Birthday Boy!

Ian loves ducks. His first and favorite word is "duck," he loves to point at the ducks on our walls and at the park, he loves songs about ducks, ... you get the idea. So we decided to have a rubber duckie birthday party. There were lots of rubber ducks, a bathtub cake (the "water" is blue jello), and tons of balloons. (The balloons were supposed to be "bubbles," but nobody other than me seemed to think that made sense.)  Ian LOVED the balloons. When they were first inflated with helium he loved throwing them up to the ceiling, and after they fell to the floor he played with them for several days. Here are a bunch of pictures of the big day, I hope you enjoy them! My favorite is the "Cake Monster" - you'll know him when you see him. If you're getting this by email you might have to click the link to see all the pictures, I'm not sure if they will all be in the email message.

Bunch of Balloons

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Bunch of Kids

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Musical Instruments

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One Fun Day!



Eleven

I know I keep saying it every time, but I am just amazed at how time flies. It's like each month goes by even faster than the one before. Ian is 11 months old today, and what a busy boy he is. Always on the move, he's crawling everywhere, pulling up on anything he can reach, cruising along the coffee table and couches, climbing the stairs, you name it. Anything that's within reach is fair game - and that range is expanding all the time. He's also quite the talker. Mostly babble, with the first official words being "dada", "mama" and "duck."



Making funny faces in the bathtub



Zonked out on a chilly Sunday morning with his duck slippers on

Painting a card for Grandpa's birthday

Sssssssslurp!



Visiting a farm and pumpkin patch



Once Ian realized that I didn't want him to eat the rock it became a very fun game...

Oh, boy!





On the move!

What a busy month it has been! We are now a family with a very curious and mobile boy with two teeth. Ian has mastered the belly-crawl (not quite got the hands-and-knees thing yet) and started pulling up on everything he can reach. His teachers tell me he always chooses the musical toys, and one of his favorite things to play with at home is a pot and a spoon. Right now he's exploring the fax machine. Good thing it's not hooked up, or I'm sure we would be dialing internationally....

Napping on Mommy after a fun trip to the park.

Isn't it amazing!

Pure glee

See Ian's two teeth?

Found some dirty socks on the floor, yay!

The trees outside the window are fascinating

Ian loves his dog

Standing all by himself

Finally has enough hair for his first mohawk

ABC's

This week we have been doing a lot of clapping and dancing...

Crawling - First Attempt

This was a while ago (July 18), he's gotten much better at it now, but when Ian first started trying to crawl he would put his face down on the floor and push forward with his legs. This video doesn't really do justice to how funny it was.

Summer Fun

It's been a while since we were here. I'll try to catch everyone up on what we're up to. Forgive me if there are mess-ups. Ian is "helping" me type. :) I hope you're having a wonderful summer. We are enjoying it, definitely keeping busy!  Ian sure is growing and learning every day. His vocabulary of different babbling sounds keeps increasing - last week he practiced "go" and "guh" all week, this week he's added "na" and "nuh". It's amazing that those babbles can come out in so many different tones, from high pitched and excited to soft and thoughtful to loud and angry. No crawling yet, and no teeth, but we're expecting both any day now. Here are some of Ian's favorite things these days:

The pool. We've only been once so far, but he LOVED it!

Eating. He especially enjoys banging the spoon on the tray, but I think usually he likes the food, too.

Sitting on the couch. And laughing. Both high on the list.

Daddy. I think this is both of their favorite place to nap.

The dog. Bull is great, he knows to stay just close enough to keep Ian's attention, but just far enough out of the way so he doesn't get his ears pulled on.

His blanket. (Or blankets, plural, he doesn't seem to be particularly partial to just one.)

Mom & Dad's bed. Hey, if it buys me a little more sleep on a Saturday morning....

The Exersaucer. If you have a baby, you NEED one of these!

Going to "school." Ok, so maybe I'm the one who likes the cute outfits, but he does have fun there.

Grass. He'll pull at the blanket until it's out of the way and he can play in the grass. At least he doesn't usually try to eat it :) This is his very patriotic red-white-and-blue 4th of July outfit from Nana.

And top on the list of Ian's favorites: Bath Time!! Drinking the water, trying to catch the water, splashing around, playing with the toys - he loves it all!

Ian's First Trip

Last weekend we took a quick trip out to Kentucky to attend a great friend's wedding and visit my aunt and uncle.  Ian was good on the airplane flights, eating and sleeping for the majority of the time. It was a good trip, but way too short!

Happy little flyer. Don't know if you can see, but he has a pacifier clipped to his collar and a toy attached to his other wrist. We didn't want to spend the whole flight retrieving things that got tossed down to the yucky floor.

This is Ian's latest silly face. It's like a gasp of surprise and awe. He does it until we do it back.

Yum!

I don't think I've ever seen this kid sit this still. He balanced this block on his head for several minutes!

Gimme an "H"!

At the wedding

Playing with his reflection at the hotel.