Here are some overdue pictures from a few weeks ago. During the first week of June, Grant and I went down to Moody Gardens' Palm Beach area with a few friends. I bought a season pass.....kids under 4 are free, and I only have to pay $25 for the entire summer. What a good deal! Moody Gardens is about 35 miles from our house, so I end up using about 4 gallons of gas to get there and back (which these days is pretty expensive!). But I'm going to try to go once every two weeks with him.....we already made our second trip last week, and I think we'll go when Dean takes a few days off around July 4.

The place is really neat.....it's like a water theme park designed especially for little kids. They have a couple of big pools, plus an area with slides and another area with all kinds of things that splash water all over them! Grant has been a little apprehensive when we first get there each time. And he's still not crazy about the slides, but last week he got to the point where he would just run out into the pools with no fear. Yikes!

Playing with Daddy on the couch later that night.......he fell while we were at Palm Beach and scraped up his nose pretty good (it will be more obvious in later pictures from our trip to AL).


My parents came to visit the following Monday, June 9. Grant entertained them for a while (it usually takes him a few minutes to warm up to visitors, but then he gets into show-off mode!). Then we went to the pool that afternoon. I don't have any pool pictures, but he had a great time and really enjoyed sitting in his float.

Afterwards, we came back to the house and Grant found my dad's shoes. He figured out how to put them on and was busy walking around with them on for the next ten minutes. Ever since, he has been enamored with shoes! He takes ours out of our closets and tries to put them on. It's especially funny looking when he grabs one of my strappy heeled shoes and attempts to wear those!!






My mom took videos of him, and he got very curious as to what she was looking at!

So proud of my little boy!

I am so proud of Grant.....he did wonderful in the nursery all week! His teachers were two ladies he's never stayed with before (Laura and Tina), and every day they said that he was "a joy to have". Wow!! We've never heard this comment when we've dropped Grant off before! He always cried the first few minutes, but then was able to calm down. I think a big difference was that this week, he was actually in a class with kids right around his age (and not 5-6 months younger, who aren't walking or are just starting to walk). So they went outside a lot to play, which was probably a good distraction for him.

Yesterday I accidentally spotted him (and he spotted me) while my VBS kids were in music time, and his class was taking a buggy ride. I went out and stood with them for a few minutes while they watched music. Tina (his teacher) told me that he had been a social butterfly.....he waved or pointed to people he recognized as he rode on the buggy. And when the songs played at music time, he'd shake side to side in his little seat.....this is his version of dancing (he doesn't do much more than this when he's standing up!).

At the end of every day, after I picked him up, he wanted to take off running around the halls. He'd try to walk in classrooms, push buttons on the elevator, and had so much energy even though it was almost 1pm and he hadn't slept all day! This alone was a sign that he had a good time.....usually he's so upset in the nursery that he's exhausted and doesn't want me to put him down for even a second.

Yay!! Hopefully this means he will do okay in mother's day out when I put him in (I'm trying to decide if I should do it in the fall or wait until January......).

Some pictures

Here are a couple of good "before" pictures, taken a few days before his haircut:
It's a little hard to tell on this sized picture, but his hair was SO long and straggly! This was after a trip to Galveston last Thursday, so that's why it was particularly bad looking! Margaret loaned me a bunch of her pregnancy clothes, and here Grant has decided to turn over the entire container onto our bedroom floor. That was fun to clean up!
After the haircut.....what a nice-looking boy! We made a cake last Sunday, and lucky Grant got to lick the spatula after Daddy finished making the icing! He likes to say "mmmm!" when he tastes something yummy these days!
I got my haircut too.....much shorter than I expected, but I love it (and it's very easy to fix!).

Pregnancy shot taken on Sunday.....just after Grant turned towards me and sprayed me with the hose!

Watering.....still his favorite activity.....even more than swinging!
As I think I said before, Lita (who cuts our hair) is like me and doesn't like for little boys to have super short hair. She was careful not to cut it too short in the back, so that it can still curl up a little. Here he's watering one of our roses.....this rose was almost dead a couple of months ago, and now it has a lot of flowers!

Small victory in the nursery!

Today was my first day to work at Vacation Bible School at our old church. We left this church a couple of months ago, but I still do a lot of stuff up there.....I have my Right at Home moms study there, and I'm planning on enrolling Grant in their Mother's Day Out in the fall.

Anyway, I wasn't really looking forward to today because VBS lasts from 8:15 to 12:30. Grant usually takes one long nap these days, but he's usually getting really tired by 11am or so. So I assumed he'd have a major meltdown in the nursery (he still doesn't do great in the nursery on a regular basis anyway). I told his teachers repeatedly to page me if he cried or needed to be held continuously after 11am.

