Today, Grant....

- Ate Kix for the first time and liked them! Until now, I've been giving him a bowl of sugary cereal (Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Golden Grahams), and I'll fish the cereal out of the milk and give it to him while we're eating breakfast. Then I'll use the sugary milk to put in his sippy cup, since he's had such a hard time adjusting to regular milk. But this can be a lot of work, and I know it's probably not the best for him to be eating that much sugary cereal all the time! So today I tried Kix. He actually sat on my lap to eat because he was extra clingy this morning and kept crying when I tried to put him in his highchair. And it was really cute....he'd reach into my bowl and pick out a couple of pieces of cereal from the top of my bowl, and fed them to me! It's like he just knew what was mine and what was his. And he ate up the Kix and really seemed to enjoy them! He's also done a lot better about drinking non-doctored milk lately, so I think it's good to wean him off the Cinnamon Toast Crunch before he comes to expect it every day!

- Climbed onto the coffee table, and did it a few times in a row! He's been in a climbing stage in the past week or two; he's always climbing into his toy crates and sometimes gets stuck because he's not tall enough to make it out easily! And he LOVES to put things into containers and baskets, then reach in and take them out. So he'll throw something into his bathtub, then reach in and try to retrieve it, and today he actually fell in headfirst! He's done it a couple times before so I didn't really worry, and he didn't even make a peep when he did it!


These are a couple of pictures from a couple of weeks ago; I'm still working on uploading our most recent pictures. I think he has a mouthful of biscuit in the first one. The second was when he was playing with/being tickled by Daddy on the couch. Notice that he's still just got three teeth on the bottom; he has a second tooth on the left side that's been in now for a couple of months, but there's no sign of the one on the right! Hopefully it's down there somewhere!

Like father, like son??

Dean and Grant have great fun together at the dinner table; when Grant is in an especially good mood, he'll make faces and Dean will copy him (which just makes him want to do it more!) I would say that Dean is teaching bad habits except that Grant is usually the one who starts it! Here are a few faces from dinner a couple of weeks ago:Here's his new fish face that he discovered himself a few weeks ago:
I'm not sure what this face is!
A couple more silly faces:

What a difference a year makes! Yesterday Grant and I went to get the Nissan inspected at CarSpa. It's a chain, but isn't located in many places (I had to find their website yesterday morning to check what time they opened). That's such a shame, because it's about the nicest place you can go to wait while your car is being worked on. It far surpasses any of those dirty, hole-in-the-wall lube/inspection joints; this place is huge and super clean inside, with a coffee bar (free of charge). There's also a big area with kids' playground-type equipment, with slides, a playhouse, etc. And there are windows along one wall that allow you to watch the cars as they go through the car wash. There's even a little landing area with steps for little kids to go up and watch!

Well, we went there last January to get the car inspected, and of course Grant was only about 6 weeks old then. He, of course, slept the entire time, and I remember seeing the play equipment and thinking he was nowhere near being able to enjoy that stuff. Well, this time he definitely was! He loved exploring it all, and he rode down the slides and was amazed by the little playhouse. The entire time we were there, he was moving! At one point, Great Day Houston (a local talk show) was on the TV, and Grant walked up to it just as they were doing a segment on women's bras. He put his hand on the TV right as it went to a full shot of one of the models, wearing only a bra and underwear! I really don't think he meant anything by it, but I was a little embarrassed and was glad to see that nobody saw him!

It was really rainy out yesterday so nobody was getting their cars washed....I think he would have loved to watch them get sprayed and scrubbed by those machines! But we got a rain check for our free car wash, so we will have to go back soon and see what he thinks of it.

Trying again

Grant is taking a nap but we have some people coming to our house in a few minutes to work on making our house more energy efficient, so we'll hopefully be able to lower our energy bills a bit. It's a free service that our friend Carissa told us about, so we'll see what they do! We've noticed that, with all of our windows downstairs, it gets cold in the winter very quickly. So hopefully this will help to plug up some of those leaks.

Okay, here are some pictures from last week. Here's Grant answering his phone......we haven't taught him that it's impolite to talk on the phone while eating!The day after Grant and I got home from Baton Rouge, I brought in our suitcase and he had fun climbing inside. He and the cats are very similar in this respect; they both like to climb in (and on top of) suitcases and empty boxes.
This pretty tree in our backyard suddenly changed colors and lost its leaves within about a week! The leaves turned a pretty orange/red color for those 10 days or so! Dean and I took turns raking them all up a few days later....one of us would rake while the other pushed Grant in his swing.

