Bedtime with Gillian

Mommy/Daddy/Whomever is putting Gillian to bed: Okay, Gillian.  It's time for bed!
Gillian: Night night later.
Mommy: Night night now.  And we need to change your diaper.
Gillian: No stinky in there!
(Yes, this conversations happens literally every night).
Mommy: Gilly, I can smell it, let's go.
(Conversation moves to Gillian's room)
Mommy: Okay, Gilly girl pick two books.
Gillian: Ooooh. Mickey. This Mickey. (Two different Mickey books) ELMO!! Christmas. (Christmas with Corduroy). Nina (Eloise).
Mommy: Gilly, you just gave me seven books.
Gillian: Seven Eight Nine.... Ten Eleven Twelve.
(Five books later).
Mommy: Okay Gilly girl, time for bed.
Gillian: Cuddle in chair!!!
(Cuddle in chair, move to crib).
Mommy: Night night, Gilly, love you!
Gillian: Love you!
Gillian: Cover me!
(Cover Gillian with Blanket)
Gillian: Fix friends!
(All of her stuffed animals are rearranged and put back in the same spot- fix friends makes no sense).
Gillian: Hat on!
Mommy: You do it.
Gillian: mommy do it! Hat on!
(Mommy, like a sap, puts the hat on).
Mommy: Okay Gilly, night night see you in the morning. Love you!
Gillian: Fix friends!
Mommy: Fix your own friends, Gilly.

October 2014

Hi everyone! It's me, Bryce!

If you've met my sister, it's easy to imagine that getting a word in edgewise around here is difficult, to say the least.  I'm a guy who likes peace and quiet, which is hard to come by.  Here's a perfect example of a day in the life of Bryce:

Not a lot of personal space.  And a lot of pink.

October was an exciting month around here, or so I'm told.  I only get invited on certain outings because I'm just a little peanut angel (according to mom), but the ones that I've been on have been pretty fun.

FARMS.  We visited three farms in the span of a month.  At the first farm, Gilly wanted to buy a loaf of bread, and ate a donut.  At the second farm, Gilly wanted to feed the bunnies, and at a donut.  At the third farm, Gilly helped Paula picked out a pumpkin while I had a snack in the car, and then Gilly had a donut.

Mom and Gilly continue to have their adventures, and I get to stay home and snuggle with Paula (which is THE BEST.   Paula always gives me a nice warm bath, a warm bottle, snuggles me up and the next thing I know, I'm fast asleep)!  Anyway, one of their trips was to the pet store, where Mommy let Gilly pick a fish to take home.  Thank God Paula knows how to care for fish, because I don't think Gilly or Mommy are very interested in their new friend.

Another recent highlight was Halloween! As you can see, Gilly's costume was highly original.  Mimi pointed out that she was a perfect little Vandy girl mascot!

Well, that's the report from here! 

Lots of love,

Bryce

Mommy and Me

It was a bright, sunny fall day when Mommy and I made our way down to the dank, grossly painted underbelly of a nearby church where our mommy and me classes are held. As mommy would later recount- it was a real hell hole.

(Sidenote: those of you who have ever stepped foot inside a nursery school are probably asking yourselves: "what was your mommy expecting? The ritz?" And the answer is people, yes. Sort of).

We quickly realized that mommy had not read the twenty page packet of rules as both of our water bottles stood out like sore thumbs in this concrete oasis.  No hydration outside of scheduled times. We hid them in Mommy's bag so as not to ostracize ourselves before we had a chance to offend anyone.

I set out to play with the exact same toys that I have at home, except the extremely dirty, 1975 version. The dolls were all nude and several were missing critical body parts, but I was still having a great time rocking them stacked up 5 high in an oversize cradle. 

The teacher announced it was craft time, so mommy helped me paint an apple tree and introduced me to homemade play dough.  While neither of these activities were fun for us or anyone in the room, it filled some time until nice lady came in with her guitar.

