Goodbye, 2009!

Another year has come to an end. Oddly, not too differently from how 2008 came to an end: with Philip snug as a bug in a rug in bed, while his two tired parents struggle to keep their eyes open until midnight for the sake of ringing in the New Year!

This New Year's Eve we're not only saying goodbye to a year gone by but also to a decade. Which is probably why it feels all the more important to at least stay awake to commemorate the event. So many great things have happened over the past 10 years, far overshadowing the bad. It has definitely been a time of change for Phil and for myself. We graduated from high school, went to college, graduated from college, traveled, started careers, got married, had a baby, bought a home... all in all an awesome decade. It's hard to imagine the next ten years could possibly top the previous ten years but, somehow, I believe that they will. In fact, we're already off to a great start!

Happy New Year and best wishes for love, health, and happiness in 2010!

New Favorite Toy

Nope, it's not one of his Christmas presents. It's the lazy Susan and all of the fun and intriguing treasures it holds! This is how Philip kept himself busy yesterday while we put away groceries.






He's just so darn smart! He never ceases to amaze us.

Christmas 2009

Christmas has come and gone and I think we're still in recovery. Figuratively, and literally! On Christmas Eve, Philip came down with a cold. We put him to bed that night with a 101 degree fever and a rough night for all of us followed. Philip was up bright and early Christmas morning and in better spirits so we went downstairs to see if Santa had visited. And did he ever!

For only being his second Christmas, Philip made out like a bandit. Apparently, either Santa had a hard time controlling himself this year or Philip was just an especially good boy all year. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

Among some of his favorite presents were his play kitchen, complete with stainless steel pots and pans, his My Pal Scout puppy who he loves to snuggle, and his Plan Toys push walker to replace the popping lawnmower that was about to give Mommy a brain aneurysm.

Mommy and Daddy didn't too badly either! Our shared gift to each other was a Nintendo Wii, and we also gave each other a few small gifts. My favorite gift from Phil was a pink heated throw blanket. We've been inseparable since Friday! Phil would probably say his favorite gift was the large bottle of Jack Daniel's Santa left for him under the tree, which he wasted no time in opening!

After opening presents we had breakfast, a cheese and potato frittata, and lounged around in our pajamas for the rest of the day at home. It was a fun and relaxing day!

O Christmas Tree

I'm so proud of our first tree in our own house, I wanted to post a picture of it here. Of course, it would have been perfect to have had a picture of Philip posing adorably in front of it, maybe in the cute little Santa hat that I bought him (that he hates), but, after many futile attempts to make said picture a reality, I've realized that's just not gonna happen. Oh well. There's always next year!

"Sleep in Heavenly Peace"

Digging Out

The snow finally moved out around 9:00 last night, much to our relief. But after a full 24 hours of snowflakes, there was (and still is!) quite a mess to deal with:



Phil got to work right away on shoveling our driveway which was a JOB. Thankfully, it wasn't completely backbreaking as our wonderful neighbor used his snow blower to clear our driveway from the back of our cars out to the road, alleviating a lot of hard manual labor for Phil in the morning. After a couple hours of shoveling, Phil finally dug us our car out of the driveway and we ventured out into town around 1:00. Much to our dismay, the major roads through town were a complete mess. They seriously looked as though a plow hadn't even touched them! Oddly enough, the only priority area seemed to be the parking lots at Wal-Mart and Target.

Upon returning from town we found that the plow had finally made its appearance. Unfortunately, it also threw a three foot wall of rock hard snow completely across our once snow-free driveway. Needless to say, Phil definitely got our money's worth out of our snow shovel today!

Here's a picture of our house all lit up against the winter wonderland!



We didn't get to do any playing today as the snow is still so thick. Apparently, a two foot toddler isn't much of a match for two feet of snow!

SNOW!

At this moment, the three of us are huddled indoors while outside our front door the world looks like this:













It's only 11 o'clock in the morning and supposedly the worst of the storm is still ahead of us. I'm just praying we don't lose power! Thankfully, Phil called in to work last night and it looks like he won't be going anywhere today either. The roads are horrible and making the normally 1 hour and 15 minute long trek to Fairfax today would not only be treacherous, but also take at least a solid 4 hours. Looks like we'll be hunkering down together in our warm and cozy home for the weekend! Hopefully by tomorrow we'll be able to go out and play!

Then and Now

Philip at Christmastime last year:


Philip at Christmastime this year:



Back then I didn't think it was possible for my child to get any more adorable. A year has proved me wrong!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas is one week away and I think we're almost ready. We're nearly done with Christmas shopping, the house is decorated, cookies have been baked, Santa has been visited, and Christmas cards are in progress, but it still feels like there's so much left to do!

Christmas this year is such a contrast to Christmas last year. This time last year, we had just moved into our new house and sleeping on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by unpacked boxes. But it was still great to be homeowners! We didn't decorate too much, mostly because we couldn't unearth our boxes of holiday decorations, and we didn't get a tree. We also had a 3.5 month old baby who was still waking up several times per night, so we felt okay cutting ourselves some slack in that regard!

This year, Christmas has hit our house in full force. Phil did a great job putting up lights in the front and back of the house, our tree is ablaze with lights and shimmering with ornaments, and the rest of the house is peppered with holiday cheer. Preparing for Christmas has been especially fun for me this year. It's always been my favorite time of year, but being a parent has made it that much more joyful. It's so much fun seeing the holiday through the eyes of a child again and I'm having fun beginning our own family traditions with Philip, like going to pick out our Christmas tree, listening to Christmas music, watching Christmas movies together, and baking cookies to share with friends and family. And then there's the shopping! Needless to say, I've had a little too much fun shopping for Philip's first "real" Christmas now that he's old enough to actually observe and enjoy what's going on around him. But I'm still pretty sure that, of the two of us, I'm the most excited to see him open his presents this year!

