January Seanisms

Look for a blog on Christmas coming soon, but since it is going to be a longer one I wanted to get a little post out first. 

Sean is growing and learning so much right now. He moved up to the toddler room at daycare on Monday, January 12. Drop offs became difficult that week as Sean had recently become quite clingy to Mom and Dad. This week is going much better. Today he ran around showing me toys while I chatted with his new teacher for a few minutes. No crying so far this week at drop-off so hopefully that continues! 

Sean can very clearly say the following words (and point to them):

Duck

Ball 

Apple (although sometimes tomatoes and strawberries are apples as well) 

Here are a couple Seanisms and their meanings. . . 

Dow = Cow

Vow = WOW

And for the grand finale, Sean has learned to say NO - often he says "No, no, no, no." He knows what it means and says it quite frequently now. Here is an example. We are definitely in trouble! 

And a few pictures. . . 

That's is all for now - back soon with a few more updates! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. .. . but first, Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy New Year and Happy Holidays! I can't believe that it is 2015 already. What a whirlwind the last couple of months has been. Time just seems to fly by lately. The big New Years resolution is to update this blog more often. Anyway, let's rewind back to Thanksgiving. 

This year Thanksgiving was with the O'Malley clan. My parents graciously suggested that if we were willing to host, they would bring most of the food, allowing Sean to keep to his regular schedule. We started the day out with coffee and cinnamon rolls. This was the first time Sean ever tried one and he seemed to like it. He was NOT a fan of waiting for them to be ready. He started fussing for them and hanging on to my leg when they came out of the oven and by the time he was in the highchair he was on the verge of losing it from the wait (we actually saw a tear roll down his face). Here is a video of Sean trying his very first taste of a cinnamon roll (which includes a bit of him waiting impatiently). 

During Sean's nap we worked on getting the table ready, whipping up a sweet potato dish and of course, my favorite, the crescent rolls. When Sean woke up from his nap, he was a little shy but warmed up to everyone pretty quickly and we had a wonderful afternoon and evening. 

At dinner, Sean refused to eat turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green jello or cranberry. Thankfully my family also brought over a ham, which Sean LOVED. He also, much like his Mama, couldn't get enough crescent rolls. He started a little game with Kerrigan, who was seated next to him. He would act like he was nicely offering some of his roll to her, then as soon as should would lean in to take it he would giggle and pull his hand away. He did this for quite a while. Personally, I thought it was adorable! 

Sean had fun playing with everyone throughout the night as well. There was a cane there that Sean probably had the most fund with. I don't have a great picture of his fun with the cane, but the best of bunch are at the end of the pictures. 

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving! Thanks again to my family for supplying the food! 

We like to pick out our tree early during the Advent season so we can enjoy it up a little longer before that little voice starts saying "it's time to take it down". As we have done in the past we drove over to the local high school and purchased it from the booster club. Their tree selection was excellent this year and I think the one we picked out is my favorite one we've ever had. We decided to change the location of the tree this year due to Mr. "I get into everything and would likely destroy the tree". We moved it downstairs and re-purposed his play yard as a tree yard. It was nice to have the tree right next to the fireplace but I missed having it upstairs near the window. 

This was just a couple weeks after Sean officially started walking, and was our first opportunity to walk while holding his hand. It was so much fun for us! Here is a picture from our outing as well as the final product in the play yard next to the fireplace. 

Well that was Thanksgiving. Hopefully more to come on a wonderful Holiday season soon! 

Fall Fun: Cox Farm and Halloween

A month ago we decided to get in the spirit of the season and head over to Cox Farms in Centerville, VA. It is about an hour away from where we live so we left early so we could get there around when it opened. Unlike much of this area, the drive to get there was actually really nice! There was so much to do there - a hayride, petting zoo area, corn maze, kiddie zone area, rope swing and slides, slides, slides and more slides. This place had so many slides. We did not go on any this year as we thought Sean was still a little small for them, but we're looking forward to next year when he will be a perfect age to sit in one of our laps. :-) We played in the kiddie zone for a bit. It had a wooden train that Sean enjoyed playing in. I think if he had been walking on his own at that time we would have had to drag him away. We went on a hayride and had a great time. Sean was a little squirmy in the beginning but as soon as he turned to face out of the hayride he seemed to like it. It was fun to go somewhere together as a little family of 3. Brett and I also got to purchase some fun fall foods to bring home (kettle corn for me, apple cider doughnuts for Brett and a gallon of real apple cider to share). Here are several pictures from the trip. Looking forward to next year! 

This picture is not completely accurate since this was on a bit of hill and he was actually taller than that in August at his birthday, but close enough! :-) 

Captain Sean! 

We were thrilled to get this picture; Sean clearly was not!

Snoozing on the trip home. 

