It’s about time…

That I got my laptop back!!!  My loving husband hijacks my laptop constantly and I’d say that’s why it takes so long in between posts.  Of course he’ll say there are plenty of nights that he’s working that I could do this (like tonite for instance) – but to that I would say maybe the 800 million things I have to do kind of get in the way of computer time.  I could list some of those things but knowing most of you reading this are mom’s too, I know I don’t have to!  Preaching to the choir, right???

Anyway – considering I do have way too much still to do tonite – I’m gonna get right in to things.  I’ve got lots of pictures to post since so much time has passed since the last entry.  And I recently discovered how much this blog has helped me track Christopher’s milestones so I want to include as much as I can!!

This is my Cousin Marion and my Cousin Maureen – related to me on my Mothers side.  I haven’t seen or spoken to them in over 16 years.  You know how it goes, some kind of family fight that keeps you apart.  I could get in to the details and tell my “side” of the story – but it just doesn’t matter.  Either I could go on ignoring that side of my family- or I take a chance and open up that side of my heart.  Of course I chose the latter.   Not having that side of my family in my life all these years was upsetting so the chance to give that side of my family back to Christopher means so much.  We were all slightly concerned on how it would go – could we move on from the past?  Thankfully the answer was yes!  We had a lovely time.  They got to meet monkey and I got to meet their families.

Here is monkey with Marion’s kids Emily & Sean and Maureen’s daugthers Erin & Samantha.  He had a lot of fun tearing up Marion’s kitchen and flirting with the girls 🙂

That’s right, that’s my son, swiffering the kitchen floor.  They say it’s important to get your kids doing chores early…….

They also say kids watch too much tv…..I’m trying really hard to not let him sit in front of the tv all the time, but when I’m getting ready for work Sesame Street is a nice way to keep him occupied!  It’s educational, right??  And some cheerios helps too…..

Grandpa Sal came over today.  He gave Christopher a hand walking in to the house.  Check out monkey’s shoes – adorable right??

Bath time!

Christmas tree shopping!  We got a tree a bit bigger then a charlie brown tree but was not too big.  It fits our space in the living room perfectly.  I’ll have to take a picture and get that posted some other day.

Christopher has been playing with this cube forever.  He couldn’t put the shapes in their holes without help, until recently.  Now he can put the circle and the square in by himself.  He’ll sit there and do that forever!  It’s great.  I’ll be in the kitchen doing something and he’s all quiet – I peek around the corner and he’s playing with this cube.

I just love this picture of him – he looks like such a little boy!  Not like a baby at all……

This is what he looked like A YEAR AGO!!!!  Can you believe it – I can’t.

Like all babies he loves playing with the electronics in the house, the remote, the phone…..you get one away from him he takes off and finds another!!!

This is one of his favorite toys. (I said it once I’ll say it again, thanks Anita!!!!)  He’ll sit on the floor and play with this forever too. He’ll take the little magnets and walk all over the house with them.  He races in to the living room and leaves them on the couch and then grabs them again and runs them back in to the kitchen.  That hairdo is courtesy of Grandma Angie….apparently she does this to him at school all the time!  I honestly have no idea how I’m ever gonna take that binky away from him…it’s just so funny to see him with it.

So I dragged Chris & Christopher to the Old Bethpage Village Restoration for their Candlelight Evening and Tree lighting.  Of course the tree lighting had to fall on the same night as daddy’s christmas party…..so it was a little dodgy on how we’d do both…but we made it work.  It meant Christopher had to come to the party and he was up way past his bedtime, but a night out as a family was worth it.  Here were my boys with Santa Claus.

Somebody was nice enough to take a pic of the three of us in front of a Christmas tree inside the exhibition hall – it was sooo pretty.

Here is the xmas tree that was lit – that’s about the only outdoor pic I took.  It was so cold that we didn’t spend much time outside.  That and we thought the wheels on the stroller were gonna fall off – the paths were soooo rocky!  And you couldn’t bring strollers in to the historic houses so we didn’t waste a lot of time checking them out.  We’ll wait to do this again when monkey is a little older!  Note to self, next time remember the stupid flashlight and definitely dress warmer!!!  And maybe bring a thermos of hot chocolate!

After the village, we hit daddy’s xmas party.

The Holiday season has begun…..

