New Pictures in the 5 McGills Blog

For updates on Matt see our family blog, The 5 McGills.

Getting Bigger Every Day

It’s been an eventful 3 months. Matt started out his second year of life in Kazakhstan while we waited for Hope’s adoption paperwork to be completed. As with any 1 year old he enjoyed the wrapping paper more than the gifts at Christmas and as with any little brother, he wanted whatever his brother and sister were playing with more than his own toys. After arriving home from Kazakhstan on December 29 he got reacquainted with family, enjoyed a second Christmas and a second 1st birthday at home and started daycare. He started walking on January 19, just before we moved into our new house, and I think he was running by the following week. He enjoys daycare and is doted on by one of his teachers in particular. Matt is already our little daredevil. We’re hoping he’s getting it out of his system now or he’s going to be our “challenging” child. He understands every word you say and follows directions amazingly well for a 15 month old, but since he doesn’t have much impulse control yet, he’s quickly back to doing the last thing you told him not to. My personal favorite is how he can not only stand up in his high chair, but can stand up on the tray of the high chair in about 15 seconds after he sits back down.


Matt and I also started swimming classes. He loves the water – pools, baths, puddles, you name it. He continues to grow well, although he’s still the smallest kid in all the toddler classes at daycare despite being the family garbage disposal when it comes to eating. This kid can hoover down an Eggo waffle in about a minute! The only 2 things we’ve found that he doesn’t really care for so far are hamburgers and catfish, although if there’s nothing else around he’ll eat them.

We finally took him for his first haircut. During the time we were moving and trying to get Hope's school situation sorted out and a new routine going with everyone back at work/school/daycare his hair went from the "Oh look, it's getting a little long and curly in the back" to the "Oh, don't you have a happy little girl" to the "Wow, that looks really bad" look. We thought he'd be trying to jump all over getting his haircut, but he was an angel and sat fairly still. Now he looks like our cute little boy again.

He continues to be a happy, easy-going kid with a quick smile and

a hearty laugh. The last couple of pictures are him enjoying his first meeting with Clancy, the dog across the street, and pretending to vacuum the playroom.

Happy 1st Birthday!

Today is Matt's first birthday! Happy Birthday, Matt!

Matt seems quite unimpressed with this fact, but Tim sure is excited. He keeps saying he's so excited that Matt is 1 because that means he's getting bigger and can play with him. Since we were away from home for his birthday we ended up having just a small party with the immediate family. I don't know if he was tired or overwhelmed by our tremendous singing voices, but he didn't dive into his cake the way we thought he would. However, he was perfectly happy to have me feed it to him so maybe he just thought since it was his day he wouldn't bother to feed himself.


Here are some recent pictures of Matt. He really seems to have gotten a lot bigger in November. I'll be curious to see how much he's grown at his next Dr. appointment. He's cruising the furniture really well now. He's been doing it so long we thought for sure he'd be walking by his first birthday, but he still will only let go with one hand. In November he also finally started eating table food. That was almost an overnight change. One day he's screaming like we're killing him because he found a whole pea in a bottle of Beechnut baby food and the next day he's feeding himself anything you put in front of him - except Cheerios. Now, what kid doesn't eat Cheerios? He'll eat them if he's really hungry and/or there's nothing else in site, but as soon as he spots other food, no more Cheerios. He'll gladly eat cauliflower and broccoli long before Cheerios. With age has also come an even greater awareness of his voice and he's gotten louder than ever (which we didn't think was possible). Some of this, of course, is encouraged by Tim. They spend a lot of time making faces at each other and yelling.

It's hard to believe that in a few days he will have been with us 3 months. He's been such a joy so far, we can hardly wait for our first Christmas together!

Happy Halloween From the McGill Boys

Matt's 1st Vacation

After rescheduling our trip to FL 3 times because we kept thinking that we were leaving for Kazakhstan to meet Matt, we finally made it the week of October 14-21. After the hectic week of getting our house ready for sale, we were all looking forward to a vacation. The weather was great - high 70's the first day moving into the mid-90's by our last day there. After spending more than an hour moving our stuff in and out of 3 different rental cars trying to find one that would accomodate Matt's rear-facing car seat without having Mike's face in the windshield and his knees at his nose we were finally off to stay at Oranage Lakes were we had a beautiful 2 bedroom unit. It was nice to be able to eat most of our meals there and Tim was particularly fond of the screened balcony so we enjoy al fresco dining for most of our meals. The resort also has 3 different pool areas and we used each one. The kids had a ball! Matt is really a water baby and Tim is very proud of the fact that he learned to "float under the water".

The boys having a laugh after coming in from the pool.


Matt's 1st time on the beach


Riding the lazy river at Orange Lakes


Tim "floating under the water"


The kids were real troopers when we went to a couple of theme parks. With little or no nap and late nights they really did a great job with a minimum of whining and complaining. We spent a day at Seaworld and a day at Magic Kingdom. Matt really enjoyed both parks. He's a great people watcher and he's so interested in everything around him. Magic Kingdom was great because he could go on lots of the rides there. We had lunch at Crystal Palace - a very good buffet with both grown-up and kiddie food - with Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eyore and Tigger. All the characters signed Tim's autograph book and took pictures with the kids at our table. We weren't sure what Matt would think of them, but he loved it all.




