Weekend "Back Home", Two Teeth, and Crawling Everywhere!

James started crawling the past two weeks and has picked up speed, leaving less time to blog during the day! My parents are out of town on a vacation for two weeks. Before they left my dad told me he was sure James would be all over the place by the time they returned. Okay, Dad...you were right. He's into everything! But more on the later.

First business is a couple of photos our friend Sarah Sorell took for us. Here's her website, in case you're interested in her photography. We visited her really cool "Un-Studio" for the photo shoot. She has all sorts of backgrounds, walls, and doors that she can wheel around as 'backdrops.' I think it's genius. Anyway, here are just two photo 'teasers' she sent us. I'll include a link to the rest when they're ready!

What a ham! I think he was maybe blowing raspberries at this point and she caught it.

Gotta love a baby in a red wagon, right?

Okay, next are a few photos from our weekend 'back home'. It was Mark's 10th year class reunion, which we attended Saturday night. But Friday night and all day Sunday we were just able to shoot the breeze, so to say. It was one of the most relaxing weekends we've had in a long time! Thanks, Dad and Mom!


Mark's dad is very much into bird watching, bird houses, bird feeders....you get the picture. It's fascinating to see the variety of beautiful birds that are drawn to all the feeders and houses in their yard. I know we saw Orioles, but that's the extent of my bird knowledge. I liked this picture of our nephew peering in to see if there were any eggs.

Class of '99--here are 11 of Marks' graduating class of 16 (plus one exchange student) . It was a nice time of catching up with friends. This was a really tight bunch. I believe all of these kids went to school K-12 together! My favorite part of the night was watching the prom video that one of his classmates had brought. It was a great slideshow of photos and videos from their school years.

Every Saturday morning Mark's dad takes his own father, Grandpa Lester, to breakfast at The Buzz Cafe. We try to make it when we can. James was up and at 'em early that day so we all joined Lester!

In the hammock, snuggling after naptime. Mark said James loved it and was able to lay with him for thirty minutes, which is amazing considering how active he has become recently!

Down the slide at the park

playing the piano with Grandma

And now we get to James' developmental update. It's amazing that all within one months' time James learned to sit on his own, push up on all fours, crawl/bunny hop, crawl slowly, and crawl with more speed! :) I really have to check on him about every 15 seconds if I'm not in the same room. I've thoroughly emptied the bottom shelves of our coffee table and end table, as he was snatching everything there. In the past week, he has started pulling up on things, too! It's all too soon, if you ask me, but there's no stopping him!

the side-ways-chair barricade worked well at the grandparents' to keep him out of magazines and in the living room...

learning how to open kitchen drawers...I plan to empty this one out and fill it with James' toys and baby-friendly kitchen items

trying out the 'side-ways-chair' barricade at our home--it's helped a lot!

One final announcement: a second tooth popped through last week. He's looking very nice with two teeth. He's also been upgraded to whole Cheer*os. I tried four times to upload a video of him eating his Os, but the computer just wasn't letting me. But who hasn't seen a baby eat Cheer*os?

That's all for now.