We hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Well, we just had our first official "family" Christmas and it was great! This was the first time we were not able to be with either of our families on Christmas day. We were sad about it, but tried to make the best of it. We figured since it was our first Christmas with Maddox, it was only fitting. Well, he made it so much fun that the day flew by before we had a chance to get too sad about being away. We really had a great day even though he had no clue what was going on.

Maddox meets Santa for the first time. They had a good talk.

Waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.

Is it time to open presents yet?

Maddox opens his first Christmas present

Playing with his new building blocks

He is facinated by his new dragon!

This ball has some really crazy bright lights and music. He was enthralled!

Our best Christmas present. He had a lot of fun sitting in the box and tearing off the paper.

He has also reached or is about to reach several milestones. His teeth are going to break through any day now, he can now sit up on his own (for short periods) and he gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth, so crawling is just around the corner. Which also means I have been working on baby proofing the house!! He is actually pretty good at getting around by rolling or pushing himself backwards. When he starts rocking he doesn't know to move his arms so he ends up just pushing himself back. He knows how to put his pacifier in his mouth all by himself....Ok, I know this isn't technically a "milestone", but I think most parents would agree is needs to be added to the list. It has greatly cut down on the number of times he wakes up during the night. In fact - last night my total number of trips to Maddox's crib......DRUMROLL Please.......ZERO! Can you tell I am excited about that? He also taught himself how to spin the rainbow wheel on the jumparoo the other day. I know it doesn't sound like much, but he has always been interested in it and I would always spin it for him, then he would reach for it and it would stop. It was amazing to watch him as he figured out how to spin it himself and let go so it would keep spinning. I wasn't even helping him, he just all the sudden figured out what to do. It was really awesome to be able to watch that. Here are some more pictures:

His first meal in the high chair

Rolling around and slobbering on his feet

Helping put up the Christmas lights (providing comic relief at least!)

Sitting up all by himself!! We still have to sit close and watch out for the occasional face plant!

Maddox also got to meet our friends Ben and Crystal for the first time. He LOVED Crystal and wanted to talk to her all weekend. He is a flirt already. We are SO excited that Ben and Crystal will be moving back to Charleston in April!!!! We had so much fun visiting with them...now it is time to get busy house hunting for them!

Well, I was also wanting to post some videos with the other presents he opened, but it is getting late, so that will have to be the next post. We tried to get pics with everyone's presents, but we ended up with video of most of them. So I will put that together and get it up in the next few days. Thanks for checking in with us. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Thankful for laughter

My Mom, Dad and brother drove all the way to South Carolina to visit us for Thanksgiving. We had such a great time, but it went by way too quickly! I can't wait until we live closer. While they were here, we drove to Savannah, ate at The Lady and Sons, found a great candy kitchen that I spent way too much time in, had a great Thanksgiving feast, Dad and I went Black Friday shopping and did a Civil War walk downtown. Somewhere inbetween all of that, we also played a lot of games and laughed a lot! I absolutely love my family! On the way back from Savannah, Maddox was getting a little restless, so Mom decided she would entertain him. It was obviously the best comedy show he has ever seen. I have 6 minutes of video of him laughing, but I pulled out just a bit of it so you could share in the laughter...

Waiting to be called in for lunch at The Lady and Sons

Ringing the dinner bell as we all got called in for our lunch

Maddox chillin' in his stroller as we tour Savannah. As you can tell he was thoroughly impressed!

Maddox wearing short sleeves on his first Thanksgiving.

This was our first allergic reaction episode. Now if you know Caisson or me, you know we fully expect Maddox to have more of these, poor kid. He unfortunately has inherited our "sensitive to everything" genes. We found out he is allergic to Pampers diapers. Long story, but once we figured it out, we gave him a bath and this this is my attempt at turning a burp cloth into a diaper while we waited for Caisson to return from the store with our ever faithful Huggies. All I have to say here is THANK GOODNESS for disposable diapers. I got to expeirence all the joys that come with a dirty cloth diaper. YUCK!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and enjoyed your family and friends!

Can he really be 6 months old?

I can't believe it -Maddox is 6 months old today. I remember in those first few days thinking this was so far away, yet it feels like I have blinked and here it is. He has changed so much in a short 6 months. Sometimes I miss my little 5 lb bag of sugar, but he is so much fun now I wouldn't go back for the world. I bought him some new pj's the other day and I went ahead and washed them for whenever I would need them. I remember looking at them and thinking they looked so big, there was no way they would fit right now. Well, I am a little behind on laundry because I have become obsessed with cleaning out closets, so I pulled them out tonight. When I zipped him up I realized that they actually fit him pretty well. I couldn't believe it. I have to say it made me a little sad. It is crazy to see the difference from the preemie clothes he started out in to what he wears today.

