Catching Our Breath

Our Christmas holiday was very busy, as I'm sure yours was too. Andrew's family visited just prior to the holiday, and were able to stay for several days....

Here's Andrew's brother (Matt) holding Riley and his daughter Brenna. Our house was definitely more lively with everyone here, and it was nice to have small kids around for holiday festivities.

On the 21st, we all braved the VERY cold temps here (I think the high for the day was 2F) and organized ourselves to go to the Shedd Aquarium. It was the first time I'd been there in decades, and it was smaller than I remembered :) Brenna and Grandma had a great time, taking lots of pictures and checking out every tank at least once. Brenna liked the sharks, but not the sting rays. You're not supposed to use flash photography around the tanks, so we don't have many pix- but this tank had a sign in front that I could prop the camera on to get this nice photo of corals, etc.

Brenna's family left on the 23rd, while we were receiving a rather large snow deposit. I guess the driving was OK getting back to PA (?). We were thinking of leaving for STL, but decided to wait and see how the weather turned out the next day.

So, we ended up driving to STL on Christmas Eve. We had a nice dinner out (one of our traditions) and Riley was amazingy calm and happy the whole time. This was his first meal out where he was awake and not sleeping in his car seat, and he was awesome. Like I said in the previous post, our tradition is to open gifts on the Eve. Riley got lots of nice rattles and animals and books from my family. I'm sure they'll be delicious! Here's Riley "dressed up" for Christmas day. We didn't do much other than relax and try to keep Riley happy.

The Christmas dinner table, with everybody sitting around it. Riley's asleep on Rew, after an exhausting day of being cranky. We had a lovely dinner and played games afterwards.

On the 26th, we left STL stopping by the Missouri Botannical Garden on the way out to meet my grandparents, and several aunts and cousins (they were there checking out the model train display). Normally, we would have dinner with these guys on the 26th, but we left earlier than usual this year to get the little guy home. We chatted for about an hour and then left (it was funny to go to the garden and not see the garden!). Riley's here on my Grandma's lap, with 3 of my younger cousins standing next to him. He does such a good job of meeting people- I hope that means he'll be a friendly little dude when he's older too.

Jesse and Kristin were up over the weekend, making a whirlwind visit from her folks house in Indiana. We had a great time and miss them already! Here's the group, all on the couch.

Thanks to everybody for making our holidays exciting and memorable!

Happy Christmas!

And happy holidays in general to all our friends and family! We're in Santo Luigi (aka St. Louis). Our family tradition is to open gifts on Christmas Eve- pix to follow. Here's the outfit that Riley wore yesterday, with big aspirations in mind ;)

Christmas is coming...

The goose is getting fat!
My snuggle buddy and I are listening to xmas music. Here's a silly photo to make you smile...
Mouse has taken to laying under the tree!

Snow-n-Stuff

Well, it's definitely winter in Chicago. Obviously it has been for a while, but we're having multiple weather events this week. We got about 5" of snow yesterday (REALLY pretty), and we're supposed to get a bunch of ice tomorrow (yuck). Riley and I have been spending some quality time on the couch listening to Christmas music while I work on getting my Soil Microbiology class together for next semester (snore). We have an appointment tomorrow at a studio in "the Grove" to have his picture taken by an actual photographer. Should be interesting. Any tips from you Moms out there?
Here's a bunch of pix from the last few days- a random assortment for your entertainment. Hope those of you at AGU are having a blast- we miss it!

Riley loves his Browns Football mobile that hangs over the changing table in his room. This is from this morning. He just lays there and smiles and coos at it. Too bad it doesn't help the Browns out at all.

This one's for Kristin- the view out Riley's window this morning. Poor Rew- this is only half of our driveway!

My boys, a couple of days ago, inspecting the Christmas tree in the morning together.

Yesterday-Riley's looking festive!

Happy boy! He now plays a little game with his Dad- Rew sticks out his tongue and Riley smiles and sticks his out back at him. It's the best.

Trees

Well, we finally got a Christmas tree on Thursday, and got it up and decorated this weekend. We almost had an epic fail with the tree. We went out to this farm West of here to get the tree- they had a big store with all sorts of "country" sundries available. We partook in some of them (homemade doughnuts!), and then went out to look for the tree. All the precut balsam firs were about 10ft tall and cost 100 beans- so we ended up passing on them. We felt kindof silly leaving without a tree, but not as silly as when we left the next place too. Third times the charm-we ended up buying a frasier fir tree from a self-serve Boy Scout lot not more than 2 miles from our house. So it was a 40mi round trip search for a tree that lived practically in our backyard. Oh well, mission accomplished! We spent a good chunk of time trying to get a good family photo in front of the tree last night, but somebody wasn't very cooperative. We had to retake them this morning.
Hope all of you are done with your Christmas shopping. We have done most of ours from the couch this year, for obvious reasons. We finally decided on something for Riley. We'd been debating because there's nothing he "needs" or would be able to play with now, but it seemed really weird to not get him a gift. So we settled on something that he will hopefully play with for years when he's finally able to appreciate it- a huge wooden castle! It's awesome, I can't wait to play with it together.

Here's Rew at Kuiper's Farm with the little guy. Check out his polar bear suit. This place has apples and such in the fall- we had wanted to get there to pick apples but somebody arrived before we got the chance.

Here are the shots of Riley's room that I promised weeks ago. Note that he doesn't actually sleep in the crib yet. We decided to not repaint it, because the colors were actually suitable and we liked the paint job anyway.

Here's the other half of the room, with the boys during our morning playtime on the mat.

2 Months!

Today was Riley's 2 month (by the calendar) birthday! We had our well-baby exam yesterday. He weighed in at an astonishing 13lbs and measures 24 inches! This is in the 82 and 91 percentile, respectively. We're trying to stay on top of the holiday season here- I think we're probably hopelessly behind on sending cards and ordering gifts. We plan to go get a tree tomorrow, weather pending. More later...

Here's the chubby bunny this morning during playtime. He's being attacked by a vicious bear.

We all went in to work today. Here's a picture of Riley in Rew's office. Note the socks that are on the floor directly under him- where they fell after being kicked off!

OK, we hear you. Please be quiet.

First, congrats to C,B, and T!!! http://caricorrigan.blogspot.com/
Welcome to the big world little Evie! Here's hoping YOU sleep in a bassinette!

So I'm sitting here on the couch, typing left handed on Rew's computer (mine's still conked) which is wedged on my lap between the boppy and a TV table because my silly son is asleep on my right arm. Well, I should say FINALLY asleep. We seem to have entered an unfortunate phase of daytime fussiness (read, incessant unnecessary squawking), which is accompanied by a general refusal to sleep. Big fun. We seem to be totally unable to either 'entertain' (like that means anything to a 2 month old) or soothe. Rew found a swing on Craigslist which we bought- not wanting to pay full for something which will likely not work- and he's out picking it up now. Good news is that in general, at least he normally sleeps at night. Oh, and big thanks to GBB who gave us the nifty bathtime trick. He hasn't screamed at bathtime since we started steaming up the room first, and even seems to enjoy it! It's sweet when he's happy!

On another note, we woke up to a lovely wintertime scene this morning. I love snow.


Here's a shot from a couple of days ago. Look at him holding his head up!
Here's one from earlier today- one of the little smiles that are beginning to become more and more frequent. We can't get enough of them!