Birthday Week in Photos: Part One

In anticipation for Andrew's ball-themed birthday play party, James and I bought him a red ball.  He LOVED it and played with it non-stop (even in the car) for 2 weeks!

This was a rare occasion that he was napping too long and we needed to wake him up (so he'd sleep at night) so I took the opportunity to take a photo.  I miss having cute sleeping baby photos since going in while he's sleeping usually wakes him up!

 We took Andrew to the park for the first time (since it wasn't 100* out) and went on the swings!

 After swinging, he was pooped :)  and took a sweet little nap in the car on the way to the restaurant for lunch.

There are few things I love as much as watching Andrew and James together :)

 Music Class is alive and well!  Here we are singing "The Rooster Song."  This time I had the kids pick out photos of animals and we sang through the animals in the order we were sitting.  They were so excited to hold up their photo every time we got to them to do the animal sound for their photo!

 Andrew found James' Geometry textbook and was entertained for about 20 min!  Now, if we can only keep him that studious until he's through college...

The pool in the living room is for the ball pit... the balls just hadn't arrived yet :)  This sweet little onesie was embroidered by my Bible study leader from last year and is just so super sweet!

 Look, Mom, I can do this cool thing with my tongue!

 Aunt Jenn, Uncle George, and Titus came to visit for a week!  We had SO MUCH FUN but of course, the first thing on the activity roster was lunch...

 Great-Aunt Cathi came for the weekend, too!  It was so special to have her here with both boys!

Here we are getting ready for church on Sunday morning :)

Watsons give such good snuggly hugs :)

Poppy also came for the weekend and made us a delicious breakfast!  Thankfully, he had time to pause and play with his first grandson for a few minutes :)

Omelet time!

 Between Sunday school and worship service we stood outside (WOO HOO it wasn't 100*!!!) while I walked Andrew in the stroller to take a quick nap before the baby dedication part of the service.

 I love this shot of Titus!  He has such great facial expressions!

 I love it when James laughs :)  And George.  And it's pretty cool when they're together and happy, too!

Titus gives good Mama snuggles...

...but likes attacking Daddy's nose!

 During the dedication.  I love those boys.

 Thanks, Pastor Brad, for such a thoughtful and scriptural dedication ceremony.

 Andrew's birthday buddy, 'The Texan Titus,' was dedicated at the same time!

 I love the part of the service that the congregation stands and commits to praying for the child's salvation and coming along side the parents and supporting them in raising him to know the Lord.  It was awesome to be on the 'other side' of that part this time!

 Well, two of the three of us are smiling...

 Andrew found his 'big sister' Marlie!

 Well, the ball pit still didn't have any balls so we tossed some other toys in...

 The balls arrived, and Marlie had a blast!  PS - I just noticed her dress makes a heart in the back... hello?  ADORABLE!

Ball themed lunch: cheese balls, meat balls, cherry tomatoes, ball-shaped rolls for sandwiches, ball fruit (clementines) and cupcakes topped with Whoppers and ball-sprinkles :)

I always feel stupid posing for photos like this, but it's one of the few photos of me from the day, so I'm glad we have it!  Haha

 Aunt Jackie and Uncle Nathan (brought the balls - THANKS!) and Hannah and Evie drove up here after church and we had a fun time playing with them!

 First Cupcake time... of course James insisted it would be chocolate ;)

 Hmm... never seen this before...

 Maybe I should squish it...

 Everyone's telling me to eat it.  This is confusing.  Usually Momma tells me to NOT put things in my mouth.  Well, might as well try it...

YUM!

Bum-Book Time

Andrew decided to spend yesterday's "bum time" looking out his window and reading books :)  This lent itself very well to cute naked-baby photos... so I thought I'd share a few!  Here's my almost-one-year-old sweet baby boy!

 

This book has three tiny balls in a plastic dome on the front... Andrew is saying "Ball!" 

 He loves putting his hands through the hole in the cover of "Barnyard Dance." :)

 He just discovered he can open the flaps in the Thomas the Train book and play "peek-a-boo" with the characters under the flaps :)

A UPS van went by, which called for looking out the window... but it was only a momentary distraction.

Just look at that sweet head of hair!

Teeth

Andrew cut a molar on Monday. Today I was playing "upside down baby" with him and noticed definitely two, possibly three, more molars immediately below the gums. And feeling the gums with my fingers I felt sharp points poking up for two of them. Sigh. Poor baby. I'm amazed... I'd have never guessed he was teething that badly based on how sweet he's been! Just extra snuggly when he's tired.

Is it normal to have 12 teeth by the first birthday? Is it normal to get the first 8 between months 4 and 7, then no teething for 4 months, and then get 4 molars in 10 days?

Videos?!?

So, I've tried uploading several videos in the past few days and the blog site won't load them correctly. I'm trying, I promise!

