"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself." ~ Joyce Maynard
Thanksgiving Round 1. This year we had a Thanksgiving dinner at Great-Grandma & Grandpa Guyer's house a few days early. Dylan had fun playing with his buddies Justin, Kennady, and Kelsey and gathering with The Guyer side of the family. He explored and socialized with everyone and ates lots of turkey.
Thanksgiving Round 2. We all packed up and headed back home to Great-Grandma & Grandpa Sheets' house for Thanksgiving lunch on Thanksgiving Day. Dylan socialized as the rounds of people shifted to and from the kitchen.
Uncle Dustin & Dylan posing for a few cameras. Although it looks like Dylan was just trying to figure out what Dust was doing.
Dylan playing with Grandpa. Dylan had the opportunity to try all sorts of new sweets thanks to Grandpa that day.
Uncle Cameron trying to get Dylan to share with him, lol.
Uncle Dustin & Dylan playing with the kiddy piano. Grandma had a stash of some new interesting toys that she pulled out for Dylan to play with.
Grandpa Faith, Mom, Dylan & Uncle Dustin
Aunt Blake & Dylan. They were posing for a few pictures but Dylan decided that he reallyliked Blake's hair and decided to check it out too.
Alisha, Blake & I
The ladies hanging out at Thanksgiving.
Adam & Dylan playing together at Grandma & Grandpa Gray's house.
Thanksgiving Round 3. We spent Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma & Grandpa Gray's house with the Gray family. As you can see, Dylan was being a little rambunctious by then, haha.
I'm sorry I don't have more pictures from the other Thanksgiving dinners but I completely forgot about the camera. Little man can do that you sometimes, lol.
Well...we are getting super close to the holidays. We actually already celebrated an early Thanksgiving dinner and everything. So this week I figured I would put up some cute, funny, adorable videos of the munchkin to give everyone a little extra cheer or if nothing else to put a smile on your face at the moment. All of these are fairly recent videos from October & November '08. Enjoy!
As I'm sure you all know by now, Dylan loves Elmo. I bought him a "Best of Elmo" DVD a long time ago and the boy loves to watch it. Recently however, he has become more interested in actually sitting and watching it instead of running around and stopping to watch for a few seconds here and there. One day I put his Elmo DVD in and he plopped himself down on his little car in front of the TV and watched and danced to his favorite Elmo songs. I tried to upload this video multiple times straight to the blog but for some reason it is having problems "processing" it. Therefore I had to post the YouTube version of it so it looks a little more blurry than it normally would. I'm going to try to replace it later when the problem is fixed (hopefully), lol. Oh yeah, I bet you are wondering why you are looking at Dylan's back. Well, Dylan is quite curious about cameras of any sort and usually as soon as he sees one, he stops what ever cute thing he is doing to come over, point to the camera, and ask "What's this?"
Dylan has mastered this thing called running. Not only that, he has now moved on to running in place. It seems like Dylan learns or does something new every single day. It's quite hard to keep up with all the new activities. The first time I saw Dylan being a goof-ball and running in place, I had laughed until there were tears.
How many times have you heard someone say, "If I had even half of his energy, I would be set." Well, if I had even one tenth of Dylan's energy, I could run a marathon. The boy is high energy all the time. He definitely keeps me on my toes. I swear chasing after him could be the "Ultimate Weight Loss Solution," lol. If you don't believe me, here is a typical afternoon with Dylan. Running, squealing, and spinning. Anyone want to babysit? I'm kidding. Not about the high energy part though. He is still a really good kid and listens to me MOST of the time. He is just hard to keep up with sometimes and makes you enjoy his nap times VERY much.
Dylan is goofy pretty much all day. He is almost always in a good mood. In this video, Dylan had just woke up from his afternoon nap. Silly boy tries to get me to tickle him. Also, this poor boy always gets hiccups. Even when I was pregnant, I could feel him hiccuping at least once a day, lol. He usually gets them if he laughs really hard. He still gets them all the time but thankfully not nearly as much as he used to.
One Sunday, Grandma & Grandpa Faith came up to visit us. When they came up to visit, they brought Dylan his new toybox (as seen in previous pictures, lol) and also this red fireman's hat. Dylan played with this thing for the entire next day. Maybe he'll be a firefighter like his Uncle Cam, lol. Unfortunately for him, the plastic hat didn't survive for too long. The plastic could only handle so much Dylan. He definitely enjoyed it while it lasted and had a blast playing with it.
Just an FYI: Jeff just informed me that if you click on the video again that it will redirect you to my YouTube page where you can watch these videos in high quality if you click below the video where it says "watch in high quality." They definitely look a little better if you want to check that out.
