The Big Game

With the Packers out of the game, Lyla is primed to cheer solely for perfection!

First Shots of Pidge

For those of you who just can't wait to see him...

2008 Comes Rolling In...

You may not have noticed, but I popped a January 2008 Gallery link over on the left hand navigation a few days ago. I think this year, I'll just put a new gallery up each month and add pictures to it as I have them. Then I won't delay putting up pictures until I have time to write my little blab fest over here. Plus, I'm going to give up trying to put pictures up in the text field, except for maybe one picture at the top. It gets a little tricky trying to get the code to work with me otherwise.

Just before we kicked off 2008, Lyla decided she'd try to get in her first trip to the potty, so on December 31st, she grabbed her crotch said, "potty" and had us sit her on the throne. She actually got a little tinkle out, though her next couple of trips she didn't and rarely asks to go potty any more, but it's a good start!

Our 2008 started off with a lot of fun as Uncle Arthur came to visit on New Year's Day and had a great time playing with Lyla. He said that we should freeze her, because she was at the peak of cuteness and playfulness. We tried to explain that she's always like that, but he couldn't quite believe it.

The following weekend we were very busy with a trip to the Museum of Natural History. It was the last weekend of the Mythic Creatures exhibit and I... um... I mean Lyla, really wanted to see it. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside, but she LOVED seeing all the critters, especially the great big dragons. She enjoyed the huge eyes of the kraken, too, but kept wanting to go back to various dragons. After going through the exhibit, she brought Erin all the way back to the beginning and then we all went through the whole thing again, but a little bit quicker. We definitely need to hit the museum a little more. Lyla really loved it. Luckily, we could take pictures in other parts of the museum and were able to catch the action as Lyla and I barely avoided being stampeded by elephants.

The next day, we shipped out to the Bronx to meet up with Jeff Mazur with his son Adam and Sam Mazur with his kids Zach and Nicole. Lyla loved seeing the monkeys and had a nice up-close view of some tigers. Unfortunately, the Gorillas appeared to be on vacation for the weekend, so we didn't get to see any. Adam just wanted to see peacocks and he got to see plenty of them, though he couldn't catch any.

After that things went a little downhill. When we came home from the zoo, Lyla had a high fever and Erin felt sick to her stomach. I stayed home the next day and played nursemaid to both of them. Erin started feeling better, then seemed to come down with whatever Lyla had and Lyla seemed to get better and then relapse. Everyone was relatively healthy last weekend, but Lyla seems to have picked up yet another sickness and has been running a fever. The doctor said she has just been very unlucky and picked up about 4 different sicknesses in the past month. Hopefully, her immune system is getting stronger with each one and she won't get sick again until she's in high school and has a paper due the next day.

This weekend, Mima came to visit and spend some time with her favorite grandchild. She also babysat while Erin and I went out for a nice dinner Friday night and then again while I had a birthday party with about 20 friends in attendance. Before the party we watched the Patriots continue their NFL dominance on the way to an undefeated season. Unfortunately, at the party, we watched the Packers in their loss to the Giants. Sorry to all of our Packer fan family and friends! On the bright side, we won't have any problems in the house when the Patriots win the Superbowl, since they'll just be beating the Giants. We may, however, have issues on the subway.

In other family news, we found out that the next baby Black will be a BOY! We're all very excited and looking forward to having a whole new world of child rearing. Feel free to post your suggestions for names in the comment field for this post. The winning name gets to have our boy named with that name. We may not choose to use any of the names suggested, though and names that begin with "E" will not be considered.

2007 Wrap Up

Well, another year has passed (and a week and a half beyond that, but who's counting?) and it's pretty astounding to me to look back through these blogs and the pictures of Lyla and see how much she has changed. At the beginning of 2007, she had no teeth and wasn't even crawling around. Now she's got teeth aplenty and loves to run all over the house. She's gained about 10 lbs and around 6 inches. She's gone from wrestling elephants to double fisting guacamole. Her formerly short hair is long enough now that Erin can turn her into a sprout head. She's now talking up a storm and can often let us know exactly what she wants. She is particularly fond of blueberries, Sesame Street characters and babies (usually dolls).

We were really busy during the end of the year and I didn't have time/energy to get this blog updated, so I'll cover that ground now and then try to play catch up with our recent events sometime soon. We went to Wisconsin at the end of December to spend Christmas with Lyla's Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Erin and Uncle Ryan and cousins Keira and Will. During our trip we also got to celebrate Keira's birthday with her and her Grandpa Dave was nice enough to give Lyla a photo session in his studio with some pics with Keira and Will. I've got a whole bunch of those pictures up in Lyla's photo shoot gallery.

Keira and Lyla always have a blast together and Lyla just loves her baby cousin, Will, which makes us very hopeful that she'll be as sweet with her sibling, even if he or she pulls Lyla's hair or takes up space on her mamma's lap.

We took Lyla out in the snow for a bit, but she wasn't particularly thrilled with it. She did like when I would throw snow around and hit her mom with snowballs, but she cried when I plopped backwards into the snow. She didn't quite understand that I was just making snow angels and seemed to think something bad had happened to me. She definitely didn't want to be lying down in the snow and wasn't too happy about even standing in it at first. She eventually warmed up to it a bit, but the weather cooled down as the sun fell and we needed to head inside.

I've got more pictures from the beginning of December all the way through to New Years in the latest Gallery. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures during our little New Years party and due to various illnesses, we were down to 4 kids and 7 parents, but it was still a nice way to say goodbye to 2007.

You might want to turn down your volume before checking out the video below. Keira gets a little loud after 4 Christmas cookies...



In case you missed any of the past videos, I've put them all on one page for your viewing pleasure and I'll try to update it as we go along and maybe try to make it look a little nicer, too.