Dis?

We have been having so much fun the past couple weeks around here! Aunty, Uncle, and cousin Emma flew in for Christmas AND Daddy has been home from work. Christmas was of course wonderful and we had so much fun hanging out with family and getting to experience Christmas with Grayson opening presents and getting semi-excited about gifts. The biggest problem being that he didn't want to wait for the pesky packaging to be opened before he got his new toys... he wanted them instantly!

Crying because Mommy can't open the box fast enough and me struggling to open the box as fast as possible.

A couple days after Christmas, we packaged up about half the toys and will wait on giving them to him again till a bit later in the year. Birthday and Christmas all at once fill up the house faster than we know what to do with a bunch of VERY noisy toys :) Plus with the Christmas tree in the living room we already don't have anywhere to walk without tripping on toys.

Grayson got an awesome book for his birthday that has baby's first words and the alphabet and shapes and that sort of thing in it and his favorite activity seems to be sitting on Daddy's lap and pointing to all the different pictures and having Daddy read it to him. However, it quickly became an outside of book game. His NEW favorite activity is to be carried around and point at everything and say dis? (this?) and have you tell him what it is. The problem with this is half the time we have no idea what he is pointing at and the other half of the time he points to something quicker than we can tell him what the first thing was. So not sure he's learning as much anymore but he sure does enjoy it!

We went hiking at Deception Pass today and even though it was quite cold it was nice to get out of the house and move around and enjoy the day! Grayson was such a trooper in the car seat and then in the backpack, back in the car seat and then we went out to dinner. Poor guy kind of lost it about half way through dinner but for someone who can't get enough of the new walking thing you can't really blame him. All in all it's been a fun little vacation for us and we'll be sad when Dave goes back to work on Tuesday.

Hiking at Deception Pass

And now for everyone's favorite part: Random Pictures! :)

Daddies and their babies

Grayson's new favorite face

Daddy and son matching expressions

1 Year Old!!!

I cannot believe my baby is one! It seems so crazy that one year ago he was this tiny little thing, spitting up everywhere and crying all night and now he's walking and crawling and babbling and pointing and grunting and learning and understanding me when I talk and calling me "Mama".

I haven't posted in awhile and I have so many updates like how he's walking all over like a champ and he can stand up on his own without pulling himself up on a piece of furniture and how he says real words and points at things he wants and then points at himself to make it really clear. How he's started hanging on around my neck when I pick him up and he gives me real hugs but still the wet sloppy open mouth kisses and when he wasn't feeling good he perfected the "mama" with a whine that just broke my heart. And he is getting so funny, he wrestled with a pillow for a good 15 minutes tonight and was laughing the entire time; he laughs when you tickle him and he shrieks and giggles when the dog sniffs him.

I have so much fun with this little boy everyday and now he is ONE! We went to Leavenworth for his birthday and had ice cream for the first time and saw all the lights, tried on a few hats, looked at EVERYTHING in the Christmas store and generally had a good time. And yesterday we had his birthday party. We had a "very hungry caterpillar" theme and he loved getting so many fun presents and playing with his little friends Katilyn and Eli. He also loved my carrot cake but didn't get nearly as messy as I thought he might!

I have course included tons of pictures below. Some of his birthday and some of life since the last post. I again renew my promise to post more often :)

Dave and I got him a rocking camel for his birthday. He actually figured out how to rock it himself and has a pretty good time on it... but he needs to grow a bit before it will work properly.

LOVES the play table his Auntie Laura and Uncle Kyle bought him!

The birthday cake. I baked it and Dave decorated it. The caterpillar at the bottom was Dave's when he was a kid.

The piano I got when I turned one is now the piano Grayson got when he turned one :)

Eating cake :)

Helping Daddy make a fire

Grayson's first snow! Dave stayed home from work but it was too dry to make a snowman so we are anxiously awaiting the making of Grayson's first snowman

We went to a light display at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. We all loved it! I've decided that we will go every year and it will be our new family tradition :)

My little one socked elf! (He is only happy when he has taken one sock off... he fusses and fusses till he gets one off and then is perfectly happy walking around the rest of the day with only one sock on. I can only imagine what kind of mother people think I am when we go out...)

We went out to a tree farm and picked out a Christmas tree this year. I think Grayson had a pretty good time but I'm sure next year he will be much more excited about this activity.

Helping Daddy with the christmas lights

Pointing out his favorite ornament. He wasn't very helpful at decorating the tree... he didn't want to let go of the ornaments. So we put a few on and let him point at them and then put the rest on after he went to bed.

Walking!!! And San Diego

Grayson took a few steps on Halloween! At first it was just three; and then he took five, and then three more. He is getting to be such a big boy!!! And while it is very cute... I'm not sure I'm entirely ready for him to be running around yet. He seems to be a bit wary of it and hasn't taken off yet... but I hear that's pretty normal and then all of a sudden they take off! :)

We flew down to San Diego the other day to visit new cousin Emily. Here is Grayson ready to go!

The morning was going very smoothly until we got to the airport and Dave told me that he forgot to put the stroller in the car. So I ended up carrying Grayson through the airport and security to the gate where they told me the plane was full and they couldn't move me from my middle seat. After we boarded the plane, we had an hour delay... trying to keep a child who really needs a nap entertained in the middle seat while sitting at the gate... not fun! Anyways... he fell asleep while taxiing down the runway and even though he woke up 45 min later... we ended up having a pretty nice flight.

