Terrible Two's at 16 months???

Oliver is a lot like his parents, very opinionated and stubborn.  It will pay off later in life to be a strong character but not when he is 16 months old!!!! I mean come on... give me a break!!!!

My sweet innocent child can go from cute to throwing a tantrum in five seconds....  SCARY!!!!

I am blaming it on his molars coming in or maybe it is just my cute little son being a little bit too much like his parents... very opinionated and stubborn....  I am already fearing it when he is two or dare I say teenage days????

he is gone

Since Oliver is born time has really been flying like crazy - now I am putting you to the test TIME!  Let's see if it will seem like forever before Patrick gets back home OR will it go by super fast???

Let's just say - the countdown to his return has begun!!!!

Patrick - I just want you to know that although you have only been gone a few hours (almost 5) that you are already MISSED and you are loved and we are proud of you!!!
Not everyone can/will do what you are doing....  some must, but only a few choose....

Stationery card

Retro Stripe Frame Christmas Card

Seasons greetings with personalized Christmas cards from Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

two weeks

In two weeks Patrick is leaving for 6 months for work.  I have been with him for over 8 years and while he was active duty military he never got to deploy for such a long time and I know in comparison to other spouses who have been gone multiple times for a year or longer it is not comparable, but the longest Patrick ever deployed was for 3 months prior to meeting me.

I will miss seeing him everyday
I will miss seeing him interact with our son
I will miss his kisses
I will miss his hugs
I will miss his text messages
I will miss his random phone calls
I will miss his dinners

but mostly I will miss him...

Six months will fly by and I will try to keep myself busy... hopefully we will get to talk over skype frequently and I hope we will be able to email daily...

Trick or Treat Oliver Style

A few years ago our friends Aaron and Miranda's son Will was dressed up as a gnome for Halloween and we saw it and knew right away we had to use that outfit whenever we were going to have kids.  So September rolled around and I asked her where she got it from and found it on Amazon.

We did a little photo shoot Saturday before Halloween and let's say I am glad, because someone (not trying to mention any names) had an incident at the playground last Sunday and scraped up his nose pretty bad :(  Everyone thought it was part of the costume so I guess it worked out... 

Here is my gnome:

My little Gnome

 At first he was enjoying wearing his outfit but he lost interested very fast....

this sucks! 

Halloween Night - getting ready for the big show!!! 

there is always time to annoy Frankee

gnome and witch 

grown-ups treats! 

 Oliver's bed time is usually around 7pm so we were out and about at 6:30 and lasted for one hour.  At first he enjoyed walking by himself and he LOVED walked up to every single house (something that he usually isn't allowed) and he did have Jayden and Zoey to show him how it is done.  But I am already looking forward to next year when he'll be able to not only walk up the steps but also down...  Halfway through our trick-or-treat I had to start carrying him.  Poor little guy was getting tired.
I realized it was time to go home when his diaper gave up and leaked onto me :( I guess I didn't get a treat, just a trick ;)

first house! 

Disclaimer to the outfit - it runs VERY small - we squeezed our almost 15month child in a size 2T and the red slippers are made out of felt and are very slippery when wearing on non-carpeted flooring.  20 min before bed he slipped and hit his forehead :(  Miranda placed duct tape on the bottom for some traction.

from Pumpkins to Halloween

We took Oliver to pick out his pumpkin and he had a blast and let's say we kind of snuck in by accident...

getting ready for the pig race

we had great seats 

my boys (someone is sad that the pig race is over) 

those are too big for me... 

let's see if there is something in my size

here we go Daddy! Look what I found

ok if it doesn't burst open, we are buying this one! 

it passed the test

let's go! 

playing in the corn box

and having fun

it was a big bouncy ball and it was FUN! 

Mommy loves her little boy!!! 

14 months

where has the time gone??? just the other day I wrote about Oliver's first birthday and now two months simply just flew by...

Oliver started pointing at everything recently and loves to say "Ai" and wave to "Hi" and "Bye"  to whomever waves at him.  It is rather cute to hear him and see him in action.  His walking has been perfected into non-stop running, with the occasional face-meets-floor accident. His face is still recovering from a recent accident two weeks ago.

