Lucky Seven

He'll be showing them off soon enough, but this morning I noticed that Daniel has two more teeth that have come in on the top! So that makes 3 on the bottom and 4 on the top. Lucky seven chompers.

College-bound

I was able to accomplish a life-long goal today and set up a 529 fund for Daniel that by the time he is 18 and ready to go to college, will fully fund his tuition and room and board.  Thank you Papi (and thank you Jesus).  I've been working with a financial planner to invest some money that Papi had left to us and all I knew was that I wanted to pay off my credit card and pay for Daniel's college education.  I knew a bit about the Virginia college fund (because he WILL go to a Virginia school) but found out that it only covers tuition and not room and board (and other expenses) and while I have dreams of his athletic and/or intellectual skills getting him a full ride somewhere, I want to make sure he's covered if that somehow isn't the case.  The other nice thing about this fund is that if Daniel turns out to be a prodigy or follows in daddy's footsteps and goes to a military academy (mommy prefers Annapolis, my little love bug), he'll be able to use this money for a graduate degree or we can transfer it to a sibling or another family member.  But until then, I'll just enjoy my little snuggly monkey baby while he can't get enough of his mommy.

Already studying hard...on mommy's blackberry.

11 months!

At this point last year, I was starting to wonder if Daniel would ever come out to join the party.  I was SO huge and uncomfortable by the time I hit full-term that it was baffling for me to think that I had another 3 1/2 weeks to go.  Daniel had his feet up in my lungs making it hard to breath and would put a well-placed kick into some vital organ if I dared to push him out of the way.  It's amazing to think how much of his personality was already in effect.

This morning we had an equally feisty little guy, unencumbered by momma's belly, who tore across the living room on his hands and knees (little butt wiggling as he crawled by), and then pulled himself up on his walker and took a number of sure-footed steps pushing it from the dining room into the kitchen.  The diaper wrestling challenge is getting even harder, but he can easily palm a bottle in one hand and loves to feed himself.  We're watching out for first signs of walking since Daniel is becoming a proficient cruiser and he loves climbing the stairs (with very closer supervision).  He's a boy on the move!

Handsome boy!

Uh, oh...crazy baby ramping up.

And we're done with this photo shoot.





Birthday and Baptisms

Daniel had a fun time on Saturday with his Grandma Corrinne, cousin Alicia and Uncle Rudy while I was serving at the BYC Women's Conference.  He showed off his interest in Connor's water bowl, and ourse Grandma indulged this interest because watching Daniel splash is adorable...until he's soak through.  (He showed off again in Connor's bowl on Sunday morning too).



Playing nicely with Jess

 

Sunday was spent with Daniel's "girlfriends" celebrating the newest arrival's baptism and her older sister's second birthday.  The house was in mass choas with babies ranging in age from 3 years to almost 4 months.  The poor non-parents hid in the kitchen and the two-expecting mom, sat in silence in the dining room just watching their (veyr loud) future play out before them. 

There were still three other little ones NOT in this picture

I did get to see how good of a sharer Daniel is and how laid back he was when the other toddlers took his toys..."all right, I'll just find something else".  His only fuss was when he tried to chase the poor cat (who was desperately trying to escape) out the front door and was quickly stopped before he made it out.  He also showed off his fine cruising skills fron tv standing to toy box to random sitting uncles. We're all taking bets as to when the first steps might be.



Mmmm, books are tasty



Chompers

Daniel definitely loves to put things in his mouth and is quite happy to chomp on anything hard or soft.  At almost 11 months he has 5 teeth, two on the top, and three on the bottom, though I'm fairly sure a 4th one on the bottom will cut any day.  Here are some shots from this morning showing off his full set of chompers! It's getting to be my crazy work and travel season, so I'll be doing my best to at least post recent pictures and video, but the commentary may be a bit on the sparse side.   

Top two (mommy stop taking pictures of me!)

Bottom three...and those beautiful blue eyes.

Your attention, please...