I thought I would share his six month pics with you. But first, here is a newborn pic just for reference: (that is a preemie outfit he has on that is swallowing him, and don't ask about the one mitten...I don't know what happened to the other one or why we didn't remove this one before we took the picture. Maybe a Michael Jackson reference for his Rock N' Roll room!)

Here he is at 6 months

My cute little bucket of fun

Then I decided since he was wearing his cowboy shirt, I would put Bevo in the picture with him. Seemed fitting. As soon as I set it down he got this concerned look on his face.

So I thought I would make it moo and maybe he would think that was funny. I was wrong.

This is when it hit me that my son really isn't a true Texan. He is scared of the sound of a cow.....

We will have to work on that!

Happy 6 months Maddox!

Say Thank You!

I am always thankful for the men and women who have devoted thier lives to keeping me safe, but it especially hits me during the holidays. I can't imagine spending Thanksgiving or Christmas in a sandy tent surrounded by guns and armor rather than presents and lights. Trying to make the best of a meal made for hundreds rather than the homemade feast I enjoy with my family. And certainly missing this time with thier kids. I just saw on Fox news that you can send text messages to the troops to send your thanks. So, I have already sent a few. I am glad to know I was able to tell at least a couple of soldiers how much I appreciate their service. I am passing along the website so you can do the same. It only takes a few seconds and it means so much. Click on the link below for more info, or you can just text your thanks to 89279 (You can remember the number for later by "TeXt America Supports You" - TXASY.)
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/americasupportsyou/index.aspx

That kid in the mirror is HILARIOUS!

This is my favorite part of the day. Getting Maddox ready for bed consists of a bottle, the solid food of the day, a bath and a quick game of "Who's that Baby" before we go rock him off to la la land. Tonight he thought our game was especially fun. We laughed so hard, so I thought I would share it with you. He is so much fun right now. I love it!!

Just a bunch of monkey business...

I am so glad we have finally gotten a cold spell here. Glad because I finally get to put on the monkey hat and gloves that Kimberly sent Maddox before he was even born. He has worn it out a few times now and we get rave reviews. It is really funny, and he also looks sooooo cute!!!

The back even has a curly tail.

I know this is the second picture you have seen like this, and I was hesitant to put it on here because you might think I don't pay attention to him, but it is so funny I have to post it. He really doesn't like laying down anymore, but he can't sit up on his own yet. So we usually prop him up in the corner of the couch if we have to put him down for a few seconds. This time I was trying to get his bottle ready, so I propped him up while I assembled it and within the 30 seconds it took to screw the cap on, he had tipped over. What I love about this is the arm straight up in the air. A last ditch effort to stay vertical. Sorry Maddox, it was a good try!

I just thought these next 2 pics were cute. Here he is successfully propped in the corner of the couch.


And in his favorite spot - the jumparoo. He can't get enough of this thing. I hear the elephant in my sleep now!

Last night Maddox officially had his first non-family babysitter. Our church has started a new ministry for "Parents night out". Once a month, a group of "seasoned parents" as they call themselves, meet at the church and host a night for the kids so the younger parents can have a date night. It was so nice because I felt so comfortable leaving him with our church friends, and it is FREE which really helps! Maddox did pretty well. (And I have to say I did pretty well too! It helped a lot when I saw who was keeping the kids in the nursery.) They said he cried for a while, but they think he was just tired and there were so many kids that there was just too much comotion for him to go to sleep. Once he gave up on the idea of sleep, he just hung out in the bouncy chair and in the arms of 3 loving ladies. Caisson and I had a peaceful dinner (being able to use both arms to eat and eating while your dinner is hot can be a wonderful thing!), and went to see The Kingdom. It was a great movie! The food was good, but we had the second worst service ever. (1st place goes to our 3 hour visit to IHOP. Yeah, you read that right, 3 hours at IHOP - for coffee, hot chocolate and ONE omelet. Sadly enough, we had been to early service at church and thought we could quickly go to IHOP then get home for Caisson to work. We were wrong.) Last night we watched THREE tables get seated, (after we had already been seated and placed our order for drinks and an appetizer) get their salads, thier meal, and yes, their bill, all before our Texas Tonion arrived. Then we thought for sure our meals would come out quickly. We were oh so wrong. Caisson had to ask the girl if she had remembered to put our order in. So we ended up 30 minutes late to the movie, but we sent Garrett a text message and he updated us on what was going on. We did have a great and much needed date night. It is really nice to sit down with your spouse and use sentences that don't include the words poop or spit-up, and talk in a normal tone of voice rather than two octaves above. Caisson is an awesome Dad, but he is also a fantastic husband and it was nice to have him all to myself, even if only for a few hours.

