It's "Big Boy" Bath Time

We've had many requests (especially from those loving grandparents) to see Mr. G now playing around in the "big boy" tub. It's quite the sight so we wanted to give you a little glimpse before the regular end of the month update. Enjoy Mr. Splashy having lots of fun free and clear to make a mess now that he's free of the baby bath tub :)

Time to Ring in the New Year!

Happy New Year to all of our fabulous friends and family who read our monthly blog updates! Hope you had a fantastic holiday season and are settling back into the daily grind in the new year. We had a VERY busy, but fantastic month of December. We enjoyed a few down weeks at home in TN at the beginning of the month. Had some great friends come and visit from Louisville and celebrated Kyle's 27th birthday (I keep teasing that 30 is just around the corner now). Then the weekend before Christmas we headed up to Chicago for the holidays. I love getting the chance to go home and Christmas is and always will be cold and snow to me, but the major downside of going home is the 8 hour road trip. Especially now that Grey doesn't exactly fall asleep in the car all the time like he did when we he was younger. We left at about 5am so he would at least sleep for more of the trip and made both legs of the trip with only having to stop once. So, overall not to bad, but God bless portable DVD players because when Grey was hitting the wall with exhaustation and tired of being in his car seat good ole "Baby Einstein" was just the trick to calm him down. We spent a week in Chicago - seeing my family, going to Kenosha to visit Kyle's grandma and aunt, and celebrating the holidays. Greyson throughly enjoyed his first Christmas and now our house is starting to look like a playground with the many toys he recieved, which he is throughly enjoying. Gone are the days of stylish home decor and now we function with toy baskets in each room and many a colorful plastic sound making gadget laying around.

After our Christmas trip to Chicago we came home for about 2 and half days, and then left again to fly down to Florida to visit Kyle's parents for the new year. The warm 70-80 degree temps were a welcome change after the bitter Chicago cold and we had a really fun visit. Took Greyson to his first mini petting zoo which was a big hit with him. He loved seeing all the animals and we had to laugh when the only animal he got vocally excited about was a farm cat running around after seeing all these big cows, llamas, and crazy looking turkeys. Guess that cat reminded him of his buddies at home. Check out the pictures to see what a good time was had by all.

We're now happily back in TN for awhile and only have one little trip in the forseeable future - which we're rather happy about it. We have been all over the place the past 6 months so some down time at home is just what we need. We realized that our trip to FL was Grey's 4th round trip flight in his 10 months of life - he's quite the jetsetter. Speaking of Grey moving all around he is now a crazy crawling monster. When he is up he literally never stops moving! He is a speed crawler and pulling up on anything and everything he can get his hands on (see video below to check him out in action). He's starting to walk moving along a table or furniture and getting pretty gutsy with letting go with one hand. Walking is definitely coming in our near future - I'm already exhausted thinking about how much chasing around we'll be doing. Overall, he's doing fantastic....continuing to grow like a weed and weighing in around 22-23 pounds. We just can't get over what a "little boy" he's becoming, especially now that his first birthday is approaching quickly. Check out the pictures to see what a little man we have now.

Hope this New Year finds you healthy and happy and we wish you all the best that 2009 has to offer!

With Love,
The 3 H's

Happy Holidays from the H's

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It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

November has been a month of a lot of events and travels. At the beginning of the month I ventured to Indianapolis to have our traditional "girls weekend" with my Mom and sister, Lisa, with the intention of seeing Celine Dion in concert. Sure enough once we arrived on Saturday for the concert on Sunday we found out that Celine had cancelled her show due to illness. Yes, we were bummed but true to our style we turned lemons into lemonade and went to see a local dinner theater production of the "The Sound of Music". It was a fun show and we had a blast together that weekend which is what those weekends are all about. Kyle and Grey had a wonderful boys weekend while I was away, and I handled my first weekend away from the little man relatively well.

Then a few weeks later Kyle, Grey, and I headed back to our old stomping grounds at Purdue University to meet up with my Dad and step mom, Robyne, and Lisa to see Purdue play Indiana University in the old oaken bucket rival football game. Grey stayed back and had play time with his Nonny (Robyne) while the rest of us enjoyed a chilly football game were the Boilermakers had quite a game and came out mighty victorious! Always fun to go back to college and visit some of our favorite spots - Purdue holds a special place in our hearts. Kyle and I both talk about becoming professors down the road and would LOVE to be back at Purdue eventually.....we'll see.

Then we hosted Thanksgiving at our home a few days ago. We were joined for the occasion by Kyle's parents (Daryl and Joyce), my Mom and stepdad (Joanne and Mike), and my sister, Lisa. Kyle cooked an outstanding bird and all the fixings and we enjoyed a delicious feast. Greyson loved having all the family around to play with him and give him the constant attention that he enjoys. He was a wonderful part of our Thanksgiving table and only ate part of a roll and baby food this year, but by next year we're guessing he'll be shoveling in all the food.

Greyson is growing and changing every day. His 9 month appointment is coming up later this week so we'll have updated "official" statistics then, but from using our home scale we're guessing he's between 20-22 lbs. He is a skilled army crawler - you can check out his new found ability in the video below. He does a combo of pulling forward with his right hand, then uses his left elbow while moving his right knee up. He hasn't done an up on the knees crawl yet, but he can get just about anywhere with what he's doing now so we'll see what he does in the future. He's also working at holding himself up in a standing a position - he loves reaching for his mobile while holding on to the edge of his crib. Also, his other rather amusing new habit is his favorite sleeping position. He lays his face down on the mattress in the corner of his crib and then tucks his knees and puts his tush right up in the air. Kyle and I get a kick out of it every night when we go to kiss him goodnight. What a goofball. You'll see him in all his glory in his November pictures that are linked for your viewing pleasure.

