A Weekend of Many Firsts

As our little angel is rapidly approaching the five month mark (can you believe it?) it was a weekend of many firsts. Seeing as how Mary Pat has begun to chew on everything she can find (chew with her gums that is) we let her test out a cold teething ring to try out something that was meant to be chewed. So far the reviews are mixed as it apparently doesn't taste as good as her shirt. One item that did go over well was the toy/Bumbo tray combo, which keeps Mary Pat occupied while she is sitting at the dinner table like a big girl. Speaking of dinner, Mary Pat also had her first solid meal this weekend in the form of rice cereal. You can see from these pictures that the initial reaction was mixed at best, but she's starting to like it more with every meal.
Finally, this weekend we retired the swaddle and Mary Pat slept in a wearable blanket, which allows her arms to swing free. We don't have any pictures yet but if you would like an idea of how the first night went set your alarm clock for 2:45am and keep hitting the snooze bar until whatever time you normally wake up. Luckily, she's getting used to it and we're having better luck in the following nights!

Christening Pictures

Here are a couple of links to christening pictures. Here is our album and here is one from Big Poppa.

Christening

Last Sunday we had Mary Pat's christening at our Church, St. Anne's, and a small party at our house afterwards. Aunt Shay Baby and Uncle Knox are Mary Pat's godparents and we would like to thank them for making the trip up for the weekend. We were very lucky that Nana, Aunt Shay Baby and Uncle Knox made it into town in between snow storms!We would also like to thank all of our friends and family that travelled through the crazy snow that hit the tri-state area on Sunday to make Mary Pat's day all the more special.

Mary Pat Meets Her New Cousins!

On Sunday, we went up to New City to visit Chuck's sister Amy and her brand new twins, Emily and Patrice. Mary Pat was very excited to meet her new cousins and Mommy and Daddy were excited to meet their newest nieces! The babies are adorable and are thriving! Amy looks like she was never even pregnant and seems to be settling in to motherhood wonderfully.
Unfortunately, Johnny was away on business but Aunt Charlene was staying with Amy to help out so it was an added bonus that we got to spend some time visiting with her! Here is a link to some pictures from the day!

Happy New Year!

We had a low key but wonderful New Year's Eve this year. We went to our friends Kelly and Kevin's house and had a relaxing night with them, Al and Rosette, and Pete Simon and his three kids. Mary Pat slept through the countdown to midnight but was ready to celebrate on New Year's Day! Unfortunately we had to spend the morning of January 1st at the doctor since Mary Pat woke up with a nasty cough, but luckily it was only a cold.

We hope everyone is having a wonderful start to 2009!

Mary Pat enjoyed celebrating her first New Year's Eve with Daniel, Abigail and Charlotte Simon!
Kicking back on New Year's Day getting ready to watch football with Daddy and nurse her cold.

Mary Pat's 1st Christmas!

Sorry it has taken so long, but Mommy has FINALLY gotten all of this pictures uploaded from Mary Pat's 1st Christmas. Below are a few of the best ones, however here is a link to all of the pictures (there are almost 600) for those who want to see every moment of our trip to Spartanburg!

Mary Pat loved sitting in her Bumbo seat and watching Mommy and Daddy unwrap all of her presents.

Mary Pat loved her wave drum from Santa!

Christmas morning family portrait.

Smiley Christmas baby!

The Jolly family and their coordinating Christmas pjs!

One of many potential Christmas card shots.

All dressed up for Christmas Eve mass.

"Can I Hold Her?"

This title of this post was one of "Big Cousin" Victoria's favorite phrases while we were in Spartanburg. She loved spending time with her "Baby Cousin" Mary Pat and wanted to hug, kiss and hold her as much as possible. Nana and Mommy had a hard time getting a good picture of the two girls together in any of their matching outfits, but here are a few good shots of Victoria holding Mary Pat during various points of our visit.

This was the first time Victoria got to hold Mary Pat after our arrival. You can see the pure joy in her face!

Just two cousins chillin' in their pajamas!

One of MANY attempts to get a picture of big cousin and baby cousin in their matching pjs. It was impossible to get them to both look at the camera at the same time!

Leenie FINALLY meets Mary Pat!

As you can see from this picture taken at the airport as we arrived down south for Christmas, Shannon's aunt Leenie was very happy to FINALLY meet Mary Pat! If you read any of the comments on the blog, you already know that Leenie was counting down the minutes until she got to meet her newest great-niece but you can see it was worth the wait!