1st Thanksgiving

Colden's "Hand-Turkey" 

My little turkey

For Colden's first Thanksgiving, we flew out to Washington state to visit Mike's family.  It was Colden's first time in a plane...

And despite his 2nd ear infection, which flared up the night before, he did extremely well.  If he wasn't sleeping, he was making friends with everyone around him.

After we arrived in Washington, we went up to Bellingham - where I went to graduate school and where Mike and I first met...

...In the waiting room of his physical therapy office.  I sat in that very chair when I first saw Mike.

We then went to where we had our first date - Boundary Bay Brewery.



After meeting up with some old friends, we went down to the Seattle-Tacoma area to visit with Mike's family.

Mount Rainier.  Oh, how I miss the views!

It was nice to see Mike's family again, and to finally meet other family members

Left to right

Back Row:  sister-in-law Diana, me, Chris (Mike's brother), Mike, Colden, Aunt Krys, Bob (Mike's dad), David, Grandma Alice (Great Grandma to Colden), sister-in-law Katie, Alyssa, Bob (Mike's brother)

Front Row: Jeff, Linda, Hannah, Justine, Abby, Robert

Jim (Papa), Kathleen and Mike's mom (Nana)

Colden loved hanging out with his family

Cousin Kathleen, Papa and Colden

Cousin Kathleen and Colden

The cousins:  Alyssa, Justine, Hannah, Robert, Colden, David and Abby



In between playing, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast.

Even Colden enjoyed dinner with his sippy cup and pureed green beans.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  (Colden looks ready for his post-meal siesta)

Our Thanksgiving in Washington was a white one. Colden got to see snow for the first time.

(He was indifferent)



We had such a great time on this trip...

...It was hard to say goodbye.

Sleeping Bag

"Colden is standing in the bed, we need a sleeping bag"

That's right.  On Colden's last daily report card from daycare, his teachers said that because he is standing in his crib, he has been "promoted" from the crib to the big kid sleeping area in the infant room.  The big kid sleeping area is a completely enclosed, carpeted area where the kids sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. 

Over the weekend we bought Colden his first sleeping bag.

 

This isn't just any ordinary sleeping bag!  Colden's monkey sleeping bag comes in a cute monkey backpack... 

...and comes with a handy-dandy monkey flashlight and a sporty monkey water bottle.

Colden on his first day to school with his monkey backpack. 


(And in case you were wondering, Colden did very well sleeping in his sleeping bag.  He took two naps, each about 1.5 hours long...AND...he didn't even try to wiggle away.  For too long, anyways)


~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Cute pictures of my boy:

Colden would make my Grandpa Paul proud with his hat

 

7 Months Old

OK, so Colden's 7-month-old post is two weeks too late because Colden had an ear infection and Mike had pneumonia the week that he turned 7 months.  Both boys had temperatures of 102 degrees, so both boys needed a little extra TLC that week.  Mommy snuggles to the rescue!

The bunny picture therefore had to be temporarily postponed.  But don't worry, once Colden was back to his smiley old self, we sandwiched him between the two bunnies once again.

(3 days)

(1 month)

 (2 months)

                                           (3 months)

(4 months)

(5 months)

(6 months)

(7 months)

After Colden and Mike were feeling better, we decided to celebrate by taking Colden to the park and putting him in a real swing for the first time.

At first he wasn't so sure...

But once he started swinging, he loved it!

Over the past few weeks, Colden has mastered the skill of sitting up, as you can see in this video:

When we come into his room in the morning, we find him like this:

But now that he can sit without any problem, he has moved on to standing.  All he wants to do is stand!  He will grab onto anything that is within reach and try to stand up.  His new favorite activity is to use whoever is sitting nearby as a jungle gym:

He has gotten so good at standing that he prefers standing and looking down at the books during story time, rather than lying down and looking up:

Believe it or not, we have already lowered the crib two notches down from the highest setting.  It looks like we may have to lower it again.  We also had to put on the crib rail protectors so that he didn't leave teeth marks in the wood of his crib.