Three Month Milestones, First Swim & LeConte Hike

It's been a busy summer so far folks, hence my month long absence AGAIN from the blog. I am trying to be more consistent, but life with a 3 month old often seems anything but! Any who, we wanted to catch you up on the latest happenings in the Wilson household, as well as feed your need for Cassady news and photos.

We had Cassady's three month check up 2 days ago, and our little man is doing great! Though he started off small, he's doing his best to catch up, as he gained a half pound more than the average monthly weight gain and DOUBLED the average monthly height gain this month! He also ranked at 4 months 2 weeks on the development chart, and has recently rolled over, blown bubbles and started making consonant sounds in addition to his running commentary of vowels. Needless to say, we are quite thrilled with our little over achiever!

In preparation for our beach trip this summer, we got Cassady in a pool a few weeks ago to see how he liked the water. He really loves his bath (video evidence of that to follow), so we were fairly certain that he would do ok in the pool. Here's the photographic evidence:

Already he could tell we were up to something.

He screamed bloody murder. The water was 78 degrees, so 20 below body temp.

Still getting used to it. You can see one lone tear on that right cheek, hehe.

"It's not so bad....maybe..."

Weeeee!

Comin' in for a close up.

Ahhhh, good stuff.

To wrap up, here's a video of bath time fun, and also the pictures from our recent hike up Mount LeConte. My folks watched Cassady for us, and we did a day hike up to Tennessee's second highest peak. It was great to get out and stretch the legs (all in all, we covered about 15 miles), and to explore the Smokies again.

Cassady - Bathtub Gin from Bradly Wilson on Vimeo.

Paris Trip

In June, we took Cassady on his first big road trip to see Grandmother and Grandaddy Wilson in Paris. Sonny's mother and two sisters live in Paris, and Marie has 3 brothers and one sister who all live there too, so we were happy to have the chance to catch up with a lot of family while we were in town.

Grandmother and Grandaddy Wilson

Cousin Carlo, Tami and her son Ty

Tami actually saved the day when she used her dental hygenist smarts to diagnoise the tooth pain I had been having for a few days as an abscesed tooth. I went into her practice the next day and found out I needed two root canals. Ugh. I still love her though!

Aunt Kathy, Uncle Tony and Anna

He saves the biggest smiles for Grandmother!

Tummy time is the best!

Riding the lawn mower is the new best!

Four generations of Wilsons: Grandaddy Sonny, Great Grandmother Momommie and Daddy

Williams Family get together

More Williams family

Cassady's movie premiere, a first road trip and Ben's birthday party

Yikes, somehow I managed to go the entire month of May without any blog updates! I'm hoping to do better this month as Cassady has hit his stride schedule wise, so hopefully that will result in me being able to better plan my free time.

Cassady is two months old today, and I cannot believe time is passing so quickly! He's put on quite a bit of weight, and is now tipping the scales at 10 lbs. Considering how small he was (5 lbs 6 oz at his lowest weight), we're thrilled with his progress! He is a happy baby most of the time, and is smiling and cooing at everything. Here are a few recent pics.


Cassady recently became a star in his first major motion picture! Here ya go, the blog premiere of Cassady, Supernatural Superserious, featuring music by REM.

Cassady - Supernatural Superserious from Bradly Wilson on Vimeo.

May was a month for family birthdays, and we took our first overnight road trip to Smithville to stay with my folks and help cousin Ben celebrate his 3rd birthday and his mom Lori celebrate her 30th. It was great to see all of my family and church friends and catch up on what everyone has been doing. Here's a slide show from Ben's party.

Ben's Birthday Party 2009 from Bradly Wilson on Vimeo.

Brad and I also broke away this past Saturday for a day hike up to Mt. LeConte, and we have plans this weekend for our first trip to Paris to see all of Brad's family. Pictures of those adventures will hopefully come soon! In the meantime, I'll leave you with one final snap shot. Till next time!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Three, oh, It's the Magic Number

So says a Blind Melon School House Rock song, and in our case, it works! Brad and I were very excited to welcome Cassady Lee Wilson into our family on April 1, 2009! Yep, we have a little April fools boy, and the joke was on us, as he decided to make his appearance three weeks early! We are absolutely thrilled to have the little guy here, and are enjoying every minute (even the sleep deprived ones) with him. Cassady was born at 1:57 pm, weighing 5 lbs 14 oz and 18 in long. The labor and delivery progressed very quickly and without incident, so we were grateful for that. Here are a few early shots of Cassady in the hospital.

