I can’t believe the middle of December is already here! Fall was way too short (as always) and we have had seriously unseasonably cold weather already this winter. I hope we’re not in for more Snowpocalypses or Snowmageddons this winter!

Anna and I had an exceptionally busy and successful year with Graceful Weddings. We are definitely both enjoying the downtime now that the 2010 wedding season has come to an end, though our 2011 season begins in January so our break is not too long! I am excited to report that I will be venturing into full wedding planning in the coming months and years, and hope to make that my full-time job once Cole (and any siblings he might have down the road) is in school. I took on my first partial planning clients a few months ago and am having a lot fun helping them finish planning their March 2010 wedding. You can follow Graceful Weddings on Facebook if you want to see photos of our past and future events; just search for “Graceful Weddings” and you’ll find us easily.

Cole is doing great! Growing and learning more every day. He loves building with his blocks (and knocking down the tall towers we build him), and going down his new playroom slide. Though I can’t always understand what he’s saying, he talks nearly nonstop all day (I have no idea where he gets this trait from!) and he’s such a happy-go-lucky little boy.

This afternoon he woke up (too!) early from his nap, so we took advantage of the day and went to the mall to see Santa. I wasn’t sure if he’d be excited or terrified, but I’m happy to report he was excited! A little skeptical at first, but he did great, as you can see above!

We are looking forward to my mom’s visit in less than two weeks. Cole hasn’t seen his California grandma since July and I think we’re all going to have a ton of fun with Christmas this year!

Blue eyes, smiling at me…

Nothing but blue skies, do I see…

Is anyone actually still checking/reading this blog, by the way?

There’s absolutely no valid excuse from this huge hiatus in blogging! I won’t even try to make excuses. Instead I’ll just say we had a very busy summer and move on and we can pretend we were never MIA from the blogosphere.

We are all well, and settled into our new house. Cole is now 18 months old, and growing taller and skinnier and more funny by the day. He is toddler in the truest sense of the word, and he certainly keeps us on our toes.

Hey! I know what will make you happy! New photos! (No Facebook account required to see these.)

Here’s a video from yesterday of our outdoors explorer!

Neither Ben nor I have had much time to think about blogging lately! Now that the spring wedding season is upon us, much of my “free” time is devoted to working (either for my wedding coordinating business or my wedding jewelry business). In the rest of my “free” time, I’m busy trying to keep up with all the regular chores that need doing, and it doesn’t help that we are moving to a new house in about a month. I’ll certainly be glad when the move is over, however, as we’re moving to a house that’s almost twice as large as our current house. Now that there are three of us, this little duplex keeps feeling smaller and smaller.

I hope this video of Cole from this afternoon will tide you over until we have more time to update Charbonews!

We returned Sunday from a one-week vacation to the Bahamas! We took a cruise out of Baltimore on Carnival and it was pretty great. We couldn’t beat the convenience of driving to the port (Baltimore is only an hour drive for us), and while Carnival wouldn’t have been our first choice for a cruise line, they surprised us!

Cruising with a one-year-old turned out to be easier than we expected. Cole was scared the first night (he had skipped his afternoon nap, so he was overtired, and the mirrors in the stateroom were making funky shadows that scared him), but he slept great the whole rest of the week until he came down with a fever Saturday night. (We think he had/has a mild case of roseola, and he’s doing fine now). He LOVED all the waitstaff, and they loved him, too. Most remembered his name, and came to say hi every morning at breakfast. He loved all the people-watching in general, and loved the beaches we went to, too.

Here are some photos from our trip!

Cole started walking on his first birthday, and it has been difficult to capture his wobbly walking on video since then.  But, I managed to get a decent video yesterday before lunch.  He is already quite a bit more coordinated than he was a week ago, but you can still get a sense for how wobbly he was initially!

I also put together a slideshow before Cole’s first birthday that I thought some of you might like to see! It’s a little long (nine minutes), but takes you on Cole’s whole journey up until his first birthday.

In what seems like the blink of an eye, our teeny baby boy has turned into a bounding one-year-old toddler! Cole had a quiet birthday on Thursday, April 15, but had quite a whirlwind weekend starting Friday afternoon when my mom and sister flew in, and Friday evening when Ben’s parents arrived.

We threw Cole a zoo-themed birthday party on Saturday morning and he had a lot of fun with family and friends, including a few of his little buddies.  You can see some photos from the party here.

He also started officially walking late last week; the date in his baby book is actually his birthday!  By Friday, he was more adventurous with his steps, and showed off quite a bit for his grandparents and aunt Laura.  We are trying to capture his moves soon, because we know he will get more coordinated very quickly and watching him walk won’t be quite as funny anymore!

Cole also said his first word about a month ago.  Nope, not mama, or dada.  Or even kitty.  One evening I took a banana over to the table to give to Cole after dinner, and after I said “Do you want some banana?” he said, clear as day, “nuh-nah-na!”  Of course this child chooses a three-syllable first word.  We wouldn’t imagine anything less!

He also knows how to use sign more and milk, and we are working on the sign for eat right now, too.  We will probably also teach him bed or sleep, but that’s where we’ll stop with signing.  He seems like the type of child who would choose not to talk if he knows how to sign for everything he wants, so we want to encourage him to talk as much as possible.  He knows many, many words (at least 40), and surprises us often by showing us new words he knows!  He has known some of these for months (such as kiss, which he will do on command if he’s in the mood), and others only a short while (such as ear, which he’ll point to if you ask).

Finally, I will leave you with a set of photos from Cole’s one-year shoot with local photographer Kari Merkel.  You’ll see that Cole is featured at the top of her blog at the moment!  And you can click here to see more photos from the shoot.  We think you’ll agree he’s a pretty photogenic little dude.

We feel so lucky and blessed to be Cole’s parents.  He is a silly, serious, funny, adorable addition to our family and I know it sounds cliche, but I can hardly remember life before he came along.

Here’s to Cole’s second year!