New Pictures!

It's been brought to my attention that I really stink at posting pictures of my little pride and joy here.  You know the story though (fellow bloggers, I mean)... the last thing any of us wants to do is ruin a fellow infertile's day with a post full of gushing details and photos of our babes.  But once in a while, I can't help myself.  I know, I should post them anytime I want to... and maybe someday I'll get to that point.  But that is not today.

Remember that you can click each picture to see it larger, if you want to.

So, what has my little monkey been up to lately?  Well, we're enjoying the heck out of solid foods...

Okay, so this just happens to be Cheerios (aka baby crack), but he's starting to eat a lot more "real" food and a lot less baby food.  Fine by me - saves me a bucket of money on baby food!  He adores veggies, which makes me happy, and he seems to be a good meat-eater, too.  I made chicken enchiladas the other night and just picked out some chunks of chicken for him, and the way he scarfed them down, you'd have thought they were... well... Cheerios.

"OOOOH, Mommy!  Look at this pretty white stuff!  I pull on it, and pull on it, and pull on it, and it just keeps coming!  This is SO COOL!  And it tastes good too!"  You turn around for three seconds to run bath water, and this is what you get!

One of the things that I have always looked forward to the most in terms of having children is being able to take them swinging.  I LOVE going to a park or a school and sitting in a swing.  I revert immediately back to being eight years old and trying to go so high that the chains actually snap as you come back down.  And I've known for a while that Aidan would get a kick out of swinging too, because he loves motion.  He loves to be tossed around, he loves it when you pretend you're going to drop him, he loves to be startled.  My little adrenaline junkie.  (This strikes terror in my heart when I think about ten years from now.)

However, summers here are short, so therefore swinging seasons are too.  We've been so busy packing/moving since the snow melted that we never got to the park until two weekends ago to try this out.  As you can see, it was a big hit.  Actually, this wasn't a park, it was a school that is just a very short distance from our new house.  I can't even tell you how great it is that I can put him in his stroller and walk to a playground.  At the old house, that would've involved walking like four miles.  Anyway, he screeched and squawked and giggled the entire time he was in this swing.  He LOVED every second of it.  I may or may not have cried.

Oh, did I mention the walking?  This kid is a walking machine... as long as he's holding on to something.  He pushes this little car around everywhere.  The last three or four days when I've picked him up from daycare, they've made a point to tell me that he's spent nearly the entire day up on his feet pushing around one toy or another.  He just loves being mobile and feeling a little more independent.  It's pretty cute to watch now that he's got it down pat!  At first, his upper body went faster than his lower body, so there were a lot of face plants.  (Most of the time I didn't laugh...)  But now he's mostly figured out how to pace himself and make his feet keep up.  He's so pleased with himself about it, too.  Sometimes he stops, looks at whoever's around, and grins from ear to ear proudly.  I could watch him do this all day.

Aidan LOVES that he can pull himself up on the back door and watch Daddy mow the yard.  He stood there for a good 15 minutes the other night just watching Daddy go back and forth, totally enthralled.  He is most definitely a Daddy's boy.  He lives and breathes for his Daddy.  It's the cutest thing ever, even though it's tough some days not to get a complex about him finding me totally useless.  Ha!

And last, but most certainly not least...

Birthday party preparation is underway!  Fellow blogger and good friend Lisa (whose Jayden, you probably remember, was born the same day as my Aidan, and both are adopted!) mentioned to me in a text the other day that she always thought big celebrations for first birthdays were silly... until now!  We're not going nuts with presents for him; we figure we'll let the friends and family do that.  But I may have gone a little overboard with decorations.  What can I say, we're a Disney loving family.  And really, how many times does a kid have a first birthday, anyway?  I say we've earned the right to overdo it a little bit.