Kyle continues to keep busy finishing up his second to last semester for his masters degree in Military History. He's looking foward to only having one semester left to go with only a few more credit hours until he is done! While he is finishing up his masters, I just found out that I was accepted into Penn State's M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on children's literature program. It's an online program that will allow me to work on it while being home with Grey and while we move around for Kyle's training. I'm very excited about this program and look forward to starting my courses in May.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and enjoy the upcoming holiday season!

Happy Holidays,
The 3 H's

Our Little Man

October has kept us quite busy. We started off the month with a trip to Florida to visit with Kyle's parents. This was Greyson's 3rd airplane trip, and he's quite an excellent flyer - he gets that from his Aunt Lisa. We had a wonderful long weekend enjoying the Florida sunshine, taking some time to relax, and Greyson got lots of love and attention from his Pop Pop and Jo Jo. Check out the pictures and you'll see what a little swimmer we have. We're looking forward to our next trip down to Florida over New Year's for some more Florida fun. Other than that trip we have enjoyed some downtime at home this month. We took Greyson to the pumpkin patch, I hosted a Halloween party for our playgroup, and of course, he experienced his first Halloween. Lots of fun and lots of great photo opportunities - so check them out.

Greyson is growing like a weed and based on us putting him on our home scale he's about 20-22 lbs now and quite the arm workout to carry around all the time. He's an excellent sitter and lately he's developed a passion for rolling. He can roll from one side of the room to the other in a matter of seconds. Then when he gets stuck somewhere he pivots on his belly and rolls another way. He hasn't quite figured out the crawling thing, but we figure he's learned to get most places rolling so why crawl? I'm sure he'll figure it out soon enough, but check out the video down below to see his rolling in action. His skills are quite impressive. He's also getting more and more verbal. He says "ma ma", "da da", "na na", "ba ba" and a variety of one syllable sounds. He'll have these talking moods where he just talks and talks and sure does seem to love it. We're guessing that when he does start using his words more, he's never going to be quite. Afterall, he's got us for parents and both of us always seem to have something to say.

Kyle and I are keeping busy with work and school. Kyle did find out recently that he will be comissioning as a field artillery officer in May. He's happy with that branch and glad he'll be going back to the branch of the Army he was in before so he can apply all that he already knows. Now that we know what branch he is going to comission we also know that we will be heading to Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma for about 6 months sometime next summer for Kyle's field artillery officer training. Not particularly thrilled about living in the great plains, but it's better than many other places we could have been sent and we're only there for a short while. We will know where we are getting stationed for after his training sometime next spring and we're quite anxious to know where the next place is that we will call "home". The relatively exciting news for me is that I just recently applied to get my M. Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on children's literature through Penn State. I'm anxious to find out that I officially got in and plan on starting classes either in January or next summer. It's an online program that will allow me to still be a stay at home mom after completing teaching this year, and plus with it being online it gives me the flexibility to work on my masters while we're moving all over for Kyle's career during the next year or so.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the two videos - we couldn't pick just one this month. One showcases Greyson's rolling abilities, and one is a rather amusing Halloween video of Greyson as the cutest and silliest penguin....enjoy! Don't forget to check out the October pictures link.

With Love,
K, L, and G

Busy Busy Busy

September has been a CRAZY busy month for our family. Almost every weekend we have had something going on or been out of town. Two weeks ago we went up to Chicago for the weekend for my Grandpa Bell's memorial service. It was a beautiful service and I really felt it honored him in a very sincere way. Despite it being a sad occasion it was wonderful to see family that we haven't seen in awhile, and for Greyson to meet some second cousins that he hadn't met yet. Then this past weekend we road tripped up to St. Louis for a friend/teaching colleague's wedding. Nonny and Poppy (my Dad and Robyne) were kind enough to meet us there and be wonderful babysitters to Greyson so we could attend the wedding and reception. We had a blast at the wedding seeing some friends we unfortunately we don't get to see very often, and Greyson had a great time checking out St. Louis and playing with his grandparents. Great times were had by all. Now we're preparing to head to Florida in a few weeks to visit with Kyle's parents and to show Greyson the excitement of the Villages, the retirement community where they live. We're looking forward to having another fun trip.

Other than that not too much is new with us. Kyle is keeping busy with his graduate classes, and I'm enjoying my part-time teaching job - especially being able to go in, teach, and leave by 3:15 everyday. What a nice change! Greyson continues to be such a joy. He's chewing on everything and drooling so we think those teeth are on their way, but no sign of them just yet. Also he's working on figuring out crawling - he hasn't quite discovered how to tuck his knees under his tush, but I'm sure he will with time. He is doing quite a bit of "talking" - he says ma ma, da da, ba, ga, and few other one syllable sounds. He hasn't quite connected those names with Kyle and I and says ma ma and da da to just about anything, but I'm sure he'll figure out those names go with us soon enough. Our biggest accomplishment is doing some successful "sleep training" according to Dr. Weissbluth (thanks Aunt Susie and Jenni for the recommendation!). Greyson was suddenly back to waking up a few times a night for no reason other than wanting our attention and we weren't to thrilled with this since we had been blessed with a sleeping through the night baby since he was about 8 weeks old. So, we followed the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" recommendations and now he's back to being a super sleeper! He's sleeping about 12 hours at night and taking 2 naps that range from 1-3 hours daily....yeah! We're so happy he's back on track and we're a much happier family with a well rested Mom, Dad, and baby. Hope you all are doing well!

With Love,
K, L, and G

P.S. Check out Greyson's September photos - some really cute ones!

P.S. Check out this rather amusing video of Greyson - already trying to get behind the wheel at 7 months old

Happy Grandparents Day!

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