Jimmy's brother's family flew back to Mongolia Wednesday. They stayed with us Tuesday night. Nathan and his cousin, who is only 3 weeks older, always seemed to find each other. Here they are helpfully unfolding clean, folded laundry...

...and plotting to do something naughty, no doubt.



Here is my little man hiding. I came out from the back of the apartment and couldn't find him anywhere. I was getting a little scared when I noticed something behind the chair: a little person! I had been putting the large gray circular chair in front of the bookcase to prevent little hands from pulling down the books and tearing out pages, but he got clever and figured out how to crawl behind the chair to get to the books. Oh well, how can I be mad at a baby who wants to read The Case for Christ??

Pictures and thoughts

Not that many of you care too much about my musings, but I thought I'd write some anyway. This morning I was at the grocery store and was buying peaches. Seeing the little stickers on every single peace made me think about the jobs I wouldn't want. One is putting the stickers on produce. Another is tying together all the hundreds of balloons that fly above the car dealerships near our home (on this particular stretch of road you can find any kind of car you're looking for because there are about 15 dealerships).

Anyway, here's what you really came for: pictures of Nathan.

A man with good taste.

Just because he's so stinkin' cute.

Ripping up all of the trash you can find is a tiring job.

Walking like a pro!!

my life is over

According to one of the women in my church, my life as I have known it is officially over. The reason: Nathan is walking. He still definitely prefers crawling and when we encourage him to stand and walk with us if he's really excited about getting somewhere he'll plop down and go, very quickly, crawling away. He took his first few steps yesterday and walked a number of times today. I've got a couple of cute videos if you want to see them, so let me know and I'll email them to you. Other than that, just keep me in your prayers, that I'm able to retain what little sanity I have left! ;)

Pictures from Vacation

We've been back in CA for about 10 days now and I'm just getting around to posting pictures. The task seemed to daunting, therefore the delay. As I look through them, however, I realize that I didn't take many pictures. Here are some from our two weeks with family in VA.

Nathan and my mom :)


Bath time in Buckingham. Yes, we have running water indoors. Nathan splashes so much, though, that the porch was a better place for his bath.

The cousins! The last time D & C were in the US, T was the only grandchild (S soon followed)...it was a fun week with the four of them!

The bouganvilla I came home to. :) Thanks for watering, Katie!

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. :)