Grady loves Books

This was his favorite. Farewell Wheels on the Bus!

Christmas - Round 2

Where do I even begin to describe our Christmas back home??? We were away from home for 5 days and we did lots and visited many people. It was Grady's first Christmas in SK and I think he had a great time. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here they are!

Santa made a stop at G&G's house on Christmas eve afternoon to be sure to visit with both Grady and his cousin Madison. Grady wasn't too sure about him and wouldn't sit on his knee, BUT he did accept the gifts that Santa handed out!

Here are Grady and Madison during present opening. It is so fun to watch then together. Madison loved chasing Grady around and helping him down the stairs. She still isn't crazy about sharing her toys... but given that she is really into Hannah Montana I am pretty sure Grady doesn't mind!!


We were lucky to get to spend lots of time with Madison and Uncle James (yes my brother's name is also James!). Here are my brother and I with our kids. We don't get the opportunity to be all together so we take any chance we get for a photo!

Grady got all dressed up (and I took the time to brush my hair) and we headed to the Christmas eve mass at 7pm. We lasted until communion (45 minutes) and survived one poopy diaper change before we headed home to eat.


And eat we did. James even made the subs.

You didn't believe me did you???

We also took a pretty good pic of G&G&G.

Good thing my mom takes lots of pictures because I took a total of 8 on my camera. So I have no evidence of our visit to Grandpa Lorne's and family houses several times during the trip. Aunty Kolby and Blaire... if you got any good ones - send them my way!!

Grady loved these Christmas ornaments. You know... the annoying ones that sing songs when you push a button. Well, he could push the button on one of the 2. He would push it and then bring you the second one so you could listen to both toys at the same time. Lucky us.



One common theme was food. Grady. Ate. A. Lot. And it always seemed to be after 8pm. Go figure. This picture is in fact breakfast given the PJs and cereal.


Notice the rosy cheeks. We went outside in -20 or colder weather and went to the park. Dad insisted we came back because Grady was cold. I am pretty convinced it was just him. Grady loved it.

Grandma also introduced him to the world of markers. Don't get me wrong, Grady and I have colored. He just doesn't understand he should only color on the paper so marker use is limited and far between. Not at Grandma's! To name a few things...... Grady colored on the his face and on Grandma's chair. Thankfully the marker easily came off both!

Grady also learned to love the dogs. It wasn't immediate, but eventually he was pointing and smiling at them all the time. And feeding them. When Grady was in the high chair you could be sure that both dogs were close by!

I am sure I missed many details but this is all this post can hold! Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmaaaaaaaaaaas,
And a Happy New Year!

For your Christmas enjoyment... here are a few outakes from our second Christmas card photo shoot:

Smiles from mom and Dad - Grady not looking.

Smiles from Grady - Mom and Dad not looking.


Smiles from Mom and Dad - Grady not looking. Seeing a trend yet???

I don't even know where to start on this one.....

Grady is poking James' eye out... but he is smiling :)

Smiles from Mom and Dad - Grady not looking.

Here is the winner. Although Grady is not smiling - we are ALL looking at the camera. 2 out of 3 smiles ain't bad!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas - Round 1

We re-created Christmas this weekend at Nana's house and boy did we have fun! It started with Grady openning up his Christmas PJs on Friday night and getting geared up for the next morning when Santa would bring all his lute! I am quite proud of the PJs as I paid less than $10 and they are nice and soft - he will afterall be wearing them until he out grows them, not just until xmas is over :).

In usual James style, he did not wrap his presents before we headed to Nana's. So.... he was wrapping them in another room. Grady came in and found one of his presents under the bed - a different version of his favorite book 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?'. Although James insisted he wanted to wait until the morning to give the book to Grady, he cried with tears and James caved in quickly and handed over the book to a very happy child.

Here he is with his new book 'Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear?'

After nearly an hour of trying to get Grady to sleep, he finally drifted off to sleep and slept well all things considered. He let everyone sleep in until almost 7am!! When he finally woke up and opened the door to 'his room' it smelt funny. When I lifted him from the crib he was soaking wet. I thought he had just peed through his sleep sack. Boy oh Boy was I wrong. We sat down and I unzipped the sleep sack and pulled out a bare butt with no diaper. You heard right. No. Diaper. Apparently in his struggles to fall asleep the night before his diaper fell off. How he managed to sleep all night covered in pee is beyond me!!!

Once he was re-diapered, we let Grady open one gift from his stocking since we had to wait for Aunty Bo and Uncle Dave to get up to dig into the rest. I think he was quite pleased and ready for trip to Maui in the spring!

Notice said book in this picture taken the next morning.

Once everyone was awake and breakfast was eaten we dug into the rest of the loot.

It did NOT take Grady long to figure out the whole present thing. He was actually quite good at it!

There were slight delays if he opened a toy he really liked.....

I was so lucky to get a different variation of the book Grady likes 'Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?' from Grady. Lucky me. Now we have 3 books essentially the same that Grady could read for hours. Literally.

Here is one of many times James read the book. We all had our turn.

Here is the aftermath of Christmas 2009:



This year, Nana made a Turducken. This is a Turkey stuffed with Duck stuffed with Chicken and all layered with stuffing. Besides taking longer than expected to cook, it was very moist and tasty.

Here we are enjoying dinner with our crowns from the xmas cracker things. Grady wasn't loving his....

