Merry Christmas!

Ho ho ho!!!  Meeerrrry Christmas!  What a great weekend!  Presents certainly aren't everything to me by any means, but I was certainly blessed this weekend by my family.  To start off, I enjoyed one of my favorite Christmas Eve services since I can remember.  A quote from Scott our pastor, "I know many of you wanted to come here and hear about little baby Jesus and how we was born and it WAS great, but he grew up!  And this is how he showed love..."  So awesome.  Love who I am.

Katie and I had a wonderful Christmas Eve routine that includes a service, looking at Christmas lights and champagne.  Service was wonderful.  Daniel cried after the service most of the ride home so we nixed the Christmas lights.  The champagne was on sale at Wal-Mart and was pretty awful.  BUT, I came home to an HD Television from my wife.  She had given my parents the keys and they set up everything while we were out.  I had NO idea.  Very cool.  It's just one of her many gifts.  A couple before and after shots below.

Clever thief

Santa in his younger years

Christmas day was wonderful.  We woke up (or I should say, were woken up) at about 5am and decided to exchange gifts and hang out with Daniel.  Daniel got a Johnny Jump Up and just LOVES it.  He jumps around more than House of Pain.  I should be honest, he probably spins more than he jumps right now, but as my father always says, "spininess is next to jumpiness".

Happy dude

Following our small family Christmas, we went over to MY parents and celebrated with my mother and father, Eric and Noelle, and Jason and Tina. What a nice time.  I do love ALL of my family.  Beyond gifts even, I just love having such a great support system on all sides while we go through this transition in our life. 

Daniel is growing like crazy.  He's so heavy and it's starting to take a toll on my back and legs.  I need to do some calisthenics or something.  We got big plans this week of random acts and planned resting.  I wish you all the best.  Daniel has been steadily improving night to night with not having his Swaddle Me and we're so thankful..rest is good.

Family picture in front of our tree

Little elf

I Should Be Replaced

There's been many calling for my replacement as blog updater.  To those people, you are required by Blogger bylaws to issue a recall vote.  Until then...you're stuck with me.  I also apologize for the lack of updates lately.  I blame one of my two room mates.  I actually typed the below last week, but have not been able to finish it until today.  Please forgive me.

Last Sunday we celebrated our first of many Christmases together as a family, both for this year (we have 5 total) and those to come.  We began with Katie's immediate family and ended the day with the Tomes side of the family (Katie's mother's side).  It was a wonderful time and I received some very, very nice gifts personally.  Also, more toys/books for Daniel = more toys/books for Daddy.  As much as I love my son, it was always nice to rest my arms/brain and allow the other members of our family to enjoy Daniel's company through holding.  What a wonderful time though.  Certainly enjoyed it and best of all...NO TOWED CARS (story for another day).   I enjoy all my Christmases (is that a soap opera?), so we're continuing to look forward to some more good clean fun this weekend....that means no holding, no low punches, no biting, gouging or rabbit punches...anyways.

If I could work in reverse chronological order, last Saturday was an interesting day in the Konrad household.  Katie has been involved in a wedding with one of her great friends, Amanda and has needed to be gone for various events.  Which means...that's right, Daddy's in charge.  I've had a few nights where I've been responsible for putting him down (to bed I mean), but yesterday presented the first entire day without Kate (on a side note, I constantly jump between Katie and Kate to refer to my wonderful wife, Katherine and either or works, so it just depends on how I'm feeling at the very moment..thank you, this has been a Zac Konrad Side Track).  I always knew that being alone all day with a child had as many, if not more challenges than being out all day doing a job or something else, but man oh man, yesterday was a BEAST.  I have great respect for Katie for all the days she did and others that do the same.  I do not know how many single parents do this, because I would have been lost without my honey bunny (Katie...or Kate...whatever floats your boat).

Alright, I'm going out of order.  We went caroling last night and were very blessed to have my mother watch Daniel.  You see, he ROLLED OVER last weekend and since then, we've had to stop swaddling him with his Swaddle Me..kind of a difficult transition.  Thanks to some motherly advice and dedication on our parts, he's been improving night to night.  He's grown up up so much.  Can you believe he's 17 lbs when last weighed him!  Porky.

Katie and I are both on break now and looking forward to this weekend with both our family and MY family.  Although Daniel was with us last year in utero, I'm sure he'll enjoy it more this time around.

Last note, Daniel laughed for the first time with us.  I have not seen it yet, but Katie claims it is true.  I give credit to the rubber ducky.

3 Months Down

Holy smokes!  Our little guys is a whopping three months old!  He's officially out of his fourth trimester.  He no longer thinks he's still inside a belly.  He's been growing up quickly.  I'm estimating his weight at 34 lbs or so.  Again, I'm a terrible estimater, but I have spunk and that's all that matters.

Great picture

We had a nice weekend of just chillin' and relaxin' and actin' all cool.  We had our first snow, so the decision to stay in was an easy one.  We did venture out once or twice, but only to visit my father, worship it up at church, and I decided to go shopping...grocery shopping that is.  We were also able to visit with our friends, Patrick and Sarah Hammers on Saturday.  They braved the snow to come visit lil' ol' us.  I should've taken pictures...dang..but having visitors was certainly nice. 

Daniel has been making great strides. We're still figuring out some of his routines.  He had been sleeping at night like a rockstar and all of the sudden this past week he decided to..well...sleep like a very rude, loud walrus.  I don't know how rude walruses usually are, but this was an exceptionally rude walrus...anyways, he went from sleeping 8-9 hours a night to remaining awake 8-9 hours a night.  The weekend was a different story, but it took a toll on our work days.  Maybe he's hatching some sort of plan...maybe he's just rude. 

I've been reading online baby things again and apparently he recognizes my face now.  I should probably grow my beard out so that he gets used to that too.  What if I wanna join a ZZ Top cover band...gotta be ready.  I guess I could always be the drummer...I'm trying to use more vocabulary too.  Lately it's been a lot of "meeee meee mee mee mee" in a very high voice.  It makes him smile.  He's smiling like a champ though.  We think he's pretty close to laughing.  I think he's got the "hah" part down, but not the "hah hah".  I'm going through my joke library to see if I can get him going. 

We're nearing our first Christmas together and boy are we excited.  Stay tune for more (hopefully more frequent) updates. 

Shrunken socks

Snuggling

He's playing at a 4 month level.