Where has the summer gone?!?

Today was James' first day back at school. Sigh. We missed having him home with us! Fortunately the day was filled with friends visiting, Music Class, and driving some more friends around (who are having car trouble) so we were too busy to mope around for long. We sure loved having Daddy home with us all summer!

(PS - sorry for the terrible ratio of words:photos in this post... I'll make a better effort to take more pictures!)

A few weeks ago James was Andrew's designated parent during Music Class... which was great for me since I could just focus on teaching instead of wrestling a baby at the same time :) After class, by special request, he got out his Millenium Falcon and showed the kids how it works. They were totally impressed!


In other news, Andrew hit several milestones all in one day about two and a half weeks ago. He started crawling (for real, on his hands and knees), pushing himself into a sitting position (previously once he started crawling he was stuck and needed help getting up to sit), and clapping (which has also been identified as signing "more" when in the context of meal-time, in the past 3 days!) all within about 2 hours. It was pretty exciting! Then the next day he started pulling himself up to standing on anything and everything he could reach (by crawling over to) AND walking along the furniture/toys/walls! Just about the same time he also figured out how to sit back down... we're SO thankful that this wasn't an ordeal for him to learn since we know several friends of his who have gotten "stuck" standing up (which is really only a big problem when they're supposed to be napping...).

ANYWAY, I have a feeling that starting tomorrow my life is really going to change. Since all of this mobility and independence has begun we've had at least 2 pairs of eyes in the house for the vast majority of the time. Starting tomorrow we won't. Oh boy!

But for all of the mischief he gets himself into, there's and equal (and usually larger) amount of cuteness to make up for it! (although I'm starting to think he's aware of this phenomenon, which is going to be dangerous for me!)

He loves crawling UNDER and OVER things right now! Under the kitchen table and chairs, over my legs and the bottom rungs of his high chair. CLIMBING is also a new fascination... which my mom says he gets from me! Good thing we bought new book cases for the living room - they're sturdier and are (will be this week) mounted to the wall - which is good since book cases were my favorite climbing endeavor when I was little, apparently!

He has a new toy table that I found at a consignment store. It has Duplo/lego parts on one side and a car track painted on the other, with two storage areas underneath, and it's the perfect height for Andrew to stand at and play. I'll take a picture the next time he's playing at it... he's learned how to play with his cars on it and actually drives them back and forth! It's so adorable!

He finds lots of amusement in his crib now, too... we've had to go in and lay him back down to go to sleep a few times since he gets distracted by the new fun games of walking the perimeter of the crib and standing holding the crib rungs while bouncing up and down to make the mattress squeak. Today he threw all of his toys overboard and was reaching as far as he could through the rungs in the crib, trying to reach the changing table. (I just realized that after an hour of him playing I went in and found a poopy diaper - dare I think he was trying to reach for a clean one?!?)

Here he is standing up in his crib after a nap... "Hi Momma! Thank you for coming to rescue me!"

He's making a lot of pre-language sounds now, too. "Buh" is definitely the FAVORITE and we get to hear it ALL DAY. Sometimes it is in reference to a book and sometimes a ball (which we remind him is a "bah" sound, which he repeats sometimes), occasionally a bath, but mostly it's just the go-to sound for him. Other frequently heard "words" include: bah, buh teh (probably the second most frequent), teh, tuh luh, guh luh, mah MAH mah mah mah, dah, nuh, and fffff. "Mee" and "dee" have also made appearances once or twice.

Sometimes he will look at me contemplatively after nursing, furrow his brow, look away, look back at me, and say "Buh. Buh teh." It's ADORABLE and he's quite serious in his impression that he has communicated something important.

Poppy visited last weekend! He and Andrew had a great time catching up and playing together!

As always, making towers is a favorite activity... for the adults in Andrew's life. Andrew is very pleased with his roll as demolition man! He and Poppy discovered the joys of picking off one cup at a time without knocking over the entire tower!


This is what my dad does with my son when I leave him for a half hour to go run to the store...

Early morning snuggles... Mom says I used to snuggle on Poppy's shoulder just like this when I was little :)

Poppy also discovered the immediate and seemingly eternal joys of the "down-up" game. His version came with better sound effects, though!


All in all we've had a great summer with James home, a couple of delightful visits from family and friends, and achieved about half of our "honey do" list (which is pretty much par for the course and I'm happy with the items we checked off). Oh yeah - I painted the master bathroom. It's still not completely redecorated, but the painting is done. Well, mostly. Hah!

Next up is waiting patiently for Andrew's friend Baby Reed to be born (we get to play with his big sister while his Mama is in labor!), which judging from how she was feeling today might be very soon! And then it's a visit from Cousin Titus for Andrew's first birthday in October! (and We can't wait!