What a great way to kick of Christmas! A great time was had by all.

Bring on Round 2!

Great Grandpa's Chair

It is no secret that Grady spends 2 days a week tiring out visitng Nana, what has been a secret is this little treasure Nana has tucked in the corner that until this week went unnoticed by Grady. Great Grandmpa's Chair. It belonged to Nana's father over 110 years ago. Grandpa Peter had it refinished for Nana a number of years ago and now it sits in Nana condo. The perfect sized chair for our little just about 18 month old!



Wouldn't that be neat it Grady's kids, Grandkids, or even Great Grandkids sat in this chair in the next 100 years??

As an aside, the teddy bear he is holding has also become a favorite. Although Nana tells me that he hugs and kisses Mr. Teddy, when I picked him up yesterday he would run down the hall and throw Mr. Teddy screaming. It was quite entertaining........

Who needs a teddy bear....

This story was just too cute not to share...

In the past few weeks Grady has become obsessed with his tooth brush, tooth paste, and brushing his teeth in general. Sunday, his love of dental hygiene reached a whole other level!

Just before Grady and I headed up stairs for a few stories before bed James attempted to take away his tooth paste. Well, Grady threw a royal tantrum. I told James to give it back to him and I would take it away upstairs. That was easier said then done. We read our stories while our son gripped this tube of tooth paste like it was liquid gold.

The next part of our bed time routine is a quick snuggle in the rocker while I sing him a song or to. Like usual he snuggled into my neck and closed his eyes. While I sang I gently tugged on the tooth paste to get it out of his hand slowly. Grady's head jerked up as if to say 'what do you think you are doing?'. This happened not once but twice - so I gave up. I laid him in the crib toothpaste gripped tightly in his tiny hand.

About 30 minutes later I crept upstairs expecting to retrieve the toothpaste from the floor or in the crib somewhere. I wish I would have taken a picture of what I found. Grady was sleeping on his tummy with the toothpaste still gripped in his little hand. It was all I could do not to burst into giggles. I pried his little fingers open and finally had the toothpaste.

I never would have guessed Grady would take dental hygiene so seriously!

Heritage Park Brunch 2009!

It is no secret that our family loves Heritage Park. We got married there and have been going back yearly ever since. Grady doesn't seem to mind it either.

He was so excited to be there for brunch he did a little dance.

It was -30 this morning when we departed and all were bundled up to to keep warm in the cold weather. Grady wasn't bothered and was eager to explore.

Similar to our Christmas card photo session, getting a good picture was not an easy feat. But we did walk away with a few good ones.

This one is where our favorite wedding picture was taken and where we take all our yearly shots.

2008 Flashback: It was also very cold that day.... maybe one day we will get temperatures that are just a little bit bearable.... We are not asking for that much!!

Winter

CONS:

-cold

-windy

-gets dark early

-have to shovel the driveway

-have to scrape the windows

- bad driving conditions leading to long commutes and canceled dinner plans

PROS:

-the office gets out early so you can play in the snow with your kids

We were watching James shovel from inside and Grady just kept coming back to the window. Even though we had just gotten home I bundled him out and took him outside.

Our neighbour and her daughter were outside as well. It seems with kids you go outside to play on days where adults without kids stay inside and drink hot chocolate and Bailey's. Wait - I still do that!

(If you make this picture bigger Grady has a huge smile on his face. Also notice the snow on his hood... his little girlfriend dropped snow on his head and he just laughed)

Take a good look at this one people... James is shovelling!!

This picture doesn't begin to show how much it was actually (and still is) snowing outside!

Happy Snow Day!!!

Thanks Grandma....

Mom doesn't let me stand on chairs (that often)!

O Christmas Tree...

We set up the tree last night. 'We' being James and I while Grady played with the ornaments and emptied the contents of my wallet.

Every once in a while, Grady showed some interest in helping....


'I'll help with these ones Mom!'

'Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg....'

'What do I do with this one Dad?'

'I like this one!'

I took this picture while sitting on the floor right in front of the tree. It turned out really good, you'd almost think I did it on purpose. Really I was just too lazy to stand.

Ironically, we set up the tree exactly one year ago today. This was Grady contributing to the tree decorating in 2008. My oh my how things have changed!

2008:

2009:

I wasn't kidding about the wallet!

Sleep Update 2

It is Saturday morning and i got up at 6:30 figuring Grady would be up any second.... now, an hour later, he is STILL. SLEEPING. This after a 3.5 hour nap yesterday afternoon. Who is this kid?? I don't know - but I'll keep him!

Have a good weekend!

Sleep Update

Thankfuly, it is a good news update. We didn’t have to do the hard core sleep training like we originally planned. Last Tuesday, he slept through the night, Wednesday he woke up before I went to bed so we let him cry for 10ish minutes. By Thursday, we knew we couldn’t wait until the weekend to put our foot feet down we needed to start it that day….

This time around it proved to be much easier on both us and Grady. I would almost say he decided it was time on his own. Almost. He still whimpered in the night and let out the occasional cry, but all in all we are back to sleeping through the night.

I hesitated in posting this update as I don’t want to wreck a good thing. I literally just knocked on wood. Literally.

Here’s to hoping Grady continues to stay in his crib and Mom and Dad continue to get the much needed sleep to keep up with a very high energy little boy!

Genetics

Just like Mom. It is a phone if you can't tell.

Just like Dad.