After Dean came home early from his trip to surprise us, we took Grant outside to swing. He always love when Dean pushes him because he plays fun games with him! Grant has started this thing where sometimes he'll tilt his head to the side and wait for you to mirror him. When you do the same thing, he laughs! I don't know what's so funny about it, but he likes it!

More pictures

This past week has been kind of hard....Grant and I both have colds, and for some reason I just haven't had a lot of time to be on the computer. It seems like we're on about a six week schedule with colds.....Grant (or both of us) seem to pick one up about that often! But they still don't seem to bother him much....I don't think he acts much differently than normal, except for maybe sleeping a little more (at night).

Anyway, he's been doing some funny things this past week or 10 days:

-Last week, we went to the resale shop and bought him one of those Sesame Street pop-up toys, where you push on a button and one of the characters pops out of a door and sings a song. He doesn't push the buttons like he's supposed to do yet, but he loves to pick it up and carry it with him. And when the songs play, he's started to "dance," which means that he sways back and forth, side to side. He has also started to dance when he hears music on the radio or on some of his other toys. I am sad to say that he has just about as much rhythm as his mom and dad!

-He loves his toy cars more and more now, and will make a "vroom" sound when pushing them along the floor.

-Lately we have been sleeping in later than usual (esp on the weekends) and sometimes Dean will get Grant and bring him into bed with us for a few minutes. A lot of times, I'm taking my temperature when Dean brings him in. A couple of days ago, Grant saw that my drawer was opened, and he found my thermometer and stuck it in my mouth!

Well, I intended to post a few pictures but Grant is not being very patient at the moment, so I will have to do that later!

Wow!

This is an amazing story, so I had to share it with anyone who might be reading.

Yesterday Grant and I were at Carter's (children's clothing store), and a lady was standing in the same section as us, looking very pregnant. I asked when she was due, and she said she's having twins, but isn't due until April. In her hands, she had four pairs of boys' pajamas, two each of two different sets. She said that she was taking advantage of the good sales in winter clothes, because she already has twins. But I noticed that the pajamas were sized 12 months, so I asked how old her twins are. 10 months old!!! So.....she has twin boys who (presumably) will be a year old in March, and she's pregnant with another set of twins (a boy and girl) who are due in April! And she has a 5-year old boy too. WOW!!!!

I think I just stood there with my jaw open wide for a couple seconds. She was quick to say that this was NOT planned, but she actually seemed like she was pretty calm about it all. She kept talking to Grant and asking questions about him, and was a really nice lady. But that just boggles my mind.....that would be like me having two Grants right now, and giving birth to two more babies within the next few days!

My life suddenly doesn't seem so difficult!

Trip to Baton Rouge

We went to Baton Rouge last week because Dean had a few days' worth of meetings, and Grant and I always love an excuse to go someplace new to explore! We got there on Monday night and had dinner with one of Dean's old friends from Alabama, Gabe, and his wife Diane. They had us over for pizza and we watched the national championship game. Gabe is the new bassoon teacher at LSU, so they've just moved there in the past few months. Grant of course wanted to explore everything, and he was particularly interested in their little kitten. He chased her all over the place! Diane is an amazing artist, and showed me some of her work. I never knew there were so many different ways to create art.....I guess I kinda just assumed it was all painting on canvas!

Anyway, we had a bad night that night at the hotel, as I had feared. Grant has just simply outgrown those pack n' plays, which is what they give you when you request a crib at a hotel. He woke up multiple times, and had to be rocked back to sleep each time. Dean hardly got any sleep, so the next morning, Grant and I explored around the city a little bit and then drove home! It was kind of a bummer, because it's a four-hour trip. But Grant did better than expected with the drive, so we just learned our lesson.....it's probably going to be best to avoid trips where he has to sleep in his pack n' play for multiple nights in a row.

One thing I learned, though.....even though we were only there for less than 24 hours, I was very pleasantly surprised by Baton Rouge. It's not a dirty industrial city like I had imagined. There were some really beautiful parts of it, and it seems like a really nice town! It's possible that Dean will be transferred there with work at some point, so at least now I'd be okay with moving there!

