Zach's 1 year formal photos

We took Zach out today for his one year old formal portraits. We were SUPER EXCITED because we brought a cake and some balloons....and we let him go to town and caught it all on camera. This was his first cake experience.....tomorrow will bring the second cake experience when we have his birthday party. Here are a few of our favorites!

Our newest birth control

Now that I have your attention! :) We both got called to be nursery workers at church - for those of you non-mormons out there...basically we get to babysit the 18-24 month old kids for two hours every other Sunday while the adults are attending other church classes. Lucky us! Normally the kids have to be 18 months to go into the nursery - Zach gets to go in with us. Looking at Zach who is just barely turning 12 months old and these other kids look so much bigger...even though they only have 6 months on him! So today was quite the adventure for us...we had about 8 kids we were watching. Dustin enjoyed playing with all the toys, Zach just yelled really loudly when ever a kid would get near him......Jen...well...Jen ran ground control and kept the kids from crying cause they wanted to go back with their "Mommies".

Weekend project

Adding cabinet hardware has been on our home project "to do" list for a while. We FINALLY picked out some knobs and pulls and bought them last week - the delay has been agreeing on a style. In the end I think Dustin just gave in to Jen and let her pick out what she wanted. We wanted to have the hardware added before Zach started going crazy and opening cabinets so we could "lock" them. Turns out adding hardware to our cabinets actually just made Zachary more curious - and we didn't think about the fact that he can pull the actual drawers open now.....whoops....I guess we are still learning about this parenting thing!

We even got a video of Zach "exploring"

a SPOON!

Zachary learned how to use a spoon!

Double?!

Parenting has been a challenge the past few days…..we thought Zach was getting his terrible two’s a whole year early. Zach is normally a very easy going kid…..the past few days we have experienced:

• Diarrhea diapers (yup – he’s had his 1st blowout…this 2nd blowout and this 3rd blowout!)
• Gags eating “solid” food and throws up (in Tuscano’s lobby Saturday afternoon none the less….)
• Suddenly starts crying in the bath tub while playing with this toys
• Successfully scratched up the back of his neck and inside of one of his ears with his killer claws (yes – we do cut them)
• Cries when he drops the toy his playing with…heaven forbid he bend down and pick it up….
• Falls asleep for bed at 7:30pm – and sleeps 12+ full hours!

Well – at our morning visit with the pediatrician we learned Zach has DOUBLE ear infections. Our sweet little baby isn’t turning into a terror – he has a legitimate reason to not feel or act “good”. Finally a visit to the doctor where the co-pay was well spent!

Zach at 11.5 months

Christmas Pictures 2008

We wanted to share some of the highlights from Zach's first Christmas

 

Zach had the chance to meet Santa TWICE this year! :) This Santa was at Aunt Mary's house.. Zach was really excited and liked to pull on Santa's wiskers.. Santa didn't enjoy that part so much I bet ;-)

 

Grandpa Gray with Santa and Zach

Grandpa Gray and his little elf.. Zachary

Sarah decided to make the largest Gray family cookie ever.. in honor of Zach.. Ok, and just for a bit of fun.

Zach with his Christmas Eve gift.. a polar bear! How cool!

Zach is Mommy's little helper.. He can unwrap anything in no time at all.

Grandpa and Grandma celebrating Christmas with us

Sarah unwrapping her gifts.. Indian food! Fitting for her since she is such a great chef!

 

Zach got a bus for Christmas! He loves it

Jen's friend Kwang got Zach a rocking horse.. This thing is awesome.. Plays music and everything!

Thanks for sharing this special time of year with us. Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas

snow FUN!

The second time we took Zachary out in the snow he enjoyed it a bit more. We made a snowman this morning!

I don't need a nap....

Zach has been fighting his naps A LOT lately-especially if there are people over...or if we are playing Rock Band (he wants to be the drummer)...well, tonight we tried putting him down for his last nap...and it started coinciding with his dinner time...so we figured, if he has a full belly maybe he would take his nap faster. I guess we were RIGHT!

Random stuff on a Saturday

Why do birds keep flying in to the windows of my house? The windows aren't open....yet a bird has smacked himself into a window of my house THREE TIMES this morning.

Also....the FED EX delivery guy just dropped off a package...in a BUDGET MOVING TRUCK. Last night we saw a UPS truck with a UHAUL trailer hitched to the truck. Either everyone is mailing more packages this Christmas....or they are short vehicles...or short staffed?

The snow keeps coming....

We have received our fair share of snow this week....I believe there is about a foot of it in front of our house. What a perfect time to bundle Zach up and introduce him to the "cold white powder" stuff.

Whoa - check out my new snow threads...boots and ALL!

This was about all we could get him to do....just lay...no movement....no smile.
Maybe next year there will be a smile?
Our "sled" (really is an old moving box) - didn't even do the trick...no smiles from Zach!