Baptized and showing off my bling
and recovering from my fall

silly boy

The outdoors is his new passion - just walking up and down the street in our neighborhood while kicking a soccer ball or carrying a rock is highly enjoyable these days.

Oliver LOVES balloons and bubbles - the library story time we visit always finishes with bubbles and I am not proud to say, but my child is the bully of story time and shoved a kid out of the way last week just to get to his bubbles...  (not proud of that)

don't get between me and my balloon lady! 

On October 2nd we finally baptized Oliver at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Ellicott City.  We were very happy Sam finally lives in the area so it made it a bit easier to co-ordinate the Godparents.  Unfortunately couldn't Oliver's Godmother Lora make it so we used Sam's girlfriend as her proxy.  Oliver was mesmerized by Father Matt  and behaved the entire time, he almost burned himself on the baptismal candle, but lucky us no-one really saw it and well let's say his Godfather learned that Oliver can reach PRETTY far....

My Godfather and Jenn 

My favorite part of the day is when I come home from work and he comes running towards me and just smiles and giggles out of happiness that I am back home :)   

drowning in pictures

As a kid I remember having my own baby album - well it wasn't cute or anything, it was the 80's after all... but I had one... it wasn't as fancy as my older brothers baby albums but it was mine... (theirs was done in the 70's and they had this photographer friend who took all these amazing black and white pictures and bla bla)
I always wanted to have a memory book where my parents (mom who else) would have recorded all the important milestones... but I didn't... I guess being the youngest of three I can be happy I have a baby album... and for whatever reason there is a huge gap between the age 2-5 which know I am finding strange, but whatever...

Anyways I knew even before being pregnant my child needed to have a memory book and a photo album and with the day and age of the internet and digital cameras it is just amazing how many more pictures we can take and how many places we can share our children's milestones so yeah it can be overwhelming... By the time I have updated Facebook, my blog and send out text messages with the most recent updates and pictures it is time to go to bed... ugh... oh and I forgot to mention updating his memory book... needless to say I am behind on the photo album.  I pretty much stayed on top of the first year in his memory book.... now my question - how many photo albums does one child need?  When will I stop taking pictures?  Why did I order that one print, that I don't seem to like now anymore?  How did I miss this one pictures ALL the way in the beginning??? What it is 11pm and I need another photo album to add 150 pictures to???

I do have all his pictures uploaded to the laptop and a back up on an external hard drive and additionally I have them backed up on shutterfly, not to mention some on FB, this blog, Photobucket and various other photo pages I have signed up over the last year or so...

My admiration goes out to anyone who enjoys scapbooking  - it is a beautiful art, I don't think I would enjoy it, mainly because all the options and designs are too overwhelming (it takes me a very long time to pic out a birthday card for someone - and an even longer time to make a decision which one of the 30 identical picture I want to order)  so yeah not for me...  but it is sooooo pretty and sooo many options.... Anyways I am drifting away from the initial subject - I am drowning in pictures.... there is one too many orange envelope next to me....

Well for now the photo album project is on hold until I have purchased another photo album (matching of course to the first album AND the memory book) and once this project has been successfully tamed (not finished because I do not see an end in the near future) I must tackle the next project - MEMORY BOX!!!

Summer - where did you go???

Dear Summer,

I know a lot of people LOVE you, but a lot of people don't like what you bring along the beautiful weather, your cousin humidity...  So for the last few weeks all I keep hearing is: Where is fall?? When will she come?  I can't wait to wear sweaters, I can't wait for pumpkin beer (I was looking forward to that too I have to admit) and so on....  But you know, you just kind of left quickly the other day.... I don't think I am ready for you to be gone this fast....  Can you come and spend a few more days (weeks)???  It is kind of nice to wear long jeans again and trust me I was getting tired of Oliver's summer clothing, as you know he's been wearing it since May and some stuff he outgrew and some other stuff well, I am just tired of it, but I don't like the fact that his little fingers are cold in the morning when I pick him up from his crib.  He does look cute with his house shoes on, but I preferred his little bare feet running around the house.

