Bye-Bye April

April is over and we are looking forward to May.  We'll get to try out another plane trip down to see Uncle Sean graduate.  All of our California family will be coming out too so they'll get to see a more active and speedy Colin.

Colin has been improving his crawling skills and has ventured a bit into the standing arena.  It's a bit like the cartoons that don't know they ran off the cliff and should be falling, until they look down.  He'll accidentally let go or need to grab a toy with two hands and stand for a couple seconds.  When he notices he's standing...down he goes.  He's learning the rules of the road and some laws of physics as he's received a couple bumps and bruises in his travels.

He's more into toys, or rather hair, buttons, boxes, furniture, sticks, empty mayonnaise container, book corners, tethers holding toys and some random things on the ground.  Everything goes into his mouth.  "Yucky" is now a contender for first word.  He's also recognizing a lot of what we say.  He'll recognize names of toys and things.  He'll also mimic some actions.  Shaking the head is a fun game and the hand sign for 'more' are the most commonly mimicked.  New things pop up almost daily.

Here is the April album:

Happy Easter

Colin is approaching 8 months and celebrated his first Easter. He did very well grabbing eggs and try to eat them. The Easter Bunny left plenty of eggs to find and a basket that was nowhere near as interesting as things that had tags on them. He's a busy crawler keeping mommy and daddy on our toes. He's also quite the chatter box, don't know which side that came from.  The "D" and "T" sounds are pretty good as are any sounds from the tongue.  We are taking guesses on his first word/phrase. 

1. Da-da
2. Ma-ma
3. Hobie, no
4. Hi
5. I love you
6. Antidisestablishmentarianism

What is your guess?  Post a comment and hopefully we won't have to wait too long.


 Here are a few pictures from his Easter day.

The egg hunting ground

Stuff from the Easter Bunny

Trying on his Easter hat

plastic eggs are delicious

Stupid video upload

It wouldn't allow the video to upload in the last post and I didn't want to lose all the work.  I made a new post with the video that was supposed to be in the last post.

Speed Demon Daredevil

Colin is now fully mobile with "Baby ADHD". He doesn't really care where he's going as long as he is going.  He does love his mobility.  He throws caution to the wind and just goes.  He's figuring out that the floor and the table legs don't feel good when he runs into them.  He recovers quickly and is back at it again.  When he's tired of crawling he'll fuss his way over to pull himself up with help to walk around.  He's got a pretty good stomp/walk.  We had a week of beautiful weather and so we were outside on the grass.  He's pretty cautious about the grass.  I guess the texture just isn't right.  We'll be able to enjoy it again when it warms up more.  It's pretty incredible the progress he's made over the last week or two.


He tried some more foods now as well.  Yogurt is an okay addition to food as long as it isn't too strong.  Cauliflower is okay too.   We're figuring out the list of foods to some, little by little.

Colin's vocabulary is growing too.  Spitting and raspberry's are what he does mostly but he'll surprise us with some various sounds now and then.  He's concentrating more on what mommy and daddy are doing and trying to mimic  sometimes (at least it seems that way).

He also is developing some games to play too.  Peek-a-boo is still a big hit.  He'll swing a toy around toward our faces and giggle when we 'eat' it, then try it again.  He plays his own baby version of fetch.  He'll crawl around chasing a toy and then grab at it or swing his arm around until it moves and then chase it down to repeat again.

And here is March's album:

Colin's a Crawlin'

Spring is here - at least it feels like it.  Colin has been spending his time enjoying walks in the stroller, playing with Hobie at the beach and just hanging out on the porch.  He loves the warm weather.

Some great news is that Mr. Furious no longer makes an appearance at bed time, which is around 7:00 just after reading a book and getting a last bit of milk for the night.  Colin loves bedtime and falls to sleep quickly after laying down in his crib.  The bad news is that Mr. Furious now arrives sometime between 4:00 and 4:30 and isn't replaced by Mr. Handsome until he gets up for the day, around 6:00 or 6:30.  We're hoping that daylight savings will push out his furious time close enough to wake-up time so that we can just get up for the day then.  We'll keep you posted :)

Happy 7 month birthday Colin!

Happy leap day

February has finished and it seems like fall still.  I don't know if the groundhog saw his shadow or not but there should be something about winter not starting.  Our biggest snowfall, which was only a couple inches, was around Halloween.  Maybe it's better that Colin's first winter wasn't a harsh one.

