Christmas #1

Clay's first Christmas is in the books. Lots of stories to tell, so bear with the long post...

Christmas officially started the weekend before the 25th when we did Christmas with Brian's dad. Clay enjoyed hanging out with his Pop Pop and the new car that he got to play in. We all had a great time playing at the house and managed to cover the floor in legos without Clay ending up with any of them up his nose or in his mouth (maybe in a few years he can help with the building process - if his uncles will let him).

After a couple days back at work for Brian, we left Indianapolis about 1pm on Tuesday to head to Belvidere. Usually, that would mean that we would get in town about 4 hours later. However, mother nature and a ton of traffic had a different idea. Following a 9 1/2 hour drive, we got into Belvidere about 9:30pm their time exhausted and ready for a drink. Clay actually did amazing in the car, but it was still something we never hope to repeat. [No pictures from the drive, it wouldn't have been pretty]

We split our time in Belvidere between Holly's parent's house and Brian's mom's house, so Clay got plenty of chances to run back and forth between the houses. Took him a couple of days to realize we weren't putting him back in his carseat for 9 hours but he got the hang of it.

We went to Holly's parent's new church with them on Christmas Eve and Clay did really well socializing with all of the people there. He's gotten very good at reaching out to go to people, and although he still prefers both of us, he'll go to pretty much anyone.

Clay's Christmas morning started off at Brian's mom's house, where he managed to face plant on a toy and start to get a shiner within the first 20 minutes. We made sure to take a bunch of pictures of him as quick as we could before it would swell up, but thankfully that never happened. Here's one of the pictures we took that morning, complete with his new Santa hat.

You may notice the position that Clay's in above. On Christmas Eve he finally figured out how to move his legs and arms in unison and started crawling!!! He's already constantly on the move (especially when chasing Brian's cell phone) and moves along pretty quickly. Here's a video of his success after a couple days of practice.

Clay easily had the most gifts of anyone at Brian's mom's house which made it tough for us all to fit on the couch and be photographed but we managed to get a good shot of him enjoying Christmas.

One of his other favorite parts of being there was interacting with the dogs. They were really good with him and he showed a lot of interest in them.

After Christmas morning with Brian's family, we went over to spend the rest of the day with Holly's family. We did gifts soon after we got there and then had a good afternoon/evening of eating and playing cards and just relaxing around the house. Clay enjoyed crawling after his new steel drum toy and playing with a light-up ring stacker (as with most toys, new and way improved variations on something we had when we were younger). By the end of the day, he was pretty worn out with gifts.

Clay spent quite a bit of time in Grandpa's chair and we managed to get a picture of Jerry smiling in the process (almost as rare as a shot of Bigfoot, but not quite).

The drive home on Sunday was MUCH better than the drive to Illinois and Clay (not surprisingly after the week he had) slept almost the entire time and didn't even make us stop. We got back in time to unload the car, get some dinnner, and have Clay open his gifts from us. Most of his gift went to his 529 plan (yes, we're dorks) but he managed to get some good stuff, including an Illinois football jersey.

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families and have a wonderful new year!

Holiday Laughter

You may remember that Clay dressed up as a frog for Halloween this year. We were debating between the frog and another costume, but from the looks of this video we recently took of Clay, I think we made the right choice...

6 Months Old!!

Hello All! Exciting week with lots of stuff going on with our little boy. On Tuesday the 2nd Clay turned 6 months old! Its hard to believe that much time has gone by already and that a person could change so much in 6 months - some of his earlier pictures don't even look like him anymore.

This week also brought a change in jobs for mommy, or more like a decrease in jobs. I was teaching swim lessons at the work out center near our house and that did not work out as planned. The lesson part of it was great but Clay had been going to the child care that is provided there and that was not working out so great - set him down on his own and didn't play with him, tried to tell me that there "must be" something wrong with this stomach because he spits up (keep in mind he is a 6 month old baby), and made me feel like he was a total burden to them everytime I picked him up. Not worth it when Clay's needs aren't being met and I feel like crap all the time about it. It was a good try but for now I am just going to stay at home and enjoy the time we have together.

New things in Clay's world as a 6 month old:

1) Clay is able to move around on his own almost crawling- even if it is at a snail's pace for now (i know, enjoy it while it lasts)

2) Clay can now go from sitting up to hands and knees and vise versa - not a smooth transition yet but soon

3) 3 new teeth coming in ! both eye teeth on the top and finally the other bottom front tooth. We will soon have a vampire baby - hopefully one that doesn't bite

4) Solid foods and stinky diapers- we started rice cereal last sunday and it is going great, mixed with a little baby applesauce he really likes it but oddly enough does not like the applesauce on its own. We were warned about the severity of the stinky diapers once solid food was started and it was no joke - pee yew!

5) Clay's first snow - we haven't been out to touch it yet but we'll make it soon

6) 6 month pictures at Target - a much bigger success and more pleasant experience than we had at JCPenny, thank goodness!

That's all for now, here are some pictures to hold you over for a bit! Have a great week!

Snoozin'


Clay and his second cousins? maybe? Holly's Cousin's daughters


I'm 6 Months Old!