Brrrrr! It definitely feels like winter now. It took some time to finally get to the real cold wintery weather and I am definitely not complaining. I would prefer to live where I never had to see, deal with, and drive in the snow. Anyways, now that it is starting to feel like winter time, we broke out Dylan's winter coat. Dylan still needed a hat and some gloves/mittens for the winter. So Dylan, Daddy & I stopped at Target one day on the way home and picked up some more wintery accessories. Now we are ready for the winter!
Dylan and I were outside playing last week and it was really cold out. It doesn't matter how cold it gets, the little man always still wants to go outside. Although now that it is getting really cold, he doesn't want to stay out as long as he used to. Not to mention he can't quite run around as fast and crazy as he did before now that he has a big puffy winter coat on.
I woke up this morning to the snow falling. Some people might have already seen some snow but this was the first snow here. It didn't snow for very long this morning and started melting immediately after it stopped snowing. It was nice to see just a little bit of white though.
Dylan & Daddy. Dylan loves playing with Daddy. He looks forward to when Daddy comes home from work every day. Just the other day, Dylan did the cutest thing in the world when Jeff got home. Dylan was sitting on the couch with me watching TV and relaxing when Daddy walked in the door. The minute he opened the door, Dylan started waving and said "Hi Da!" He did it all on his own!
Dylan & Uncle Dust. Dylan loves playing with both Uncle Dustin & Aunt Alisha. It always takes Dylan a couple seconds to warm up to people but when he does, you better be ready, lol. He was even trying to tickle Uncle Dusty's feet, lol.
Dylan, Uncle Dustin & Aunt Alisha. Dust & Alisha came up to visit us the past Saturday. They always make an extra effort to see their nephew. Like a couple of others, if they haven't seen in a while, then they come up to visit us. They love spending time with the little goofball.
Dylan & Great-Grandma Guyer. Dylan & I took a little day trip to Mercersburg yesterday to visit Great-Grandma & Grandpa Guyer and Mommy's cousin, Cortney.
So earlier this week, I decided to try to clean Dylan's bathroom while he was awake and playing. I normally reserve these kinds of activities for when little man is napping. However, this day I was going to put a couple baby gates up and let him play in his bedroom and the connecting hallway. From the bathroom, I can see most of Dylan's room so it's easy to keep an eye on him. Dylan played quietly for most of the time. By the time I worked my way over to scrub the bathtub, Dylan got quiet. Too quiet! Usually when it's that quiet, he's doing something that he is not supposed to be doing. So I quickly dropped everything and peaked around the corner to his bedroom. This is what I saw.
I was relieved to find him just sitting in his toybox playing with his toys. But then I started to think, "How in the world did he get in there?" He only had maybe 2-3 minutes at the very most since the last time I went in his room to check on him.
I'm still not quite sure how he got in there. There is a little chair that sits beside the toy box that Dylan's Great-Grandfather Faith had made for him. The only logical explanation that I could come to is that somehow my little monkey climbed up on the chair and then proceeded to somehow swing his leg over the side of the toy box to slide down in it. I'm not even sure if this is possible considering it was super quiet and I really think I would have heard him. I guess I'll never know. Here's one of Dylan's first mysteries that Mom might not ever figure out.
Thank You Grandma & Grandpa Faith for the toy box. As you can see we are working on filling it up. Not only does it store toys out of sight for us, but it is also enjoyment for the curious little monkey man who climbs everything!
We have two windows to the basement next to our patio outside. We have found some crazy things in there in the year and a half that we have lived here. Most of the time, the rustling leaves sound comes from a very large cricket crawling around inside. However, we have found a few mice, a couple garden snakes, and now this thing. It has been raining for about two days now and it is wet and miserable outside. I saw this thing, which I assume is some sort of salamander, clinging to the screen on the window. It looks cool but I was somewhat grossed out.
Imitation Central. Dylan started imitating little things we do a long time ago but now it's pretty much all he does. This was a Saturday or Sunday morning and Daddy was making us breakfast. As soon as Jeff started cooking, Dylan ran over to the cupboard with all the pots and pans and started pulling out his materials. The minute Jeff or I start cooking anything, Dylan always pulls out all the pots, pans, and lids. He really has a blast if you add a wooden spoon to the mixture because he sits next to all the pans on the floor and pretends to stir invisible food.
An example of Dylan's set up when trying to help Mom cook dinner. He usually uses most or all of the pans and lids that are left in the cupboard. For some reason, Dylan wanted to cook on the other side of the kitchen this day. He normally sets up shop somewhere nearby.
