cole's first day.

this morning we took cole to his first day of mother's day out at church.  we love that he got into highland's program because he is familiar with the nursery there as well as a lot of the people and kids.  he is going to be going one day a week from 9-2:30.  with him starting school (i know it's not really school but it is like baby school!), i suddenly saw the need to do a little shopping (like i really need a reason but it is nice when i have one!)  here is the backpack and lunchbox that i got for cole.  

here is cole wearing his backpack.  the pictures are a little blurry because the light was awful and he kept moving.  

here he is when he tried to move with it on....we will be growing into this backpack

going in with dad.

saying goodbye to mama (ignore the awful picture of me and focus on the cute little one)

so when i picked cole up today, his teacher told me that he was the happiest baby they had ever seen.  no surprise.  they also said, and i quote, he stole the hearts of every teacher here.  sounds like my boy.  he had so much fun there.  when he saw me he showed no excitement and continued to crawl over the the ball pit....i was at least hoping he would crawl over to me but no...the ball pit is way more fun than mama.  so, it was a successful first day.  i think that this is going to be a good situation for all of us!

lake waco.

today we went out with some friends in the boat on lake waco that brenner knows from seminary.  they have two fun kids who experienced tubing for the first time today (and i think are now addicted).  tia, andrew, grace and daniel had never been on lake waco.  we all took our turns on the tube and ate lots of cheetos and gatorade.  great saturday afternoon.

HILARIOUS.

a night away.

so tonight i had a much needed night out by myself.  i needed to go out and piddle around the town and shop by myself.  i have to get these times away every so often otherwise i go crazy.  i had a lovely time with me and found several goodies on sale.  then i went to panera where i had a totally girly dinner of salad and green tea and rounded it off with a totally ungirly chocolate malt from sonic.  good times.  

but before i went out, cole and i had some picture time.  he has recently found the door stop near the front door and is obsessed with making it spring back and forth.  he will sit there for 10 minutes playing with it.

brenner and i also use water bottles all the time and cole now totally freaks out when we have one and won't give it to him.  i gave in this afternoon and he threw it around happily as well as gummed it profusely trying to get the water out of it. 

goofy boy.  

 

Brownwood.

last weekend we went to brownwood to go and see some of brenner's family.  his aunt has a house on lake brownwood that she has fixed up and it is so cute!  here are a couple of pictures that i took of the house:

one of the bedrooms

dining room

bathroom that barbara is tiling herself with stones!

the kitchen

dining room and kitchen

here we went out on lake brownwood with brenner's uncle and papa

papa taking care of cole on the boat

hanging out

papa made cole laugh all weekend!

Newest stats.

here are cole's most recent stats as of thursday when we FINALLY went to our 9 month appointment. 

He weighs 19 lbs 4 oz and is 27 1/2 inches long tall (as we are a standing man these days and don't prefer the horizontal).  these stats put him roughly in the 25th percentile.  so we are thinking running back at this point instead of line backer.  

by the way...how do you like my stylin' overalls?

my new favorite place to eat.

when taking a bottle in the morning before i go to work (for time saving purposes), cole has a new favorite place to eat: on the kitchen floor.....because.....

then he can play around and bang his bottle on the floor to make fun sounds....

and he can sing a little song at his leisure....

and he can roll the bottle across the floor....

and he can chase after his mama....

and he can figure out how to squeeze the nipple to make the milk come out (which he did right after i took this photo and i didn't catch on film as i was trying to prevent him from squeezing out his whole breakfast).

mmmmm.....breakfast.

what a weekend.

we had a crazy, but great, weekend.  after having some friends stay with us all week (yeah harris family!) we headed up to arlington to spend some time with brenner's mom.  his brother came too and we all went to see the texas rangers face the red sox.  

now, while i am not a baseball fanatic, i do enjoy a good game and that is exactly what we saw.  it was crazy...there were a total of 8 homeruns!  it went to 11 innings and after being down by 6 runs, the rangers came back to win.  the downside?  it was 100 degrees and i had a sick baby on my lap who was up 4 hours past his bedtime.  to be fair, by the time we got home at 12:15 am, the temperature had dropped to 91 (gotta love texas!).  we drank 3 bottles of water (cole was drenched because we forgot his bib) had a lemon ice and a huge coke just to try to keep semi-cool.  i am thinking that is the last night game cole and i will attend for a while.  he finally fell asleep in the 9th inning for a little while with his uncle....how cute is this pic?

so naturally, what happens when you do not put your baby to bed until 12:30 am having had intermittent naps and an irregular feeding schedule?  he is up all night long.  i know, you are waiting for me to get to the part where my weekend was actually fun.


brenner's mom opened up her pool for some of our dear friends from college to come over and hang out for a while.  how great is it to catch up with old friends?  cole was the youngest of the wild children running and swimming about and was finally napping when this picture was taken. 