I love this time of year!!!  Thanksgiving was nice – Grandma Candy, Grandpa Richie, Grandma Angie, Aunt Victoria and Aunt Gen were here to celebrate with us.  What wasn’t so nice was monkey got sick – throwing up first, then diarrhea – poor thing spent dinner drinking pedialite while the rest of us ate turkey!  But he got lots of love so that made it a little easier.

I just realized I didn’t get any pictures – which sucks.  I was so surprised by his sickness it totally threw me off.  Of course the Grandma’s were quick to point out this will happen all the time, usually on holidays or other special occasions so I should get used to it…..great!

Now I need to get my butt in gear and get the house decorated for Christmas!  We don’t have a lot of space for a big tree, and it’s probably better that we don’t have that kind of temptation around the house for monkey.  The last few years I’ve been getting a little Charlie Brown tree.  But daddy says I have to wait to get it or it will dry out before Xmas.  Of course I don’t think he realizes that the trees they’re selling now will probably be the same trees they’re selling a week from now so it will end up drying out before Xmas no matter how long we wait!!!  So maybe I won’t listen to him and I’ll pick one up this weekend 🙂  Christmas just feels more real once the tree is up.  I never did understand how some people wait until Christmas eve to put one up……that’s just cutting it too close for me.

I’ve started addressing the xmas cards – I did two versions because I’m a lunatic – I addressed the first set.  Now the new set that arrived today will go to all the people I hadn’t gotten to yet.  I’ll get to scanning and posting them at a later date.  Of course now I wish I had waited to order cards cause we took the little nugget to visit Santa at Roosevelt Field yesterday and they took a GREAT picture of him and Santa.

I made some tweaks in Adobe Lightroom and came up with this…..which would have made for the best Xmas card!!!!!

Oh well – rookie mistake.  Next year I’ll wait to see how Santa pic comes out before I make my cards……..

Well I knew that was going to happen…..

Now that the pressure is off on the 365 day project I knew I’d take forever to update this thing.  Whenever I’ve tried keeping a journal I either gave up or I only wrote in it once a month.  Don’t know why I thought this would be different.  Well, actually I do.  I thought since I was doing it for Christopher I’d be more motivated.  I kept a written journal during my pregnancy, kept another written one during his first year, did the baby book, the 1st year calendar and this blog.  I know, seems like overkill right?  But having lost my mother at the age of 5, I know what it’s like to wish I had those things to look back on and see what she was thinking since she’s not here to tell me herself.  Now of course I plan on sticking around for a really long time so it shouldn’t be an issue – but I can’t help myself!  Gonna try to be better about writing this thing.  (and really God – please keep me here for a nice long time please)

Oddly enough the thing I haven’t stopped doing is taking a picture of him everyday.  Even if it’s just him playing in his play yard.  I have loved looking back and seeing how significant the changes are in his growth.  And these days with a digital camera it’s so easy to do!

The latest thing we’re dealing with are night terrors.  I hate it.  The monkey cries almost every night now.  Sometimes he just whimpers a few times and goes back to sleep.  Other times it’s blood curdling cries followed by him sitting up staring in to space.  I can’t tell if he’s awake or not – the books say to leave them alone, they’ll work through it and go back to sleep and not even remember the incident.  I’ve tried to do that – but really how can you????  He won’t stop crying and he tries getting up, but he’s half asleep so he falls into the side of the crib.  It’s so awful.  Of course I pick him up and he stops instantly.  But when I try putting him back down he starts crying again.  The doctor says it’s normal.  She said from her experience kids that grind their teeth or don’t nap enough during the day tend to experience this more.  When I’m holding him I think I can hear him grinding his teeth – but how do you stop that?  I try putting his binky in his mouth but when he’s that upset he just spits it out.  I’d say on the weekend the nap thing could be the issue – but he cries during the week and he gets plenty of nap time at school.  It’s only me that can’t get him to go down….unless I’m driving!   So now I take hour drives to no where when he does that just so he’ll get some sleep.  I thinking gas might be an issue too.  Sometimes I check the monitor before going in his room to see if he’ll settle in – and if he sits up then I go in.  And a lot of the time if it progresses to my picking him up, he’ll be crying, fart, then stop.   I keep telling myself to add the gripe water to his last bottle of the day but I always forget.  The last few nights I haven’t even gotten him in his crib – he’s been stuffy and it makes it hard to breathe so unless I’m cuddled next to him he’d just cry and cry.  But tonite he went down ok and keeping fingers crossed he’ll stay that way until tomorrow a.m……

This is one of the outfits Christopher got for his birthday.  I love it – he’s totally ready for fall 🙂

my friend Susan and I got together so I could do Christmas pics of her daughter Jordan and she’d help me with taking Christopher’s.  Jordan got in on the action and was taking pictures for me – I actually think I’m using one of the pics she took!

