The beginning?

Harmon began what we hope to be a long and successful athletic career on Saturday, Jan. 16 when he attended his first soccer practice. While soccer quite frankly BORES ME TO TEARS (to be fair, Kevin likes it), there weren’t a lot of sports options around town for 4 year olds. There was floor hockey (um, NO), gymnastics (come ON, the kid is huge) and swimming (we would have gone with this one but there were scheduling issues). Anyway, upon arriving, he was a little hesitant to get out there with the other kids but, eventually, he ventured out into the chaos with Kevin. He did a great job listening to the British Elite Soccer (oooooooooooo) instructors and doing what he was told and it looked like he was having fun. I think the next practice will be even better, especially when he a) can go out there WITHOUT Kevin and he b) won’t feel the need to come visit me and Simon all the time. We all went to the first practice but I think it will be best for future practices if just one of us goes. It’s just fewer distractions. This first class is only five weeks long and then we’ll see what else is out there. I am DYING for t-ball and, eventually, Little League but he needs to be in kindergarten for those. In due time!

Got milk?

At Simon’s one-year appointment back on Dec. 4, we spoke with the doctor about his transition to milk. For the life of me, I couldn't remember doing this with Harmon so I was interested to hear what he would say (side note: we had a different doctor for Harmon). So, he suggested we just give him some Vitamin D milk in a sippy cup and see how it goes. If he was hesitant, we would have to wean him off formula slowly with all kinds of ¼, ½, ¾ mixtures. Thankfully, Simon said to hell with that mixture business as he happily chugged down his milk. Before that appointment, he had pretty much lost all interest in bottles throughout the day. He would have one at school and maybe one while my Mom and Dad were watching him on Wednesdays but nothing more. With the big move to milk, we thought we should just do away with ALL daytime bottles and it went very well.

The only remaining issue was the nighttime bottle, which the doctor said he would like to go bye-bye by the time he was 14 months old. Ah, what to do? We were dead set against putting milk in a bottle (since he was already getting used to it in his sippy cup) and we simply did not want to buy anymore damn Enfamil. So, we agreed that once that last can of formula was gone, we would just maybe give him a drink of milk from his sippy cup before bed. Well, we used the last of the can for his bottle on Friday, Jan. 15 so Saturday, Jan. 16 was the first night in his 13+ months that he didn’t have a nighttime bottle. Kevin has Simon duty on Saturdays so I didn’t think much about it until it was MY turn to rock him to sleep on Sunday night. I guess on Saturday, Kevin said he gave him a look like “what the hell is going on, where’s my damn bottle?” Understandable! Sunday night with me, though, he was sad and he cried. I felt terrible but it didn’t last long. Within a few minutes, he was drooling on me and snoring. We thought we were in for a few rough nights but he handled it just fine. He’s such an easy baby, a good baby, and always so adaptable to whatever is going on. Sorry about those bottles, little guy!

13-month update

The last month of Simon's life occurred during the busiest time of the year so it's impressive that I remember ANY of it! I do remember that the tooth to the right of his top front tooth finally busted through on Nov. 30 after his gums there were black and blue for weeks. I thought maybe he had fallen and injured that tooth but the little pearly white finally came through and put my mind at ease. This month also brought a ton of multi-syllable babbling complete with pointing at everything. He was like an Elmo doll that just got turned on!

On the heels of his first hot dog on Dec. 9 (my Mom let him have one when she was watching him), he also started camping out in front of the open refridgerator door to get a drink of his water. And, speaking of drinks, he made the transition to from formula to milk but that deserves a post all its own (bye, bye, Enfamil)!

Christmas vacation

Each year, I really look forward to Christmas vacation because we get so much uninterrupted time with the boys. This year, Kevin and I took off two full weeks and it was awesome! While we did the usual things like sleeping in, taking naps, decorating the tree AND baking way too many treats, we did some different things too. We finished up our shopping, I took Harmon to see Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, and we made our first family trip to the Henry Ford Museum. We planned to go because of the Lego exhibit, but we barely spent any time there once we arrived. Harmon was way more excited to see all the cars and trains so we spent most of our time doing that. On our way out, we also had a Bergquist boy hot dog!

We spent with my immediate family where - among other things - Simon got Elmo and Harmon got a very cool Lightning McQueen remote control car. We got them in their jammies before leaving Waterford so we could just put them to bed when we got home. Then we collected all the presents and put them under the tree.

Christmas morning was spent at home and we were stunned that Harmon slept until 8:30 a.m. He was patient for a little bit, but once it got around 9 a.m. we had to wake Simon and get the festivities underway. They opened presents for a while in their matching reindeer jammies.

Later in the day, we headed to my Uncle Max's house to celebrate with my extended family. The highlight, of course, was the Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner, which Simon took full advantage of! We didn't stay long, though, because the next morning we had to hit the road to Peoria to celebrate with Kevin's family.

I've been making that trip 2-3 times each year since 2000 and it was never as bad as it was this year. We should have known it would be bad when it took us ONE HOUR to get from the east side to the west side of Ann Arbor! It snowed almost the entire way and it took us about nine hours to get there (it's usually 6-7 hours). The last two hours, I had to sit in the back seat with the boys because they were so sick of being in the car. We got there late on Dec. 26 and spent the next three days just hanging out. Kevin's brother, sister-in-law, sister and nieces came over every day to play with the boys, which was very sweet! They got LOTS of attention and way too many gifts, as is the norm! We headed back on Dec. 30 and made it home in record time, which was great because Harmon was itching to play with all his new toys.

As has been tradition since the year before Harmon was born, we went to Pizza House for dinner on New Year's Eve. It wasn't the best trip as both boys were nuts! I think they were pissed about just being with me and Kevin after almost a week of attention from so many other cool people. New Year's Day was ... well ... a bummer. No bowl game will do that to you. The rest of the weekend, we took our time getting ready for the week and wondering why Christmas vacation has to go by so damn fast! It was back to the grind on Monday, Jan. 4 - ugh!