These are some photos that I would like documented on the blog but really have no purpose other than to look back on and smile at in 50 years.
I reckon my next post will be his 1st birthday. It really does go by fast, doesn’t it?
Posted in Uncategorized on June 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »
These are some photos that I would like documented on the blog but really have no purpose other than to look back on and smile at in 50 years.
I reckon my next post will be his 1st birthday. It really does go by fast, doesn’t it?
Posted in baby on June 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »
For my first mothers day, Wilek got me tickets to an Os game. A big group of friends of us met and sat in the shade in the upper deck. There was one other mom celebrating her first mothers day with us, too, so that was fun. Wil, again, did not make it through the whole game. But it was beautiful weather and we had a great time.
Fathers day weekend was even more beautiful. It was the 200-anniversary of the war or 1812, which apparently has some ties to Baltimore, so the weekend was dubbed the ‘Sailibration’ weekend (which sounds like ‘Celebration’ with a red-neck accent) and there were fun events all over town in honor of it. There were like 50 huge ships docked in the harbor that were free to go on board and look at – hense the ‘sail’ part of the sailibration. There were also softball tournaments in the park for all the crew members of the ships, fireworks, and a blue angels show. It really felt like a holiday weekend around here and we took full advantage.
On Saturday we took Wilek to the park and then let him stay up extra late to watch his first fireworks show. He was tired, grumpy, and not impressed. But Phil and I liked it.
Hes such a city boy. He has no idea what grass is or what to do with it. This was one of the few pictures I could get of him before he crawled back over to the blanket. On Sunday we walked down to the harbor and snagged an outdoor table at Alexanders, one of our favorite brunch locations. Score! We walked past a lot of the boats, but the lines were too long to actually go on board. Then we made our way back to our friends house, who has a roof-top deck to watch the Blue angels show! Phil had some really good videos that he’ll post soon. Fathers day in 4 pics:
Posted in baby, things we've done on June 26, 2012| 1 Comment »
Over Memorial day 2012 we flew to Bloomington to meet up with my sister who was also visiting. Its pretty rare to get the whole watkins family together, so we were really excited. We kept wil up way past his bed time in the airport, to ensure he’d sleep on the plane. Though the hour leading up to the departure was a little tough – once we were in the air, he was out cold. The way back was equally successful. We were able to spend all of Saturday with my sister, Nate and Luke, along with the Phil, Maggie, and Andrew (Jessie was out of the country….we cant ALL ever be together, hah). Then Sunday we spent the day at the Wozniaks. I managed to not take a single picture all weekend. But I was able to swipe a few pictures from my sister and Phil took a few videos which he will upload soon.
Playing at the park:
Play room trampoline at Mimi and PopPop’s:
Playing with water and bubbles:
Family picture: Will someone with some photoshop skills please shop Jessie into that open space behind Mom and Maggie? Thanks.
We will have to steal some pictures from Char for the 2nd half of our memorial day weekend at the Wozniaks. I think she took a few.
UPDATE! Char sent over some photos. Here are some highlights from Sunday!
Yay for nice weather, good food, and fun times in BTown.
Posted in baby on June 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »
One thing I really wanted to do with this blog, along with keeping and sharing pictures, was to also share stories of our experience with Wilek as a baby. And I haven’t really gotten down anything lately – so I’ll use this opportunity to share a few tidbits with ya’ll.
(1) The stroller incident
About a month ago, we are getting ready to go on a nice family walk around the park. So I head outside and put him in his stroller – aaaaand forgot to put the break on. So I walk away for 2 seconds to shut the front door and the stroller starts going down the sidewalk on its own, off the curb, into the street where it hit a car and fell onto its side in the road. I got the front door closed just in time to turn around and witness the whole thing, but couldnt get to him fast enough to stop it from happening. Wil got jostled around a bit, but luckily I had him all strapped in and no cars were coming. He screamed bloody murder but he didnt seem to really hit his head or anything. We checked him all over, and he calmed down within minutes. We assumed he was fine and went on our walk.
(2) Homemade baby food
Since Wil started eating solids 3 times a day, I decided to try my hand at some homemade baby purees. I spent a whole afternoon cooking, steaming, puree-ing and freezing carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes. I was so proud of myself. Well it just so happened, the very day I started incorporating these into his diet – he seemed to come down with some sort of stomach bug. He surprised us with this by throwing up over everything, including me, two nights in a row. Massive cleaning sessions needed to take place because of this. But he was fine both days leading up to his night time bottle! We couldnt make sense of why he was getting sick just at night. Finally by the 3rd night, we were terrified of his nighttime feeding – so I stripped down to basically nothing and fed Wil over a blanket on the hard wood floor. I wouldnt let Phil take any pictures, but it was a hilarious scene. I couldnt believe it had come to that. Coincidentally that same night, instead of his delicious homemade baby puree dinner, we fed him some baby cereal. And he was perfectly fine. We finally realized that he didnt have a mysterious night-time-only stomach bug. My purees were just disgusting to him. They were promptly throw out and he was fine ever since.
(3) The perfect sippy cup
I had heard that babies should be ‘off the bottle’ by 1-year old, so I started my search for the perfect sippy cup for him a few months ago, but had serious trouble. He has no concept of holding a bottle or cup by himself and tipping it up to get the water to come out. We tried repeated to get him to hold it, tried showing him how the water comes out. At first we thought maybe he needed one with handles, then we thought he needed a softer spout. We seriously bought like 10 different sippy cups trying to find the right one, never finding the trick. Until one day Phil had his camelback water bottle on the ground next to him, and Wilek magically crawled right up to it, put his mouth on the spout and started drinking from it. It was at the perfect height that he didnt have to hold it and it had a straw so that he didnt have to tip it for the water (Picture in slideshow below). Uuuuuunbelievable. 10 trips to babies-r-us for the ‘perfect’ sippy cup results in him preferring a 1-liter adult-water bottle. Hey – whatever works.
Posted in things we've done on June 23, 2012| 2 Comments »
Mimi and PopPop came to visit at the end of April! The whole week leading up to their visit we had beautiful warm weather, but of course as soon as they got here it turned cold and windy. We did not let that deter us from seeing the Orioles at Camden yards though! My dad has always been an Orioles fan, so it’s quite serendipitous that Phil and I moved to Baltimore. Funny enough, we didnt go to any games last July because it was like 105 degrees. So we werent going to let 50 degree weather stop us. We bundled up and headed to the park!
It was a 7pm game, which is right before Wilek’s bedtime, so we had him in his jammies ready for sleep, haha. He found some seats away from the drunk ‘college night’ crowd. He watched a little of the game with Mimi and PopPop before dozing off.
Unfortunately the Os lost. But one of the aforementioned drunk college kids ran on the field in the 7th inning before being tackled by the home plate umpire. That was exciting?
The next day, I showed everyone my new work place. We walked around the Hopkins medical campus and showed them my office. We also drove by daycare (in the old Natty Boh brewery building), hung around the apartment, went to the basilica downtown and had a nice dinner out.
On our last day, the weather was finally nice! We drove down Annapolis maryland to check out their cute downtown, historical buildings, and naval academy.
Wilek was tuckered out by the end of the weekend. A good time was had by all. Thanks for coming Mom and Dad!