While our group of kids were in music, I took a walk down Grant's hallway (I know, this is exactly what parents are NOT supposed to do!) to see if I could hear him crying, or to see if they were outside or on a buggy ride. This was at around 11:15....and sure enough, they were coming down the hallway in the buggy. I guessed wrong about which way they'd turn, and he saw me for a second and started crying. Thankfully he stopped a minute later as they kept walking! At 12:30 when VBS ended, I went to pick him up (and apologized profusely to his teachers for being a nosy parent). They said he did very well the entire day! He played a lot, ate snacks, and was very good! He was standing at the doorway, not crying or fussing, when I came to pick him up. Wow!!!!

Hopefully this will continue tomorrow.....we have Wednesday and Friday still to go, but I was so encouraged after today!

Pregnancy picture

A few people have asked me to post a pregnant picture.....we haven't taken too many yet, but here's one we took a couple of weeks ago, on June 5 or 6:
Grant loves to lift up my shirt and press on my belly! I haven't even mentioned the baby a lot to him, because I figured he wouldn't understand what I was talking about. But while we were in Alabama, he was pressing on my belly and laying his head on top of it. Dean's mom asked him where the baby was, and he pointed to my belly! So I guess he does understand.....people say that kids have a sixth sense about that kind of stuff, and maybe I believe it now! I figured he might begin to understand right before the baby is due, when my belly is huge. But I thought the changes would be too slow and subtle for him to already notice.

Grant and I went yesterday to get our hair cut. It was Grant's second visit with Lita, and he wasn't quite as keen on getting a haircut as last time! He wouldn't sit on my lap like he did before, so Lita cut it while Dean was standing with him. She gave him a few lollipops (he didn't care for them too much), and we were able to distract him enough for her to finish. And I got my hair chopped.....it's shorter than I expected, but I like it! I will try to take another pregnancy picture in the next few days and post it soon.....

Another day, another adventure......

A Houston Police badge??

Grant and I went to Kroger today to stock up on groceries after getting home from Alabama this weekend (more on that in the next couple of days). We got there at exactly 1:30pm. I went and opened Grant's door, locked the car, unbuckled him (at which point he squirmed out of his seat to try to play in the car.....he loves to do this). Then I realized his shoes still weren't on (they were sitting on the other side of the car), so I told him I'd come to the other side to put them on. Well, I got over to that door and realized it was locked. Yes, I had left my purse in the car, next to Grant's car seat. I quickly checked all the doors (although I knew this was pointless), then I panicked and ran into the store once I realized I locked my baby in a car on a very hot day!

I called the first locksmith I saw in the phone book, only to be told they don't come to our area. Then the lady at the counter suggested I called 911, so I did. A few seconds into the conversation, I started crying as she asked me for the location, etc. A manager who was standing nearby realized what was going on (I asked him the store's address and phone number, and he saw me crying). He took the phone and did the rest, and told me to go out with Grant. I had barely gotten out there when he, another manager, and a nice lady from the deli all came out. Grant was still just jumping around in the car, having a great time and not realizing why all these people were standing around! We tried to get him to come to the front seat, thinking he might by chance press some of the buttons on the door. But while we were trying to get his attention, he heard the sirens and looked at me and started pointing excitedly towards the direction they were coming from!

There's a fire station less than one mile away, so they got there very quickly. A fire truck AND ambulance showed up (very embarrassing for me!), and there were no less than 7 men there to help us. They immediately got to work trying to press the unlock button with what looked like a coat hanger. Then a police officer came and reassured me that they do this stuff all the time, and that Grant would be fine. I never doubted that.....by that point, he had only been in the car for about 10 minutes and was still happy as a lark, completely oblivious as to why now about 10 or 11 people were surrounding our car! In fact, one time I looked in at him, and he looked at me with a huge smile on his face, pointing at the fire truck which was sitting right behind our car!

The paramedic who was keeping an eye on Grant saw him pull my keys out of my purse. He started pressing the buttons that lock and unlock the car, and the man was yelling, "press the middle button!" (which would have unlocked it). But no, he just pressed the lock button a few times, then threw the keys down and went to find something else. But a few minutes later (no later than 1:50), one of the men was able to unlock it and our ordeal was over! Grant was sweaty and a little red in the face, but he still hadn't started crying or anything. All the men were very nice, and I thanked them profusely for all of their help! They were some of the friendliest men you could ever meet.

As they were leaving, the police officer handed Grant a police badge. Then, as we got our things together and went into the store, three of the firefighters also came into the store to go shopping. They mentioned that they were about to come stock up on food anyway when they got the phone call, so I guess the timing worked out well for them! One of them also saw that I was holding the police badge, and he told me, "when you get home, throw that one away and come up to the fire station. We'll give him one of our badges." I thought this was so funny.....I never would have thought there would be rivalry between firefighters and policemen! They told me again to bring Grant up to the fire station so he could sit in their truck and take a picture with them. I will have to write them a nice letter and take them up on their offer one of these days!

