Feeding Fun

My quads are killing me from a brutal workout this morning, then I decided to paint the downstairs bathroom and just finished staring at the ceiling for over an hour trying to make the lines even, and Joseph was up last night from 3:00 to 4:00 wanting to play, so I am tired and not in the mood to write anything (and that is enough complaining from me for one night :) so I think I'll just post a few recent videos instead. Not sure why his head is cut off in the videos...sorry. Enjoy!

The Church Bully

For the past 4 weeks we have been dropping Joseph off at the church nursery during mass. They have a huge room with a ton of toys and it sure beats sitting in the crying room, where you can't hear anything, or trying to keep him quiet during the mass, although we think the constant "da da da" is adorable we're pretty certain the other churchgoers don't feel the same way. I have been going to a moms group/playgroup during the week at the church and one of the moms mentioned the nursery and raved about the ladies who take care of the kids so we figured we'd give it a try. Joseph loves it and the ladies love him. He is the youngest that attends and he just scoots/crawls around and is into everything but is as happy as can be when we drop him off and pick him up and always gets good reports. Well, until, recently...when we picked him up on Sunday he was his usual happy self and the ladies just started laughing when we walked in. They said that he was "chasing" around and "bothering" a 3 year old and the 3 year old started to get upset. The ladies told us that they told the 3 year old to run and hide from Joseph. All we (and the ladies) could do was laugh, really. Our 9 month old is bullying a 3 year old? Really? We'll have to work on that!

There's no way this smile could belong to that of a bully

Well, maybe...

No, not Joseph...

Ok, we'll definitely work on being nice to others!

Just hanging around

This past weekend we had plans to go to an art in the park festival about 2 miles from our house but we finally got some rain so it was cancelled so we basically just took it easy and worked on the house, did a little shopping, and did the normal routine weekend things like church, working out, going to the park (luckily it didn't rain all weekend), and just hanging out together. Here are a few pictures from just hanging around this weekend:

He loves playing in our bathtub and that was fine,

until he learned how to turn the water on! Can you see it in the background?? No more playtime in the tub for him!

He prefers to stand next to the exercauser now and climb all over it instead of jump in it.

Doesn't it look like he is saying "Cheese!"

Rich went downtown Houston on Saturday to watch the Army game with the West Point alumni group and here is Joseph watching him come home...so cute!

It was rainy so I thought it may be chilly enough for him to wear this awesome outfit but when we went outside once the rain stopped it was about 80 degrees so had to change him...he will probably outgrow it before it gets cold enough for him to wear it out anywhere. At least I got a picture :)

First Race

We wanted to do something to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 09/11 and to pay tribute to all of the people who have sacrificed so much on and since that day. As I was searching for events in Houston to remember 09/11, I came across a 5K run whose theme was to run to honor our Heroes. I loved the message on the website- "We honor the fallen by challenging the living", so we signed up. There was a great pre-race ceremony where the mayor, as well as the father of Travis Manion, the Marine Corps officer who was killed in Iraq and who the foundation is named after spoke. The race definitely wasn't our fastest since it was extremely crowded and the first mile was dodging walkers, dogs, kids and just about everything else with the stroller, but by mile 2 it opened up and we ran the last two miles pretty strong-a little over 8 minutes-not too bad for Joseph's first race. After the race we hung around to cool down and checked out the displays that each branch of the military had and listened to the military bands-they really did a nice job with the event. So glad that we did it and hopefully we'll make a yearly tradition so we never forget.

9 months!

Joseph turned 9 months on September 7th and he was lucky enough to go to the doctor for his well baby check-up to celebrate-a flu shot and blood drawn were the icing on the cake. He is tipping the scales at 21 pounds, 9 ozs (67th %ile) and is 29 3/4 inches long (81st %ile). I'd say its a good thing we moved to the state where football is life-looks like we'll have a future linebacker on our hands!

9 months today

When he sees the camera now, he basically tries to eat it-much harder to get pictures of him these days.

How he spends most of his days now-pulling up on everything and trying to stand wherever he can.
Gets up on all fours and will move a bit but he still prefers the army crawl. Such concentration!

This was in the middle of a "da da da da" conversation-still no "ma ma" (unless if he is in his crib crying)- "da da" is definitely his fave.

Happy 9 months little man-he is growing up way too fast!

Planking

Recently on the Today show I heard about the two crazes for the summer-planking and leisure diving. Have you heard about them? Pretty funny and creative-check them out here: http://www.planking.me/ and http://www.leisuredive.com/

Well, this weekend, Joseph decided he wanted to join in on the planking fun.

He still has a little work to do on straightening the arms and legs but it's a start! And, I think we'll wait until he is a little older to try out the leisure dive!

Labor Day Hike

We took advantage of the beautiful, cooler (finally out of the 90s!) weather this Labor Day and went for a hike. There is a nature preserve less than 2 miles from our house with a ton of trails so we decided to check one out.

This was the first time that we used the hiking backpack and obviously it was a success!

He did wake up for the second half of the hike and loved just looking around.

We will definitely be back to check out the other trails that the nature preserve offers-there were so many side trails that we passed that we are looking forward to eventually exploring them all!

Happy Friday!

Fish face Friday that is!

Seriously, where does he learn these things? Hope everyone enjoys the long weekend!

We did it!

I often send pictures of Joseph to Rich during the day and he normally responds with things like, "So cute!" or "Miss you guys." On Tuesday, August 30th (I want to remember the date!) I sent Rich these two pictures to show him what Joseph was up to for the afternoon...

and all he wrote back was, "We need to cut that hair!"

So, after a little persuading and a few tears (by me, not him)

He has a new do!

We did it!! Eeeeek!! I couldn't sleep that night because I kept thinking about what we did and how short it was but by Wednesday afternoon I was definitely glad we did it. It is a little too short for me to be in love with it but I know it will grow and after going back and looking at this post I knew that we did the right thing :) I have some of his hair saved in a baggie-not sure what I will do with it-I never thought that I would be the mom who saves hair but as of right now I am just not ready to throw it away yet, so it is sitting on my bathroom counter for now, until I decide for sure.

He had two compliments on it yesterday and someone even rubbed his head (not knowing that we just shaved it the night before!) Luckily it looks pretty natural (ya think?) since babies have all sorts of crazy hairdos. I can't wait to see how it grows back and just hoping that it comes in a little more even this time around!

If you thought Rich and Joseph looked alike before, I would say now they are basically identical!