celebrate good times

august 14th also marked the one year anniversary of our son's birth. this past weekend we had an opportunity to celebrate him and the community that has supported our family so splendidly during his first year of life. i literally don't know how we would have made it through the last 12 months without the love and support of so many of our family and friends. you have been such a tangible expression of God's provision in our lives, our cup overflows. thank you, thank you, thank you. here's to the rest of the road.

here's a real shocker, isaac putting something in his mouth. this time it is the string on a camera, others it is the dog dish or plug from an electrical cord. please do note the extraordinarily cute pirate outfit. he almost sweat to death, but man did he look good. the high price of fashion i suppose.

family pics are isaac's favorite. he always cooperates.

another family pic, representing four generations on my side. the hole in my shirt is part of the pirate outfit, not the result of a ravenous wolf attack.

the mattingly's (left) are due a couple months after us. the laforges (right) gave birth to their adorable daughter clara (decked in pirate attire) about 5 months ago. cheers to babies all around!

isaac with his friends zach and andrew exploring the wonders of the bubble machine.

annie and isaac with adrienne, zach and jayden

booty-licious fun. inflatable pirate ship complete with ring toss.

isaac and michael beading it up

cousins abound: avery, rhiannon, michael, and isaac. looks like a great gene pool to me.

part of the knudsen, herold, curry, erickson, montgomery clan that came to celebrate with us

annie, paige and adrienne

more family and neighbors. who is the good looking guy at the bbq?

isaac still hates candles. he cried shortly after this picture was taken. the only thing that kept him from melting down was the fact that everybody cheered after annie blew it out for him. he likes cheering.

"um, dad, i think we have had a conversation about that hat before. you. are. embarassing. me."

he made very short work of the cupcake. i love this look b/c it seems like he is not quite sure if he has been caught doing something he shouldn't be. i guess he is right, he probably shouldn't be shoving a whole cupcake in his mouth, but hey, it was his party.

"grammy, i demand more cupcake!"

aunt barbara, grauntie, and isaac looking thoroughly confused

so glad to have auntie allie back in town. what's hanging?

happy as a clam to be the center of attention all afternoon.

we have titled this one: uncle derek and naked isaac with finger in mouth, part 1

4 good years

we celebrated four years of marriage a couple weeks ago with a retreat to downtown san diego. you may notice that the usual subject of every photo on this blog (our son) is suspiciously absent from these pictures, and that is b/c he was not with us. a big note of thanks to all those people that helped make this weekend possible.

san diego bay, post gift card dinner at roy's

seaport village

why does anybody want to live in san diego?

la jolla, post gift card dining at george's

how do you measure a year?

so birthdays are a pretty big thing in the montgomery household, a tradition that comes to us mostly through annie, whose family does not only take a day to celebrate each person, but an entire month. as early as a few days at the end of the pre-birthday month, cards will start showing up in your mailbox, ones you can tell are from hallmark b/c they are bright red and say hallmark on the back. full of kind notes and occasionally cash, these cards serve to extend the celebration of the individual who lays claim to that month. august is isaac's month, and as you might imagine, he has had plenty of attention this month, especially this past thursday when he turned one.

annie and i thought it would be fun to surprise him in the morning, greeting him with hats and loud party favors. turns out that was not such a happy start to the day:



the day got a bit better from there, as we spent the morning at starbucks,





and the afternoon at the pool.





dinner was good, isaac got his favorite, mashed potatoes, and the rest of us got bbq. the whole birthday song didn't go over so well though:



in fact, the whole day was a little rough, mostly b/c of three factors:


1) teething. a pretty constant thing in our life right now, but it seemed especially rough on thursday. if his hand wasn't in his mouth, a new shirt was.

2) falling. he got two new bumps to add to his collection, one rug burn, and one just plain bump.

3) constipation. by far the worst culprit of the day, it culminated with him screaming in pain at about 8:30 at night, and two words you never want to hear in reference to your child: "anal fissure". essentially it means he has a crack in his butt, aside from the one that is usually there separating the cheeks. he is fine, but when you take off your child's diaper and there is blood in it, things tend to get a little tense.

it is pretty insane to be celebrating his one year birthday already, to have witnessed the absolute transformation that has happened over the past 369 days or so. he is a little boy, full of life, energy, and spirit. as ryder's birth is a little over four months away, it is hard for me to imagine what it will be like to be the father of another boy, of any boy other than isaac. i am excited to meet him though, and to continue to celebrate the son that has brought us so much in this past year.

something i will miss

we have been on the go a lot lately while the condo is in various stages of deconstruction and annie has been finding new ways of transporting our portly son. notice how he is so hungry he is eating a cell phone.

the second cousins menconi: the first time this whole group has ever been together


the menconi clan: it's been almost 10 years since this group has been together. there was way fewer kids last time.

isaac learned to skateboard and of course loved it

rhett, isaac and brighton kicking it in the parking lot

anne deggleman came to visit. we ate at panera where isaac eats a whole kids grilled cheese by himself.

clear the roads

i took the pregnant girl to prom (aka. our friends chris and thia's wedding)

drew, clara, isaac and i at the favorite: chevy's happy hour

so last night isaac joined us in bed at 3:30am. it's a rare case, yet one we sometimes resort to when he wakes up screaming, presumably in pain or in fear. there are times he goes straight back to sleep real easy like, then there are others, like last night, where he struggles to get comfortable by getting up on all fours and repeatedly bumping his forehead into the headboard, laying back down and steamrolling both of us with appendages flailing , and, my personal favorite, using his chubby little fist to claw at your eye socket. i am not sure if he does this to annie or not, but there are times when i wake up and five little fingers are working their way into my ocular cavity, pinching as they go. as much as this frightens and hurts me, i think it is something i will miss at some point in my life.

i imagine it is not nearly as cute to have your child sleep with you when he is 23 as when he is 1, regardless of whether or not he has learned to keep his hands to himself as he sleeps. at some point there will be a permanent ban on him in our bed, lest it becomes an unhealthy habit that takes us months to break. but for now it can be pretty sweet b/c there are times when he is sleeping on his side, blissfully unaware of the world around him, his little chest heaving and falling, making muffled sleeping noises like dori in finding nemo, and you just want to wrap your arm around him like he is a living body pillow and squeeze him to your chest. but if you do, be careful, or you might just end up looking like a cyclops.

the next chapter

yesterday we went to the doctor for the first true sonogram of our second child. this was the one where we got to figure out what what we are having. i could tell you now, but i am going to make you wait.

we had kinda been subconsciously putting this appointment off for a while; i think there is still a bit of residual fear from last pregnancy that we were going to go and hear something we were not expecting, something about a third limb or an extra nipple. on the contrary, every bit of news we got yesterday was fantastically boring, right down to the fact that the baby is due exactly when the doctor has told us, most likely around the 27th of december. the stage will be have to be shared with another famous december birthday that happens on the 25th, but on the other hand it will be in time to catch a tax break so we will just buy the kid nice gifts (for at least the first year).

we both went into the appointment thinking we were going to have a girl: me b/c i felt like i had some sort of intuition, annie b/c she was afraid to be selfish and think we were going to have what she really wanted: a boy. we were both wrong. we are having another boy.

his name will be ryder jedidiah. "jedidiah" means loved by God. "ryder" means one who rides: skateboards, surfboards, horses, bulls, roller coaters, bandwagons, whatever. it is a great thing that he is a boy, b/c as has been mentioned many times before, his older brother is a bruiser and will now have somebody to scrap with. we would love to have a girl at some point, even next, but for now the gender ratio in the montgomery household is becoming even more lopsided...and we couldn't be happier.