An elf noshing on a bagel

You can take the boy out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the boy.

Schmoo Two

Life of the S-worm

Seamus' first Christmas tree

Zombie Seamus Attempts To Eat His Grampy's Face

The ghoulish laughter in the background is mine.

Catching up...

Well I tried to upload some photos, but this thing ain't workin'.
So I'll just give you a text update of the wonders of the Schmoo. He is completely walking now, hardly ever crawls, and he can stand up without pulling up on anything. I think he is saying "dada" in context and he knows a bunch of words, like "ball" and "book." And he's almost a year old!! The past six months really has flown. Ah, in the tradition of Mommy opening Christmas presents way too early, Seamus opened his first two presents yesterday---a Christmas rubber ducky from Aunt Teri and a Vietnamese frog instrument from Granny Franny. He said they both taste great! Film of the rubber ducky unwrapping to come.

I Wanna Rock

Our little Guitar Hero ...

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Mimi and Evelin!!

Last night we went to a really fun party at Byrne's house. Seamus charmed everyone, of course. Uncle Bob is a very bad influence! He gave Seamus this holiday cocktail!

How To Eat Mashed Potatoes

A memorable scene from Seamus' first Thanksgiving:

Greta's holiday message

Gardening with Mom

In Mary Jane's beautiful garden:

splish splash

... the Schmoo was taking a bath, on about a Tuesday night (in Mary Jane's awesome bathtub):

Seamus the Chick Magnet

Thanks to modern aeronautics, we are at this moment three thousand miles from home, relaxing in my father's office room, which has been converted into a guest bedroom for us.

We were worried about how Seamus would take to flying, but he exceeded all of our hopes by a) sleeping a fair amount and b) generally being in a very good mood when awake. In fact, he was so happy that he totally charmed everyone with whom he came in contact. He made friends with two young women sitting in front of us, another young woman behind us, and all of the flight attendants. One of them even threatened to steal him by putting him into her carry-on.

A plane actually seem to be a great environment for him: there's constant white noise to soothe him, interesting stuff to look at outside the window, and, most of all, lots of people to interact with. Whenever I see him being ultra-gregarious, I think to myself, "That's Grandpa Jude's genes coming out."

Here's the little boy enjoying some applesauce at 30,000 feet:

Happy Halloween! Roar!!!

Halloween in the C.T.

It's Pigwidgeon's favorite day of the year!


Eatin' pizza with Mom ...


I'm a scary dragon!


Seamus says: "send your costume pictures, cousins! dad will post them here."

I'm going to be a big brother!

Greta vs. Nature

We took Seamus down to the mill pond in the center of Milford yesterday. He enjoyed watching Greta feed the ducks, geese, swans, and seagulls that congregate there ... I enjoyed it even more, because Greta was terrified by them. She thought they might possibly peck her to death, or perhaps trample her with their little webbed feet. I'm not sure exactly what she thought was going to happen to her, actually, but it was very funny to watch.

This video is dedicated to Granny Franny, in fond remembrance of the days when we used to chase the pigeons in St. Peter's Square towards her.

Partay in Jersey!

Pumpkins!

Seamus went to his first pumpkin patch today. Here he is standing on a bridge with Daddy. The pond behind them had giant geese around it. Good thing Grandpa John wasn't there! Those geese wouldn't have lasted long.

Pumpkin boy!


Grampy makes Seamus laugh.

Roadtrip!

We drove up to Gloucester, Massachusetts this weekend to see our nephew Wes Dunn ride in a cyclocross race. It was really cool, a mix between road racing and motocross kind of. We were so proud of Wes when he came in 3rd on Saturday and 4th on Sunday. The coolest person was the woman who won the women's race but decided she needed to warm up during the race before, which was the B-level men's race. She beat most of them. Way too cool. We had a great time and got to see Teri and Tris too. Very nice couple of days! Oh and Seamus got another tooth as well, so now he's up to seven!

Tris, Jim and Seamus at the race.

Mama and Seamus

Proud mom and Wes

I'm too cute!

All Those Months Ago

Was cleaning out my computer and found this picture of Seamus in his first week. I don't remember him being that tiny! He's a little more than twice as big now. Seamus is 37 weeks old today and will be 9 months old in 2 weeks!

Also found this funny before and after that my mom made while she was staying with us the first 2 weeks of Seamus's life. Jim pretty much still looks like the After photo, but that will end soon when he starts his new job at Yale! Can't wait.

Yogurt

Rain

Cheerios on the Floor!

I walked into the kitchen to get some coffee and came back to cereal all over the floor.

To soothe the savage beast

Seamus is a pretty even-tempered guy, but there are a few things that he hates. Among them are being strapped into a car seat, and being over-tired. We deal with the former by distracting him with this cheeky Dora the Explorer-related toy .. as you can tell, he loves it!



We usually deal with the crabby overtired baby situation by taking him to the beach -- the sound of the waves is like NyQuil to him. Sometimes, though, it's rainy or cold, and we have to resort to cuddling and dancing with him. For some reason, the music that soothes him the best is Aimee Mann -- in particular, a song called "Susan". The "Play Count" column in iTunes tells us that we have used this song as a sedative 146 times so far. I love Aimee Mann, and I'm grateful that he hasn't chosen, say, Avril Lavigne instead, but I can say that Susan is ... not ... my ... favorite ... song anymore. (Although the line "We kissed for a while to see how it played" still makes me smile sometimes.)

On the plus side, this early exposure to Aimee's music will leave him fully prepared to deal with romantic disappointment with elegantly-crafted expressions of regret.

I couldn't find Susan online, but here's an awesome video of another of Seamus' favorite tunes:


PS: The English major in me feels compelled to confess that I have misquoted William Congreve in the title of this post.

Crazy Chicken

Seamus feeds himself

Cutie Pie

This morning I said "kitty cat" and I swear Seamus said "Keh Tah" or something like that. Then, just now he was sleeping and I didn't hear anything on the monitor, but I heard this banging noise coming from the bedroom. Apparently, Seamus had gotten up, crawled off of the bed (it's on the floor), and was banging on the door.

Funny little monkey.

Pictures to come soon. Not of what I described though, unfortunately.

For Auntie Teri

Seamus enjoying some yogurt.

I attempted to take a family portrait

It was like wrangling cats!

Another visit from Logan Part Deux

"Make the face you make when you don't want Nona to do something."

We were sitting underneath an oak tree that had two resident squirrels. At one point, one of them threw (or dropped) a half eaten acorn at us! Here's one of them.

"I wanna climb the tree like the squirrels!"

La la la.