Parker Steffen Shook

Oliver holding Parker this afternoon.
Oliver came up to meet Parker yesterday. He looked at him for a little bit, but wasn't too interested in him. Today when he came up, he wanted to hold him right away and was more interested. He tried to give him a kiss when he left, but had a hard time getting set up right and so he blew Parker a kiss instead.

We have had quite a few visitors- Grandma Steffen, Aunt Kathy, and Aunt Donna came yesterday and are all staying for a few days. Oliver enjoyed going out for lunch with them today and spending lots of time with them. Yesterday, Aunt Coco and cousin Amy came to visit. We are happy to have had all of them here.

Parker is doing really well. He slept quite a bit for us last night and so Eric and I were able to get some rest. Hopefully tonight is similar. :) We will be heading home from the hospital tomorrow. It will be nice to be home as a family of four tomorrow.

Grandma Steffen holding Parker


A few pictures from the past day and a half.

New Baby!!

Parker Steffen Shook was born this morning!! He weighs 7 lbs, 13 oz (the same as Oliver) and was 20.5 inches long. He is doing very well, as are Eric and I. Oliver will be coming up later this afternoon to meet his new brother. We are very excited and happy he is here and healthy. I'm sure more pictures will follow eventually :)

Christmas Morning

Here is a link to a video of Oliver coming out to the living room and seeing what Santa left him. It is a few minutes long and was too big for blogger so I loaded it through youtube and am just posting the link. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUaaD06xUNc

Christmas Fun

Oliver opening a present at our Christmas with his Grandma & Grandpa Shook and Great-Grandma & Grandpa DeLong.

Aunt Wendy & Uncle Bob sent a present out for Oliver. He was very excited to get a package in the mail. He opened it up and it was filled with stickers, markers, crayons, and coloring books. He was in heaven!! Before he even opened it, he was telling us about the stickers Aunt Wendy sent him.

This starts our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations. We went to church on Christmas Eve and Oliver did very well, especially considering we got the 30 minutes early to make sure we had a seat. This was our best shot at a family picture, every time we'd use the timer, Oliver would have a big smile as soon as the flash went off... So this is what we got.

We opened a few presents after we got home from church. Oliver was very excited about that. He got an ABC puzzle and new pajamas with Lightning McQueen on them. He wore his pajamas to bed (and still has them on at 5:00 on Christmas Day :))

We had been talking about Christmas and baby Jesus and had said after church we would have birthday cake for baby Jesus- so after church we had cupcakes- and Oliver made sure his cupcake had a candle on it, because after all, birthday cakes have candles.

Oliver sitting in his new pajamas before going to bed on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning Oliver woke us up at 7:20 and we headed out to the living room. He was pretty amazed that Santa had came the night before. He was excited about the train set he got. His stocking was also a big hit. He got a big candy cane filled with Hershey kisses and took it out and said "lick big candy cane." I don't think he thought the plastic tasted as good as a regular candy cane.

He got a table and chairs that he spent a lot of time at today. It has a drawer that holds his crayons, coloring books, and stickers. Another big hit was a Diego puzzle and a train puzzle. I think he has put each together about 50 times today.

We have had a relaxing day of playing, eating candy, and just hanging out. We missed being in Iowa to celebrate with everyone, but we have talked to a few people on the phone and did a skype session with Grandma Steffen, Aunt Kara, Uncle Randy, Alex, Max, Sophie, Henry, Timothy, Uncle Joe, Aunt Renee, & Uncle Dan. The kids were all excited to show each other what things Santa brought them. Oliver used us being distracted by talking as a good chance to climb up and get more Christmas Tree peeps.

We hope everyone's Christmas was as wonderful as ours was. We feel blessed to be able to celebrate as a family (and were glad I wasn't in the hospital having a baby and we were all able to be together). Hopefully the baby will come pretty soon :) Merry Christmas to Everyone!!

December Catch-Up

Oliver was so excited that he was wearing Daddy's gloves and boots.

