Please Excuse the New Setup...

Please, all, excuse my new setup for the page. Twice a year I get in this mode where everything I own has to be changed or altered in some way....usually all my passwords get changed, I change web stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda.... Now that I have a house I have this incredible yen to paint two of the bedrooms. One of them absolutely NEEDS to be painted and the other I just want a different color scheme....

Christopher's First Christmas!

Christmas morning came upon us, and there was much rejoicing. Christopher, the night before Christmas Eve (would that Christmas Eve's Eve?....hmmmmm...) came down with some sort of respiratory problem. Not usually an issue that Colleen nor I would generally freak out about. We had to have some concern due to Colleen's father's recent medical diagnosis (which I will keep off the web for his sake). He cannot be around sick people right now because he could have some difficulty fighting infection...we'll just leave it at that. That being the case, coupled with Christopher's shallow breathing, wheezing, runny nose, horse noise-making, and "wet" coughing, we decided to call his doctor for advice. We went in and got a clean bill for Christopher to hang out with Pop-Pop and wall was well...the rejoicing continued...

Christmas day arrived and after Christopher's steambath with Mommy, per Doctor recommondation, he bathed in a vapor-soap bath. Had to be clean and as minimally congested for Christmas as possible.

The in-laws arrived and present openning and breakfast ensued. He got more things than anyone should, especially since this will not be a memory he retains (I'm sure he was relatively unaware of the goings on to the degree that everyone else was aware of the goings on). But he notably got a 3-piece suit from Grammy Stevie, a bit stuffed dog from his Uncle Patrick, which was his favorite of all the presents he recieved...don't know why, it just was.

He also got a weeble-wobble sort of penguin toy that he just sort of got...basically a baby punching bag that makes a lot of funny noises when he's teetering about. I love this picture because it looks as if he's saying,"Uhm...for real? And what the hell am I supposed to do with this?" And he got the new Elmo toy...Elmo Live (???). Anyways, he liked the laughing and other random and wierd sounds Elmo made...but apparently he got tired of Elmo and did some cool WWF moves on him....you see the reverse headlock pictured...this was soon followed by the suplex and the obligatory "People's Elbow". It was really too graphic to display in photos....lets just say Elmo's gonna need some medical attention.

Christopher's 1st Christmas was a good one. He got way too much stuff, but that sort of thing will happen. We'll have to decide what to do with the extras (I'm sure they'll be donated...we're going to try to make that an annual thing and, eventually, get him involved in the donation part of it).

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas....

Pre-Christmas Photos

I'll be honest...I'm still learning to adapt to all of the family activities that my in-law relatives hold...especially around the holidays. There's nothing inherently bad about having all of these get togethers, it has just been somewhat of a process that I've just had to teach myself to do. And I'm still learning to adapt my anti-hang-out-with-people-too-much-or-too-often mentality to a more socially aware and involved (for lack of a better term) state of being. That being said, the activities really become more frequent around the holidays and, to be honest, its quite refreshing to experiece family that actually gets along well enough to actually want to be around one another....its quite an interesting phenomenon...and somewhat refreshing.

Regardless, here are two photos from 2 separate occurances of the aforementioned "gatherings" the first being the "Bad Christmas Sweater Party", with Colleen's cousin, and Christopher's God-Mother, Jacqueline, fully adorned in her pointsettia patterned black button-up top holding Christopher on her right and her son, Benjamin, on her left. Very cute stuff.

The second photo coming from the Christmas Eve gathering at my In-Law's home. I'm holding Max on my right knee (he is the son of another of Colleen's cousins, Kim) and Christopher on my left.

Christopher's Santa Picture

We waited until almost the last minute to get the "Santa" pictures, so we had to get them done at the local mall. The picture actually turned out pretty good, even though it makes him look like he's about 40 lbs. They did stick us pretty hard though. One sheet of pictures was $26!!!!! I almost hit the floor. Quite honestly, I don't know why I was surprised at all seeing as how it was a mall and it is, in fact, the American way to capitalize on common traditions and lore. We went ahead and ate the fee, agreeing to 1 page of assorted sized pictures with the thought that Colleen will, at least, have some good pictures to scrapbook when she does his 1st Christmas page.

