Update time! (aka Playing Catch-up with my life)

February just flew right on by and now it is 2 weeks into March!  Holy Cow!  Not too much has gone on here in the Sullivan home, besides my cute boy turning 10 months old (he'll be 11 months in a couple weeks...EEK!) and I did some more painting.

view from the living room

shoe area

wall by the stairs

Carlos learned how to climb the stairs (with supervision and assistance from his father...) and Luke surprised me with a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day (after all kinds of hints were dropped on him that flowers would be nice :D ).

he likes to try to walk up the stairs (with assistance of course)

my beautiful roses :)

 We also spent some quality family time at the Waikiki Aquarium on Feb 19 (which was neat!).  None of us had been to the Aquarium here yet and since I had a coupon for BOGOF adult admission I figured we'd better take advantage of that.  Carlos loved looking at all the fish!  It was so cute to see him try to grab at the fish as they swam by him :)

Luke just loved the Aquarium...the poop lol

We had a great time though!

Not much else happened in Feb from what I can remember.  The beginning of March didn't start so well for us though.  Carlos got his first cold on the 1st and is just now starting to recover from it.  Luke and I both got sick too, but mine only lasted for 3 days and Luke stayed home from work on Monday and Tuesday this week because he felt awful.  Hopefully we don't get sick again for a loooong time because having a sick baby is the WORST!  On a different note, I gave Carlos another haircut last night and he did much better this time than the first time back in December.  Luke and I only had to hold him still for a little bit and then he calmed down and let me cut his hair.  He looks so different with it shorter than normal, but he's still just as handsome :)  Luke told me that he thinks Carlos looks weird with short hair and I said that he looks just like him when his hair is short.  Luke took that to mean that I was telling him that HE looks weird with short hair (and I was ha ha).  Anyway I took some pics of him before and after I cut Carlos' hair so here they are.

before the haircut

after :)

playing with Papa

my goofy boys :)

Well there you have it!  I'm now up to date (so now I can slack off again, right? lol).  Hope you all had a wonderful February and that your March is the best one yet!  Hopefully I don't wait so long to update again (and hopefully Carlos doesn't get sick for over a week again any time soon).  Love you all!

baby has new shoes :)

here's the video from yesterday.  Sure do love my baby bug :)


baby has new shoes :) from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.

9 months old!

Has 9 months gone by already???  Seems like only yesterday we were on our way home from the hospital with Carlos in tow... Now he's not only crawling all over the place, he is walking (that's right people, walking) too!!  Where did my little baby go??  He is really into EVERYTHING he can get his hands on now ha ha.  He just loves to keep us on our toes :)  He hasn't figured out how to stand up on his own without using something to pull up on, but I'm sure he'll figure that out soon enough.  The only major issue with him walking already is that his feet are still too fat for most shoes ha ha.  I used to have to keep a pair of grippy socks in his diaper bag all the time so that he could get down and walk around when we weren't at home.  I was able to find a pair of tennis shoes last night at Wal-Mart that fit him!  I had him wear them for a little bit this morning to get used to them and took some pics and a video (which I'll post tomorrow after I get it uploaded).

my cute big boy in his new "kicks"

He has recently (as in the beginning of the month) started eating and enjoying baby food which makes his Mama VERY happy :)  He loves the orange veggies and most fruits so far, but since he broke out in hives around the 4th or 5th so we have been taking it slow in introducing foods to him again.  Speaking of hives I don't ever want to see them on my poor baby again!  They were HUGE!  We had a follow up a couple days later to make sure he was ok (which he was and still is). Here's a couple pics that we took of them on him before we took him to the clinic to get some Benadryl.

still happy, even with hives

He hasn't broken out since the above incident, but we are more aware now of what they look like and I'm monitoring his diet (and mine) better so we can possibly pinpoint the cause faster (we never figured out what caused them).  Thank goodness for Benadryl.

Anyway, here's a pic I took of him after one of our feeding sessions.

Baby Food: good to eat and makes a great hair gel too!