 but we had so much fun! 


on our way home from arlington, we stopped at the ever-dwindleing outlet mall along I-35 and i found .99 cent polos at the children's place outlet!  i should have bought more but i was trying to go fast and didn't realize that they were that cheap until i got up to the register. i also got some super cute things for baby gifts.  we ended the weekend with a barbeque with some more friends  and more wild children running around...we had a blast!  my friend sarah is about to move and she generously gave us a big toy for cole and i think he will love when i get it all cleaned off.  thank you hannah and seth for sharing!


so that was our weekend.  on a side note, little man is feeling better!

diapers.

how can a post about diapers really be interesting?  well, it is when i am i having to buy diapers for cole for the first time in 9 months.  let me clarify.  when i was pregnant, our choir held a diapers and wipes shower for us where we received an absurd amount of both diapers and wipes.  my mom has also bought me several packages when she has been in town.  i also use cloth diapers a couple of days a week when we are at home and for overnight and i just ordered a couple more. i had been wanting some and the brand that i use came out with a newer model.  i am excited for them to arrive!  (i know...i am excited by diapers...life as a mom surprises me sometimes!)    so, when you add it all up, this week is the first time i have had to buy diapers (the exception to this was when we were traveling over the summer...one can only pack so many diapers!) so needless to say, i am a blessed mom to have been able to go so long without buying diapers! so while i am on the subject, i will share with my mom friends the diapers that we have had the most success with:

bumgenius cloth diapers....love them.

these are the disposable ones that i have used the most

these are the disposable ones that i prefer to use but they are not always available in waco

jelly.

remember those sandplums i told you about?  the ones that i picked in oklahoma?  well, i finally turned those into some jelly.  my aunt came over and taught me how to make jelly and before long, i was a jelly makin' fool.  i have made 30 jars so far and i have one batch left to make which will give me another 5 or 6 jars.  it is really fun and despite the fact that i burned my finger and spilled one jar of jelly all over the stove causing us to replace those little round things under the burners, i did pretty well.  i surprised myself and am  proud of my work!  here is a picture of the first 17 jars.  i meant to get a picture of all of them before i started giving them away but i forgot.  

look at this yummy goodness. the one in the front is obviously the one that tested for taste....numerous times....okay i ate like 10 spoonfuls. delish!

back in the saddle.

so i went back to work yesterday.  bye bye summer. i must confess that i did not go back with the best of attitudes.  i hate to leave my baby.  i thoroughly enjoyed my 2 whole months at home with Cole and am sad to give up every day with him.  i am just working a couple of days a week, but still, it is hard to leave!!  so my blogging time will be cut short ( as it has been these last few days after returning from ok and getting ready to resume a normal schedule) but i will do my best to continue to update you on all our happenings!

so i leave you with an adorable picture of the little one that i took in oklahoma when he was in his pool on the front porch.  i used the color saturation feature which was kind of cool.  the other picture is of chewy, also with the color saturation feature, which only picked up his collar.  this was the day after the porcupine incident (#2) and so he is still a little swollen in his face.

 

9 months.

i know that this is a little late (cole turned 9 months on sunday) but this was the first chance that i got to take his photo.  it is getting harder and harder to take a picture with cole a) sitting still and b) holding a sign without him eating it or tearing it.  

at 9 months, here is what i love about cole:

he is obsessed with yogurt...the whole, plain, greek variety and will eat a TON of it if we let him 

he loves the dogs and doesn't mind being slobbered by them

he laughs ALL the time

he loves everyone and gives smiles generously

he has a foot fetish and loves to touch, follow and suck on his toes and others (should i be concerned?)

he is a mover...his crawl speed is amazingly fast

he is happy when he wakes up and waits for us to open the door with a smile on his face

he loves stuffed animals and rubs them against his face when excited

he sticks his tongue out all the time for no apparent reason

he thinks it is really funny to stick his finger up his nose (and leave it there!)

he is very observant of others and likes to mimic facial expressions and movements

he will sit still for a surprisingly long time to read books

he bounces up and down to the beat of fast music

he is the happiest kid i know 

little one, you melt my heart.

round two.

believe it or not, he has done it again.  yep, chewy found another porcupine.  i am not upset about the 1st time he did it.  he is a hunting dog, what do you expect?  but now after the second time (and another $125 at the vet) i do not feel sorry about his swollen face, sore paws and pathetic limp.  i did however take a couple better pictures.  maybe he will learn his lesson this time.

boy meets horse.

cole met our family's horse for the first time.  cole....meet waldo.

the sniff

the petting

the trying to put his finger up waldo's nose

i think it's love.

swimmin' hole.

a few hundred yards behind our house there is a pond that the dogs LOVE to go swim in and run around.  

if you know chewy, you know one of his favorites activities is digging in the mud

can you see all three?