On Hiatus

Hi everyone out there in blog world...I'll be on a blog break for a couple of weeks while I'm with Nathan out of town. Since I'll actually be with most of you, though, I'm sure you won't mind missing the Nathan pictures since you'll get the real thing!

1st Birthday Party

On Friday my little man will be 1 and I can't believe it. The year has gone by so quickly. At the same time, it's hard to imagine that a year ago I was still pregnant. Anyway, here are some pictures from his birthday party, which we had this afternoon (Sunday, 7/1/07).

His birthday cake from Costco which was SO good. He didn't actually get any of this. I made the babies "cupcakes" which were really more like muffins that were really healthy (they had all whole wheat flour, wheat germ, carrots, apple juice concentrate, etc...) with light cream cheese frosting and very little sugar. But we'll pretend that he enjoyed this cake (the adults sure did!!).

This is Nathan with his buddy, S, from church. She's 10, in Jimmy's Sunday School class, and when she sees me drive up has been known, on more than one occasion, to meet me at the car and wait by the door while I get out to ask if she can hold Nathan. :) I make her wait until we're inside on the carpet instead of outside on the asphalt!
This is Nathan enjoying his birthday cupcake. I was feeding it to him and got up to fill his sippy cup with water. I left the half-eaten cupcake on the plate. When I got back he had taken matters into his own hands, literally.
This is him after he realized we were all laughing at the fact that he was stuffing his face with cupcake.
Here's Nathan with his very good buddy and his bud's mom. Nathan literally starts squealing and screaming when he sees his little buddy, J. J likes to crawl over to me and climb in my lap. They're cute together. :)
Nathan opening his present from Katie, which included a barn. He also got a tractor with some animals that ride on it. Very appropriate considering we'll be in Buckingham in a week!
Party aftermath. And the sad part is, the party wasn't even here. Oh well. Nathan's playing with the best gift of all: a gift bag.

Nathan's birthday present!

We went on a walk this morning after breakfast and before naptime, and apparently sitting in a stroller and yelling at ducks is quite draining!
But here's what I really wanted to post about. We went to Babies R Us yesterday because I wanted a few things I haven't found anywhere else (mainly stick sunscreen because Nathan wipes the lotion in his eyes, causes swollen eyes, rash, etc.), and we decided to get his birthday present. It took us a while to decide on something and meanwhile Nathan was getting irritated that we weren't buying it all. We finally decided on a firetruck ride-on toy that has buttons and lights and all that exciting stuff, and that he can also walk behind and push. We decided that since (1) he doesn't know when his birthday is anyway, (2) we'll be flying to VA on his birthday, (3) we'd like to take it to his party Sunday, and (4) we're impatient, we'd give it to him today. He likes it, definitely, and I think will like it more once he figures how to get from point A to point B by either walking it or once he can push it and keep up without falling. Oh, and in honor of his birthday present, he's wearing his firetruck onesie. :)

not a lot going on...

Sorry this hasn't been updated more often. I haven't been taking many picutres lately. In fact, I don't think I'd taken any since our last trip to the beach. We went again yesterday. We have been asked to lead a college Bible study for our church so we met at the beach to decide when to meet, what to study, and what kind of fun things to do. We had quite a number of people for the size of our church, which was really encouraging.

Here are some pictures of Nathan. :) He decided to get a bit more friendly with the sand this time, including rolling around in it (that's why his face is covered). I think he tried to put some in his mouth when it was on his hand, but he didn't actively try to eat it. I guess the nasty gritty taste is quite the deterrent. At the bottom is Jimmy trying to convince him to come back to the group and eventually he just had to pick up the little guy who wouldn't follow the leader.

My Men

The other day Nathan spent at least 30 minutes, perhaps even 45 just cruising from one end of the coffee table to the other. Right now it's cleared off because if we don't clear it, he will (which is not so useful to a mom who has enough junk to pick up off the floor) and is acting as a barrier to the balcony. I like to have the sliding glass door open and the screen door closed so we get some breeze, but I don't like the thought of Nathan either opening the screen door (we can't lock it) or pushing through the screen. So, the coffee table, which is quite large and heavy, is the barrier to the outside. We thought about putting it in one of the closets because we like the open space in the living room area for Nathan to have plenty of floor area to play on, but it's the perfect height for him to pull to standing and guard the balcony. I didn't realize how entertaining cruising from one end of a 4-foot table to the other could be, but there are pretty flowers on the balcony to see! I don't know what he's pointing here, but I think when he was pointing he was probably screaming (which he does when he's excited about anything). Oh, and you're seeing correctly; he always points with his middle finger. I will probably try to curb that behavior when he's starting school but for now, it's pretty cute.

Here's Jimmy on his first father's day with a baby. We celebrated last year, but it's different this year with almost a full year of fathering under his belt. The card that Nathan got him had a sticker which he proudly displayed. :)

What?

I turned on the TV today to the local news. The first two stories were quite disturbing. In the first story, a child (pre-schooler, I'm assuming) brought little baggies of heroin to school and passed them to his classmates saying they were candy. The children are all fine; the teachers called the paramedics once they figured out what was going on. The second story was about how a neighborhood Applebee's served a margarita (instead of apple juice) to a 2-year-old in a sippy cup. The restaurant said that they keep the apple juice and the pre-mixed margarita in identical plastic containers behind the counter. Yeah, because no one could have seen that that would be a problem someday. In light of these two stories, I hope you have enjoyed your time with Nathan until now. He will not be leaving the apartment until he's 30. You are welcome to visit.

Beach Pictures

We took Nathan to the beach for the first time today with the purpose of doing the "beach thing." We've taken him before but just walked a little, mostly in the pier. Today he got to wear his bathing suit and matching hat (which he actually kept on! I was quite impressed), play in the sand, and get in the water. At first he really didn't know what to do about the sand. Here he is thinking about it and what his next move should be. At first, when we put him down on the sheet, he crawled right for it because that's what he does now. But as soon as he touched it he had to think twice about it.
After a little thinking, though (and getting placed on the sand by our friend Katie) he decided that it was alright.
Then we took him down to the water. It was a little chilly. He's not upset in this picture--I'm pretty sure he's smiling.
But it was a little chilly so he was a little serious (and though he was only in the water for a grand total of maybe 2 minutes, he was shivering a little when he got out, so we put his shirt back on him).
Here he is going for someone else's yellow ball. Nathan LOVES balls. We've got several and though they've lost their initial charm, he does enjoy grabbing them with both hands and doing a baby version of double dribbling, which mainly just means throwing it down as hard as possible, watching it roll away, and crawling after it to do it again.
The best of all was making a drum out of the cooler. Banging on things, anything, is always a winner.
Now he's fast asleep, and since his noise machine makes the sound of waves, he's probably dreaming about the ocean. :)