Baby Update

Matthew has discovered his feet. Whenever he's on his changing table or sitting up somewhere, he finds them and immediately grabs at them. When his socks are on, he pulls on them, and when they are off, he laughs cause he's tickling his feet! It's cute to watch. He's just more grabby in general these days. If he sees something he wants, he tries to get it, whether it's his toy box or his mobile or my hair :)

I don't know why this picture only uploads in this direction, but just turn your head and you can see how cute it is! We did not purposely put that ducky there. It just floated there all by itself, I promise!

Here's the little booger trying to get into trouble.
This is something new he's been doing lately. We tell him to smile or we smile at him, and he scrunches up his nose and squints his eyes like this! What a ham!
And here he is just looking handsome and sweet. That's my boy!

And finally, some videos of Matthew hanging out on our bed. I like playing with him here, cause I can get on my knees and be eye level with him. Anyway, that's all I have. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Thank you, Sweetheart! **Edit**

I love you too, and you're the best husband ever! The best dad too (Matthew told me to say that, and I think I have to agree with him) ;)

**Just for the record, it was a "just because" moment. He didn't get himself in trouble, but I might have to agree with my sis and say that maybe it was because I'm just awesome ;)**

Seven Months Old

The Stats

Weight: 23.5 lbs.
Height: 29" long

The Pics

Whatchu lookin' at?

Ok, I need a toy to play with.

That's better. Now we're in business.

Hi Mom! Love you!

More pictures? What's the deal? Am I cute or something?

If I pretend not to notice, maybe she'll go away. Do-do-do...

Are you still here?

Let's try another strategy...Look, what's this on the couch, Mom?

Alright I give up, but I'm gonna give you a fake smile, so there!

This is so embarrassing.

Lookin' cute and cuddly for Mommy.

The two best-dressed boys on the block.

A little blurry, but by far one of my favorite pictures.

Father Son Bonding

As you can see from this video, he's getting better at sitting up, and he's also more willing to try it. Trust me, he really lets us know if he's not in the mood to sit up, but for the most part he can be persuaded unless he's hungry or tired. He seems to balance better when he's on a soft surface like the bed. I guess cause he sinks into it, so he can get better support. Putting the boppy around him seemed to help him stay up, instead of just falling backwards or to the side right away. And he's been staying in the Bumbo longer too. Remember that baby seat that we borrowed from a friend? Today he was in it for like 10 minutes! Well, that's all I have to say for now. He's gonna be 7 months old on Monday, you guys!!

And I'll leave you with this last clip we got. He's such a silly boy, I tell ya!

Le Voyage d'Affaires - Paris

Ok, so Mary wanted me to blog about my trip to other side of the "pond". Why do wives "always" volunteer their husbands to do things they don't want to do? Is it a control thing or something? :)

Anyway, in case you don't know my job required me to travel over to Florence, Italy for a few days to train a group of users of our application suite called Gensuite. Basically, I help support a suite of web based applications that allow GE and it's businesses measure, track, and improve upon their environmental, health, safety (EHS), quality, regulatory, etc metrics. Yes, I work with computers all day - it's rough but someone has to suffer.

I travelled with one of my colleagues and we had a 9 hour layover in Paris. 9 hours?!?! Why you ask. We planned it that way so we could see some of the sites...like this:

We took the hour train ride from Charles De Gaulle down into Paris to get on the Eiffel Tower - great story here -- how many of you can say that they climbed all the stairs to the first stage of the Eiffel Tower? Well, my colleague and I did it - completely by accident. My colleague took us to the line that starts to climb it instead of the line for elevator. I know very intelligent, he's not very patient. Regardless we made it to first stage and took a nice break and enjoyed the view of Paris along with a Coke and a French slice of pizza. Wasn't too bad. We then proceeded to find the elevator to the second and finally the third stages. The view was spectacular!

Now keep in mind my trip started at 7:30PM EDT Saturday night and we are seeing Paris at Noon CET -- 6 hours ahead of the cities of New York, Boston, and Atlanta. I had about 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane and we made it through Paris and eventually landed in Florence (Firenze for the locals) at 9PM CET. That is one way to beat jet lag and the time difference - exhuast yourself on the day of travel and sleep like a rock at night.

This is the view from the third stage (top deck) of the tower

I think I can definitely visit Paris again - we only had time for the Eiffel tower since we needed to be back to the airport in time for our next flight. We had hoped to visit the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe - but because of an impatient colleague jumping on the wrong train and not knowing where to go in the airport we blew about 2 extra hours we could have used. No - I'm not mad, but he now knows to listen to the guy with the map -- me! I am the type when going on business trips, I'll find out where the sites are and map them out and understand the public transits so I can get to where I'm going as quickly as possible.

So I'll leave you with a little trivia -- What famous person's office was at the top of the Eiffel Tower? I have more about Italy that I'll blog about a little later. Ciao!

More Copycat Fun

Here's Daddy and Son acting so weird (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree I'm afraid) ;)

Goofing off with Daddy some more and chatting before bedtime

Dressed for Saturday's game and hanging out with Mommy

Lookin' snazzy for Sunday (thanks for the outfit, Grammy!)

Cute Videos

I like to call this one "Jiggly Cheeks"


In this one you'll see a little copycat. Josh started roaring at Matthew, and he in turn tried to roar back at him. It's very adorable I think.

This Morning

While on the computer this morning, Matthew had plans of his own...



I just get such a kick out of this picture. He was being so quiet, and when I turned around to check on him, he'd rolled himself partly under the changing table and was just hanging out. He's such a cutie!

I think he really misses his daddy too. Yesterday I couldn't take two steps away from him before he'd start to whine. And if I left the room, he'd wail like I didn't love him and wasn't ever coming back! Well, his daddy is coming home today, and I think he'll be really happy to see him. Which just goes to show you, that kids need both parents in their lives. I certainly can't fill Josh's shoes, even though I've tried. I attempted to wrestle with Matthew just like his daddy does, and he gave me this smile that said nice try, but you're not dadddy. He knows it's just not the same coming from me.

Well, I think I'm done here. Short and sweet, just like my baby :)

Mommy's Little Helper *Edit*

What does Matthew do every time I feed him? He helps his Mommy. He always grabs the spoon before it gets to his mouth. It makes for some very messy meals, but at least he's interested in eating :)

And here's a close up of his first two teeth. They're the cutest teeth I've ever seen :)

The Toothbrush

Look at this lonely toothbrush! Doesn't it look sad? :( This is probably the worst part about Josh being gone, and that's because when I go to brush my teeth in the morning and at night, I see that Josh's toothbrush is missing. And that means he's not at work locally and won't be coming home tonight like usual :(

Wanna know a secret? I cleaned the parts of the mirror and sink that would be showing in this picture, cause I don't want you all to think I live like a slouch :)

Josh is in Italy on a business trip, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. They had a layover in Paris, so he got to see the Eiffel Tower! He sent me a picture of it, and I was gonna put it up, but I think I'm gonna see if I can convince Josh to blog when he gets back. And then he can put up the picture and talk about it, since he's the one who actually saw it. He's hoping he can get some more touristy stuff in while in Italy, but it will be kinda hard. Once his work day is over, museums and stuff might be closed. His hotel is near the statue of David and the oldest church in Italy or something like that. It'll be cool to see pictures of Europe and pretend I went with him :)

Why didn't I go with him, you ask? Cause the tickets cost too much. Otherwise I would have been right at his side, with Matthew in tow. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you--the airline lost his luggage! Luckily he packed essentials in his carryon bag, but I know he had to wear jeans for his first day of work over there. I had an e-mail from him this morning saying that the airport called and would be delivering his suitcase that afternoon for him. Yay for found luggage!

Happy Columbus Day!

100th Post!

In honor of my 100th post, I thought I'd put up a couple cute videos. The first one is full of bubbles, and the second one is full of giggles. Have fun! :)

Update with Pictures

Just a little update on my cute little man. I might be speaking too early, but I think Josh and I have conquered bedtime. For a whole week this kid has been going to sleep without so much as a whimper. Now I'm sure you are all wondering what our secret to successful parenting is. Well, we don't have one. I really don't know what changed. We've been putting him to bed the same way, and he'd cry for an hour before finally settling down. I guess he just decided one day to not cry and go to sleep. I don't think he goes to sleep right away. He moves around a lot, and it may take him 20 minutes I'm guessing. I'm not really sure, cause I don't want to keep checking on him and disturb him. I think the Lord has something to do with Matthew going to bed nicely. I really can't take any credit, cause I don't know what triggered this behavior. I think I will just be grateful for it and smile. Now if he can only do that for nap time, I would be ecstatic. For instance, yesterday he didn't take one nap. He just cried and cried. I feel so bad that he spent a lot of the day crying, but I don't know what else to do. Trust me, he's tired, so I know he needs to sleep. He's just a determined young fellow. Which is a good trait in other settings. But today, I put him down for a nap, and in 10 minutes he was asleep. He only slept for 30 minutes, but hey, he did it all by himself. Does this gray cloud have a silver lining? Stay tuned!

Ok, I admit, these are a little staged. I had to make his hand touch his foot, but he grabbed on and held on all by himself.




In other Matthew news, his tooth is really starting to shoot up. I noticed he's got a red spot behind it, and the other day he was chewing on his zipper sweater thing, and we found some blood on his clothes. Now at first I thought he must have knicked himself on the zipper, but now I'm thinking that maybe his gum was just bleeding a little bit by itself. It makes sense, cause he's got this new tooth that his gums have to make room for, so they would be a little sore and ready to bleed perhaps. It doesn't seem to bother him either, so I'm happy for him. The tooth next to this one is visible, but it hasn't actually surfaced yet. I can't wait to have pictures of him with his new teeth. There's nothing like a baby's gummy smile with two little white friends peeking through :)

I love his goofy-looking smile here.

He likes to practice his new sound. He was saying "da-da-da-da" in Wal-Mart really loud yesterday. And he likes to spit too. Especially when I'm trying to feed him. And while we're on that subject, I haven't seen much improvement with him liking baby food. He doesn't hate it, but he's also not begging for more. It's almost like he tolerates it for my sake. He's gotta learn to swallow, which I know only comes with practice. If he gets confident with that, he may enjoy eating better. For now I just put it in, and it sits on his tongue before it comes back out, watered down with drool. He grabs the spoon when it comes close enough, like he's trying to feed himself, and he'll chew on it and swing it around.

This is the face he makes when Daddy holds him. Just kidding! This was a particularly grumpy day. I know it's blurry, but I figure I get all these pictures when he's smiling, and I need to capture the cranky side of him too. I don't want to look back and think my kid was perfect :)

He seems to laugh pretty easy these days. People at church might not believe me, since whenever we're there he seems so tired and subdued. But I promise he's got energy! He loves to grab at people's faces now. The other day he grabbed my cheeks, so I made a game out of it. I said "These are Mommy's cheeks" and then I'd tickle his cheeks and say "These are Matthew's cheeks." We continued that with our noses and lips and chins, and he kept giggling every time I touched his face. It was a lot of fun.

This is how we found him asleep one night. See what I mean about him moving around a lot? I certainly didn't lay him in the crib that way!

Oh yeah! The other day he reached for me for the first time! Josh was holding him, and he said "Do you want to go to Mommy?" I held out my hands, and he reached out both arms for me. And he was doing it over Josh's shoulder, which made it a little more challenging, but he did it! He's getting much stronger these days. When we hold him, his back is straighter, and he supports himself by pressing his hand on us so he can look around. We're still trying to get him to sit up on his own. He's definitely not always in the mood for it, and he'll let us know, but sometimes he likes it. A friend of mine let me borrow the Bumbo they had for their little girl, and I tried Matthew in it. It was a snug fit, but he didn't mind it for the first couple minutes. But once he dropped his toy and couldn't get to it, then he'd had enough. I think we'll keep using it though, cause I want him to realize that he can play with his toys while sitting up.


Whatchu lookin' at?

Hey, where'd that toy go? It was here a second ago!

And last but not least, some of the cutest pictures ever, in my objective, unbiased opinion ;)

Da-da-da

Six Month Pictures

We took Matthew to Portrait Innovations this morning, and the results were great. We stayed in our budget, but I'm tellin' ya, it was hard to do. They took 42 pictures, and he was just so darn adorable that it was hard to narrow it down. Our photographer was really good with him, and he smiled for her like a champ. I've put up the ones that didn't make the cut. Those of you that'll be getting pictures will see the better ones soon. Enjoy our handsome little man!

Yay for pumpkins and leaves!

Playing in the leaves

These really are pants on him, but he kept pulling them up.

I love how his hands are just so in this shot.

He's becoming such a playful little boy.

Mommy, are we almost done?

Look at those little lips! I just wanna kiss 'em!