our weekend

this weekend was the annual gun-practice weekend at mom and dad's... this usually involves "the krisher boys" and their families, and whoever else wants to join. basically it's the guys going out and popping off some rounds and sighting in their rifles while we womenfolk sit and chat and whatnot. as always, there's plenty of good stuff to eat! this time there were brats and burgers on the grill- yummmmm! also, there were some other small kids running around, which was great for cole! cousin erin posing for the camera. what a natural!
one of the old baby dolls was unearthed from the dark realms of the basement... cole was somewhat interested in it. he found the baby's belly button to be of particular interest. this might be a great way to get him familiar with the concept of babies and how they should be handled...
...or not. yikes!
sunday morning- cole tried his hand at feeding himself with his spoon. we've attempted it a few times in the past week, but in his little world, whoever has the spoon is the one that does the feeding, not the eating!
but he got the hang of it- we found that we got better results if he was given a pre-loaded spoon instead of an empty spoon, full bowl and some hand-over-hand guidance. for some reason, he does NOT like having us guide his hand (spoon, crayon, etc).
and the end result, of course, was oatmeal all over his face. i can proudly say that cole only put one spoonful of oatmeal on the floor, and that was half accidental! i'm thinking it's beginner's luck. anyway, he thought it was neat to 'run' the spoon for awhile, but got a bit tired of it before too long. practice, practice... i made some homemade applesauce last night and this morning, so maybe we will do a taste-test as an excuse to encourage the self-feeding. once again, i'm amazed at how proud you can be at your child's accomplishments and at the same time, wish they'd stop growing so fast already!