Happy Halloween!!

Our fearless dragon made his grand appearance on Halloween, scaring all the trick-or-treaters with his scary ROAR!

Trey has lost his voice, so that's why you might notice he sounds a little funny!

Happy Halloween!!!!

Too bad we never found time to actually carve our pumpkin!


Last night we went to the aquarium for their annual Fish or Treat event. Last year it was held over two nights. This year they crammed it into one, and the result was a terribly disorganized, overly crowded mess. Hopefully next year they'll learn from this unfortunate mistake. It was all a bit of a blur...


Even so, Thomas enjoyed his first real time to actually trick-or-treat! He didn't quite get it. If someone put something in his pumpkin, he'd put the pumpkin on the ground and examine the addition. If it didn't meet his liking, he'd toss it on the ground.


Like I said, it was very crowded.


And I think he was a little overwhelmed and/or overstimulated. But we pressed on!


Thomas's Aunt Beth joined us for the fun and Thomas had a fabulous time with her.


As we were leaving, we tried to take a rare family picture but the winds were a bit much.


I thought pulling my hair back would help, but I think it only made me look more crazy. Will have to work on doing a little Photoshop editing to this one or something since it's otherwise very cute (except that maybe on second glance my eyes look a little wacky! -- At least Thomas looks great!).

And just for fun, here's another little video from tonight. I couldn't get Thomas to "roar" much even though he's been doing it all day long, but he does a little here. And then when he sees the neighbor's dog, he gives the sign for "dog," which is to pant like a dog. He gives me a little wave bye. Oh, and he's carrying around the, I guess you'd call it a yard ornament, that has become his new favorite outdoor "toy."


We hope everyone had a very happy Halloween!

A weekend in pictures

Quite a busy weekend around here. Friday seems like ages ago, and yet, it's only Sunday.

On Friday I met a neighborhood friend and her little boy, J, at the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry. It was our first trip there and Thomas enjoyed it enough that I went ahead and bought a membership.

He loved the Water Wise room, but he had this very serious, determined look on his face the whole time. No time for smiles, I guess, when you are having fun.


Thank goodness for those waterproof smocks. His feet, sleeves and bottoms of his pants were still wet, but not nearly as bad as they would have been!

Here he is with J (who just turned two!):


He really enjoyed hanging out in the little dinghy boat behind the big shrimp boat. He loved throwing all the little shrimp into the "water" (AKA carpet).


When Mommy needed a break, we headed to the Toddler playroom area and he had a ball there too.






On Saturday we decided to head out and visit a pumpkin patch. Thomas loved the pumpkins (he obviously remembered them from one of his books), animals, and most of all, the tractors! We bought him a tiny little pumpkin and it has taken a bath with him for two nights in a row. :) It's one clean pumpkin.





I thought this would make a great photo op, but Thomas would have none of it. Not for a cute picture anyway...


But he'll smile for a tractor!


And he'll appease his mother by sitting in this strangely large chair with a disproportionately-sized pumpkin:




Then he saw wheels and ran as fast as could to this contraption:




Then he saw the bunnies...


And the goats...


And then we relaxed a bit on the hayride (or so they called it, even though there was no actual HAY)...


Afterward we picked out our pumpkin and called it a day.

Now here's a little Halloween preview for you. Today we had to wake up and brush off last night's depressing Gamecock loss and get to church on time for their annual Blessing of the Halloween Costumes. It was fun to see all the kids dressed up in their Halloween best. Here's our fearsome dragon, making his way to church:


Pretty scary, huh?


Afterward he declared his work there was done and he headed on to his next mission...lunch. :)



Just a couple more pictures for fun. On the way home from lunch Thomas was doing what he usually does, "reads" a book. I always love to see him looking so intently at books. I hope he develops a lifelong interest!


A random picture from last week... Toys are fun, but boxes are the best entertainment:


Oh and we actually had planned to maybe get a haircut yesterday. Unfortunately (or maybe it was fortunate?), we ran out of time after staying a while at the pumpkin patch. I trimmed the front a tad the other day, but the back looks like this most of the time:


Whew! That was a lot of pictures. That should make up a little for my absence around here lately. I'll be back with more soon!