Halloween was on a Friday this year which was really nice. I took the day off anyway just to make sure I would be home to take pictures before it got too dark. I wasn't going to send Sean to daycare that day but found out that they were having a little Halloween party and I wanted him to enjoy that. I let him sleep in, dropped him off mid-morning and picked him up after lunch. They told me he cried in his costume (not surprising) but loved the pizza they had for lunch (also not surprising). We did not end up going trick-or-treating with him (people start a bit on the later side here) but took a slew of pictures outside before it got dark. He was Winnie the Pooh. To say that he did not like the costume is an understatement. He did not mind it tooooo much until we put the hood/head on then he would cry and cry and cry. They only reason we got pictures outside is because he forgot he had the hood on! Here are some pictures from our photo shoot. 

This is the test of run of the costume the night before Halloween

Sean loved watching the kids come to the door

Sean also tried candy for the first time! We went with a kit kat. To say he liked it is a huge understatement. See for yourself! 

Looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving this coming week and having a few extra days off to spend together as a family. 

We have a walker!!

I have a few things in the queue that I need to blog about but this one bumps them all. 

Sean has been so close to walking for a while now. He cruises easily with just a little hand on the couch and practically runs when using his walker. He has been taking one step for a little bit - letting go of the couch, taking one step then grabbing onto something else so we don't really count this as walking. For the past week or so he has been standing up on his own without holding onto anything and you can tell he is thinking about making a move but he would either try and walk and fall down or he would just plain sit down without trying. Tonight, after running around like a little wild man with his walker, Brett and I put him in between us and encouraged him to walk. He stood there for a bit looking at both of us then walked 6-7 steps on his own, though not actually to either of us! Of course Brett and I started hooting and hollering but neither had a camera running (which we are very happy about as we really got to take the moment in). After several tries with the camera we caught this on tape. The video starts after he has taken about 6 steps on his own (from where Brett is standing) but I could not get the camera turned on fast enough. He seems very proud of himself, hence the noise he is making. 

We could not be more thrilled, although we know once he gets the hang of it everything will change! Can't believe how fast our little man is growing up! 

October Seanisms

Little man is turning into a little boy more and more everyday. He has started to babble with somewhat real words recently so wanted to get a few of them down before I forgot. Here are a few things that Sean can say right now. 

Dada = Daddy
Booh = Book - basically he can almost say book, but can't figure out getting the k sound on the end
Du = Duck - same as above
Uh Ah = Uh Oh
Baba = Bottle (he also refers to his favorite food Puffs as Baba but we are trying to discourage this - lol)

When I dropped him off at Daycare this morning my arm brushed something hanging on the door and Sean said "Uh Ah"! 

Although he can't say them yet he definitely knows more words. He can find his Jungle Babies book (one of his favorites) even if it is all the way on the other side of the room. All you have to say is "Where is Jungle Babies?" and he will stop what he is doing and start searching around for it. He puts his hands on his head if you ask him where his head is. He will sometimes wave Byebye - although usually it is delayed and he will clap if asked (and if he is in a good mood). He seems to like his chair more, but he still does not sit in it; rather he prefers to stand and bang on the wall or sit on one of the arms that is flush with the wall. Hopefully he will use it as a real chair someday! 

He has also learned a few naughty habbits recently. He will screech when a toy he really likes gets taken away from him (such as when we have to leave for school in the morning). He loves, loves, loves to throw all his toys through the railing in the living room. If he is playing somewhere he shouldn't be and gets moved, he will make his body go limp, which threw us for a loop the first few times and we came close to dropping him. And lastly, he has entered the stage of throwing or, in his case, dropping food on the floor. Typically it is either something he does not like or when he has decided he is finished. 

Of course, no blog post would be complete without some pictures. :-) 

Where's your head? 

 Preferred chair sitting position

Sean's new favorite thing to do - throw toys through the railing

And just because I think he looks like such a little angel here. . Melt my heart baby boy!

Sean loves to dance!

In the past month or so we have noticed that Sean loves to dance. We first noticed that he would dance (shake his arms when music was on) with the mini refrigerator/stove he got for his birthday. Now he will randomly start dancing when he hears music no matter what he is doing. Below are a couple videos of the little man dancing. They make us laugh every time we watch them. We love that he seems to really like music. 

Here he is taking a little dancing break with his walker. 

Happy Friday!!

Sean's First Year in Monthly Pictures

I have posted a few of these before in the blog but wanted to post all 13 (one from the day he was born). We printed these out and had them on the wall at his birthday party. It is really incredible to see him grow through the pictures! At his doctor's appointment the day after his birthday he was in the 99th % for height and 96th % for weight. He has certainly come a long way since when he was born he was so little he was not even on the charts for his age.