15 Months Old

Little P is 15 months old today!


Boy, oh, boy is time flying now! If I thought the first year went by quickly, I can clearly see now that the second year is going to go by even faster! Philip has all but left all traces of babyhood behind him. In fact, when I refer to him as "the baby" now, it seems like a poor fit; he is most definitely a toddler! He's changed so much over the past 3 months. He's extremely mobile now. Walking, running, and climbing; he's absolutely keeping us on our toes. He's also becoming such an independent little person! Every day I'm amazed to see how much he is changing, learning, and growing, and it's so awesome to see his little personality blooming right before our eyes.

He's not really talking, per se, but he has a few "words" in his repertoire that we've decided to go ahead and count as his official words. He started with "dada", which he's been saying since this summer. Then he added "baba" into the mix, but hasn't used that much at all since he started drinking from sippy cups during the day back in September. Next came the long-awaited "mama" which he finally gave up last month! Granted, most of the time he saves "mama" for when he's angry or upset but I'll take what I can get! And, just the other day we were checking out in line at Target, and the cashier greeted Philip with a friendly "Hi!" Wouldn't you know it, our sweet little boy said it right back? We were beaming! Now he says it all the time when prompted. So cute!

He's also recently taken to signing! So far he knows the sign for "more" and for "milk." He learned "more" a while ago but I hadn't been practicing any with him for a while. Within the past couple of weeks I started randomly making the sign for "milk" when offering him his sippy cup and then, out of the blue, the other morning he signed "milk" to us (with both hands!) when we asked him if he wanted a drink. Genius, I tell you! ;-)

Even though his spoken vocabulary is limited, he still understands so much. All we have to do is give him the vocabulary for an object a couple of times and he retains it. What's even more adorable is when we ask him to find something, like his football, and he immediately stops what he was doing to go find it and bring it to us!

We couldn't be more proud of our little guy. He's healthy and smart and such a blessing in our lives. Life with Philip just keeps getting better!

Happy Baby

Today was a good day.

A couple of cute moments from our rainy Monday at home together:

• I realized today that I can access Facebook from Phil's XBox. (Finally, a use for the XBox that I can appreciate!) I logged into my account and was viewing photos in my photo album, 99% of which are pictures of Philip. Philip was in love with watching pictures of himself and his mommy and daddy flash across the TV screen. At one point a picture of Philip posed with his stuffed monkey came up on the screen. He pointed at the monkey, and then scanned the room, and then pointed at the actual monkey sitting in the corner, and then pointed at the screen again. So cute! It never ceases to amaze me how smart he is.

• Later, Philip and I were sitting on the couch together this evening. Well, I was sitting, aka, using my body as a shield to deflect my monkey of a toddler from flying off of the couch while he rolled around on it. Philip had discovered our large bottle of hand sanitizer. He was really interested in it, and I thought he was just picking it up off the end table and putting it back down. I looked closer over his shoulder and realized that he was touching the pump on the top, and then repeatedly rubbing his hands together in an awkward little slapping/rubbing motion. He was "sanitizing" his hands! LOL This is a good sign of things to come, I'm telling you! Can't argue with a baby who values cleanliness. ;-)
  

Morning

I think morning is my favorite time of day with Philip. So far he seems to be a morning person, just like his mama. He's always relaxed and happy in the morning, and why wouldn't he be? PJs, sippies, and Cheerios. Doesn't get any better than that!

Tunes

I've added some music to the blog. If you scroll down the page a ways, on the right side you'll see a music player. If you prefer not to listen to the music, you can hit stop. I wanted to point out especially one of my most favorite songs ever though, the Dixie Chicks' "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)." Any mommy of a little boy, or any mommy in general, will be hard-pressed to listen to this song without crying. At least, I know I can't!

Here are the lyrics, too, because they're just too sweet and beautiful to not include.

Dragon tales and the "water is wide"
Pirate's sail and lost boys fly
Fish bite moonbeams every night
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels wings
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

The rocket racer's all tuckered out
Superman's in pajamas on the couch
Goodnight moon, we'll find the mouse
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels' wings
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

God bless mommy and match box cars
God bless dad and thanks for the stars
God hears "Amen," wherever we are
And I love you

Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angels' wings
Godspeed
Godspeed
Godspeed
Sweet dreams

Halloween + Misc. Pics

It's been a while! Things have been busy around here. Halloween has long since come and gone but I wanted to share a few pictures here.

Carving pumpkins! Philip was not as interested in playing with the "guts" as we thought he would be.

"You can play with that all you want, Mama, I'm still not going to touch it."

"What the heck is that?!"

"You must be new here!"

"Oh, boy! My favorite thing: leaves!"

The best shot we could get of him with the pumpkins. He gets a little weirded out when we put him in outdoor situations. What can I say, he's an indoor baby.

"Oh, it's you again!"

Phil likes mullet wigs. Sorry Steelers fans. Phil's own team is 2-6 at the time of this writing. ;-)

Babies do not like mullet wigs.

Or being posed on the porch next to jack-o-lanterns, apparently.

Ready to trick or treat with neighbors Ian and Elijah! Two of three kids smiling. Not bad!

Elijah graciously "inspected" all of Philip's candy for him.

"Mama, that giraffe won't leave my candy alone!"

Truck rides and Cheerios.

Cheesin'

Sharing his Cheerios with Lola.

Look at those tip toes!

Really in need of a toddler chair!

Pumpkin pancakes + Taylor Swift = Dancing in the high chair