What a ham, huh?  We sure love him!  He also loves taking a bath!  He will stand next to Luke while he is waiting for the tub to fill up and just babble at him until his bath is ready.  Once in the tub he doesn't like to sit down to play.  He would rather stand up the goon ha ha.  His favorite thing to do is dip the toys into the water and then suck on them and then dip them again ha ha.  He sure is a nut!

action shot of him falling down onto his butt

mm tasty tub toys :)

He is "talking" more and more lately and it is so fun to watch him play and learn.  He says Mama and Dada A LOT now and loves attention from anyone who makes eye contact with him!  He makes the funniest faces and sounds too!  He is definitely a Mama's Boy.  There are pros and cons to this ha ha.  Cons being I can't leave the area without a protest from him unless Luke has thoroughly distracted him or he is in his room taking a nap (and therefore can't see me anyway).  He even gets mad at me for sitting on the couch when he's playing with his toys on the floor, but as soon as I sit on the floor with him he is all happy again the brat!  I still love him though, even if he is a stinker sometimes ha ha.  Especially when he makes faces like the one pictured below at me.

Life would be pretty dull around here without these two turkeys that's for sure ha ha. :D

We had his 9 month check up this afternoon so here are the stats:

Weight: 17 lb. 15 oz (below 5th percentile)

Height: 26 in (between 5th and 10th percentile)

Head Circumference: 45.1 cm (between 25th and 50th percentile)

So to sum up, he's short, kinda chunky (looking) and has an average sized head, but he's still healthy and that's the important thing. :)  Just gotta keep feeding him more baby foods and be better about giving him rice cereal and such.  The doc was surprised that he is walking already (we get that a lot now) and let us know that he is doing good even if he's on the small side.  Short people do great things, too!  It's not like I'm the tallest person ever (and Luke is average height, too).  He'll just take after his Uncle Dusty :)  Luckily, we didn't have to get any shots today so my baby bug is a happy bug and not a grumpy one :D

Any who, hope everyone is having an awesome month so far!  Luke will be turning 27 next Monday so that is our next exciting thing that we are looking forward to.  He doesn't want me to get him anything (no surprise there) so I'm gonna make him dinner and get him some ice cream sandwiches for his "cake" (it's the only dessert that he will eat, that or vanilla ice cream) and call it a success.  Wish he wasn't such a poop about getting gifts from people, but that means we can put that money towards something useful, like new clothes for Carlito... :D

Anyway, gotta go figure out what we are having for dinner tonight. Have a great rest of the week (and month)!  Loves to all!

It's the most Wonderful time of the Year!

Luke's favorite pic of the 3 of us lol

Merry Christmas everyone!!  This year has flown by soo fast for us!  I love this time of year and all the feelings I get from thinking of Christmas' past and present and what the future holds for us with each passing year!  I had the opportunity to participate in my Stake's Christmas Concert this year which was so much fun!  I absolutely love singing Christmas songs!!  I was able to record most of the concert so that Luke could see it (he had to work a 15 hour shift that night) as well as family and friends that aren't here with us too.  I'll post the clip with my duet and trio on it since it's the shortest one out of the whole event (which is still almost 10 min long I think. And compared to almost an hour of video total, that's short) so you can see me doing something I love with some awesome friends :)  Just remember, it's a loooong clip so you can skip ahead if you want and I promise I won't be hurt :)

Christmas Concert (Duet & Trio) 2010 from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.





The week of Christmas was busy for us.  My friend Joy and I had started going to Hot Yoga the week before as a start to a New Year's resolution kind of thing.  I have developed a love/hate relationship with the practice, but I will keep going because I know it's good for me :)  We had a couple of friends over for dinner on Christmas Eve (Joy being one of them).  We drank 4 bottles of sparkling cider (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE that stuff?  Well, I LOVE IT! ha ha), ate pecan topped sweet potatoes (Thanks to Shelly for giving me that 3rd Ward Cookbook many Christmas' ago!),  ham loaf and cheesy (funeral) potatoes too!  Everyone seemed to enjoy the food too which made me happy :)  After dinner we played a game of Settlers and a couple games on the Wii, too.  All in all it was a fun night with friends and I'm glad we got to enjoy it together :D

Christmas Day at the Sullivan Home was most wonderful and I attribute that to our sweet little boy, Carlos.  It was his first Christmas and he was so fun to watch as he opened his gifts and played with his new toys!  We recorded him opening his gifts (see clip below) and watched him play with his toys (and the wrapping paper too ha ha).  We ate breakfast first before introducing him to his gifts, but once we did all he wanted was the wrapping paper until we traded him for a toy instead.  As of right now his favorite toy to play with is the activity table Santa got him.  We forgot to show him his stocking, but retrieved the toy car from inside of it later for him.  I also forgot to turn on the lights on the tree before we opened gifts and I usually have The Forester Sisters playing softly in the background, but forgot that too.  Oh well, there's always next year.





