new stuff. or not... whatever!

cole has a new favorite activity- swinging from the blinds! not really swinging FROM, per se, but you get the idea. whatever you call it, he really loves those things... reach, baby, reach!
ha- got it...

really, does this face spell "trouble"? (mommy says it does...)

along with a new activity, cole has a new tooth! i was pretty sure that it was coming,, from the way he has been acting the past few days. the constant crying at the drop of a hat, the spitting up, and the tell-tale BITING!!! seriously- we'll be at the computer (sitting on the floor, since there's no computer desk here), and cole will stop what he's doing, crawl over and pull himself up to just chomp our shoulder, arm, or whatever is handy. then he'll crawl away as if nothing really happened. anyway, i felt around in his mouth for any hint of a tooth last night (dangerous mission, i know), and got nothing, but this morning, he has a left lateral incisor poking through! and he seems a tiny bit happier. i still think it would be better if they got all their teeth right away instead of slowly- how agonizing! so yeah- more teeth!

one last thing- HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to mom and dad! 29 years and still counting- we love you and miss you!

chief crazy-hair

as cole's hair gets longer (i'm going to have to trim it around his ears soon, but i can't bring myself to do it just yet...), it gets to looking kinda silly now and then after his bath.

the view from the top, so to speak...

heehee!

and, my big boy, standing almost all by himself! his balance is getting lots better, and he'll walk beside me holding onto just one hand, although sometimes he ends up falling to one side, which usually means he twirls halfway around on the way to the floor... but he seems really determined! way to go, baby! it won't be very long and we'll really be chasing him- and i think i'm exhausted NOW, hahaha!

what's for lunch?

so, for an early lunch, my sweet little monkey decided to eat a catalog. again, it's just junk mail, but he does have good taste. expensive, but good- it was a tilley's magazine. i know he loves to rip paper, and since it wasn't doing him any harm, i let him rip away. and then it got quiet...

this is WHY it was quiet- his mouth was full of glossy, color-printed paper. yum.

this is what happened when i took away the shred of paper he was working on- he just went for the entire magazine instead. smarty pants!

and of course, once mommy started vigorously digging wads of paper out of his mouth, cole got the giggles. it was funny, i have to admit- me trying desperately to get every last mushy wad out of his mouth, him giggling and trying to hang onto it (good chewing, i guess), and to top it all off, his cheeks and tongue had this faint blue hue to them. and in the end, it was fun... cole was having a ball and there ARE worse things he could have been munching on. really, i'm not a bad parent- we DO feed him, he doesn't have to eat paper to survive!! :)

date night

we really enjoyed our dinner out last night! we thought olive garden was open (the banner said that it was opening july 1st), but when kelvin went in to make reservations (we were out grocery shopping, yay), they told him that they aren't opening until august 4th. oh, ok... whatever?? jeanette told us, when we dropped cole off, that they had seen the banner that said "opening july 1st" as well, so we weren't the only ones disappointed by the info! instead, we went to a place called BeDillon's, and it was great! it's this little hole-in-the-wall looking place, and actually, it's a big, oddly-shaped house with a cactus garden out back. if i remember correctly from the info on the menu, it was opened in the early 1900's, and the owners actually lived there. the current owners fell in love with the place and bought it, and let me tell you, even though the guy that owns it looks like a hippy (dressy shirt and pants, flipflops and nice long ponytail), he is super-nice, watches the front so he can personally open the door for his customers, and chats with people who come to eat there. nice guy! kelvin had a prime rib steak with grilled vegetables, baked potato and a salad, and i had this neat little dish called mexican lasagna. it's pretty good- it's corn tortillas layered with shredded chicken and a creamy cheese sauce. the side of rice that it came with was the best rice i've ever tasted! anyway, it was nice to have a few hours together without the baby (one of them, anyway... lol), but it's funny- you don't realize how exhausted you are until you get away from the source of the exhaustion... i just wanted to take a nap the whole time!!