Maddox got to watch his first episode of "The Great Pumpkin" the other night. He loved it! I couldn't get him to pay enough attention to me to eat his cereal...and he usually loves his oatmeal. While we were getting ready for trick-or-treaters, we propped him up on the couch so we could carry the chairs outside. When we came back in, he had toppled over...it was pretty funny. He didn't seem to mind much though.
He wasn't really sure about the pumpkin at first. He wouldn't take his eyes off of it.
Our little purple monster.
Maddox with our neighbors, Allison, Cole and Nathan. We had a great time with them.

Hope you had a great Halloween!

My Pouty Pumpkin

Our adventure for Monday was to go take some pictures at the pumpkin patch. My neighbor and her 3 kids went too - looked to be a fun time. Well, Maddox didn't agree. He decided his "trick" for this Halloween was to make everyone at the pumpkin patch think I was the worst Mom ever. He screamed from the time we got out of the car. I promise I had fed him, changed him and he had slept right before we left. Maybe my kid is afraid of pumpkins. I don't know. At least we got the trick over and now I can wait for the treat! Mindi got some good pictures of her kids and they each got to pick out a pumpkin so that was fun. We got some pictures of Maddox - not really what we were going for, but they are funny anyway.

Notice the grumpy pumpkin behind him...they could be good friends!

My poor little man looks so sad. "Why do you do this to me Mom?"

This is my neighbor Nathan with the pumpkins they bought that day. He was so proud of his jack-o-lanterns.

Maddox has decided that everything tastes better when eaten sideways. I tried everything to get him to sit up straight, I thought I had him in the Bumbo lopsided, but he just kept leaning over, so we just went with it. He ate the whole bowl of cereal in this position.

This is his cute little outfit Mama C smocked for him. The blocks have his initials in them. He wore it to church this past Sunday and everyone thought he looked so cute!

We have started "sleep training" this week. He got to the point where he was only taking 30 minute naps during the day and was so unpredictable about when he would nap. He was also fussy a lot of the time and I knew he was tired, but couldn't get him to sleep. He was waking up about every hour or so during the night. Well, I can't keep up with that, so I plopped myself down in the floor of Barnes and Noble and picked out a book. I am only about half way through, but I have put into practice what I have read so far, and it is already working! We have only been in our sleep "boot camp" as I like to call it for 3 days but he is already doing so much better. So, if any of you are having the same troubles, I would like to recommend to you "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." It is so great, and he acknowledges the real life factor of all of this as well, which most of the books don't. It also goes up through age 3 I think. So future help as well. I told my Mom I feel kind of dumb now after reading it, like I should have realized this on my own, but maybe I get a free pass since he is my first. Poor first kid has to suffer through his Mom's stupidity. Hopefully he will survive without too much damage!

The jumping Russian

Maddox has aquired two new abilities in the past two days. Yesterday he figured out how to make this funny gurgling noise and he thinks it is quite entertaining. In fact, it is pretty much the only noise he makes all day now. It doesn't matter if he has his pacifier in, or his hands in his mouth, or just laying around, he loves it. We find it quite amusing too. Caisson calls it his "Russian" language. Then today he was in his jumparoo, which he has always loved, but before he was just content with the toys and lights. He would sway a little bit, but mainly just played with his hands. Well today he figured out he could make it bounce too and he had the best time! Caisson took our good camera with him to Canada, but I did get it filmed on my old camera. The quality is not as good, and there is no sound, but you can see how excited he gets when he starts to bounce. I wish there was sound so you could hear the squeals of excitement and giggles that were coming out of my little man. He thought it was the best thing ever. I was cracking up. I know this is probably only really cute and funny to us, but I wanted to put it on here anyway. Carl, Landis and Shayde will be able to tell how much he has grown - we had him in this same jumparoo at their house a month ago and we had to put a couch pillow below him so his feet would have something to touch. Man, he is growing so fast!!






I am getting errors again trying to post my other pics, so I will try to put those up tomorrow. Blogger really doesn't like me.

Hope you have a great rest of the weekend!

Long live the Raiders

I have been cleaning out closets all week. I have been in one of those moods to get rid of the stuff that has been laying around forever and make my house a little less cluttered. So it hit me even harder with the unsentimental mood I am in that I can't get rid of this t-shirt.