Daniel is becoming a problem solver.  He has this toy called "Icrediblock" that I got for him from the Old Town moms list serve.  It only came with five blocks, but he finds other things to try to put into it.  But he's getting clever are realizing that if you drop the block into the slot you have to open the little door to find it "Yeah!!"  It's never a problem to get mommy and daddy to cheer for him though!

Frustrated

Daniel is good baby.  We know this and are constantly reminded of it by other friends and family who have less "chill" kids, but Daniel also has a strong will (wonder where he got that from) and is getting to that age where he really knows what he wants and gets VERY frustrated if he can get it.  Again, wonder where he got that from.  Here are a few cute examples of our frustrated baby. 

What do you mean I can't climb the stairs!!!

I want your camera, NOW!

And a little video of Daniel with his walker.  He's getting very good at getting around with it now, but he doesn't really get how to move it in another direction when he bumps into something.  We're trying to teach him that "Uh oh, it's okay....move around" but the tears and frustrated plop down on the floor on his bottom usually happen before we can get him to move.

Happy Easter



Happy Easter!


We had a wonderful Easter that started off Daniel sporting the bunny ears that mommy got for him (much to daddy's protests) and hunting for some eggs around this living room.  He did better than imagined, though he had some practice with the "egg chewing" yesterday and learned that they made a fun noise when banged together.  There are still a few missing, but at least their plastic so it won't matter if we don't find them for a few days.

After the egg hunt, we made it to the 10am service at church, where Daniel met the "Easter Bunny".  He wasn't so sure about the whole thing.  We ended up having dinner at Uncle Rudy's house (Papi's old house) and I quickly discovered how baby proof our house really is. After a quick sweep Daniel had free acess to the house and enjoyed an afternoon with his cousin Alicia.  Somehow we managed to not get a family picture, but at least the bunny shot shows off Daniel's cute Easter outfit.

CHEESE!

We used to shred the cheese sticks for Daniel, now he wants them whole so he can hold them and chomp on the ends.  Sometimes he polishes off a whole one by himself, sometimes he'll get part of the way through and "offer" it to Connor when mommy isn't looking (like mommy like son), but no matter what he does a great job shredding it with his nearly SIX teeth, two on the top, three with one cutting on the bottom.  It shouldn't surprise me that he likes them so much, I ate one nearly every day when I was pregnant.  No matter how sick I was I figured at least with a cheese stick I was getting calcium and protein. This shot is of him working on one after dinner tonight (his leftovers of chicken, potato and carrots from last night's dinner).  I think Connor ended up getting more than half of this one.

Blogging from 30,000 feet

So I was off for another business trip this week.  This time for just over 36 hours to LA and back.  My long trips are coming up in May and June, but thankfully the first long one Daniel will be travelling with me to San Francisco (will need some prayers to manage that flight alone!) and then Grandma Mary will meet us there to hang out with him during the day.  This time Daniel had a wonderful time with his daddy and big brother, as evidenced in the picture below.  Let's hope he's equally excited to see mommy when he wakes up tomorrow morning and sees mommy there holding him.

Cheering for mommy...

We had a very low key weekend: mommy and daddy had a date night to see the Hunger Games on Friday and Daniel had a fun night with grandma Corrinne, then a day of rest and some errands on Saturday.  We started off bright and early this morning, Daniel and daddy had a chance to cheer me on as I ran my first post-baby "serious" race, the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler.  My time was pretty good thanks to Daniel and all of the training I did pushing him in his stroller.  Now if only I could keep him happy in the stroller for my other long runs as I train for a half marathon next month.  He had lots of opportunities to cheer on mommy.  Daniel is actually cheering for lunch in this video (and doing a pretty good "Home Alone" impression) but it does show off one of his latest tricks, clapping.  Here's also a picture of another one of his tricks, holding the something to his ear, cell phone, play phone, remote...whatever is closer, and talk into it like a phone.  Wonder where he pictured that one up...

Hello? Hello?