Passed out on the airplane

We are having so much fun down here even though it is super hot! Little Emma is too adorable and while Grayson isn't interested yet... I enjoy her a lot!!

Checking out cousin Emily

Exciting Week

It's been a very exciting week in our house! Grayson started crawling a normal crawl, he got a head shaved hair cut, and his first cousin was born! We are so excited to go down to California and visit Auntie Laura and Uncle Kyle and our new cousin Emily. But until then... here are some fun pictures. :)

Hitting tupperware together while Mommy cooks dinner.

Bath time after our fancy new hair cut!

Talking to Daddy before bed time

Crawling like a big boy!

Saying goodnight to doggy

For some reason this cabinet won't open...

But he's figuring it out... it won't be long now... :(

Figured out how to climb up on his box to get a better view out the window... I took the bumper off of his crib so we don't have a climbing out accident

It's Been Awhile...

I know it's been awhile but since my camera broke I've had a hard time getting pictures and therefore haven't been blogging because how can you have a good blog without good pictures? I'm sure some of you check this just to see the pictures anyways :) Here's my new favorite photo just to start this blog off right!

So... what is new? Grayson is becoming more and more interactive. And we are having sooo much fun!! He has started clapping (which I think is the cutest thing ever!), he gives high fives, and this morning Dave taught him how to click his tongue! He says mama and dada... though not always at the correct times. One of our new favorite games though is he'll say "mama" and I say "Grayson" and we go back and forth calling each others name :) I adore this game! But now he finds it more fun to say mama than dada which makes Dave sad so we'll be working on that. He also says kitty... and loves to chase the cats around the house saying kitty and laughing. If by chance they let him get close he gets so excited that he starts flapping his arms and screaming which of course scares them away. Because of this... no cute Grayson and kitty pictures yet. And it turns out that he is starting to learn animal noises... everytime we read a book with a cow and say moo he says "mmmmm" which I have taken to him saying moo. :) He is also getting quite good at cruising around the living room and will even let go and stand on his own. He will walk holding on to my hands and the other day was walking holding on to just one of my hands! I'm sure he'll be running around before we know it!

Aunty Laura came to visit a couple weeks ago and they had sooo much fun together. Though VERY sad... we did not get any pictures of them together. However... Aunty did go to Target with us and bought a few shirts and our new favorite toy!

Grayson loves making this sing it's big long song... but his most favorite part of this toy is that it has a volume switch on the bottom. Everytime I turn the volume down he flips it back over and turns up the volume all the way. With all the fun buttons on the front... this stupid little volume switch on the bottom is his favorite... go figure...

Since it's starting to get colder out, Boomer is inside more often which is of course VERY exciting to Grayson. His favorite thing to do is play with the tags on Boomer's collar... which is an improvement from trying to always poke Boomers eyes... I think Boomer is happy about this as well. :)

That's about it for now... I'll be better about updating now that I have a camera I can use again. Until next time... enjoy the random pictures and cute Grayson army crawling video below! :)

Grayson's first pumpkin!

Loves his books!

Ready to watch the big game with Daddy

Reading his book

Playing with Great-Grandma

Look out!

Music and Zoo Day

So the day started out like every other, Grayson and I were planning to go to the zoo so we got up and I fed him breakfast and then put him on the ground to crawl around while I ate. He crawled over to our radio/cd player that for some reason I have sitting on the ground... another fine example of my excellent baby proofing skills... and he turned on the radio. He seemed satisfied with the music coming out of the speakers and crawled away and into the living room. After a few minutes he must have decided he didn't like the song that was playing because he crawled back over, turned the radio off, and hit play on the cd player. He seemed happy with the selection in the cd player though because he crawled away and let the cd play in it's entirety. I have such a smart baby :)

Soon Cassie came over and we loaded both babies and both strollers into our car... not the Escape... the car! :) And we headed off towards the zoo. It was Grayson's nap time and I figured he would just fall asleep on the way there... no such luck. It is far to entertaining to have another baby riding with you in the back sleep to worry about things like napping! But we had a great day at the zoo!!! We saw giraffes up close because they were letting people feed them; we saw zebras and elephants and bears and penguins and lions and gorillas. I saw more animals but those are the big ones we saw up close that Grayson was interested in looking at. He seemed to like looking at all the animals but I got a couple good smiles while he watched one of the gorillas swinging between the trees.

Watching the zebras

Grayson and Mommy at the zoo!

Kaitlyn was trying to steal his Winnie the Pooh... flirting already :)

He finally passed out as I was standing in line to order a sandwich for lunch. I was just about to order and a little boy came over and was looking at Grayson in the stroller with a strange look on his face so I bent over to see what he was looking at and Grayson's face had fallen forward and was resting on his little snack tray and he was out! Poor kid!! He was so tired that he fell asleep before he even had a chance to eat lunch. I leaned his sit back and he turned his head and opened an eye like he was going to wake up but then his eye shut and didn't move for half an hour.

So sleepy!!!

Once we got home he decided he hadn't had enough animals for one day so he played with Boomer and Maverick for about an hour before taking another short nap.

Loves his puppy!

And his kitty!

His face in this picture just cracks me up

All in all we had a very good day! Even though he was so tired he was quite the trooper! And tonight he went to bed before 7 because he couldn't seem to keep his head up while eating dinner.

So sleepy!

And now... a couple random pictures.

Thanks for installing this gate Grandpa!

Daddy reading Grayson a bedtime story

Mommy and Grayson relaxing after dinner while Daddy cleans up :)