Words With Friends

One of Graeme's new "things" is to push the kitchen chairs into the living room. He thought he was pretty clever until he realized that there was something going on behind him (he still isn't really sure what to think of TV).

We took G-bo out for a "fancy" dinner last Friday to Red Lobster. Here he is enjoying a cheese biscuit. We did order him the chicken tender basket with fries, which led to a new revelation, Graeme is a ketchup fiend (notice the bib). He didn't really want his chicken, and he only used the fries to scoop up ketchup, that is when he wasn't trying to just grab handfuls of it.

Graeme has also been getting himself into trouble, pushing the limits of what he knows he is not supposed to do, such as stand on his new chairs, stand on the couches, play with the oven door, or stand on his other toys. Therefore it was funny to see how proud he was when he was able to crawl into his wagon all by himself, but wasn't quite sure how to get out on his own.

Graeme was a little embarrassed by the Packers on Sunday, so he took some time to celebrate the opening day of love season (thanks Kimmeses - your hat comes in handy for play time).

And now, game time - Graeme has several words that he is using now. Some of them sound the same (apple, open, airplane, up - just imagine appa, opa, airpee, upa from a pronunciation standpoint), but he does use these all in context which we find pretty impressive.

He also has a few words that he gets really enamored with. He has a bunch of Disney books, but his favorite by far is Wall-E (sounds more like wowee). We "watched" Wall-E the other day. Imagine watching a movie, and for the first 15 minutes your child calls out the main character's name every time he shows up. It's cute for the first minute or two. He also knows how to point out owies as well.

Graeme knows lots of other people/objects in context - Mama, Dada, Puppy (Sims), banana, car, door, baby, cheese, shoe, sock, bubbles, and truck. He knows when we are going bye bye or night night. He knows that a car says beep beep, a sheep says bah, a cow says moo, a duck says quack and daddy says no no.

He will tell you yes/yeah, no, all done, please and sometimes even thank you. He greats the check out staff at Target with a friendly hi each time we go, and will continue to repeat this until (or even if) they say hello back to him.

It's so much fun to watch him learn, know that he is picking up more and more each day.

Happy New Year - It's my new Friggin' Haircut...

...and if you don't get the title, go to youtube and look it up (but not unless you don't mind profanity or are open to being offended).

Wow, has it really been since mid-November since we last posted? Sorry about that - is anyone still out there? New Year's resolution - post more about G Money - we'll see if this lasts more than two weeks.

Well, a lot has happened since November 19. First, we'll jump back to Thanksgiving when we made a trip back to Madison to see the Fam(s). Chris, Meg, Adie and Brynn made it down to Madison too, and we got a picture of all the kids on Grandma Toni's new rock wall.

After a visit to Madison, we went to Dodgeville to visit Great Grandma T. It was her 80th birthday in November.

When we got home from our Thanksgiving travel, we stuck to our close family traditions of doing Christmas shopping and putting up the tree on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Sims could hardly wait for Christmas to come.

Savage holds an annual "Winterfest" that we took Graeme to this year. One of the local daycares had a craft station where Graeme was able to make his own snowman.

Graeme got to go to his first "grown-up" Christmas party at our friends' the Schellhammers. He was excited to dress up for the occasion and play with some new little friends.

Just before Christmas, we surprised Graeme (as much as can really be done when he has no clue what is going on) with a trip to his first Gopher basketball game. He has now been to a Gopher basketball and football game in his first 15 months. We need to make sure there is an appropriate balance of maroon and gold, to cardinal and white, or black and yellow in this family.

We got to see an exciting victory against North Dakota State. Graeme was mostly impressed by the people and bright lights in the ceiling. He did pretty good for the game starting at what is normally bed time.

Graeme woke up on Christmas Eve morning to find that Santa had left him a large present in his play room (i.e. the office).

What could it be...what could it be?

His very own table and chairs. I know it doesn't seem all that exciting, but he already has a ton of toys, and he is really into sitting, or as he requests "ditting" these days. The trouble now is getting him to actually dit in his chairs and not stand on them.

After the excitement of the morning, we headed back to Madison to visit the Fam(s) again. We spent Christmas Eve at Ryan and Tommi's house. Here is Graeme and Brayden relaxing on the couch after the night's excitement.

We spent Christmas Day with the Tredinnick side of the family. Chris, Meg and the girls made it down again for Christmas as well and we all had the chance to watch the Packer's clinch home field through the NFC playoffs - Go Pack!

Before we headed back to the cities, the Woode family got together again for some Rocky's pizza. This table looks like trouble waiting to happen.

They aren't as innocent as they look. After pizza we swung by Grandma Toni's to say happy birthday to Brynn (we also missed a shout out to miss Adrienne on her birthday - happy birthday Adie!).

Remember how excited Sims was for Christmas? Man was he pooped afterwards.

But he did recover enough to finally pit Graeme in a rematch of tug-o-war.

AND NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT!!!!!

As you can see from the picture below, our sweet little baby had a little bit of what we like to call a mullet. Want further proof - is that Clay Matthews? Is that a precious little girl (yes, he has been called that)? Nope, it's just Graemebo.

We were a little nervous, because we didn't want to lose our little baby through chopping his locks, but I think the final product highlighted his chubby little cheeks and kept our baby in tact.

Hard to believe its been almost 16 months already. For those interested - please note that to be fair we did put Graeme in a Badger shirt for the Rose Bowl. I think he went to bed when the Badgers were up, and if you don't give us any crap about our Gophers, he doesn't have to know that Bucky lost...just sayin'.

Happy New Year!

S(no)w!

Da Dip

We showed Graeme how to dip breadsticks into pizza sauce over the weekend. He took it upon himself to try some other foods and use his new skill.

What does Graemebo say?

Graeme has been picking up some bad habits, though they are awefully darn cute. He really likes to sit. He will sit on the bottom step of the stairs. He will sit on you if you lay on the floor. He will find unusual places to sit, even if he is not supposed to.

This often leads to us telling Graeme, "no no". Now Graeme has learned, "what did Daddy say?"

Graeme is also learning a lot about what other people/animals say too.

I didn't know that monkeys actually giggled when they do that.

Happy Halloween!

Graeme did not go as a chipmunk for Halloween, but tried to give his best impression of one while eating banana.

Speaking of bananas though, Graeme did go as a sock monkey. Here is the Sunday night trial run.

After the trial run came the Primrose School of Savage Halloween Day parade at Graeme's daycare.

We had Monday morning off, so we went to watch the parade. Graeme was happy to see Mommy.

Not so happy to see Daddy.

Graeme was happy to have a cookie (his new favorite) at Amber's office.

And here is our little monkey with his finished pumpkin.

Hope everyone had a happy and safe night of trick or treating!

Who Hates Iowa?

Graeme hates Iowa!

This last weeked we had Amber's cousin Trish, her husband Sean, and their daughter Patricia up for the Minnesota/Iowa football game.

It was a perfect chance to teach Graeme about rivalries - not that he really got it.

The weather was great for a late October game, and thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Woode, the parents were able to enjoy an afternoon tailgating.

Miraculously, the Gophers actually came away with a victory (only their second of the season), and we got to keep Floyd of Rosedale (the golden pig rivalry game statue).

This is not Floyd, just a random pig that was outside of the stadium.

This is also not Floyd, just Sims. Sometimes confused with a pig.

The kids got some quality play time in on Sunday before Patrica had to head home. He was a little confused as to why anyone would chose to wear purple and gold rather than green or maroon.