The Mullins' Crib: Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! And Sorry About That Haircut...

The holidays came a little later than usual around here. We spent a quiet Christmas Day opening a few gifts, using Facetime to chat with our families, and having dinner with our favorite neighbor boys, Noah and Ben. The real celebrations started a week later when the Miller side of the family got together in Central Illinois. Brian and Jodi made the long drive from Ankeny, IA while Stephanie and Nate braved the even longer drive from Durham, NC to Normal. We had a great time celebrating both Christmas and New Year's Eve all in one day.

Back: Jodi, Brian, Stephanie, Riley-the-Ferocious, Nate, Grandma Miller, Grandpa Miller
Far left: a toddler-proof tree
Not pictured: Bear (see previous Riley-the-Ferocious)

New Year's Eve party ANIMAL!

Next we celebrated with the Mullins side of the family in Springfield. We had intended to get together much earlier in the season, but flu-mageddon 2012 put our household plans on hold for a bit in December. Regardless, we had a great time celebrating with Grandma and Grandpa Mullins. Wes particularly enjoyed the pizza we had for lunch.

This past week we met with Easter Seals again for a speech evaluation. Over the past year, we have learned that Wes is a slow-and-steady sort of guy when it comes to meeting milestones; however, our pediatrician proactively recommended we look into speech services for Wes. The evaluation confirmed what we already knew: Wes is a rock star at comprehending what we have to say (like, "It's snack time" and "Go find Bear" and even "Sean, I'm going to try to sneak outside to get the mail so I can have 40 seconds to myself"), but he needs to work on using words to label objects and needs. He has mastered the point-and-grunt to get what he needs, and recently, he has started to diversify the consonant sounds he makes to resemble words like God (hooray!), damn (uh-oh), and sometimes he even strings them together in babbling sentences (Uh, we'd like the early-bird special on First Reconciliation, please). Really though, we're just looking forward to the day we get a Mama and Dada from him.

After nearly 17 months of little golden curls, we decided it was time to get Wes' hair cut. Well, we didn't so much decide as did the lady at the Coffee Hound who asked "is he a little....boy?". Today we took the plunge. We knew it wasn't going to be pretty, as Wes takes Stranger Danger VERY seriously (my hope is that one day, when waiters become much less terrifying, we will eat somewhere without a back-lit menu). Things seemingly started out well, but we were not to be fooled. The pictures tell all.