This lady must have been part of some sort of union because she seemed to be under a great deal of pressure to do

Her entire three song act in ten minutes flat. Since she didn't sing top forty music, I was completely uninterested in what she had to offer and went back to rocking my naked, deformed babies. Mommy looked and me, looked at the clock and encouraged me to come back to the circle. 

At this point, I announced to everyone in the room BYE BYE CAR CAR GO, and the guitar lady looked at her watch for the tenth time in ten minutes, ripped the frog puppet back from one of my fellow inmates,and hightailed it out of there. Time up!!!

The highlight of the class was the all-you-can eat pretzel buffet. The teacher dished them out 3 at a time, but I managed to have about 20. Then the teacher asked if we should read a story or just end the class and mommy suggested that the story might be better next week.

That was our first and last mommy and me class- we resigned and neither of us have looked back.

Instead, we are creating our own mommy and me!! Today we took the choo choo from hohokus (the stop by our house) to ridgewood (3 minute ride) and walked around town for a bit.  It was my first time on a choo choo and it was so fun!!

Lots of love, 

Your diva thanks to genetics,

Gillian 

Mommy's helper

Hi gang!

Happy to report that things have been smooth sailing here at Casa tully over the last few weeks (please knock on wood, thank you).

I went #1 and #2 in the potty!! I am by no means potty trained, but I hang out on there during key times of day and sometimes stuff happens!!!

I've been helping Bryce with tummy time. Here is me threatening to sit on him if he doesn't look left.

As part of my continued efforts to help mommy (who seems to need all the help she can get), I have been lending a hand in the kitchen. Here is me baking cupcakes with mommy and Paula:

Brother Bryce is doing just great. He is a real porker, tipping the scales at a whopping 11.3 lbs at only 5 weeks!  

He is clearly thrilled to have me for a big sis!!

That's all for now!!

Xoxo

Gillian 

MESS

Hi everyone!

As many of you are probably aware, I don't like a mess.  When I'm done eating, I like to "clean clean" the area.  The other day I got pen on me when I was coloring and declared that my arm was a "mess".  A few weeks ago, when I was on the first night of a two-night screaming bender (from 12am-4am), I actually threw up as part of a grand finale of disaster and misery.  The next day, when Daddy asked what the f*ck happened to me the night before, I simply told him:

"MESS"

Needless to say, I am very familiar what a mess looks like, and can report that my family has been one big MESS for the past two weeks.

It all started with the arrival of Bryce, and just a few short days later, the arrival of the plague.  Okay, so technically, I didn't have the plague. I had a two week cold/virus of mysterious origin, that I later passed to both Mommy and Brycie, because apparently, I like to share.

Mommy was on oxygen because she has enough anxiety letting anyone who claims to be well near a newborn baby, forget having me with a fever of 103 trying to touch brother's EARS! NOSE! EYES!  HAIR!  She also got sick herself (sorry mommy) and knew that Bryce didn't stand a chance; it didn't come as a huge shock to her when she heard her little guy sniffling.

I like to focus on the bright side of things, which I'll do here:

• I got to hang out with daddy---  alot!  We spent all day together, and then we got a lot of quality time between midnight and 6am, when I would wake up screaming and refuse to go back to sleep!  Love those times, daddy! Can't wait to keep waking up demanding all sorts of things even though I feel fine.

• We got to know our new pediatricians very well!  In fact, in the span of two weeks, we made five visits.  Yay!  I love that place; they have a beautiful aquarium and some plastic cups that I enjoy pretending to drink out of, but instead pour them all over myself and the office--- and then declare that a MESS has been made.

• We learned that the Valley Hospital ER is a wonderful place!  Amidst the fever and general chaos that was the past few weeks, Bryce's belly button started oozing green sludge, which turned out to be a staph infection.  GROSS!  But better staph that some other infection that apparently would have required immediate admission to the hospital and IV antibiotics for two days.  