And something kinda fun....Dean was planning to rent a car and come home on Friday. Well, on Thursday afternoon, he called and we were talking for a while. Then the doorbell rang, and I told him to hang on a second. I looked out the door and could tell that it was a guy on a cell phone. Then it hit me that it was Dean! So he had come home early and surprised me....what a nice surprise, especially because it's a little hard being on your own with a toddler for a more than a few days in a row!

This weekend

We went to Madisonville this weekend to visit my good friend Margaret, her husband Doug, and their new little boy David. He is two and a half months old , weighs over 16 pounds (wow!), and is SO cute! And he's also a very good baby....he'll just lay in his bouncy seat and look around, completely content. I don't remember exactly what Grant did at that age, but I'm pretty sure that he never was that easy!

Then we all drove to College Station for a reunion of our accounting program at A&M. We saw a few of our friends from college, which was fun. I was blown away by how modern and state-of-the-art everything was in the business building now. It's hard to believe that technology changes so much in less than 6 years!

Here are a few pictures of David (and all of us):

More pictures

Here are some more pictures from New Year's weekend. Grant has started to get really excited about bubbles when we take him to the library, and once in a while we'll pull them out at home too. The kitties also have fun with this....they usually sit perched on the couch and try to pop them too!

During New Year's weekend, Dean washed one of the cars outside, and Grant had fun being out there with him for a while.
Oops....the sippy cup fell underneath the car!
Doing his fish face....he likes to do this because he knows it makes us laugh!What a cool kid!
Licking a spoon with peanut butter.
During bathtime....
One of Grant's favorite things to do is running around naked after bathtime. Surprisingly, we haven't had many accidents when he does this!
He loves to run from room to room, and he just laughs and laughs when we chase him and catch him!

Pictures

Here are some pictures from New Year's weekend....we've had quite a bit of cold weather for the past couple of weeks (aside from these past couple of days), so I went out and bought Grant a warm jacket the day after Christmas. It seems to keep him really warm.....we'll go outside with him and freeze our tails off while he's sitting comfortably in his swing! Here's the jacket and gloves I bought for him....the gloves are WAY too big, but he actually doesn't try to pull them off like I would have expected. And at least he'll get to wear them next year! I love this picture....
Grant giving Daddy a kiss....we couldn't get him to do this when any of the grandparents were here, but he does like to give kisses. Sometimes you'll ask him to give you one, then he'll keep doing it over and over again without being asked!
It's time to come inside, and Grant doesn't enjoy that part very much!
In his A&M jersey, before the A&M/Penn State game. Unfortunately the Aggies still lost!

Terrible twos....at thirteen months??!

We've had a rough time for the past few weeks! I don't want to say that every hour of every day is horrible (far from that), but we definitely have a curious and headstrong toddler on our hands! Grant is discovering so many new things and makes up his mind about things he wants to do, and it's becoming hard to find things to distract him anymore. For example, he is very interested in electrical outlets; we've baby-proofed them, but any time something is plugged in, he sets his mind on pulling it out! He especially wanted to do this with the Christmas tree. Any time Grant disappeared for a couple of minutes, you could pretty much guarantee that's where he was! And as we're telling him "no," it's hard not to smile because he looks so darn cute.....he goes up to it, then looks back and forth with a little sly smile on his face because he knows he's doing something he's not supposed to do! Aahh! That little stinker! Dean has been slapping his hand quite a bit, but I don't think it hurts or scares him much, because he goes right back and does it again!

So....it's just been one of those months where it seems like nothing is going right. I definitely don't want him to learn that he can play with things that are dangerous, but it's so hard to know how to discipline at this age. I know that consistency is the key, so I think it's just a matter of staying on top of him. He knows what's wrong; he's just trying to see if we'll stop him every time!

Another thing we're dealing with is fits. He loves to be outside (even in this cold weather!), and no matter how long we stay outside, he cries and gets mad when we come in! Also, if we're out doing errands and it's time to get back in the car, sometimes he makes it almost impossible to strap him in! He is so strong!! And if he wants to go into a room (i.e. laundry room/kitty litter box room) and I shut the door before he can pull it open and walk in, he will sometimes clench his fists and fall down on the floor crying!

These situations are easier to handle....I just walk away from him and let him cry for a second (that's usually all it takes), and quite often I also laugh because he looks pretty cute when he gets really mad like that! I think all of it comes down to curiosity- at this age, he wants to explore everything. And by putting him in his carseat or bringing him back into the house, he's taken away from a place where he wants to be at that moment!

