Crawling!!

This definitely calls for a special post!  You crawled today (Sunday November 21st).  Up until now there were a bunch of un-coordinated movements that resembled what, properly orchestrated, could be considered crawling.  You have been on your hands and knees for a while.  You have moved your legs forward.  You have moved your hands forward a little, but that is the hardest and final part for you.  In recent days you have done all the movements just at the wrong times.

Then came today!

You can't really see everything in still photos.  Which is why we have video.  But that video needs to be trimmed a bit to weed out the parts of just fussing and show only the sweet, sweet crawling!

I think that video will be posted for your weekly post "tomorrow."  (I say tomorrow but you will notice that last weeks post got posted one day before the next week started.)

23 Weeks - Smiles for the Daddy

You are now 23 weeks old.  What is there to talk about?

Sure we spent some time with family this last weekend.  You had cousins/second-cousins in from the nether parts of the country (Ohio and Florida).  Sure you are so very, very close to crawling.  But these are all things you have heard before on the blog and nothing really new.  Well maybe the cousins from Ohio and Florida aren't old news, but visiting family is nothing new.

What I felt most important to me this week is your smile.  Not that you smile in general.  No, you smile at me when I say your name.  You smile so big you lose your balance when I come home from work.  And there really is no better joy/reward than seeing you so happy to see me you smile and lose all control.

2 years, but not your 2 years

I know this blog is about you, but this post is somewhat of an exception.  Monday was a big deal.  Not because you turned 23 weeks.  Although we (your mother and I) do love to see you grow and love the addition you have been to our lives, the 15^th just happens to mark our two year anniversary.

It has been a great two years filled with lots of adventures, challenges and a variety of other new things.  When I took your mom out to dinner that night (you spent the evening with your Grandma an P-Pa) we discussed the last year and the year to come.  We both agreed that you have made a tremendous impact on our lives and have brought so much joy.  Not only because you are here, but because you bring out so many different aspects in your parents.  You bring out my nurturing side and your mom’s discipline, for example.

We both look forward to watching you grow as well as how we will continue to change in the coming years.  So here’s to two wonderful years so far, filled with lots of love for each other and now for you.

22 Weeks - Family Photo Shoot

You can't really tell unless you look for it, but the sign does say 22 Weeks 11/8/10.  The marker is running low on ink and your mom and I need to replace it.  It is also worth noting that you can't take a picture next to something without trying to grab it and put it in your mouth.

So this week we had a family photo shoot.  Your mom decided it would be a good idea to have coordinated family photos with the pretty fall colors.  I of course agreed.  The great news is that these photos can be used for Christmas cards as well as hanging on the wall.  We hired a great photographer - your P-Pa!  He has had some practice taking your Aunt Ali and Uncle Kyle's engagement photos so we trusted him.  Not that we trust him just on the results of those photos, but we sure do trust his photography skills based on those results.

We started out at a park just up the hill from our house called Glen Nelson park.  Your mom had done some running around there with her friend Maria Haynie and Credence before they left to Utah.  It was raining a bit which wasn't the real problem.  The problem was the large drops of water coming down off of the trees and the remaining leaves.

Several things you can tell from this photo - First, that the light shade of brown your mom chose to wear did not work out well for the drops of rain.  Second, that unless you have the right umbrella, umbrellas do not look so good in pictures/portraits.  Third, and finally, you can tell that you just have to be holding anything near you.  I mean just look at you holding that umbrella as though you were the one shielding us from the rain.

We took several different groupings in several different places, each with their own set of pros and cons.

Eventually we decided to move on to another park, Lake Fennewick Park.  We drive by it every Sunday on the way to church and all year long except for the dead of winter I think the drive is just gorgeous.  The overhanging branches provide shade and greenery in the summer and there are enough deciduous trees to have some bright color changes in the fall and early winter.

The short version of the rest of this story is we should have started there.  Well, at least we like the pictures best there.  You cooperated the most there and the background was the best there.

One little happy family!

21 Weeks - Mad Skills

Up until now you had a basic skill set you were working on.  You had the push up down.  You could roll over from front to back but you never really seemed to do it on purpose.  You could swivel around on your tummy, which totally suited your need to see everything that goes on.  But you have recently developed some new skills.

