2012 Holiday Card

We created our first holiday card, ever! We had Hanni do a holiday photo shoot with us and then used Shutterfly to create our card. We absolutely love them and can't wait to send them to all of our friends and family!

Colorful Joy Christmas Card

Create personalized Christmas cards. at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

9 Months in Crazy Town!

Holy bajeesus! This kid is a wackadoo! He has changed so much this month it's hard to comprehend and even harder to try to put into words. I mean, he's been out of the womb as long as he was in it now and that is just totally weird to think about!

He now has two teeth, is 29" tall (75th percentile), weighs just over 20 lbs (63rd percentile) and his head grew a whole inch, putting him in the 52nd percentile for head circumference, (it must be all of that new brain matter)!! He is a long, big baby! His doctor even said he looks bigger than his stats would indicate.

9 months of Dempsey!

He started swimming lessons this month and he loves the water! He is a bit of a busy body though and during the lessons while all the other babies his age are resting on their parents' chest, he is pushing up and looking around at all of the other kids and people in and around the pool! The only exception is when he is on his back - then he becomes super still and floats like he is in a super peaceful state of mind. His favorite activity at the pool is reach for and grabbing onto the side of the pool - he can hold onto the side and support himself which is neat! He also loves to practice "jumping" into the pool from the side. It's so much fun to do swimming lessons with him but it is equally, if not more, fun to watch Dempsey and Finn in the pool together! They just melt my heart! It was nice that my dad and Finn's mom got to go and watch him the last week of November while I was out of town. I heard that they both may have even gotten a little bit of chlorine in their eyes due to all the cuteness that was going on! ;)

Dempsey celebrated his first Thanksgiving in true American style by stuffing his face with more food than we ever thought imaginable! He tried sweet potato rolls, turkey, quinoa and root vegetable salad, cauliflower mashed "potatoes," and some of his dad's famous yams! He seemed to love everything he tried and just kept on eating and eating and eating. He wore the most appropriate bib for he occasion that said "Everyone Is Thankful for Me" and  it couldn't have been more true. It was a wonderful day. We spent some time at Finn's parents' house in the morning watching soccer and playing with a new dump truck toy and then we all went over to my parents' house to celebrate and have dinner with both families. We are truly blessed that we have families that not only "get along" but also enjoy each other enough to celebrate the holidays together - for that, Finn and I couldn't be more thankful.

We purchased and received a number of new toys for Dempsey as it became apparent that junk mail and teethers weren't doing the trick anymore. We got several wooden toys, including blocks, a xylophone, and a clutching toy. Finn bought him a really cool clack and slide activity ball - which is really hard to describe - but he loves it! We also got him an alphabet play mat for his room on the day before Black Friday (also known as Thanksgiving).  The play mat has been really great and we've been spending more time in his room playing rather than in the living room. It's nice for me to have one area that contains most of the messy madness of the day so that when he naps I can focus on work and not cleaning up 5 gallion things all over the house every couple of hours.

A quick note on Black Friday shopping. Some people love it, some people hate it. Some people think that we should  protest and boycott stores opening on Thanksgiving. I think that everyone has valid arguments, no matter what side they are on. However, we enjoy the thrill of the shopping and saving a lot of money on things we had already planned on buying. We even crossed off 90% of our Christmas list. Anywho... regardless of how terrible you might be thinking we are - this year we brought thank you cards and a gift for the employees that helped us. It wasn't anything huge, but we wanted to show that we appreciated those people for working and that we understood that they may have been sacrificing time with their families and friends.

We spent a lovely day at Chatfield Reservoir at the huge off-leash dog park. We had such beautiful weather that day and it was, according to Oakleigh, ideal for swimming. Gus even swam, which must have meant it was pretty warm because he is a pit of a pansy when it comes to chilly water. It was nice to be outside enjoying the weather with the family, in November! Finn and I also went to a Broncos game in some lovely weather this month. It was a ton of fun and was my first Broncos game, ever! We got the tickets from my old boss and they were great seats!

He has a pretty regular schedule, when he's not teething. He typically wakes up between 6 and 7, parties for a couple of hours and goes down for a nap at 9. He naps for about 2 hours and then eats lunch, goes crazy, and then goes down for another nap around 2pm. He then wakes up, has dinner, parties like there is no tomorrow, maybe goes to swim lessons, maybe has "spa" night and then goes down for bed around 7pm. It is an action packed day, every day! Dempsey loves his spa nights - which are bath nights - which we do every other night. He graduated to the real tub this month. Last month we switched him from the sink tub to the blow up tub in the big bath tub and now he is in the full bath tub! We have some inflatable bumpers up around the perimeter and a slip-proof mat that we sit him on. He plays with his toys, pulls up onto the side of the tub and generally has a blast.

He is crawling all over the place this days and alternates between real crawls and army crawls. He had his first real crawls the day after Thanksgiving and he pulled up (on something other than a person) all on his own on his 9 month birthday! We are quickly becoming the proud parents of a toddler/waddler! AHHHHH!!!