But....all this to say, I am completely amazed by him and have a wonderful time with him most of the time. It's just that this stage is a little bit harder (in some ways) than when he was five months old! I read in a book that one-year-olds are very selfish....they still want to make sure that mom and dad are there, but they're mainly interested in exploring their world. And they're not happy when they aren't allowed to do that!

Pictures from Christmas week.....finally!

Wow, Christmas went by in a flash and I have had such little time to do things on the computer, even though Dean has been home for much of the time! Anyway, here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Dean's first day off was Dec 19 (Weds), and we made a trip up into town to visit the Galleria (I always love to go there at Christmastime to see the giant Christmas tree and all the decorations). Grant was NOT a very good boy on this trip, and this picture somewhat indicates his frustration! He wasn't happy being pushed in his stroller, and wanted to walk everywhere, which is hard when you're in a crowded mall! So we ended up leaving earlier than we'd planned. We let him sleep in the car, then ate lunch at Niko Niko's, one of our favorite restaurants from our dating days. Grant enjoyed sitting and eating outside, so the entire trip wasn't a complete loss! But at the Galleria, there's an entire wing almost filled completely with expensive children's stores, one after another. I was in awe at some of the prices for baby clothes, and I felt completely out of touch with the people in there, who were actually really shopping for their own kids (and not just looking at the price tags in amazement!).

Mama and Grant next to our Christmas tree:
We bought a SwifferVac, and Thursday was the first day we tried it out. We have a lot of tile in our house (almost the entire downstairs), and I am horrible at finding time to take out the broom to sweep (and it's not very effective anyway). The SwifferVac is great! It's motorized but runs on a charge (so no batteries), and it's a perfect little vacuum for hard floors. Here's Grant trying it out. He loves to walk with us and talk to it when we're using it.
We went to the park that day too. Here's Grant on his favorite playground equipment (I still can't think of the name, darn it!):
He also loves to swing....here he is on the park swing:
Then he sat on Daddy's lap and they both swung together (he likes this too!):

Yikes! You're going too fast, Daddy!
On Friday, the 21st, Dean's family came to town. We went to lunch at Boudreaux's cajun restaurant (another favorite) after Corie and Steve flew in. Then we tried to drive down to Galveston, but we had a horrible time just trying to get to the interstate (people leaving early from work). So we ended up staying home and just playing outside for a while. Here's Grant riding down the slide in our backyard with Daddy:
Getting sugars from Nana!
Grant really likes Corie; he usually likes for her to hold him, and for more than just a few seconds!
Grant riding on his swing the next day. Nana was making faces at him and he loved it! He LOVES being on this swing....even when it's really cold outside (like the past couple of days), he points to go outside and could sit on that swing for an hour. Every time we bring him in, he cries and throws a little fit because he doesn't want to come in. Fun fun!
Drinking some water from Nana's glass:
Grant got some great gifts for Christmas; he got a little SpiderMan friend (basically, a doll for little boys!) from Steve and this Sesame Street couch/bed from Corie. He has great fun on this couch! While we were opening gifts (he still doesn't really get the point of that), he laid down on it, as if he was completely bored with this whole present-opening thing! The couch also folds open into a little bed, and Grant loves jumping and crashing into it.
Here he is sitting on his couch the next morning:
When my parents came to town on Christmas Eve, it was a beautiful (but cold) day. We took a walk to the park, and here's Grant flying through the air in our driveway (a little too high for my liking, but Grant enjoys it!):
With Grandma:
With Grandma and Grandpa. We had a good time that night, opening presents and eating seafood gumbo for dinner.
Christmas morning. This box was Grant's favorite toy; a few days before Christmas, he discovered it under the tree and loved to carry it around and chew on it whenever he saw it. It was a gift for me! There was also a present (for Grant) that was just wrapped in a colored box, with no paper covering it. Two or three times before Christmas, Grant went for the same box and took the top off, then tore the tissue paper out and left the present just sitting there!
Wearing a new big-boy froggy towel he got for Christmas!Grant and Daddy went out to play and swing that evening while I made dinner. Here he's coming back inside on Daddy's shoulder (and not throwing a fit.....yet!):

In front of our Christmas tree that night:
Oh yeah, Scooter really likes Grant's couch too!