We went to a friend's house and decorated Christmas cookies and Oliver got to enjoy one for a snack one afternoon. We asked him to give us a big smile and he looked at us, concentrated, and made this face.

On December 18, Eric made it one step farther toward his PhD. He graduated with his Master of Science degree. We are very proud of him. Eric's parents and grandparents were able to make the trip out for the ceremony. It was nice having them all here. When Eric processed in, he walked right past us and Oliver saw him. Oliver got very excited! After the ceremony when they were processing out, Eric walked out on the other side of the seats, but Oliver still caught him and had a huge smile when he saw Eric. When we finally got out and met up with Eric, Oliver was most excited about Eric's tassel. :)

Christmas Tree

Yesterday we woke up to a lot of snow. Further down there is a picture where Eric stuck a ruler in the snow on our patio table and it came up to just under 9 inches! Oliver was amazed to look out the window at the snow in the morning. He was also excited to get to play in the snow. We spent a little time outside in the snow while Eric shoveled so we could get out of our driveway. Oliver seemed to get the snow thing pretty well. He did better walking through the snow than I thought he might, only a few falls :)

After playing around in the snow and getting shoveled out, we headed to a Christmas tree farm to pick our Christmas tree out. We found one a little faster this year since it was a little bit colder and we didn't want to be outside for too long. Oliver had fun looking at all of the trees and loved it when Eric would shake a tree to get the snow to fall off. It was very pretty to see all the snow and I think it put us in Christmas mode a little more.

The Christmas tree farm also has reindeer so we were able to see the reindeer. Oliver really wanted to pet them, but we opted not to (considering the sign said they might bite your fingers). It was a lot of fun to spend the day doing Christmas things.

When we got home, we decorated our tree. Oliver loved hanging ornaments on the tree. He definitely had a favorite branch and had to be reminded to put ornaments in other spots on the tree. We put tinsel on our tree this year and let Oliver help. If you notice in a picture below, we gave him a bag of tinsel, he pulled it out in a big blob, and put it on his favorite branch. Then he looked at Eric and asked for more tinsel. We did manage to get it thinned out a little bit, but a few parts of the tree are pretty tinsel-heavy.

Oliver also got to decorate his own little tree. He was very excited and proud of it. He put miniature ornaments of Scooby-Doo, Curious George, and Rudolph and Friends. He also put a snowman ornament he got from Aunt Kathy & Uncle Dale on it. The first thing he did this morning when he came out the living room was look for his Christmas tree :)

I go to the doctor on Monday for an appointment- I was 36 weeks on Friday so only 4 more weeks until my due date. We are getting more and more excited and have been getting a few baby things done around the house. I think Oliver is getting excited about being a big brother- he talks about the baby quite a bit and when we go places, he always makes sure we bring the baby along.

The pictures are actually backwards from how they were taken, but I figure you are all smart people and can figure it out :)

Oliver's 2nd Birthday

Oliver opening presents at his birthday party. He was very excited about it!

Oliver with his birthday cake!

Oliver's birthday cake- it was decorated with Cars. It had Lightning McQueen, Mater, and 2 tractors on it!

Oliver had a wonderful 2nd birthday party! He was lucky enough to have lots of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends come to celebrate with him. He blew his candles out of his cake and then picked out a piece of cake with a tractor on it. He was very interested in unwrapping presents and seeing what was inside. He wanted everything open so he could play with it. When he was done opening presents, he had the help of lots of people to take presents out of the packages and play with them.

Thanks again to all who came and celebrated with us!

The next 2 pictures are on his actual birthday back in Illinois after our drive home. Eric and I unloaded and unpacked while Oliver played in the living room with all of his new toys. He had a lot of fun!

Happy Halloween!

Ready to carve our pumpkin!

Touching the guts

Checking out the inside

Our finished product!

Here are the pictures from Halloween!

Going out trick-or-treating.

He had a lot of fun playing outside in his costume. We went to a few friends' houses to trick-or-treat. Oliver got to play with his friend Andrew and had a lot of fun playing there.

Happy Halloween!