Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Our first Christmas


OK, so it's only the first Christmas for Brody, but I feel like real life has really begun now, and we're all going through "firsts" together.

Brody is 6 months old (about 16 pounds) and he loves to play, be held and chew on anything that will fit into his mouth. He also LOVES to reach out and grab for things. I guess all babies do these things, but I'm sure none of them do it as cute as Brody does ;)

His first word was about a month ago. He repeated "honk" after I said it several times (while he was grabbing my nose). He's also said "Dada" a couple of times and I am vigorously coaching him to say both "momma" and "dog." For some reason, I think "dog" is going to come before "momma." Sigh.

Of course the little booger was spoiled rotton this Christmas. He got lots of toys, bedroom decor (Noah's Ark theme) and the cutest walker - it's cherry red and modeled after a GT sports car. I'll have to take a picture of him in it tomorrow morning and post it.

And tonight I found that he's getting much closer to crawling. Now, in addition to lifting his head up while on his belly, he can lift the entire front half of his body and he kicks his legs to try and gain some speed. It won't be long now and we'll have a speedy gonzales to chase.

Well, now that I've gotten everyone up to speed on our biggest moments of the past few years, I'll post more detailed news about our everyday lives about once a week. (That should be more than enough - we're not THAT interesting). :)

A quick timeline

Here's a few important dates to get our family timeline up to speed:

Summer 2001: Duane Paitsel and Nicole Stanley batted eyes at each other across the Dairy Queen counter. They went to see Jurassic Park 3 and held hands.

June 17, 2006: Duane Paitsel and Nicole Stanley stood in front of their friends and family and batted eyes at one another and exchanged rings.

October 2006: Nicole convinced Duane that she needed a dog or a baby. Duane chose dog. They drove to West Virginia to pick out the quirkiest Weimaraner they could find. They named her Lady.

August 2007: Nicole and Duane decided that since they had kept the dog alive, they could try for a baby.

October 2007: It worked! Nicole told Duane she was pregnant.

June 30, 2008: Brodan Robert Paitsel was born via C-section, because the 9 lb. 12 ounce baby was just too much for his momma to handle. Nicole thinks this will continue to be the case for the next 18 years.

Welcome to our family blog


Hello family and friends!

Welcome to our family blog. I've wanted to put this together for a while now (since I've gotten a taste for blogging at work with my "Savvy Shopper" blog), but this one is going to be all about our family (and let's face it, mostly cute pictures of our newest angel Brody). I'll post updates here on family news and, of course, lots of lots of those pictures. I hope you like it!