Swimmer Boy

A short video of Oliver swimming with Eric Sunday morning.

Chicago Weekend

We took an overnight trip to Chicago for a wedding this weekend. A friend of mine from KinderCare got married and so we headed up north for some fun. My niece Amy met us there to watch Oliver while Eric and I went to the wedding and reception. The wedding was fun and we had delicious food.

Sunday morning we went swimming right after breakfast. Oliver had a blast. The hotel had a kiddie pool that went from 6 inches to 18 inches and had fountains and was warm. It was perfect for Oliver - and it probably helped that we were the only ones in the pool. After swimming, we all got ready for the day and checked out by 11:00.

We went to downtown Chicago to go to Macy's. Amy had a bit of shopping to do and we wanted to get Oliver's picture with the Macy's Santa. The Macy's there was huge (12 floors) and way too crowded for our likings. We walked around a bit and ate lunch there and then headed out. We didn't get the Santa picture- it was a 2-hour line and we were not going to wait that long- I'm pretty sure the Santa at our mall with work just fine.

After our shopping excursion, Amy headed home and Eric, Oliver, and myself went to Millenium Park. We took some pictures and did a little sightseeing. They had an ice skating rink there too.

It was a very fun weekend. Oliver was a perfect traveler- in the 6 total hours we were in the car, he only fussed about 5 minutes. We couldn't have asked for a better trip. A huge THANKS to Amy for meeting us in Chicago and watching Oliver!

Our Countdowns:
12 days to Iowa
29 days to Christmas

Our Christmas Tree

We went on November 21st to get our Christmas tree. We went to a farm that also had reindeer. It was pretty cool- I think Oliver will appreciate it more next year. It was a little strange getting our tree- it was almost 70 degrees out. We picked out our tree and Eric cut it down. Oliver had fun walking around outside and touching all the different trees. When we got home, we decorated the tree (no tinsel for fear of a certain little boy eating it). He got his Christmas ornament from us- a chatter phone. He seemed to like it. I still need to wrap some presents to put under our tree. Oliver does pretty well with the tree- he does mess with it pretty much everyday, but we are working on not touching it. Hopefully by the time we go back to Iowa, he will understand not to touch trees and he'll leave all the Iowa trees alone (one can hope right?).

Our Countdowns :)
15 days to Iowa
22 days to Christmas

One Year Appointment

Hanging out with dad before bed.

Playing in his bedroom. You can see all of his band-aids in this picture and the next one.

Painting with Christmas colors today.

Playing outside yesterday. It was over 50 degrees so we figured we should get in another afternoon of playing outside.

Oliver had his one year appointment today. He is 29.75 inches tall (44th percentile) and weighed 20 lbs, 7.5 oz (16th percentile). His weight actually went down since I had him weighed at 11 months. The doctor said it could be some due to different scales, but she didn't seem too concerned with it. She said he is still a healthy weight. His head circumference is 18.46 inches (65th percentile). The doctor said he is doing really well.

He had to get 6 shots today :( He did really well with them as he has in the past. He cries while he is getting the shots, but as soon as one of us pick him up, he calms right down. He even smiled at the nurse who gave him the shots when she left the room.

Today Oliver did some painting. He liked squishing the paint in his hands. He is doing more and more everyday. He has been having lots of fun with his new birthday toys. Here are some of the things this one-year-old of ours can do:

• wave hi and bye
• shake his head yes and no appropriately
  
• blow kisses
• play patty cake
• play peek-a-boo
• walk all over
• crawl up the stairs
• pick up pieces of food and feed himself
• make lots of babbling sounds
• find his nose sometimes and find other people's noses
• more and more everyday

Happy Wednesday!

Oliver's First Birthday

We celebrated Oliver's 1st birthday on Saturday. He had a 1-up party (the mushroom from Super Mario Bros.) We had lots of green all through the basement at my parents' house. Oliver liked looking at the balloons. He was a very lucky little boy and had 56 people at his party. He enjoyed his mushroom cake. He did pretty good opening presents, he started getting a little frustrated when we kept taking them away to move to the next one. As soon as we let him play with the presents, he was as happy as can be.






The one year old with his cake!

Oliver got a stuffed teddy bear from his great-great grandma DeLong.


A little people airplane from Uncle Joe and Aunt Renee. It makes music and Oliver dances to it every time it plays. :)


Eric and I got Oliver this Cozy Coupe. Oliver seemed to love going for rides in it and had lots of fun with his cousins who pushed him all around the basement.


Oliver and his cousin Danielle- she is just over 3 weeks older than him- they are almost the exact same size. They had lots of fun playing together this weekend.


Oliver's 1 year picture! I took this at 11:30 pm when he was officially 1 year old! He has been lots of fun for the past year and I'm sure we have much more fun to come. Thanks to everyone who helped celebrate his birthday! Happy First Birthday Oliver!! We love you!

Updates

I went in to wake Oliver up to go get his 1 year pictures taken and this is how he was sleeping, feet stuck out of the crib.

Oliver building with blocks, he especially likes it when other people build a tower and he gets to knock it down.

This pictures is Oliver watching out the window and if you look closely, you can see a backhoe out the window. There were 2 of them loading a huge pile of leaves into a dumptruck. I had pointed it out to the little boy I watch who was watching out the other window. Oliver looked out the other window first and then wanted down. He then went to the front window and stood and watched the 2 backhoes loading all of the leaves. He watched for probably close to 10 minutes until they were finished. He then watched them all drive away down the street and when he couldn't see them anymore, he left the window to go play. :)

Laundry baskets always make a spectacular toy.

We have been enjoying the nice fall weather. Last weekend, we raked leaves and filled 37 bags with leaves! We also took Oliver in to get his 1 year pictures taken. He did pretty good for them. He wasn't quite himself so we didn't get super big smiles. Later that night, he ended up with a fever and so I think that is what the problem was. We've spent a few days with just Oliver at home to try to get him healthy again and he seems to be doing good- no fever since Monday night. I managed to make him some new towels while we've been home. He had outgrown the baby towels quite awhile ago, but we liked the hoods... so we bought some regular towels and hand towels and I sewed them together to make big hooded towels.

I can tell I have been home with him and not able to leave, I am actually excited to get out of the house to go get groceries. Have a great day!

Monster Walking

Here is a short video of Oliver walking. He is quickly becoming more stable- before we know it he'll be running!

Halloween!!

We had a very fun Halloween weekend! We carved our pumpkin Thursday night, Oliver enjoyed pulling the guts out of the pumpkin. Our pumpkin turned out pretty good- it was carved like Cookie Monster. Oliver dressed up as a monster for Halloween. Grandma & Grandpa Shook came to visit for the weekend. Eric and Grandpa did some work around the house while Grandma, Oliver, and I did some Christmas shopping. We came back and passed out some candy. Then we took Oliver trick-or-treating to a friend's house (the little boy in the Thomas costume- they were watching out the door for more trick-or-treaters). Oliver got a special treat of cheerios :)
Oliver is getting much better at walking and seems to be doing a lot of it. He is also cutting at least 3 teeth right now, he had 1 rough time last night, but once we got him calmed down, he went back down for the night.

Happy Halloween!!