What a little dork!

It's late and I don't have much time, but I wanted to post these funny pictures I took a week ago (although I'm just getting them uploaded to the computer today). We've had an interesting couple of days.....our A/C went out yesterday morning (Wednesday), and we couldn't get a repairman to come until this afternoon. This wouldn't have been a problem if we didn't have Grant.....I could have spent all day at Barnes and Noble or Starbucks and been satisfied. But I learned how difficult it is to figure out naptimes (and places for naps) when your house isn't available! It was a rough couple of days, but now we are enjoying 75 degree temperatures again....aahh!!!

Grant loves to put glasses and hats on our heads these days, but he rarely allows us to put them on him. The other morning, however, he was pretty amused by it. Here we're standing right next to our floor-to-ceiling mirror in our bathroom, and he enjoys looking at himself with them on! These are my first pair of glasses (and only pair) I've ever had.....I only use them at night when I'm not wearing my contacts. I couldn't stop laughing when he had them on, and he started laughing too! Fun times......





The day we took these pictures, Grant had his first professional pictures made! We went to JCPenney.....they basically give their prints away, so I figured I might as well. He was pretty uncomfortable with the idea at first, and kept wanting me to come pick him up. But he got used to it and we got a few good pictures. But I'm glad I didn't pay $20 for a sitting fee.....who knows, though, maybe next time he'll be less camera-shy.

Then on Friday, we went down to Galveston to their Palm Beach swimming area. It was wonderful! We got a season pass and hope to go down once every couple of weeks this summer.

Grandma and Grandpa also came to visit this week....we went to the pool and Grant kicked his legs and enjoyed being in his baby float. I will post pictures from all of this stuff a few days from now.

More big boy pictures

We've had a lot of fun these past few weeks. When we bought Grant's toddler bed, we got a free umbrella stroller from Toys R Us. Grant loves it! He likes riding in it when we go on walks, and he always wanted to push it around while it was in the house. But he easily got frustrated every time he ran it into one of his toys.....he isn't quite tall enough to maneuver it around obstacles!

He's such a good little helper lately.....he loves to water plants! Well, he at least likes to play with the water hose.....we're working on his aim! He mostly enjoys sticking the hose into the mulch (where there's not anything planted) so he can watch the water pool up. Anytime I grab the hose and start to water, he comes and wants to grab it out of my hands to do it himself. We've had very little rain in the past few weeks, so we end up outside watering plants a lot these days!


Here he's enjoying his breakfast of squishy Life cereal at his big boy chair!
Pushing the lawnmower! He has a bubble mower that we recently opened. He likes to push it to some extent, but he'd much rather be watering flowers!
Playing in the pool last Friday. I bought this bigger pool so I could sit in it too! He had fun this time because I gave him some cups to play with. He mostly just used them to drink the water, though.....just like he does in his bath.

Big Boy!

First, we are now t-minus four months until our due date! Yikes! October 3 will be here before we know it, and most likely we'll already have a baby at that point (if he's anything like Grant, who came two weeks early). I get excited when I think what he might look like, and I love thinking about names (we still haven't decided!) and thinking about how we're going to decorate the room. But it's also somewhat bittersweet, realizing that my relationship with Grant will have to change a little bit. He has become very attached to Dean at times (some days he cries really hard when Dean leaves in the morning!), but he's still very much a mommy's boy. Just knowing that I won't be able to put him to bed every night and I won't be able to spend undivided time with him during the day anymore is a little sad to me! So I'm trying to really enjoy every day we still have, and I'm not trying to mentally rush things.


Grant is doing more big boy things every day! For a couple of weeks, putting him into his highchair had become a battle (not every time, but not infrequently). It was becoming a source of frustration for me, and we thought he might enjoy sitting in his booster seat at the table. If we had owned this house (with an informal kitchen table) when Grant was born, I never would've bought a highchair....they take up so much room. But at the time, we ate on our formal dining room furniture, so it made sense to have a separate highchair at the time (I didn't want peas and spaghetti sauce on our nice chairs!). But I've been wanting to get the highchair phased out anyway, so we gave this a try. He loves it!

In these pictures, we used the tray.....we also have tried just pulling him up to the table and putting his plate on the table, but I don't think he's quite ready for that! He's doesn't understand that his food is supposed to stay on his plate. And sometimes when he's done, he'll just start playing and turning his plate upside down. Or he gets upset and tries to throw it!

Here he's eating a whole peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's so cute seeing him trying to hold it and taking little bites of it!
During Memorial Day weekend, we also bought Grant his toddler bed! Dean set it up this past weekend, but we won't transition Grant into it for at least a couple more months. He hasn't showed any signs of trying to climb out of his crib, so I'm not in a rush to switch him.....but pretty soon we won't have a choice!!