I have loved this shirt since I got it when I was in 8th grade. (I think it was 8th grade - Kimberly and Garrett will correct me if that is wrong. I leave those details to them.) This is just the back of it, but if you look closely you will see the all the holes and the badly faded print. It is also so thin that you can just about see through it. This is not because of how hard I have been on it, or from wearing it while working on mission trips, because this shirt was never put in the "work shirt" pile. It is worn out simply because I have worn it. I have tried to throw it away several times and every time it ends up back in the good pile. Saying the "good pile" is funny - I couldn't wear this out of the house. So I started thinking why I can't give this up. It is not because it is the coolest t-shirt on the planet, it is because of the story behind it. One fall, Mom and Dad packed us all up and drove to Lubbock, TX for a Texas Tech football game. (Dad graduated from Tech). I don't remember who they played, or even if the Raiders won, but I do remember my Dad telling me to watch for the Raider who was about to ride around the stadium, seeing his excitement at having all of us there watching his alma mater play. I remember Dad taking us around campus and telling stories all weekend of the crazy things he did in college. Mom and Dad took us to the book stores and let us all pick a souvenir. This was mine. Now I know you were expecting this grand story of some amazing adventure that would prompt me to keep a t-shirt for this many years, but that is it. It is just such a great memory to me. It really hits me, now that I have a son of my own, how much something like this can mean to a child. I hope and pray that Caisson and I will be able to create the memories, traditions, and closeness that my parents created for us. I know that it must take a constant effort, and I have already found out in Maddox's almost 5 months how fast the time passes. So, Thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking us to the Tech game, and to Florida, and California, and for coaching our softball and t-ball teams, and coming to every sporting event, whether at home or away, and every pep rally, even when it made you late for work, and to the pool at Idlewild with lemon cookies, even though you don't like to swim. For making the trip to a small island in the Caribbean and to South Carolina and every other place we have lived so you can be involved in our lives. Every day I come across a memory and I thank God for the family I was born into.

Now I know that most of my visitors are coming to see pictures of Maddox, so I am not going to leave you hanging. We have some good ones this week:

Our air conditioner broke this week (again!). For the most part it hasn't been too bad because we have had some really nice days. One day was particularly hot though, and with Maddox being so hot natured, he really didn't enjoy it too much. So, Caisson finally stuck him in the freezer. He was actually happy there and got upset when we would take him out. Poor kid needs to live in Maine or maybe Alaska.

We are gearing up for Halloween, you know we love it, and of course we have to get Maddox ready too. This is the two eyed, two horned, flyin' purple finger eater that Aunt Kimberly got for Maddox. We laughed forever once we got him in it. It is a little reminiscent of the kid from "A Christmas Story." This picture is a little blurry, but it is the best one we got of the wiggle worm.

Side view of my little monster. He was such a good sport letting us dress him up and laugh at him!

Enjoying some game time with Dad.

This was the first time he wanted to hold his blanket. I thought it was so cute. He was just hanging out in the swing looking out the window and next thing I know he is catching a cat nap.

More attempts at cereal. This is so much fun! He is starting to get the hang of it now.

We also went to the doctor yesterday for his 4 month checkup. (We had to reschedule because of our Texas tour, so it was a little late.) Here are his current stats:

Weight: 15 lb 11 oz - 50th percentile

Height: 26 1/4" - 75th percentile

Head: 41 - 25th percentile

He was a champ about getting his shots. And I was so proud to answer all of his developmental questions with a yes! (cooing, lauging, rolling over, etc.)

Well, we are going to go take a nap...talk to you later.

Cereal and Surfin'

Well, I was finally able to upload pics. I don't know what was happening before, but they are here now! Maddox tried rice cereal for the first time last week. These are some pics from his first encounter with solid (semi solid at least) foods.

I don't think he was too impressed!

We have tried several more times and even thickened it up a bit since then and he is starting to take a good bit of if. I will post some more pics of that later. It is so much fun to feed him! We crack up the whole time and the camera never stops!

This surf board is the only way I can get him to spend some "tummy time".

He was working so hard to get that crab!

He is also the most hot natured baby I have ever known, (takes after his dad for sure), so this is now his usual attire - just a diaper. I think he looks so cute though, and it saves me quite a bit of laundry.

This was just one night after a bath and he was talking up a storm. He looked so cute in his little towel so I had to share this pic.

I haven't forgotten about posting pics from the party at my Grandma's for those of you who are waiting for those, we just haven't found the laptop cord yet so it is still out of commission.

Well, Caisson is bored and wants to play the Wii, so I am going to beat him in a game of bowling. I will post more tomorrow.