Troy and Melanie (dot com)

Dear Cole–
There are so many things that Mommy and Daddy could say here. Like how we couldn’t wait for you to arrive, how we feel so blessed to have you in our lives, how your smiles and giggles brighten up even the gloomiest day, how complete strangers smile when they see you, how you amaze us with your growth and progress, how your grandparents love you with everything they have, how we love watching you play with your schoolmates, and how we love watching you sleep.

This first year has gone by in a dizzying progression of one achievement after another. Smiling, laughing, rolling over, sitting up, teething, eating solid food, standing up, walking, climbing… each step you took we were right there with you, encouraging you. No matter how many things change over the years one thing will always remain the same: you’ll be our little boy and we love you so much!

Happy Birthday Cole!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Over the past year we’ve posted many photos, but here is a chronology from birth to 1 year month-by-month. Enjoy.

Mere minutes old

1 day old

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old

7 months old

8 months old

9 months old

10 months old

11 months old

1 year old!

We’re living in our own house, enjoying life… blink…
Melanie’s pregnant, we’re ecstatic… blink…
Our little bundle of joy, Cole, is born… blink…
He’s sitting up on his own… blink…
He’s crawling… blink…
He’s eating solid foods… blink…
He’s walking… blink…
I don’t want to blink any more… I’m afraid I’ll miss something.

Here we are…another month has passed. Well, Cole walks all over the place now. He power walks. He’s working toward his run. He also climbs…stairs, ottomans, couches, highchairs… He wears big boy pajamas. He eats table foods — potatoes, peas, green beans, diced fruits, bread, crackers, etc. He loves throwing and bouncing balls. In fact, he loves throwing anything. He jabbers, he squeals, he giggles. There’s the nutshell description of Cole at this point. He keeps us busy. He continues to give us joy.

Look for some new photos from Troy soon!

Several of you have asked us for ideas for birthday presents for the little man. So, Cole has kindly set up an Amazon.com wish list to give us all a variety of ideas. Just go to www.amazon.com and click on “Gifts & Wish Lists.” Then, enter “Cole Schneider” under “Find Wish Lists and Registries” and click “Go.” Click on the first Cole Schneider listing (the one that uses appropriate upper and lowercase lettering). On the left-hand side, you should see the birthday of August 28 and a “ship to” showing Austin, TX. And, you should also know it’s his list because all of the stuff should seem appropriate for a one-year old (Cole is not currently reading any Stephen King…lol).

Alternatively, use the following link and we think (fingers crossed) it will work:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/359VR3JO5OX27

And, here’s some general info that might help too:

Clothing size: Currently in 12 mths, but if you want him to get more wear out of something, probably better to go with 18mths+

Temperature Guide: In Texas, it will likely be 90s in Sept, 80s in Oct, 70s to 60s in Nov and then will go down to 50s/40s by Dec…maybe to 30s by Jan, then back up to 40s/50s for Feb and up to 60 by March and 70s by April, then 80s – 100s from May through next Aug.

Shoe size: Currently size 3, but again, probably better to think of the future and bigger sizes.

Likes: motion, noise, music, dancing, balls and throwing, reading, baths, time at the pool, Elmo, Cookie Monster, finger foods

Hope this helps — if you have any questions we didn’t cover, just give us a holler and, as Cole’s personal assistants (heh), we’ll be glad to help you.

Literally…he just keeps getting faster and faster with his walking. But, aside from that, here are just a few of the things he has done that we’ve found amusing (as well as challenging!):

> He removes corner guards from the furniture (a babyproofing thing).
> If we try to get him to eat something like his broccoli cheese meal by dipping a cracker into it and handing it to him, he takes a moment to wipe the broccoli cheese off of the cracker onto the highchair tray before eating the cracker.
> We have up play yard fencing to keep him in the living room. We have to put an old shelf on the outside of the end of it, as he will just push it open otherwise.
> He pulls the car mirror down into his lap.
> He pulls the throw pillows down off the couch to use them as stepping stools for climbing up onto the ottoman or couch. (Scratch that: He can get up onto the ottoman without pillow assistance now.)

What will be next??

It’s hard for us to look at our baby boy and think that he’s already 10 months old. The time has passed by so quickly and little mister I-want-to-reach-the-next-milestone-as-soon-as-I-reach-this-one is already starting to walk. Yup, walking at 10 months. I’m sure you’ve already picked up on that fact from Melanie’s post, but it’s truly amazing how quickly he’s picking things up and mastering them.

So here’s a selection of photos and videos to entertain you… all taken over the past few days… just after his official 10 month birthday.