I want to start with problem solving before I forget it.  Sunday you were fussing a bit so I laid you down on your back (you seem to enjoy that position as of late because you can grab your feet, more on that later).  You did your typical arm reach while squawking and I pretended to eat your hand.  When I let your hand go you stuck it in my face again.  I pretended to eat it again only to hear you giggling.  I let your hand go, you put it back in my face and so the cycle continued.  It just seemed that you had reasoned that you enjoyed me eating your hand so you wanted it to keep happening so you kept sticking your hand up there.

You also have gotten very good at seeing something you want and grabbing it. Whether this be a toy, a burp cloth, blanket, phone, your parent's food - anything you see and want you go for.  This works especially well when you are being held.  That way all you have to do is lean and usually the person holding you will assist in the proximity if you are not quite close enough.  You try this when you are on the floor by yourself but it usually ends up with your desired object being further away since your ability to grasp larger objects isn't that good yet.

It is also further away because you have learned how to scoot backwards.  You do your torso push up and then as you are going back down you push and slide backwards.  To me this is counter-productive and frustrating.  And it is frustrating to you as well, but I think it is all part of the learning to crawl process.  I can't really ask anyone in our family as there isn't a whole lot of experience with crawling.  All the more reason you should learn how to do it.  Just keep your curious hands to yourself until we baby proof the place.

Finally, or at least the last thing I can think of, is your sitting by yourself.  This one is also pretty impressive.  I just got an e-mail today that says babies sit up by themselves with help at 5 months but sometimes not until 9 months, or maybe it was not on their own until 9 months.  In any case, you sit up all by yourself so long as you are not distracted by something you want to lean after and grab at.  So really it isn't all that common because you always have something you want to lean after or grab at.

First Halloween

You actually had three different outfits for Halloween.  One costume- the afore-pictured Lady Bug (or as I called you my Love Bug).  Which you wore to the Ward potluck and Trunk-or-Treating the Friday before Halloween as well as Trick-or-Treating in Ellensburg the Saturday before Halloween.

One purchased outfit - a onesie that says "Daddy is Under my Spell."  The pants were super cute with the kitty on the bum.

And one outfit that your Grandma Perkins made for you.  The hat was purchased, but the purple onesie had a cute little skirt that was sewn onto it.  You actually wore that to church on Halloween Sunday.  Which is kinda funny because usually Christmas is a big deal when it is on Sunday because it is all about the birth of Christ, but Halloween is almost the opposite of Christmas with it's unholy themes and what not.  But it was cute and all the ladies at church thought you were the cutest!

You wore all the outfits several times, which I really like because I am a big proponent of getting the most for your money when it comes to clothing.  Wear it as often as possible, I say.  But I guess since you are wearing a lot of free clothing it is all right to spend a little money on some fun clothes for the holidays...

20 Weeks means FOOD!

That's right!  This is when you started eating real people food.  Up until now it had just been mother's milk, but now you start eating "solid" food.  To me it is kinda silly to call runny rice cereal solid food, but it definitely has more consistency than milk.  And it is a whole different food group!  And you seem to enjoy it... most of the time.

Your mom has also been feeding you other "solid" foods like bananas and squash.  I don't know about the bananas but you seem to dig the squash well enough.  Makes me wonder if my mom did any variety of baby food when I was younger because it hasn't been until recently (i.e. - since I married your mother) that I diversified my vegetable pallet.  But that has been a good thing.

And I am all for you moving on and trying different things.  We had a scare and thought you may have been allergic to the squash, but it turns out you probably just got a finger in your eye (yours or Bryson's) and that was why it was irritated.  My co-worker Mike has two girls of his own and he swears that when they started eating rice cereal that is when they started sleeping through the night.  You used to be a better sleeper so I was looking forward to that.  Thus far you have not improved your sleeping patterns to what they used to be, let alone any better.

The deal I have with your mom about baby food, and I hope she remembers this deal, is that I don't want her to feed you any weird combinations.  No Thanksgiving Dinner in a jar.  No Apple Chicken.  Protein should not be liquefied like that (protein shakes don't count because they were never solid).  But who knows.  She may just do that and not tell me and you will be healthier for it.

So here's to "solid" foods!