bright and early Sunday morning. Noah seems concerned. Rightly so, Adam needed to be redirected several times. He still doesn't recognize people as people and will often use them as chew toys, stepping stones, or use their faces as play-doh.


Adam was very interested in the new person in his highchair. He actually insisted on eating before Noah was done. He seems to have that "I must have whatever he has" complex.

We drove to Niagara Falls last Tuesday. The weather was terrible but we had a great time. The boys got to ride together when the ladies took a side trip to the outlet mall. They were a little perturbed that they couldn't see each other due to the angle of their car seats.

At the end of the day we played a few games at an arcade on the strip in Niagara Falls. It was like Heaven for Adam and Noah. The blinking lights and sounds were practically euphoric.

A Beautiful Day

As mentioned before, my sister was visiting last weekend from Utah. We decided to drive to Letchworth, a national park, to take in the fall colors. We couldn't have asked for a better day. It was close to 80 degrees and sunny.

Isn't it lovely?!

We took what we thought was going to be a short hike. It ended up being very long but very beautiful. Adam had mixed feelings about the backpack. He looks happy here, but fussed quite a bit.
The fall colors were phenomenal. I'm thinking of making this our Christmas picture. What do you think? Does the chain-link fence (and my crazy hair) take away from the beauty of the landscape?

This is me with my sisters, Melody and Emily. Everyone always tells me how lucky I am to be tall. This picture should help explain why I don't always feel lucky. I look like a giant next to Melody!! Can you tell that I have my Dad's bone structure and she has her Mom's?

This is Melody and her husband, Paul. If you've ever read Pride and Prejudice, they are Jane and Mr. Bingley, just sweet and kind in every way. More on Melody's visit tomorrow (with pictures of her cute baby, Noah!).