Carlos' First Christmas from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


Well, that's it for December and the end  of 2010!  Can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for us!  Love you all and see you next year! :)

my baby boy starting to walk at almost 8 months old

    

all about November and then some

Looks like life caught up to me and I am once again behind in my blogging.  Here's what happened in November for us.

The first half of the month was spent counting down the days until we left for our vacation to New Mexico to see Luke's family for Thanksgiving.  Carlos has been figuring out that he can climb up onto things lately.  I caught him doing so and took a pic to show off how tricky he is.

he knocked those wipes over so he could stand on them the stinker

Before we went on vacation we did a few activities with some friends.  On the 6th we went to the Laie Temple Open House with the Downer's.  We stopped for lunch in Haleiwa first before heading out to the Temple.  Here are a couple pics of Carlos showing of his latest trick: eating his foot.

After the tour we took some pics on the grounds.  Here they are.

this would have been a great pic if Luke hadn't decided to yawn

Carlos also turned 7 months old on the 21st of the month (holy cow, it's been that long?!?) I got to attend the rededication of the Temple on the 21st as well which was such a neat experience.  After the ceremony I had to come home and get everything ready to go to the airport to fly to NM.  We were in NM from the 22 to the 29th and had a blast while we were there!!  Carlos was smothered with attention the moment we arrived by his Aunties and his Grandma :)  He loved all the attention too ha ha.  We spent almost everyday over at Luke's Grandma's house and saw all his family almost every day.  Luke got to enjoy some of his favorite foods (since we don't get the ingredients out here in Hawaii for most of them).  We occupied ourselves with bowling, snowboarding and playing lots of games of Risk on the computer (oh and Scrabble too, but that is my LEAST favorite game in the world so I did not play that one).

playing Risk

hanging out with his cousin Zach

Crawling around in Great Grandma's kitchen
He loved that rug lol

hanging out at the ski lodge with Auntie Debby 

Thanksgiving day came and we got to enjoy quite the feast!  I stuffed my face with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed taters, rolls and then I made sure to save room for cheesecake and some apple crisp too (that Stephanie, Rachael and I made).  Carlos looked all handsome in his little sweater vest outfit I had put him in, but he had a diaper malfunction during his nap so I had to change him out of it before I got pics of him all dressed up.  The ones I got were still pretty cute though.

loved his socks :)

His cheeks were super rosy by the end of the trip due to the cold dry NM air poor thing.  He also cut one of his top teeth while we were there (for a total of 4 by the time we left) and a third top tooth cut shortly after we got back home.  Now he has 4 on top and 2 on bottom!  The flights to and from were not the most enjoyable with him, probably thanks to him teething.  Lucky for us we didn't have to be pat down or go through a body scanner this time around.  Won't that be a fun little addition for our next flight?....  Anyway, our flight out to NM was somewhat nice because we flew first class using our miles (even though my headphone jack didn't work for my seat so I didn't get to watch any movies), but the return flight wasn't so nice because our seats were messed up due to our flight being delayed.  We ended up being seated in the bulkhead instead of first class (don't worry, we were refunded our miles for that flight).  Bulkhead was still better than any other coach seat we could have had so I didn't complain too much, especially since my headphone jack worked so I was able to watch Despicable Me (LOVED that movie!).   Overall our trip was wonderful and much needed.  Can't wait to go back!  Oh and the day after we got back I spent some time unpacking the suitcases (of course). One of them was completely empty and I was about to take it upstairs, but decided to get something to eat first.  When I came back to get Carlos to put him into his chair I found him like this:

He wanted to play with the zippers on the front so I guess he thought it would be a good idea to climb into the suitcase to get a better angle at them ha ha.  He was quite proud of himself to say the least.


Now for December so far.  Carlos has been taking more steps on his own lately and has recently started to say "baba" alot along with dada and dadee and any other baby babble he feels like saying to us that day. We decided that he calls Luke "baba" since it's the closest to Papa.  Here's a video of him babbling and "walking" that we took this past Sunday.


babbling and such from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


He also does this weird clapping thing where he plays the slapping game with his hands (the one where you trap your friend's hand under yours and then you stack your hands over and over...).



"clapping" from Nicole Sullivan on Vimeo.


He also loves banging on the boxes that are everywhere in the living room (makeshift barricades for the Christmas Tree and the TV center) like you would on a drum.  He is so stinkin cute!!  I love watching him play, especially when he thinks I'm not watching :)

Anyway, that's all I have for now.  Have a good one!  Later!