Video (hosted on YouTube)

Here are some photos and a video from our 4th of July at Steph and Dave’s.

Video (hosted on Vimeo)

Cole and AJ playing in the water from Troy Schneider on Vimeo.

Well, technically, he took his first step(s) on June 23, 2010…9 mths and 26 days.  :-)  But, now, 11 days later, he is getting really good at it.  He’s a bit less wobbly and can walk across half the room.  He can also catch himself getting ready to fall and stop it and steady himself and keep walking.  His learning curve (babies’ learning curves, in general) is amazing to us — it’s SO much fun to see.

Well, aside from the walking, Cole cut his third tooth on June 21st.  He seems to be on his way to cutting another too…a lot of drooling and gnawing on stuff…we’ll see.  He has also learned how to climb, making us both proud and nervous.  He can climb the steps lickety split (note: we do use a gate but we let him climb the steps when we are right behind him).  He has also figured out how to pull a pillow off the couch and use it as a stepstool to climb up onto the couch or ottoman.

He’s still such a peanut by size standards (about 18+ lbs), but he is still growing out of those clothes pretty quickly.  He’s pretty much in 12 mth clothing now, though some 9 mths stuff still fits.  He eats like a Hoover though, so it’s really just the way he’s burning calories like a madman.  He is eating more 3rd foods and also some real foods (Cheerios, peas, which are gross at the other end, potatoes, and mashed bananas, which he’s still not sure about).  Puffs remain his favorite thing…that and juice.

As to playing, he loves walking around his activity table and playing the piano on it.  He loves his ball (the cheap plastic type you buy at the supermarket) and he’s good at bouncing it and throwing it to you.  He can give you five and wave bye-bye too.  He also loves the toys that light up and play music and his talking cookie monster.

For the most part, he sleeps well and through the night.  There are just some nights that go wonky.  He laughs, giggles, and squeals with delight.  He also likes to sit and read/play with his tongue pressed between his lips, like he’s really contemplating something.  Oh, he has also been enjoying our weekend trips down to the pool.  He has a floating ring/canopy thing and some water toys.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of right now.  It’s a fun age (aside from the fighting him to change his diaper and put on clothes) and we’re all enjoying it.  We’re contemplating his birthday now…crazy that it’s less than two months away.

P.S. Troy will likely post photos/videos later.

This will seriously put a smile on your face

Cole LOL from Troy Schneider on Vimeo.

(yes, if you are curious I’m backdating this post… I wanted to make it on Cole’s actual 9 month birthday, but life got in the way… as it usually does)

I don’t know how many times I heard it, but nearly every parent we know told us to cherish the first year with out new baby boy because it will go by so quickly. Of course we were thinking “sure it will”… the soon-to-be newly minted parents could slow down time and make sure that we spent as much of it with him as we could. Fast forward nearly a year (a few months before Cole was born until now) and poof. You have two tired, but happy, parents who can’t believe that their little boy is now 9 months old. It’s crazy how fast time goes by. We’re already starting to plan the logistics of his one year old parties (yes, parties… one in Texas and one in Pennsylvania). Yikes! In the meantime we’ll enjoy the next 3 months as Cole continues to babble, smile, and crawl (walk?) his way into everyone’s hearts.

He makes some of the funniest faces. He is definitely my kid

Hi there and welcome back to another episode of the “I used to blog every day and now I can’t seem to find time to post even a single entry once a week” show.

Things here have been quite busy and we’ve been putting as much time into being together as a family, cleaning, baby proofing, and doing the normal day-to-day things recently that we haven’t had much time for blogging. For those who know us you may have even seen a slowdown in the amount of Facebook updates that we’ve been making. It really is overwhelming the number of things that a set of working parents can find themselves needing to do on a daily basis. That being said, we have help this week (Grandma and Opa are visiting) so we have some time for other things… like an anniversary dinner, separate date night, and blogging!

So what’s been going on in the last few weeks… babbling, crawling, and playing (pretty much). Photos, videos, and audio paint a much better picture than words. Enjoy!

Cole and I surprised Mel with flowers, cards, and dinner on Mother’s Day this year.

Cole is getting big and is playing so hard during the day that he’s sleeping well in the night. These are iPhone photos so please excuse the quality, but there just isn’t a better camera than the one you have on you all the time.

Cole started saying dada (he’s not putting it together that I am dada, but I don’t care… I LOVE hearing it)

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Cole has been fighting a cold for the past 2 weeks and breathes a little heavier when he’s sleeping (not sure how much of this you’ll be able to hear)

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I’m having technical difficulties with the videos (they are being rotated by the video hosting site) so you’ll have to check back later