Nate is 10 Months!

Wow. It's hard to believe that Nate is already 10 months old. It seems like I was doing his 9 month post yesterday. The days are flying by. He is doing super. He is crawling around everywhere and getting into everything, if I am not keeping a close eye on him. He is learning the meaning of "No" - I hope. He has three teeth - just bottom ones. Darren and I joke that he may have all of his bottom teeth before he has any top ones. He is getting sweeter and sweeter and becoming quite the love bug. He will lay his head on our shoulder and pat and rub our back. He will also give us "sugar." His hair is getting curlier each day (I am sure this has a lot to do with the fact that it is getting more and more humid). He loves to wave hi to people. He does this by raising his hand straight up in the air. He also loves to wave Hi to the many baby Nate pictures we have around the house. This started from us looking in the mirror and saying hi to baby Nate. He loves to eat Puffs and would put 10 in his mouth at one time if I would let him. He loves books (this is one of the few traits that I know he got from me and definitely not Darren), especially ones with pictures of babies. He gets so excited looking at his "Where is Baby?" books that he squeals. He enjoys being outside and gets so excited to see the cows. We usually go see them every afternoon when Darren gets home.

Today he attended his first party. His cousin was celebrating his second birthday. This was a lot like the egg hunt we attended. He had no idea what was going on, but there were a lot of people around to talk to him and entertain him, so he had a great time. We are starting to make decisions about his first birthday party. I know he doesn't care what we do, but I want his first birthday to be special. Here is the one picture I took at the party. The golf cart was a big hit.
We will be taking a short vacation to the beach soon. This will be Nate's first trip to the beach and our first family vacation. We took a one night trip last fall, but this will be our first several day vacation. I hope things go well and Nate sleeps well in a different environment.

I am continually grateful for the huge blessing Nate is to us each and every day. It is such a joy to get to spend each day with him.

Sleeping Booty

I don't know how in the world this is comfortable, but this is Nate's favorite way to nap these days.

Nate's on the Move

Nate is crawling! For the last couple of weeks we had been expecting him to take off at any moment and last night he did. Even though we had been expecting it, it was quite a surprise. All of a sudden he just started crawling like he'd been doing it for weeks. Life is going to be a lot busier in our neck of the woods. :)

More Spring Pictures

We have really been enjoying the warm weather and all of the pretty spring flowers (and a few weeds) that are in bloom right now. Here are a few pictures from this past week. The ones in the clover are my favorites.

Nate is 9 Months

Today is Nate's nine month birthday. He is doing great. He weighs 20 pounds, 3 ounces and is 28 3/4 inches. He has turned into such a wiggle worm the last few days. He wants to go all the time and his favorite thing to do is stand up. He is "talking" more and more each day. He is saying lot's of ba-ba-ba-ba, pa-pa-pa-pa, and da-da-da-da sounds. He loves being outside, so the warm weather has been great. We spend almost every afternoon outside. This afternoon we went to the park near our house. Here are a few pictures.

This is what Daddy and Nate did while Mommy got some exercise. I think they were having more fun!

When we were leaving the park we saw a couple of cocoons in one of the trees. I've never seen an actual cocoon (except at the butterfly house at Callaway Gardens), so I thought it was kind of interesting.

It's official...

I will not be returning to work next year. I put my letter of resignation in the mail today. I really enjoyed being a media specialist and was very blessed to get to work with a veteran media specialist that was a great mentor and friend. However, NOTHING - not even my enjoyable job and salary - is better than getting to be with Nate each and every day. I am sure I will return to the classroom/media center one day, but right now I am going to enjoy being a wife and mother.

High Five Nate!

I have been wondering lately just how much information Nate is absorbing since he's not communicating with words yet. I am always saying the shapes/colors/names of objects, talking to him, singing to him (thank goodness he doesn't know how bad my singing is yet), reading to him, etc. On Wednesday of this week when Nate finished his fruit I said "It's all gone Nate. Good Job!" I say this every time he eats. A few days prior to this I started adding a "High Five Nate!" I would touch my hand to his and he got a big kick out of it, so I continued to do it. Well Wednesday I said "High Five Nate" and before I could get my hand up, he had his hand up. I thought it was a coincidence, so I said it again and sure enough he put his little hand up to give me a high five. This silly little thing was so exciting to me. It just reaffirms that he is learning and all of my "teaching" is beneficial. Of course, now Darren and I get the biggest kick out of doing this with him. I know this is just the beginning of all kinds of fun things he is going to surprise us with.