rebel

My parents were kind enough to gift us with a Canon Rebel this Christmas!  We are so excited to start taking awesome photos with it.  Here are some examples of me attempting to learn how to use it properly.  Hopefully I learn quickly!  Now get ready for photo overload:

sc christmas

We spent Christmas in SC with Patrick's family.  It was the first one I ever spent NOT with my family, which was hard for me to get over.  But we had a very nice visit with the in-laws!  It was fun to see Gunnar and his 1-month-older cousin, David, together.  David has a big sister, Mackenzie, so he is used to sharing.  But Gunnar, being the only child that he is, has no grasp on the concept.  He was frequently caught stealing things (sippy cups, food, toys) from David and just walking away.  Poor David!  Once David stood up for himself, and took his cup back from Gunnar.  Gunnar's reaction was to bop him on the head.  Oh my, we have work to do with our bully!

Here are some photos from our Christmas morning:

By the way, that scooter bike Gunnar is enjoying so much is David's.

We had a great time over both of our Christmases and can't wait to see everyone again!

nc christmas

I'm way behind on posting, but I'm finally getting around to filling you in on our holidays.

We spent our first Christmas with my family at my parents house.  My sister and her 7 kids were able to come up while we were visiting so we REALLY got to have Christmas.  They arrived on Friday and we were able to hold all 8 kids (9 if you count Patrick, which most times we do) off from ripping open presents until Sunday morning.  I was quite impressed, not so much with Gunnar because he didn't really know what was going on and didn't open presents anyway (except for a pack of batteries - SCORE!) but with his 2 and 4 year old cousins.  I know it couldn't have been easy for them to see presents and wait patiently for 2 whole days.

On our early Christmas Eve, Saturday, the bigger kids helped Patrick build a new fire pit.  Then that night we took a walk around the neighborhood enjoying the luminaries that everyone sets out while Patrick made a fire.  The bonfire was so big, and we all got to enjoy it.  We roasted marshmallows  made s'mores, and even sang some jingle bells.  Gunnar was so excited about his first bonfire, he fell asleep in front of it.  Thanks to Kel for the following photos:

It was a great beacon for Santa to find our house early, because the next morning we all awoke to too many presents.  Again, these are all Kelly's pictures:

Everyone was pretty much in agreement that the best part of this Christmas was that Patrick was with us and NOT deployed like last year.  After all that great family time, we were sad to say goodbye.  But we were off to SC to spend time with Patrick's family!

13... 14... 15...

I've kind of been MIA around here since Gunnar's birthday.  It was like he hit the big ONE and just went bonkers.  He keeps me on my toes every second of every day.  So instead of monthly updates, I guess I will have to settle for quarterly updates on my little booger.

Here's all the exciting things he's picked up in the last three months:

• He says the following words:  mama, dada, papa (puppy), paba (sponge bob), kack (jack), bebe (belly), baka (muscles - don't know why but every time we ask him to do muscles he does it, and then yells "Baka!"), bye-bye, guhguh (Gunnar)
• He knows the following body parts, and will point to them when he feels like performing.  In the order he learned them:  peepee (typical boy), belly, tongue, ears, toes, cheeks, teeth
• He will do the following actions on command:  clap your hands, put it on your head, show me your muscles, blow me a kiss, wave, put it back, give that to me, are you dancing? (for some reason he won't dance when you ask him to, only when you ask if he already is)

His favorite things to do are:  run away from me, cuddle under a blanket, play catch, play peek-a-boo, ride his horsey and fire truck, climb stairs, climb anything really, make messes, dance to mickey mouse clubhouse, brush his teeth

He loves anything with wheels, any kind of ball, and any musical toy.  He still loves to get my belly (and anyone else's that will let him), and he still naps on me every day.  And I still love it.  Although, he is transitioning himself to one nap a day.  Which is actually better.  He has been miserable fighting his second nap almost every day.  And he goes to bed much easier, and earlier, and sleeps longer when he only has one nap.  I will just miss cuddling him twice a day.  I love my cuddle bug so much.

He gets in these moods where he starts to lecture an imaginary crowd.  He gets very intense and passionate about his jibber-jabber, and even throws in hand motions.  Usually they appear to be Italian-esque, which is weird because we have just about every kind of culture represented in our ancestry, except Italian.  Regardless, it's hysterical.

And now for some videos and photos of our booger:

And this is what 15 months looks like... all 33 inches, and 25 lbs of it (that would be 95th and 60th percentile's respectively):

He climbed down only to get a book and climb back up to read it.  And my heart melted.

Couldn't you just eat him right up?!  Love him.  Oh, and disregard the band-aids on his legs.  My big 15 month old had to get some shots today.  PS:  I hope he is never too big for mama love when he hurts.

my little monkey

Well, Patrick is down south visiting an air force base, doing some jumps and other assorted training, and it's just me and my boys left at home.  This afternoon we took our black beauty (oh yeah, we got a new truck!)

back up to Carmax so they could install the DVD player we purchased with it.  The install was going to take 4 hours, so they gave me a loaner to cruise around Fayetteville with.  Awesome.

We found our way to a place called Monkey Joe's.  It's an indoor play place full of bounce houses.  Gunnar took a long time to warm up to it.  I had to sit in the corner of one with him while he cried.  It didn't help that there were 8-10 year olds running a muck in the 3 and under bounce house.  Eventually, after a little freedom and running around the adult lounge (full of recliners) and behind the bounces to inspect the air pumps, he finally started having fun.  His favorite bounce house was one with a roughly 6+ ft wall that was basically straight up with some pegs to climb on, and a steep drop slide.  The first time I helped him up, and as soon as he reached the top of the slide he spun around and flew down feet first on his belly giggling the whole way.  He got down, ran back to the beginning, and climbed the wall all by himself.  Again, this is a wall made out of basically air.  I mean, I had trouble climbing it.

Clearly, he lived up to the name Monkey Joe.  He is climbing on EVERY THING these days...

Seriously... as I type this, this is what he is doing:

But I digress...  He loved the play place so much, I was very happy to hear that there is a similar place near us so I can take him back for some repeat performances.

If you could see his face he is grinning ear-to-ear.  I felt so bad I had to make him leave to pick the truck up.  But he was excited to see the new addition just for him.  Or maybe excited is the wrong word... more like intrigued.

Problem: no speaker on the unit, so he can only listen via headphones.  They lasted about 30 seconds, then he ripped them off and played with them.  His first movie, you ask?  Double feature.  An American Tale, and Fival Goes West.  

After a very long 3 days, we are very excited to pick Dad up from base tomorrow!  As you can imagine, it was a lot of "what can go wrong will" as soon as he walked out the door.  I've come to expect it now, which makes it a little easier.