The kids even did lots of trick-or-treating in FL. We went back to Magic Kingdom on Thursday night for Mickey's Not-So-Scary-Halloween Party. It was terribly hot, but the kids didn't seem to mind that they must have been roasting in their costumes. We got tons of candy and saw lots of characters. We thought we'd stay a couple of hours - maybe 7-9 and then the kids would be done. Much to our surprise, Matt lasted through the fireworks, which he loved, at 10:15 and at 11:15 Tim was asking to go on Splash Mountain again. Shortly after that he finally crashed and we left the park a little before midnight.



Trick-or-Treating is exhausting!



On Saturday, we stopped back at SeaWorld for a couple of hours before heading to the airport and it turned out that they have trick-or-treating on the weekends so the kids got more candy. This time we didn't stop for any of the shows because Tim wanted to go to the section with the kiddie rides so we just stayed there after we finished collecting candy. By this time it had reached 95 degrees in FL and, although we could have used a longer vacation, we were glad to not be spending the whole day roaming a a theme park.



Bye - see you later.
This was a fun trip, but I can't wait to get home and get some rest.

The First Six Weeks

Matt has been with us for 6 weeks as of October 16. I think Mike and I are both amazed at how easily he has adjusted to family life and how relatively smooth Tim's transition from only to big brother has been. Once Matt got some sleep after the first few days of not sleeping much at all, he just made himself right at home and it's like he's been here forever. Now that he's home, his personality really started to emerge, too. He is almost always happy (unless he's really over-tired or hungry) and is very vocal. When we visited him at the baby house, he was fairly quiet. Well, not anymore! He can definitely hold his own with Tim in the chatterbox category, and that's really saying something!!! Like Tim, he also loves music so the 2 of them have a great time at Makin' Music class together and singing the songs at home.


Matt enjoys playing the bells at music class.


These rythm sticks sure are yummy!


It's fun to sing and dance with Pop, Tim and Nana.

He was crawling and pulling himself up when we got back to Astana, but he really moves now. It's great fun to watch him try to crawl after Tim and chase him around the house. He's also cruising around the furniture now. He looks like he's probably going to walk before his first birthday. He's a great eater, but will adamantly let you know if he's done eating or his food is too chunky. He has really filled out. He used to have skinny little arms and legs, but now has chubby baby legs and has gotten taller.


Grandmom and Matt getting to know each other

Matt has already been to 3 birthday parties. He's such a great people person that he enjoys all the activity and meeting new people. One of the parties was Tim's 4th birthday. Tim wanted a dinosaur cake and a moonbounce so on September 30 (his birthday, and Mike's too, is the 29th) we had 13 kids here for a dinosaur-moonbounce party.

Dinosaur cake for Tim's 4th birthday.


The birthday boy blows out his candles.

The day started out a bit cloudy, but looked like it might clear up until about an hour before the party when it started to rain. We quickly came up with some indoor activities since we had neglected to come up with a rainy day plan B beforehand, but just as the first guests arrived the rain stopped and the kids were able to enjoy the moonbounce. Tim spent the evening unwrapping gifts and our house looked like Christmas for a week.

Shortly before Tim's birthday, we came across a 4 bedroom house on 1.6 acres in north Wilmington, not far from where we currently live, during one of our Sunday afternoon open house tours. The house is dated, but has been very well-maintained, has a great backyard, only about half cleared and lots of woods that end at train tracks (you can't see them, but you can hear the trains) and is actually in our price range.


The day before Tim's party, we went to see the house with Nana and Pop (Debbie's parents) and it got their seal of approval. We put a bid on the house shortly after that and in a week's time managed to get our house in shape to put on the market, thanks in large part to Nana and Pop schlepping back to DE one week later to help move some stuff to storage and get the last room in the house painted.


http://www.pattersonschwartz.com/search/pdMain.asp?ID=HK15935&category=1&qID=6880768&pageTo=1&section=areaHomes&sortBy=0

This all happened the week before we left on vacation so the first couple of weeks of October were very busy! We really hadn't intended to buy a new house now, maybe in the spring or summer, but definitely not now, but we couldn't pass up the chance at land in Wilmington and still being near highway access, our jobs, and all the convenient access to stores, doctors, and schools that we've gotten used to in our current house. Keep your fingers crossed that we get an offer on our house soon so that we can get our "new house with the railroad tracks" (the big selling point for Tim).

It was an exhausting week getting the house ready so we were definitely ready for vacation when October 14 rolled around. The kids were real troopers while we were so busy that week and we all looked forward to spending more time together on vacation. I'll save pictures and detail of our trip to FL, Matt's first vacation, for another entry since this has gotten rather long.

It's been an amazing first 6 weeks with Matt, both in terms of watching him grow and develop and especially watching Tim and Matt interact together. As much as kids running through the house drives me crazy, I love to watch Matt crawl after Tim at breakneck speed as he tries to chase him around the loop through the dining room, living room and kitchen. The squeals of laughter as our boys chase each other around is a great sound.


Tim shows Matt how to use shaker eggs at music class.

Stay tuned . . . we'll update you on our family developments every 6 or 8 weeks, probably for Matt's first year with us.

More Updates Soon . . .

Matt has been with us almost a month now and things are going great. He's a wonderfully happy, exuberant little boy and Tim is a terrific big brother. Tim turned 4 on Friday and Matt was 10 months on Sunday. Debbie's parents visited this weekend for Tim's birthday and we had a house full of kids on Saturday for Tim's moonbounce birthday party. I'm hoping to go through the many pictures from the last month and write a better update soon, but in the meantime here are a few new pictures.