June - Out with a Bang!

The last day of June brought some hurdles for Grayson. He has another respiratory virus which came with quite a bit of wheezing. Fortunately, he seems to feel better than he sounds and he's been up and on the go all weekend. All the grandparents were in town to help him get better. Even with 5 adults in the room, though, he managed to fall into the coffee table and bang his eye. So Grayson has officially sustained the first of what I'm sure will be many boo boo's.

But he takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' - black eye and all!

8 Month Portraits

Well, 8 Months has officially brought us a crawler and now a "cruiser." He loves to pull up on furniture and loves it even more if you'll hold his hands while he "walks" around the room. He's growing like a weed! We think he's almost 19 pounds now and about 27 inches tall! He's now sleeping through the night which is a big treat for us. And we've gone a whole month without an ear infection! Yey!

Weekend at the lake!

Last weekend Jennifer and Erik invited us to their family's lake house on Smith Mountain Lake. We had lots of fun with 3 babies (Grayson, Jennifer's son Lincoln who is 3 months, and Ursula's (Jennifer's sister) son Emerson who is 3 weeks).

We had daycare on the dock.The big boys had some fun jumping off the upper dock.And borrowing the jet ski!Grayson enjoyed a snack on the dock with daddy.But he really wanted to know what was in the cooler! New Mommy Ursula caught up on a few Z's with Emerson.
And Lincoln enjoyed his nap with Mommy, too!But Lincoln still found plenty of entertainment with his felt friends. And even Chase got to enjoy the water!

We weren't quite brave enough to put Grayson in the lake, but we came close!

Weekend of Celebrations!

Steve celebrated his first Father's Day this past weekend while Mom celebrated her XXnd birthday.

Grayson completed his first-ever art project to give to his Daddy. He loves the finger paints! Thank goodness for non-toxic, washable Crayola!

Three generations.
Cameron and his Dad enjoyed some fun time together, too!
Grayson loved his pool on his Grandpa's porch.
And it was also Nana's birthday! By the end of the day I think all three kids were tired of pictures! But two of them were pretty excited to get to the cake - but not as excited as Nana was to get to the cream puffs!

CAP Photo Design

My sister has started a photography and graphic design business (capphotodesign.com) so I took advantage of her skills and made her practice on Grayson and her kids this past weekend...

Despite dozens of shots, it proved impossible to get all 3 kids to look at the camera at the same time. I think my Mom is going to have a wait a few more years before she has a good picture of all 3 grandchildren together.But Grayson was a good sport - he generally finds lots of smiles when the camera is out!

June is off to a big start!

June is shaping up to be a very big month for Grayson! He's learning all kinds of new tricks...or at least he's working on them...

He's trying to master the sippy cup. This generally works best when he has no shirt on. We're not sure but he MAY have actually gotten about a half ounce of water in his mouth one night.

He still loves his bottle the best! He's down to about 4 a day now, but his bottle before bed is his Mommy's favorite time of day!Despite his Mommy's best effort at homemade baby food, Grayson refuses to eat anything that doesn't come pureed in a jar. Apparently Mommy's mashed sweet potatoes or mashed bananas don't taste nearly as good as Gerber's. We're also trying to get him to eat a few things other than pureed baby food. He shows good effort with the biter biscuit, but it's still not his favorite. One of his new favorite things is standing up while he holds onto the coffee table.He's also gotten very "grabby." Anything on Mommy's face is a favorite target. this probably wasn't a great time for Mommy to decide to grow long hair again.And the really big news is that he's making forward progress with his crawl now. So I guess we officially have a crawler at 7 1/2 months old. We were hoping he'd wait a little longer on this milestone, but we gave in and made the official baby gate purchase earlier this week.Of course that means he gets into EVERYTHING now! He loves finding magazines and tearing up the pages. He got caught this time!Some days he just plays so hard! He laughed and laughed when Mommy put him in the laundry basket.Then he had to show Mommy all his toys!But that was such hard work that he conked out right on his quilt. Most days he's already asleep in his carseat by the time Mommy gets him home from daycare - and it's only a 5 minute ride.This weekend Angela, Joe, and Jackson came to play. Grayson and Jackson are getting to be such big boys! Grayson was good at stealing Jackson's toys.But Jackson has more teeth! Check out those two chompers!Grayson spent his first official afternoon at the bar! PK's is a nice hangout for locals, especially when the weather is warm and the porch is open.
He still doesn't mind kisses from Daddy in public.He sure is having fun learning all of these new things!