Not enough time in the day

Wow! It's amazing how busy the holidays are. Between D.J. starting to cover winter games, Thanksgiving, and getting ready for Christmas the past month and a half have flown by. First of all the little man continues to grow. He has started standing on his own. It is fun to watch him just stand there for about 30 seconds and then he decides to just sit down. We're taking bets on if he will be walking by Christmas.

We've let him start watching some cartoons. His favorite is Tigger and Pooh. He gets so excited to watch that he stands right infront of the TV. Also, since he has so many teeth we've started brushing them. He loves watching us while we brush so we started brushing his as well. He has a little grin on his face while we brush them.

Thanksgiving was spent at the Kearney's in Chaska. The whole gang was home, so we had 8 adults, 2 toddlers, 2 infants, and 2 dogs. A good time was had by all, except D.J. had bronchitis and was coughing most of the time. Alex enjoyed spending time with his cousins. He was very interested in Jon as they are only 5 weeks apart. They will be a handful as they get older... I see many mischevous adventures in the future. Since we had so many people we wanted to cook an extra bird, but Alex wouldn't sit still long enough to baste him.

Julie's birthday was on the 27th of November, she turned 27. Since it was her "golden" birthday we threw her a surprise party while home in Chaska. Julie's parents and brother came in from Amery as well as some other of Julie's friends. Needless to say she was very surprised and happy to see everyone. And she got to have her favorite, Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

With all the cold weather we got the chance to bundle Alex up in his elf and marshallow man winter outfits. And since the snow blower needs a tune up he came out side to help Mommy and Daddy shovel snow, he's got a smile on his face so I think he had a good time.

November has brought us many projects. The highlight came when D.J.'s parents came out to visit and his dad helped him put up crown molding and some cabinet work. After 12 hours the job was done (without any major injuries) and they sat back to admired their work over a cold beverage.

Happy Halloween

Alex is almost 9 months old now. We can't believe how fast the time is going, and how quickly he is growing. It's hard for us to even remember when he was so tiny and couldn't crawl. He is a bundle of energy. He loves to crawl all over the house, open cupboard doors, chase the cat, and play with his toys.

In the past month he's been starting to babble a little. He's started saying "Mama" but it comes out as "Baba" some times. He hasn't gotten anymore teeth, but is far ahead of schedule already having eight. Julie endured her first nights away from Alex as she had a business trip to Chicago. D.J. took Alex to Grandma and Grandpa Kearney's house while she was away. Both mother and boy did very well, but were very happy to see eachother when they got home.

On October 23rd we celebrated our 3rd anniversary. Grandma and Grandpa Fretwell took care of Alex so we could spend some time together over dinner.

Here's D.J. and Alex all ready to watch the Viking game. Unfortunatley they didn't show it... surprise, there was a Packer game on.

Alex got a new Vikings sweatshirt because he out grew his other Viking out fit so fast. Here he is proudly showing it off.
Alex loves to play with the remotes, and the other morning he got 2 of them and had a lot of fun playing with them.

Here's Alex taking his bath - D.J. wanted to see how "big" he could get Alex's hair, this is what we got, but Alex wanted to show you his duckie.

Alex has a couple different smiles, there's the one when he's laughing and it's a big smile, but then there's the sly little smile where his eyes will crinkle and his cheeks will raise to show his little teeth - this is my favorite smile because it's so genuine!!!!!This one is of Alex during trick or treating (we have it on Sunday during the day, so it's safer, but not quite the "Halloween spirit"). It was tiring for the little man to hand out so much candy. (We only went to a couple neighbor's houses, and passed on the candy - maybe in a few years.)
Here's Alex in his pumpkin costume with our other pumpkins, I know which one's my favorite, how about you?

Here's Huey, Alex's stuffed cat.
Here's Alex on his rocking moose.