Ready to go!

Love those chubby cheeks!

Because the labor went so fast, only my parents Glen & Margaret were able to make it to the hospital in time for Cassady's birth. Here he is meeting his grandparents for the first time.

My sister Kerri and Brad's parents Sonny and Marie all got to the hospital shortly after Cassady was born and were able to spend time with him before he had to go to the nursery for the first time. Kerri, send me photos of you and Cass, I don't have any!


Here's the outfit we picked out for his hospital picture. It pretty much fell off him since he's so small. Also, Cassady is not a fan of hats.


We got to take Cassady home on April 3, but he had a touch of jaundice and dehydration, so we had to take him back in a day later to spend some time under the photo light machine.

Catching some rays

Ahhh yes, the milk coma

All has been going great with Cassady since his brief return to the hospital. A few more photos from his first few weeks here at the house.

Male bonding

A thumb sucking champ

Just a'swingin

And baby makes three!

Many more photos and updates on Cassady to follow shortly I'm sure!

Forcast says showers

I'm a big fan of the phrase "Better late than never," and never was there a better example of this than my just now getting around to posting about the baby showers that family and friends were wonderful enough to host for Brad and I and our new little family addition.

First was the Paris shower, hosted by our dear friend Tami Willoughby. Tami is dating Brad's cousin Carlo, and we've loved her from the moment we met her! The shower was on February 28 (yikes, see what I mean about better late than never) in the multipurpose area of the church that Sonny & Marie attend.

A shot of me and Tami. This was early on as I lost my clothes pin within about 2 minutes of walking in.

This was us trying to draw a picture of the baby in his crib on top of our head.
Mine looked like a cross between a cat and an alien.

The beautiful cake that Tami made herself! I found out she used to work summers as a Baskin Robbins cake decorator back in high school. She's got serious skills!

We got tons of cute stuff for the little guy!

Miss Anna Banana won the "Don't say 'baby' or I'll take your clothes pin" game hands down!

Overall it was a wonderful afternoon in Paris with family and friends. Mom even made the trip west with me, and it was a great time.

Second on the shower list was a March 14th soiree in my hometown of Smithville that was hosted by my sister Kerri, Aunt Sha, and cousins Jennifer, Amanda and Lori. Most of us have moved away from Smithville, so Mom was nice enough to offer her house as the location for this shower. Most of the attendees were from our church family in Smithville and aunts and cousins on my mother's side.

The hostesses with the mostesses!
From L to R, Amanda, Aunt Sha, Kerri, Abby, Avery, me, mom, Lori, Lily Kate and Jennifer

Kerri, mom and me. Poor mom, she found out the next day she had strep throat! You'd never know by looking at this pic how bad she felt; what a trooper!

Aunts and cousins from my mom's side:
Aunt Jo Ann, Tiffany (who had a baby in Dec, not that you can tell!!), Kerri, me, Aunt Benita and Martha Ann

Super cute diaper bag!

The last of the showers was here in Knoxville on March 21, and was hosted by friends and hostesses extraordinaire Jen, Carrie, Shon and Kat. As always, these gals went out of their way to make the day a special one, and I loved that my mom and sister finally got to meet all these great Knoxville gals that they hear me talk about all the time!

Mom's always know how to work those tricky corsage pins!

College friends Faith and Courtney, with daughter Sophie, made the trip in from out of town

Carrie created these little masterpieces. They tasted as good as they looked!

Such pretty smiles from the Knoxville crew!
Shon, Carrie and Megan in front, Lila, Jen, me and Beth in the back

Yes, Jen made this adorable diaper cake.
I'm keeping it fully assembled in case of a diaper emergency!

Mom, me and Kerri. We didn't plan the green!

Sophie eyes Lotti Sue's toy collection.
Why is it that everyone else's toys are always so much cooler than your own?

More to come later on all this baby stuff and the great blog catch up!