Ty's First Christmas
When last we spoke, autumn was in the air...
All the photos in this update were taken between Oct 1999 (like the one above) and Jan 2000.
One thing I notice looking at the pictures in this update is how many different smiles Ty has. It seems that he has tried every combination of cheek, lip, tooth and tongue... all for different effect. His face is so expressive.
Enjoy!
Well, now it's February and Ty's "firsts" keep piling up: Ty's first autumn leaves, Ty's first Christmas, Ty's first sleigh ride... click on each picture to get a nice big photo. OK, let's go to the videotape:
| Ty's first Christmas...
yeah, he got a few presents |
Along with Ty's first
Christmas...
comes Ty's first teeth |
| Ty's sledding...
(you guessed it) for the first time |
Ty standing...
Excellent! |
My how time flies... Ty is now 10 months old. The highlights of the last four months include:
Ty has 7 teeth now (I think). The first one came in around Thanksgiving, I think. He loves to use those teeth to bite just about anything, so beware!
Ty can crawl. He progressed very quickly from sitting up to scooching to crawling. His major obstacle for a few weeks was the 2"-3" step into the family room. This was a source of frustration for Ty (as you can see in the picture below) for quite a while. He is now free of the ledge and can traverse it either up or down, giving him free run of most of the house.
Ty vs. "the ledge"
Ty can stand too. He just started that a couple of weeks ago. Our prediction is that he is less than a month away from walking. He can walk now with the aid of this little walker that has Elmo shit on it. (oops, sorry for that Elmo negativity there)
Ty falls down. With all the sitting up and the crawling and the clinging to sofas and doors and walls... Ty takes a header just about once every other day. It's a tough baby life, eh.
And, as you can see from the picture above, Ty is into the snow and sledding as well. Aunt Deneesha gave Ty a sled for Christmas and he loved taking that baby out for a spin recently during a nice, little snowstorm.
Ty is very social. He loves to go out shopping or to restaurants. We bring him out to dinner with us, and he loves to see all the new faces and people and things. He is enthralled until our food comes to the table, then... well, see the next point.
Ty likes food. If you are eating, then Ty had better be eating too. We bring a little bowl of Cheerios to the restaurant with us.
Ty's bald spot on the back of his head (due to friction with, well, everything) is gone.
Ty love his baths. He loves running around his bedroom naked before putting his jammies on. He loves carefully pressing buttons or light switches with his index finger. He loves falling asleep on his mother (not for long, unfortunately). He loves crawling up the stairs (with supervision, yikes!).
Ty's main characteristic remains... He is one happy, mellow dude.
Ty has, I think, mowed down the whole family by now. A couple of the last guys that Ty met were his cousins John and BJ. Both these guys live outside Illinois and are very busy... John is serving his country in the army and BJ is bad-mouthing his country at the University of Wisconsin. He-he.
 Ty and cousin John |
 Ty and cousin BJ |
John and BJ are Ty's first cousins... they are Felecia's sisters' kids. So, take a good look... my guess is that Ty will bear a pretty fair resemblance to John/BJ when he grows up. All these guys are one quarter filipino, and 3 quarters pasty white. Well, Ty is one quarter filipino and I'm pasty white, so we shall see...
One of the social events of the season that Ty attended was Gram Krieger's 90th birthday party held in December. The party was held at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, which was also where Felecia and I were married.
The party was attended by around 90 friends and family and was a smashing success. Here's a picture of Ty with his favorite womens: Mama, Aunt Deneesha, and Aunt Jonny...
Ty partying
Entertainment for Gram's party included two songs performed by Mark on guitar and Holly singing. It was wonderful, and Holly's voice is clear as a bell. Ty was enthralled and crawled across the room in the middle of Holly's song to see her up close and personal while she was singing.
Just for grins, here's one of my favorite pictures from the party... me (nice suit), Gram (can you believe she's 90?) and a rubber chicken (for Gram to ward off gang-bangers on social security check day).
Me, Gram, a rubber chicken
By the way, have you noticed the baby boom? You'd think that you could take a 5 month old baby to a family party and he would be the tiniest, little thing in the room. No chance? I think there were 2-3 babies younger than Ty at the party. We run into this a lot.
Well, some final Christmas shots... Ty was a week shy of 9 months old for his first Christmas. Certainly, he didn't quite get the whole drill, but he did love the lights, the shiny-ness of it all, and all the new things. He got to see most of the family in the Christmas whirlwind, which was cool too.
This picture was taken when we put up the Christmas tree. The final element of our Christmas tree ritual each year is for me to lift Holly to the highest branch so that she can place the Christmas angel on the top of the tree. And, yes, I was successful in raising Holly for the 16th consecutive year, but soon she'll drinking Christmas trees in college, so here's a picture of Ty and I practicing his future Christmas tree responsibilities...
Ty practicing future Christmas
duties
Ty was not real aggressive about the whole unwrapping presents thing; Brownie came to his rescue a couple of times. Brownie is actually quite accomplished at unwrapping presents. Brownie neglected the bones and pigs ears that he previously opened to get a chance to unwrap Ty's presents.
Brownie helping Ty unwrap
Holly and Ty.... click on the picture to see Ty's outfit (thanks Janny Greene) more clearly. Beam me up Scotty!
Ty, beam me up
Ty's very newest thing (that I can think of) is his reaction to any of the zillion things that are new or interesting to him, point at it with his little index finger and give a higher-pitched sigh of "ohhh". Something really cool elicits two or three "oh"s of wonder. Excellent.
Anyway, see you in a couple of months for Ty's one year update!
yow, bill