I had gone to this park in Garden City with my friend Anita once – it’s near her new house.  While I was out shopping the other day Christopher was a little restless so I figured I’d bring him to the park to burn off some energy.  Of course I didn’t realize the park is only for GC resident’s and their guests…..was hoping the whole time I was there the GC cops or better yet, some insane GC folk weren’t going to demand to see my driver’s license!!

speaking of Anita – monkey wants to thank you for the fridge magnets – he’s been having lots of fun with them.

and I finally got around to hiring my neighbor’s kid Megan to come over and be a mother’s helper.  She played with Christopher while I got some housework done.  Really need to do that more often!

yup – that’s Cap’t Adorable blowing on a duck call….he’s made daddy so proud

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTOPHER – 1 yrs old :)

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeee…..Happy Birthday to me 🙂

That’s right. Today is my birthday.  I am finally 1 years old.  Mommy and Daddy had a big party planned for me – it’s sesame street themed – cause I love watching Sesame Street in the morning before school.  I like to watch Elmo and Murray and Abby and Big Bird.

That’s me with the giant Elmo balloon.  My cousin Isabella really loved playing with him, see….

Aunt Victoria and Aunt Gen did paintings on everyone – they were really good at it.  Here’s Meghan, my neighbor from across the street, she got Elmo and Cookie on her hands.

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Here is Grandma Angie with the cake she made for me.

And here are the cupcakes mommy made…

There will be more pictures – but this is all mommy had time to post for now 🙂  Thanks everybody for hanging out with me this last year.  Mommy says she’s gonna keep my blog going so you can still see how I’m growing.  There might be some changes though.  Instead of posting a picture for every day she’ll probably do it a little differently.  And she’s probably going to take over writing duties.  I’ve got so many things to do, you know – tearing every book of my bookshelf, playing with my toys, growing teeth, eating puffs – it’s hard to keep up my blog for every day of the year.  So like I said, it will be different but it’s still going to be here so make sure you check in from time to time.

Day 365!!!!!

Technically today is the 365th day – can you believe it??  We’ve been hanging out together for a whole year.  Do you remember what I looked like on day 1(https://365daysofchristopher.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/day-1/) – that seems like so long ago!  I’m a big boy now.  I can walk and I can talk, well I can talk a little.  I have 5 teeth.  I eat regular food.  I love to play.  I like to dance.  Tomorrow is my birthday and I am going to be 1 years old 🙂  Mommy and Daddy are so excited.  They have a birthday party planned and lots of friends and family are coming to celebrate with me.

Aunt Victoria came down to stay with us and to help mommy out with all the last minute things to do.  Mommy is soooo glad she’s here.  She said she really needed Aunt Victoria’s help.  I was really happy to have her to play with.

Day 364

I’m just sitting here in the kitchen, eating my graham crackers.  They are so yummy.   See that animal on my onesie?  That’s a bull.  Mommy says I’m “strong like bull.”  It also looks a little like the tattoo daddy has on his arm.  He’s “strong like bull too”!!

Day 363

Yeah Yeah – I know, Halloween is over.  But my shirt glows in the dark!  That is so cool.  I’m gonna wear this until I outgrow it.  Which probably won’t be much longer.

Day 362

Just hanging out waiting for mommy to finish getting all my stuff ready for school.  She’d probably get it done faster if she wasn’t taking my picture all the time!!

Day 361

Mommy got a break from changing my diaper!  It was daddy’s turn.  Mommy says she needs to watch how daddy does it because I don’t squirmle for him nearly as much as I do for her 🙂  That’s cause mommy is a softy and lets me get away with squirmiling.

Day 360

This is the outfit I got from Barbara and Rich back when I was only 57 days old 🙂  It was sooooooo big then – but it fits me pretty good now!  Someday I want to go to a hockey game.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even learn to play hockey someday.