wouldn't you KNOW

November 12th:
We have a first word and I bet you can guess what it is! His favorite thing - stick. We sent him to spend the day with my parents on Saturday while we did some landscaping work and he came home saying it.



Update:
Since I never got around to publishing the above post (shame, shame) we now have more words to report - thank you, cup, truck, soap, tick tock, the list goes on. Is his pronunciation perfect? No, it is not. Be he comes pretty darn close on some of them. Graham in particular thinks it is funny the words he latches on to. He loves cats and hearing us meow and we have been doing it for months. Has he ever once tried to sound them out himself? Nope. The first time I said tick tock did he say it right back? Yes. Who knows what is going on in that brain of his...

Oh, and I guess now you can also see that he blows kisses! He understands so much. We can say "bath time" and he starts walking to the bathroom. This morning we were playing in his room and I asked him if he wanted some oatmeal and he took off in a full sprint for the kitchen! Definitely a great age!

months or YEARS?

Oh, and Blue is 13 months old today. At what point do you stop caring how many months old they are?

hats are BACK

So my love of hats on Blue has been documented here before. I had despaired that he would never let me put a hat on his head again since for a long time he just pulled them off after two seconds. But lately he has been parading around the house modeling two fine pieces of headwear. One is a little too small and the other a little too large even for his big head. Oh, but so cute.

happy wacky HALLOWEEN

So, turns out Halloween is not Blue's favorite holiday. Not a fan of the costumes, scary or not. Dad tried to explain that they were just people underneath the masks and funny hair but it wasn't sinking in...

What he did like was walking around the yard brandishing his stick. In fact, this is probably his favorite thing to do ever. We are about to do some major landscaping so he can have a safer, cleaner area to play.

The non-profit that Graham started all those years ago is still going strong. Here we all are at their Halloween party fundraiser event. This was the first time I had dressed up for Halloween since freshman year of college. Graham and I were collectively inspired by Swamp People - a show on cable about backwoods Cajun alligator hunters. So Graham was the hunter and I was the alligator. I made my costume from scratch! Mal and Andy were Rachel and Finn from Glee. I wish you could see more of our costumes in these pics. They were pretty awesome if I say so myself. Mal's Teddy Bear and Hearts sweater vest was particularly special.

a sweet NAP

These toys started out the nap spread throughout the crib...

Graham shot this with his iPhone - love the way Blue has gathered everything into a pile in the center for him to snuggle with. Blue is working on coming down to one nap a day. It has been a little bit of an adjustment for both of us as we figure it out. He has started playing in his crib instead of sleeping during his morning nap which gives us both a little quiet time. Then he goes down for real around 12:30ish. The one problem is that he doesn't always take a long enough nap to make it through til bedtime. But he won't go back down for an afternoon nap. If all else fails we get in the car and run unnecessary errands. He likes getting out and about.

the RHINO song

Ever wonder what we do in the evening after a long day when mom needs a little break?



For some reason this particular video makes him grin from ear to ear.

pair of SHOES

I was feeling a little lost about Blue's shoe size so on Friday we headed off to get fitted. Store number one was a little miserable. I asked a general question and the lady just nodded in reply. Then I asked if she could look at his feet and help me find his size. She asked how old he was and went to the chart on the wall to tell me that he would wear a size 5. Not very helpful. Lots of really cute shoes in there though. We tried some on but I still couldn't tell how they were supposed to fit and how much growing room was appropriate. So we moved on to store number two. Which is actually where my mom used to take us when we were little. Night and day difference. I was just wondering around and the salesman approached me to ask if I wanted to get him sized. Asked if he was walking and what I was looking for. Yes please! Turns out Mister Blue is a size 5.5 (when I started walking I wore a size 2)!!! That leaves a little growing room but I was so surprised. They also told me the shoes I had him in were too small (even though they were for 12-18 months). If left to my own devices I probably would have bought him a 4.5 - whoops. He was so cute walking around in his big boy shoes.