• Mom got to know her neighborhood pharmacist, Zolton (not fictionalized) VERY well, and now considers him part of her Round Table.  She spent ten minutes on the phone with him the other day discussing the merits of hot vs cool humidifiers.

Anyway, we are probably going to make it! 

Here are some winners from the past two weeks- enjoy!

Mommy and Brycie in the ER.  The doc has just told mom that Bryce doesn't require a two night stay at the hospital, and can instead go visit Zolton to pick up some topical antibiotic.

Bryce getting 'steamed' to get rid of the boogs.  Daddy later asked mommy how long she had the shower on for, and then reminded her that 'water isn't free'.  She is going to leave him $5 to pay for Brycie's spa appointment.

If you look closely, you can see that I am covered in a rash.  Yay!

Here's Bryce with his masculine boppy.  Love pink!

Okay guys, that's the scoop of what's been going here!  More to come!!

xo,

gillian

Bryce Patrick Tully Arrives!

Hello everyone!

I'm proud to announce that I now have both a baby and a brother, whatever that means!

Bryce Patrick Tully was born on Sunday, August 17, 2014 at 11:09pm, five days late to the game, weighing in at 8lbs, 8oz.  Mom said she was going to do a sit in at the hospital until they took the baby out, and it seems like her plan worked.

Here's baby Bryce.  You'll notice that his newborn hat is too small for his head- evidence of the (in)famous Tully dome!

Bryce Patrick Tully

I was feeling a little stunned in this pic- can you tell?

Here's me meeting Bryce for the first time:

Bryce is a sweet little angel (according to Mommy) and I'm sure that someday we'll be the best of friends. And/or, we'll beat the crap out of eachother!  Either way, I'm so happy that he's here, and so are Mommy and Daddy.

I love rocking Bryce, covering him with blankets, and pointing out his eyes, toes, etc!

We are all catching up on our sleep around here, so I'm going to cut this short, but stay tuned for more updates from me and Bryce!

Lots of love,
Gillian

17 Months and My Parents Forgot

I tell you what.

I must have the best parents in the world.  My 17 month birthday came and went like any other day and I was none the wiser until Mimi showed up with some cupcakes the next day to 'celebrate' (gluten free, Trader Joes.  I ask you- were those for me as she claimed they were?).

Anyway, here's how I spent my non-existent birthday:

I played with my PEOPLE and some of my favorite books:

And splashed around in the backyard.

Generally speaking, life is good.  We went to see mom's friend Mengan (that's what I call her, but she goes by Meaghan) who has TWO babies.  The only thing interesting about those babies were their babas and pacifiers, which I picked up from every crevice I could find and chewed on.

Glasses

These days, my favorite thing to do is PLAY.  I could spend hours with my little people.  They all have names like Bride, Nino, Pilot and Glasses.

I put them to sleep, (in a box, covered in a white rag, mommy says its very creepy but is supportive of anyone sleeping).  Sometimes they even sleep with the livestock from my farm.  I often pile all 15 of my people and farm animals into my schoolbus and Paula says that this bus must be from her country.

With my people and my blocks

I have some larger FRIENDS like Pete (the half dead dog from Cracker Barrel that Mimi got me), Monkey, Meow-Meow, and Minnie (not mommies for those of you in the know).  Tonight, daddy put me in my bed and as soon as he left, I saw that he had made the critical error of leaving Monkey and Meow Meow on the ground.  I alerted him immediately by shouting GUYS!!! GUYS!!! Luckily, he thought I was referring to him and Mommy, so he came back in right away and I pointed to my forgotten friends and he put them in bed with my 50 other friends. (Paula says I need a bigger bed to house everyone)!



I've also been loving COOKIN (mommy says thank God- maybe one of us will learn).  Here is me whipping up some dinner with my very own pots and pans:

My new pots!

Mommy and I are working on our sad faces- what do you think?

Here's a clip of me spotting a truck out in front of our house:

xoxo,
Gillian