WOW! It's amazing how fast time is going. Summer flew by and it's hard to believe September is almost over. We're very sorry for not updating the blog regularly lately. Needless to say we've been very busy. Julie has been busy with work, and recently started playing Bunco (a dice game) with some girlfriends. D.J. has had a busy month with school sports starting, so he's covering a lot of games. Alex has been growing like a weed and becomes more mobile each day. He is crawling and pulling himself up with ease now, pretty soon he'll be asking for the keys to the car. "OK, now that I've unfolded all the clothes what else can I get in to?"
On Labor Day our neighbor invite us to swim. Alex didn't like the cool water, but obvisouly found floating in the tube to be relaxing. All he needed was a fruity cocktail with an umbrella in it.
"Siggy where are you going? Don't you want to play?"
Alex liked the grass at Grandma & Grandpa Fretwell's. This was taken the day before his 7 month birthday.
He likes to cuddle :)
"Yeah, I know, I'm standing up. What's the big deal?"

"Let's see what else I can get in to."

HI Grandpa!
Playtime after bathtime. RIB-IT!
"Go Vikes! Why can't I find the game on TV? Shoot, that's right we live in Wisconsin!"

6 Months Old!!!!

On August 8th Alex turned 6 months old. The last six months have flown by but so much has changed at the same time. Last week Alex had his 6 month check up he was 17 pounds 11 ounces and 27 inches long. He also got 3 immunizations, he was a trooper and didn't cry until the 3rd needle went in (it took that long to realize what the strange sharp pain was in his leg). He did great and only cried for a couple minutes, it must have been tiring though as he slept most of the day.

At six months Alex has accomplished a lot, especially in the past 6 weeks. He now has six teeth!, which he's been using to eat solid food. He sat up and started crawling within the last week, and just today we caught him pulling himself up on a small box. He loves to be tickled and to chase the cat. He is starting to develop his own personality. He's a very happy baby and smiles a lot. We've been VERY blessed as he has been so content. It's been nice for us now that he enjoys playing by himself, allowing us to get some things done. However, one of the most precious things is when we get on the floor to play with him and he crawls up into our laps. "What?!? You looking at me?"



"I've gotta get the bag.".



He's so cute when he smiles.




"My first time eating cereal. YUMMY!"

"Daddy and Grandpa took me swimming in the Lake. Mom didn't let me go skiing."

"Happy Birthday GG!"

Alex loves his Exer-saucer.

"I can't wait to get my driver's license."

Fun Times

Alex is very ticklish, especially for Daddy, here they are having their evening tickle time.

Alex has started making new sounds, one of his new ones sounds like a high pitched screech, which involves him opening his mouth as big as he can and screaming from the back of his throat, it is actually really interesting to hear... and watch.

Last weekend we drove to Fort Dodge, Iowa to see DJ's Grandma Kearney. Here's the 4 generations of the Kearney family!!!

Here Alex is with his GG Kearney, we were so glad that we could visit her and give her sometime to be so excited about, Alex was such a good little boy!!!! He was mezmorized by GG's fingers. She would wiggle them infront of him and he would stare at them before he broke down and give her a sly grin.

This is so the Abercrombie picture of the baby world....eat your heart out girls!!!!!

Update

So in the last couple of weeks we've been so busy!! The summer is going so quickly and we didn't think we were going to be busy this summer, but now we're realizing that we were wrong.

July 1st was Alex's baptism, and we were so excited to have so much of our family here - not only to celebrate, but to be at our house (we always like visitors). Here are some pictures!!! Alex was so good, no crying or anything. Julie's brother, Jeff, and D.J.'s sister, Jennifer, are his godparents.

In Alex's first week of being 5 months old we introduced him to a couple of very exciting new things, his ExerSaucer (I know that doesn't sound all that interesting, but put yourself in the footy bottoms of an energetic little boy) and a swimming pool. We have lots of pool pictures, because they are so cute - Alex loves his baths, and he enjoyed it by kicking around, I think the life jacket and the vast size of the pool were a lot to take in.