cole enjoyed his evening too- philip and jeanette and the kids happened to head out to dinner as well, meeting two other families from our meeting. they had a blast with cole... no lack of attention for him! when they brought him home, i got the real scoop- it appears that philip just couldn't (wouldn't....) let him go and hung onto him almost the whole time! too cute! and wow, did our little man eat- i packed more than i thought he'd ever need: a large jar of broccoli and carrots with cheese, a large jar of squash, a regular jar of pears, a cheerios container (the cool one that looks like a cheerio) almost full of cheerios and his sippy cup with juice. he ate EVERYTHING except for the pears, plus a good portion of gerber yogurt drops that phil and jeanette carry around for the girls... and he still had room for his bottle when he got home! sometimes i worry that we won't be able to keep him fed when he gets a bit bigger, with the way he eats now, sometimes. like last weekend at the hilton- we had a breakfast buffet, and cole single-handedly polished off (after his bottle) a pancake (about 6 inches across), four or five slices of cantaloupe, most of a carton of berry yogurt and a few various tidbits from angela and the girls. i have no idea where he puts it all! i'm amazed that he doesn't weigh several pounds more- he must have a great metabolism.

one last thing- i do believe that cole is getting ready to cut more teeth- yesterday, and today already, he spit up a little bit, which he hasn't done in quite awhile. that, and he's quite touchy... mr attitude! one wrong look and he dissolves into tears. poor kiddo- so right away after i cleaned him up this morning, i gave him a dose of baby mortin, and already he's a bit happier. hopefully they'll come through really quickly...

bathtime!

last night kelvin got cole out of the tub after his bath so i could take a much needed but VERY quick soak. cole was just SO cute, i had to take pictures. of course. unfortunately, i no longer have my free trial for corel and every other photo software that i have tried, i just am not completely happy with (thanks much for the suggestions from others though!). so until we get the software from best buy, i'm outta luck for monkeying around with them!
i LOVE the expression- just wonder what he was thinking!

anyhoo, tonight we are leaving cole with philip and jeanette and the kids so we can go to olive garden. i know it's a new mommy thing that i really need to get over, but i felt so bad asking if they would like to take cole. i mean, they have their own kids and maybe they had things they want to do... i feel really guilty even thinking about asking someone to take him for awhile! oh well... we need an hour or two to ourselves, i guess. so i AM looking forward to it, just with the big cloud of guilt hanging over me in the meantime. i have no doubt that cole will be fine, it's the sitters i'm worried about!! (lol)

i wish i'd had the camera with me on wednesday night on the way to bible study... with the icky weather coming in, the sky ahead of us was this really dark gray-blue, but the sun setting behind us was an intense gold, amazingly bright. there was this dead tree in a field kind of close to the road that we pass all the time, and it's gray and weathered, and the way it was lit up by the sun with the really dark sky behind was just awesome. it would have made an amazing picture, but since i didn't have the camera... it would have been even better if i had a "good" camera. keep dreaming. huh.

another though i had today- this time around, i am going to splurge and get a pair or two (or three, we'll see) of maternity pj's. i didn't last time, but it was also summer before i got huge, and so i got away with sleeping in a tank top and my underwear (large enough to accomodate a small toddler as a parachute, but really comfy...), but this time it will be late fall and winter, and now that we have been down here for awhile, we'll be freezing once it gets below 65. tanks and undies just won't do this time. but enough of my rambling... it's time to go grocery shopping so that we can make our date!!!

busy little boy

it seems like cole is into everything these days! i know- just wait till he starts walking... it still blows my mind how he can be so fascinated for so long with an empty water bottle! i keep thinking of all the money we could have saved on the toys he has no interest in...

action-shot... he's in the middle of whacking the tar out of his ring stacker toy. guess that shows what he thinks of THAT!

"oh mom, watch this!!"

sucking on his lip- if only he'd do that with one of the many different paci's we got him! it's really cute though; he'll just sit and watch me (or daddy) and suck away on his lip. maybe it's a concentration thing, i don't know!

yummy apple-cinnamon wheels for a snack! we gave him his first one up at the hilton this past weekend and he promptly stuck the entire thing in his mouth and worked it around till it was eventually gone. now he at least holds onto it- but it's still all in his mouth! he sticks the whole thing in there, and the tips of his fingers disappear into his mouth, but at least he's hanging on to it! actually, he does really well with them. i love the way he's sitting in the photo- reminds me of kindergarten story-time! which reminds me that in another 4 years, he'll be getting ready for his first day of school; that's SO sad!! i think i'll be the one who will have be dragged along kicking and screaming and crying! ahhhh, well- it makes the 'now' moments that much more precious.

random question:

does anyone else out there feel kinda sad when you hear lullabies? cole's got a fisher-price lullabye cd that we put in last night and tonight... it makes me feel sad when i hear it (which is all night...). maybe because it's so slow and quiet. or maybe because it reminds me of taylor and london... yeah, so i was just curious if it gets to anyone else or if i'm just weird... g'night y'all!