Never a good thing

This is what I got when booting up my laptop this evening....never a good thing!
......they say once you go Mac you won't go back.....I am starting to see why....

Economic Soap Box

We just drove past the gas station.... $1.49 for a gallon of 85 octane unleaded. $1.49 a gallon! Gas hasn't been this low in four years. So we got to thinking (a very dangerous thing...) - when gas prices kept rising the cost of everything else did as well. Delivery of any item cost more because gas cost more resulting in higher priced food, etc.....airline tickets went up because gas cost more. Well....as gas prices have decreased, have you noticed the price of anything else get cheaper? We sure haven't.....someone out there is still making a killing...and it isn't us!

Not "quite" the perfect week....

As I sit to surf the web...it hits me that I haven't blogged in a week. Why haven't I blogged? Well...it turns out this has been a week....that I would just like to forget! Recap:

• Sunday - we both give talks at church; decorate the Christmas tree we cut down two days earlier. Head to bed, 30 minutes later hear our tree crash to the floor (compliments of our cats and too small of a Christmas tree stand). Spent the next hour tying our tree to the banister of the stairs, picking up broken ornaments and sucking a couple gallons of water out of the carpet with the steam cleaner.
• Monday - exhausted from the Sunday night mishaps. Buy a new "larger" Christmas tree stand, redecorate the tree, and make the shopping list for Dustin's work Christmas party which is at our house on Wednesday. Zach decides his new bedtime is midnight and literally cries and screams from 8pm to midnight.
• Tuesday - exhausted from Monday nights activities and a child that didn't want to go to bed. Learn of some issues at work that will obviously take more than the allotted 8 hours of my day to fix. Come home (thank you to Dustin for getting take out for dinner!) finish decorating the house for the party tomorrow night and head to the local Walmart (YUCK) for food/christmas gift shopping - 1.5 hours later (10pm at night) I return home to find Zach wide awake...he decides his bedtime is yet again not 8pm, but midnight.
• Wednesday - exhausted from Tuesday's activities and decided to take the day off from work to catch up on my mental/physical health....this included sleeping in until noon and getting a massage. Then enjoying the Christmas party at my house this evening. 8:30pm rolls around....and Zach still doesn't want to go to bed....urgh...midnight yet again.
• Thursday - wake up at 4am barfing. Can't afford to take another day off work (remember the full plate at work on Tuesday and I just took the day before off!)...skip breakfast, skip lunch...walk out in the middle of two separate meetings to go barf in the bathroom at work....by the end of the work day I realized I had motion induced nausea - get an earful from everyone that I am pregnant (NO I AM NOT!)....head home and veg on the couch (big thanks to Dustin for taking the Zach duties for the night...which included the midnight bedtime). After chilling on the couch for an hour I realize I can't move...my muscles had tightened up so much. I start getting the chills...head to bed with my electric blanket cranked.
• Friday - wake up at 8am (should have been up at 6am to get to work on time), realize my motion induced nausea was gone and I can actually keep down breakfast. Generally feeling better but just exhausted - but yet again can't skip work because of too much going on at work. Good thing I did go to work because several problems were solved - and lots got done...I actually left the work day feeling accomplished. Come home, play with Zach, enjoy a Cafe Rio burrito for dinner (take out compliments of Dustin again)...at this point I look at Zach's teeth and see that tooth #6 was about to break through and the gums physically look like they hurt - seriously, you know when you get that pimple on your face that just won't pop but hurts sooooooo bad...this is what Zach's gums looked like for tooth #6. I think I get smart by giving him Tylenol before bedtime...and Zach actually falls asleep drinking his 8pm bottle (THANK GOODNESS!)...put him to bed, thinking finally after 4 nights of being up to midnight he would get a normal nights sleep....WRONG! 9pm rolls around and Zach is up crying, crying, crying...that tooth is just killing him. I try orajel for the first time...didn't help...I think it actually made his upper lip swell. 30 minutes later I give him highlands teething tablets...he calms down...and 30 minutes later falls asleep laying next to me on the couch. I tip toe to put him to bed and he actually sleeps until 8:30am Saturday morning!
• Saturday - wake up and finish wrapping the Christmas gifts I couldn't get to the other days this week...seal up a package to head to North Carolina...we hit the road so I can mail that package - find it will cost me $90 to get it to NC on Wednesday, $19 to get it there Friday....one of the gifts in the package is for a Thursday birthday - sorry Craig, the $19 won out...your gift (which you will love by the way) will be a day late. Next stop hair cuts for Zach and Dustin - which actually turned out much better than our first hair cut experience with Zach....no tears this time....and he is still mesmerized by the yellow balloon. Now I need to start making a list of everything else to get done before Christmas!