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.

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.

I think she needs a name. Meet ________________. She’s my new Suzuki Boulevard M50 cruiser.

Sometime in the next week or so I’m hoping to film and post a video walk-around of the bike.

(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

Yesterday we partied with a bunch of kiddos at E’s birthday party and we had a ton of fun. It was a bug hunt theme and the kids loved it. Not many words tonight… need to get to sleep. Enjoy the photos.

The birthday boy and Cole hanging out with E’s grandma.

Cole was a perfect gentleman all day.

Our friends Jason and Jennifer, who we haven’t seen in years… they have an adorable little boy of their own.

Springtime in Texas is pretty (if you can get by the insane amount of allergy inducing pollen). Each year around this time the wildflowers bloom and put on a show that can make a box of Crayola crayons look bland. Check out this Flickr pool for some beautiful examples: http://www.flickr.com/groups/txwildflowers/pool/. Predictably you’ll find many Texans parked on roadsides all over the state getting photos of babies in flowers, families in flowers, pets in flowers, dolls in flowers, bikes in flowers… pretty much anything/anyone in the flowers.

So here’s our baby in the flowers

Dear Internet–
I only have one small, teensy-weensy, super tiny favor to ask of you: please make time slow down… my boy is growing up too fast and I’m afraid if I blink I may miss something. In the past month alone he’s cut 2 teeth, started eating solids (now up to 3 times a day), army crawling (or scooting), and sitting up on his own. It’s getting hard to keep up with him and I know this is only the beginning. He’s become quite the squirmy arm dangler, finds me not soothing enough at night, and has already managed to pull himself up into a standing position in his crib (my response to which was to immediately lower his mattress so he doesn’t take an untimely tumble). Don’t get me wrong, internet, I love seeing my son explore his world, but I want more time to enjoy it with him. So if you could indulge me in just this one wish I would be forever grateful. Thanks.

This whole daylight savings time thing is getting old and it’s definitely not helping Cole get the hang of the “sleep through the night” plan (it’s midnight and he’s laying in his crib crying at the moment… slept from 9 to 11 and then woke up screaming… bleh).

So what’s been going on with Cole lately (aside from fighting sleep)? Well he’s mastered rolling over, is eating oatmeal (likes), rice cereal (doesn’t like), sweet potatoes (really likes), carrots (doesn’t like), and sweet peas (jury’s out), and has cut his first tooth. It’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks. We think he’s on the verge of crawling too (Lord help us when that happens… he’s already a handful) as he’s getting better at scootin’ around on his belly and is lifting himself up more frequently.

Anyway, here are a few photos from today. I’ll try to get a couple of videos posted tomorrow to share.