18 months old

Time truly flies. How is my little baby boy already 18 months old!?!!?! It cannot be possible. Yet, it is.



Every month, it's becoming more and more challenging to get him to sit still for his monthly photo.



He tries to take down the "sign"...


He tries to get down...


He'll flash me an occasional smile...


And eventually he wins, gets down, runs across the room and declares himself the victor:


He is often very strong willed and outright defiant, but for the most part he is our happy little guy. He smiles and laughs all day long and it brightens my world. It's hard to be frustrated with someone who is so cute. :-)

He chats a lot, but we're not really sure what he's saying most of the time. I'm sure it's more frustrating for him than it is for us.

I'm not sure how many teeth he has now, but he's been getting some molars in (at least four) for about a month now. I think one is just now popping through because he's become more irritable and upset in the last few days (and I've heard him being a little more restless during the night...with lovely 4 am brief play sessions in his crib (consisting of turning on his crib aquarium and waking me up)). Generally he's a pretty good sleeper though. He goes down at 8 (usually doesn't fall asleep until closer to 9 though), and wakes around 7-7:30. He takes a 2.5-3 hour nap every afternoon from 2-5, which is my little bit of heaven. :)

He's starting to play more with other children. You know, up until now the kids always play alongside each other, but not really with each other. So it's fun to see them develop more into children who are actually interested in interacting with each other. It's just so amazing watching children grow, period. We are so blessed.

He loves his dog and he loves going fast. He loves to run and he's become a pro at riding his little "car" (powered by his legs). I need to get a video of him scooting around the house. He goes so fast! And if we are in the way, he loves to play bumper cars and run into us. Lots of fun. His other love is being outside. It's been rainy for a few days and that has curtailed our outdoor play time and I know it must be about to drive him crazy. Since he loves playing in water, he stood at the front door and fussed/cried for 10 minutes the other day because he wanted me to take him out in the rain.

Not much else to say. He's a joy and a blessing and I cannot believe he is already a year and a half old. Wow.

PS - Yes, I backdated this. It's truly 10.25 as I write this, but I'm going to make it look like I'm on top of things. :-)

Catching up with October

A few weeks ago we had our first cooler weather day of the fall. I realized that day I had not yet stocked up on fall pants yet for Thomas. Luckily I had a pair I bought last winter that never fit him in the spring as I had hoped. So yeah, he probably shouldn't have been wearing seersucker in October, but it was all that fit. And he looked so durn cute.

He is most interested lately in the berries on these shrubs. Luckily he has yet to show an interest in picking or eating them.


This is such a "Thomas face" to me. When he starts talking, he can be quite the chatterbox...and he makes the cutest faces along the way.


Last Saturday Trey flew to St. Croix for the Reserves (overnight trip with an oceanview...work is so hard), so Thomas and I took a trip to see my parents...and Thomas' aunt and uncle were also in town.

Not sure what this was all about...




Thomas got to spend plenty of time checking out one of his favorite toys at Papa's house, the mower. Papa even took him for a ride, which he of course loved (by "he" I mean both of them!).

Thomas is very serious about his mower-riding skills:


But he also has some fun:


Papa even took him for a "ride" in the truck (another way to really win Thomas' heart!):


After all of that fun, they all relaxed under the shade of the tree while Thomas examined all the fallen leaves:


And here's a random picture of a typical morning of Thomas silliness. Before or after breakfast he can often be found putting on any hat he can find and carrying around any bags or other assorted items. He's a goof.


Of course he learned rather quickly that it's not good to have one strap around your neck and the other around your foot. :)

Thomas is off to visit his other grandparents this weekend (Nana and Granddaddy). I'll do my best to get some pictures up of his trip early next week! By the way, I'm not able to go this time so it will be my first night away from him. I don't think I've been away from him for more than five hours ever. I'm sure it will be good for both of us...but man, it does cause a bit of anxiety!

Trying to get back in the swing of things...

I backdated last months' monthly update (see 9/20/07) and promise to be back very soon with more pictures (that I've already uploaded). While you wait, here's something to keep you interested...