So it would be nice if you could just hang for a little longer....

Love,

Donik

PS: worst case - we'll just see you next year...

fun times with Daddy

first boo boo

what goes hand in hand with learning to walk?  Falling... or should I say learning how to fall gracefully?

Today Oliver decided to skip his morning nap and just be up and energized so we went to the library for story time - as always we had a blast - but when we left someone wanted to walk and well although Mama had him by the hand he just didn't quiet walk but rather stumble and he fell :(  face first on the concrete :(  oh man the tears were HUGE and the crying was LOUD!!! but nothing a hug couldn't fix...

the damage wasn't that bad considering he didn't use his hand to brace his fall... just a few little scratches on his upper lip and check...

Well that wasn't the only time he bumped his head today......  bathtubs are a dangerous place and they do sell spout covers and thanks to Miranda and Aaron we got one as a shower gift however it doesn't quiet work as needed if someone (not going to mention any names here) removes it to rather play with it... long story short he removed it, stood up and lost his balance... BANG hit his little forehead on the spout :(  another bruise to add to the collection... I knew they are coming and I know there will be lots of them but not all in one day.... Poor Mama can't handle all the tears by herself while Daddy is on a business trip in San Francisco...

face meets asphalt

What Irene brought us...

What a week.... first we had an earthquake followed by  Hurricane Irene...  Luckily we were spared by both....   We only lost power for about 2hrs in the middle of the night but thanks to Patrick we were fully prepared to be without power for a while.   He stock piled food and supplies months ago - just in case - and it did pay off to have that sense of calm that we are ready no matter what comes our way.  Jokingly I refer to his OCD preparedness to the "Zombie War Attack" but this weekend did show me that it doesn't hurt to be ready.

now on Oliver news... the little guy officially started walking today!!!  We practiced this morning by have him walk in between me and Patrick and he would take two steps and then fall into our arms (of course we are luring him with remote/iPhone) then we would sit further apart and the time of him walking increased.  Then suddenly he kind of just took off... it was very surreal - it brought a few happiness and some sad tears to my eyes... my little baby is mobile now and is growing more and more independent - which is great, but NOOOOOOO not great at all!!!!  Anyways, as you saw in my last post, his pre walking crawler shoes have a hole and now it was time to buy him some big boy shoes!!! We went to the mall (ugh why on a Sunday afternoon????) and got him two pairs of shoes and let's say he loves walking with his big boy shoes on.  Daddy enjoyed to hold him by the hand and stroll through the isles of H&M.

first steps

Oliver is getting closer every day to walking... Last Saturday I noticed that he can stand now for a pretty long time and he is pretty sturdy while standing.  Yet he is still very hesitant to take those steps, when he doesn't think about it, he let's go for a few steps but as soon as he realizes it, he goes back on all fours.

I am for now still enjoying the non walking phase but I am very anxious to the walking stage....

brand new
May 2011

worn out
August 2011

I was hoping I could get by the pre walking stage with one pair of soft sole shoes, but as you can see in the picture above he wore a hole through his right shoe... I guess we'll be going to the mall this weekend for another pair of soft sole shoes....

The First Birthday

Wow my little baby is now officially considered a toddler...

We had a beautiful birthday celebration with great friends, semi good weather, lots of yummy summer foods, lots of kids, tons of gifts, proud parents and one awesome little boy who smashed his cake like there is no tomorrow....

thank you Etsy.com for a vintage chalkboard

 

yummy summer foods

love this angle 

mmmmmhhhhhhh

cake balls and watermelon a MUST

lots of gifts

silly Mama

birthday family photo

the perfect cake for a summer themed first birthday

the birthday boy getting ready for the smash cake

the entire family

wonder what he wished for

hesitant

yummy

she wants to help her brother

this is sooooo good!!! 

can I do this everyday please???? 

perfect first birthday

i heart this picture

now that he is a toddler the baby treatment is a thing of the past

not happy

birthday boy wearing his birthday suit

Daddy is mean

time for gifts!!! 

*pictures courtesy of Sophorn Morgan and Sandra Eminger