Colleen did tell me of an area "farm" (I'm not exactly sure what this place sells, but it has "farm" in its name...hence the openning and closing ") that provides a Santa Claus every year free of charge to the patrons. The only requirement is that the patrons have to take the pictures themselves. I think that is a more-than-prompting proposition than getting rammed at the mall. The only hitch on that is that its about 10 miles from our house. Colleen actually offered that to me a few weeks ago, but I shot it down with the thought that driving that far to get a picture of Santa isn't very fiscally responsible. I've since rethought that position!





All that being said, he's Christopher's first picture with Santa Claus....





Enjoy

Christmas Decorations and Boy

The Holiday Season is now upon us...tenfold. There's a lot going on in the world to entice us all to dwell on the negative. Between the buyouts, sellouts, bailouts and bombings going on all over the world it really is difficult to think of anything positive at all. But this is the time of year where, at least in my mind, things hopefully go alright and I get to see the love and bond between families and friends. I'm trying very hard to think positive....at least through Christmas. So, we all went out to get a tree, came home to decorate it and the house to prepare for the season of some hopeful optimism (we have a new president for example). Col and I decided to put the tree near the piano...which I thought was a nice touch. It looks very nice...my mediocre picture-taking ability definitely does the tree a great disservice. We also did the outside of the house. Nothing crazy...some light up snowflakes and present boxes. We have a wreath coming soon, too. I try to make it a point to only keep the lights up for a minimal amount of time (2 hours typically) so as to keep my electric bill down and keep it a little green (the lights are even low wattage lights that don't use much power...I was very excited to hear about that when I bought them). The pictures of the house are very bad. I'll try to replace them as soon as I can.


Of course, we had to get some shots of Christopher by the tree. What else is there to say? One more thing to say actually...look at the larger picture below, bottom gums....he's finally getting those teeth! Colleen and I are both very excited...I'm sure he's not at 2 a.m. when he wakes up in writhing and screaming in pain. (I can't begin to tell you how thankful I am for teething medicines!)

More pictures to come of Christmas...gifts to open and all that...gifts that he'll show little to no intrerest in, being more interested in the boxes and wrapping paper, but I'll tak what I can get atthis age!

The New Resident Musician

I usually sit with Christopher at the piano a few times a week. I usually play chords or something simple for him (basic II, IV, V, I Progressions and what not...sometimes Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the like...whatever). This time, however, he wasn't feeling just sitting and listening to Daddy play. This time he wanted to be part of the action...so away we flew.

"You want me to play what? Hmmm....let me take a look. Ok......ok...."

"I think I can handle this. I know I've heard it somewhere. Maybe inutero or somewhere. You guys were always playing something or singing something. I think I know this though..."

DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!
DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!

da-da-da-dam, da-da-da-dam, da-da-da-dam...
da-da-da-dam, da-da-da-dam, da-da-da-dam...
DA-DA-DA-DAM!
DA-DA-DA-DAM!
DA-DA-DA-DAM!....DAM!...DAM!


"I knew I'd heard this before!"


All jokes aside, it was a fantastic moment for me. It was a lot of fun to see him start banging on the keys of the piano for the first time...and without reservation. I'll train him on touch as we go. As for now, this was an amazing time for me with Christopher.

I got so excited I tried him out on the Doumbek (smaller variation of the family of tuned drums such as the Djembe). That took him some time, but he started to get it a bit after a few minutes. That's my boy.

please note: For those of you who will enlarge the pictures to look at them, I'm very aware that the sheet music is not, in reality, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The music is actually from Franz Schubert's song-cyle "Die Schoner Mullerin." Just play along...Beethoven's 5th is a much more recognizable and type-easy

The Day of "The Tierney December Birthday Party"

These are some pictures I took yesterday.

These photos were taken during the morning. He was in a very good mood considering he is now beginning to shed his two bottom teeth. He was actually very comical...laughing hysterically while grabbing his little flex football and flinging it all around. Its tough not to be reminded of how much we should really appreciate the simplest, most seemingly benign things. Its a fantastic reality check of sorts to try to see the world through the eyes of a child.

We then attended the "Tierney December Birthday Party" held in celebration for all of the people with birthdays in the month of December...a real gala affair. This festival is held every year, but this year there was a special motivation. My wife and her cousins who are also mothers wanted to have a picture taken of all 4 of the children in Christmas pajamas. Again, its amazing to think of myself so "tamed," for lack of a better term. I think we took between 40-50 shots cumulatively, but eventually my wife's cousin, Jacqueline, got the shots. She got the only 2 photos that had all 3 (or 4) children all looking at the camera. The results are below, along with a very good picture of Colleen and Christopher.