Unfortunately for me, Dylan playing with the pots, pans, and lids tends to be quite loud. The day Dylan realized that banging two lids together makes an incredibly loud crashing sound, I realized that Advil might be my new best friend.
Dylan will attempt to imitate any face that you make at him. He usually can do a pretty good rendition of it too. Dylan has so many crazy faces. This one is usually accompanied by an "Ooo Ooo Ooo," which I think almost sounds like the Count from Sesame Street.
Out of nowhere, or at least what seemed like it, Dylan began "brushing" his hair on his own. As you can see, he hasn't worked out the finer details of it yet but he definitely has the idea. He figured it out just in time too. The boy is finally starting to get some hair!
This picture looks hilarious. Dylan was imitating my kissy face but for some reason he kept squeezing his eyes shut and nodding his head at the same time, lol. Dylan also imitates pretty much any movement you make too!
Ever since Dylan was walking, he always loved to climb too. However, he legs were much too short to climb most things. He loves climbing the stairs every night on the way up to bed. Now that he is much taller, he is starting to try to climb every little thing. This morning he was super close to actually climbing up on the couch but thankfully he's not quite there yet.
Dylan is built just like his Daddy. He has a very long torso and then short legs. His torso is just as long as his legs, lol. Anyone who knows me, knows for a fact that he didn't get that from me! He is now trying to climb EVERYTHING. After getting home from the grocery store one day, Dylan decided to climb a diaper box, lol. I told you he tries to climb everything.
Dylan loves that fact that he can climb on top of stuff and it doesn't matter what it is. We were outside playing recently and he decided that instead of running around the yard playing like he normally does, that he was going to climb up the one step, sit down, jump down, and repeat. Oh man, I'm in trouble now!
So earlier in this blog, I mentioned that Dylan loves his Kawasaki 4 wheeler but he usually just plays mechanic or pushes it around. Well, Mr. short legs can finally swing his leg up high enough to get on. So now his new obsession with the 4 wheeler is getting on and off of it. He still doesn't ride it anywhere, lol. He tries now though. He sits on it and rocks for a minute or two before he decides to get off...and then back on...and then back off, lol.
Dylan was actually trying to ride in this picture. It is much easier to ride the Kawasaki in the kitchen. I know that he was born into a family where riding and Kawasaki's are life and it seems like he's ready to follow that path, lol.
Dylan inspecting and making sure the 4 wheeler is good to go. He didn't completely abandon the idea of being a mechanic. He just added riding to it, lol.
Dylan checking the tires too. He's got to make sure that everything is in top condition before he jumps on to ride, lol.
Sometimes Dylan swings the wrong leg over the 4 wheeler and ends up a little backwards. He's starting to really understand a lot though. Jeff told him "other foot" one day and he actually switched and got on the right way.
Dylan got on backwards and was trying to figure out how to ride while facing the wrong direction, lol.
Here is some more recent photoshop stuff. Most of the pictures should look familiar, lol.
Halfway through football season and our Eagles aren't doing that bad. It's a big game this week though. Giants are going down!
It's that time of year again. The weather cools off quite a bit and we transition from the summer of riding jetskis to the fall of riding motocross bikes.
This was a really early morning with Dylan. We watched the sunrise from complete darkness.
Election Day is finally here. Don't forget to go out and vote! Dylan & I jumped in the car this morning and headed out to vote. You should do the same...go...go ahead...did you go yet?
Dylan running around the kitchen dressed up as Elmo doing his new laugh.
Happy Halloween! Dylan celebrated his 2nd Halloween this year. However, he didn't really celebrate last year considering he was one month old. This year Dylan got to dress up as a giant Elmo. Dylan enjoyed running all over the house dressed up as Elmo and handing candy out to the trick-or-treaters!
Dylan was a little unsure about this Elmo costume until he had it for about 30 seconds. Out of nowhere, Dylan takes off squealing and running laps between the living room and the kitchen. He only stops just long enough to get one or two pictures and then off he goes again.
I know this one is a little blurry but the big smile on is face is hilarious. I definitely think that Dylan enjoyed this Halloween much more than the last.
Dylan stopping just long enough for me to snap a picture. Once again, he flashes his biggest, cheesiest smile and then off he goes.
It was pretty funny to watch him run around in this because he would constantly look down at his feet as he ran around. With his head down the whole time, the head of the Elmo looked pretty normal, lol. It really did look like a giant Elmo running around the house.
Thanksgiving Round 2. We all packed up and headed back home to Great-Grandma & Grandpa Sheets' house for Thanksgiving lunch on Thanksgiving Day. Dylan socialized as the rounds of people shifted to and from the kitchen.