Colin has reached a few big milestones.  He now has his 2 lower teeth.  Taking a picture of them has proven difficult.  When a 'good' one was taken it was difficult to tell if you were looking at teeth.  Hopefully we'll be able to get something for the March album.  We're going to go ahead and call it crawling.  He can prop himself up on his knees and lunge forward.  It usually ends in a faceplant, but not always.  He can move forward, just not very well.  Hopefully the crawling video will be another great March addition.  He has also grown up and moved out.  He sleeps in his room now which he seems okay with.  Naps are no problem but he gets up every couple hours during the night.  He doesn't have his night feeding anymore but he is getting up more often than when he did.

He is definitely recognizing food we eat and that causes the mouth to go into "big-boy mouth" mode.  That is the mouth open as wide as possible and the tongue wiggling around in there.  Luckily he's not fussy when he can't have our food...yet.  He eats plenty of his food.  Sweet potatoes and apples are on the top of the list.

He is more interactive with his environment now.  Mommy's hair is probably at the top of the list but he'll grab for anything in passing.  We've dug into his toy box and he'll play with his toys for a while now.  That usually entails swinging them around until the fly off somewhere and, of course, eating them.  He also seems to enjoy music.  He'll go the the library sometimes to listen to Ms Melissa sing and sing along.  He'll sing along with the baby music or mommy/daddy music on the radio.  Music will often produce a smile.

I guess that is all for now.  Here's the Feb album.

Yea!! 6 Months Old

       So we think that Colin is undergoing training to be a cage fighter.  He spends most of his awake time going through a pretty rigorous workout of push-ups, crunches, pull-ups and rapid leg squats.  He also is working on his attacks with his arms.  We're surprised he hasn't left any black eyes or bruises on us from his vicious arm chops.  Needless to say, he is quite active.  He's still working on crawling and sitting up.  He can sit on his own if he's propped and can scoot backwards pretty good.  His push-up clears the floor all the way to his toes but he doesn't get his knees under him very often.  He rolls quite a bit too but not to move very far.
   After letting us know, at 10p, 10:30, 11, 11:30....(you get the idea), that he was big enough to move out on his own we finally moved the crib to his room.  He's been doing fine but hasn't been sleeping very well for about a week.  That could be teething or just some random baby reason....we only know that we don't sleep.
   He's been eating more real foods.  Apples can be added to the 'like' list and peas (just like his daddy) can be added to the 'gross' list.  He loves eating and taking sips of water.

     We are looking forward to him crawling and adding more sounds to his growing baby vocabulary.  February is a short month so the album of pictures for the month aren't too far off.

We're mobile..kinda

So Colin is able to move around just a bit.  At this point it's more slowly scooting backwards.  He can roll front to back and back to front fairly well.
The other reason for the title is that blogger gave us some options for mobile phone viewing too.  Hopefully that means you can view it on your smartphone too.

 Colin bouncing away

Colin has done pretty well this month.  He becoming more vocal and using new sounds all the time.  He's unfortunately discovered the very high pitch whine.  Most of the others are just adorable.  His mobility was mentioned above.  During the day Colin will usually cook or bake with daddy since it seems to occupy him pretty well.  He's eating some different foods now as well as drinking plenty of milk.  On the list of likes he has: two types of sweet potatoes and banana.  On the dislike or not care for list are: carrots, rice-cereal and avocado.  If those get mixed with one he does like though then it's devoured.  He loves eating foods and taking drips of water from a cup.  The 'present' he'll leave us in his diaper now is just impressive.  I guess that's to be expected when the diet starts to change.

Things have been going well overall.  Colin had to fight off another cold.  We haven't really had much snow.  Bunny and Hobie are still alive and kickin'.  Here are the pictures for Jan:

Missing Dec pics

A couple of pictures were left out of the December album.  Here those are:

Leaving milk and cookies for Santa.

Jumpy seat is pretty awesome

Out with 2011

Happy New Year everybody.  Colin went to his first New Year's party and he enjoyed it as long as he didn't interact with anyone else for more than 2 minutes.  He seems to be recognizing people aren't mommy and daddy... something to work on.  We are looking into 'mommy and me' swimming lessons and also a play group through the mommy group he sometimes goes to.  Hopefully he is able to get some social skills.  He wasn't happy at the last mommy group when another baby borrowed his toy.
Colin is able to do plenty now and the list keeps growing.  He'll reach out for either of us now which is very cute.  He will experiment with taking out the pacifier and putting it back in.  He's batting about .500 on that.  He's pretty good at pushup and crunches.  He'll roll from front to back but the other way we just need one more inch.  We blame the bulky diapers.  He's tried a few foods; rice cereal wasn't a big hit but banana and sweet potatoes were.  Peas and avocado are on deck.

Enjoy his December album: