Here are a couple videos from our trip to Pennsylvania. I thought I took more, but I guess not… I will have to remember to take more videos next time.

This is Graham enjoying some sugar cake. The food in PA is about a million times better than the food down here in the south. Sorry southern family, but its true. Especially when it comes to snacks, candy and dessert type foods. I think if I lived there I would weigh 200 pounds for sure. Uncle Ned gave Graham a little piece of sugar cake and he loved it. He would crawl over and beg for more! I have one left here at the house and when he sees the packages he reaches and whines for it. He is also addicted to the animal crackers. I ate one this morning and I guess he could smell it on my breath when I picked him up. I was still chewing it and he started grabbing at my hands looking for one. Then he tried to open my mouth to get some out!

Here he is playing with his cookie jar that Uncle Gary and Christine gave him. Casey was teaching him how to put the shapes in the right holes. Sorry the video is a bit long, but I didn’t feel like editing it down.

This past weekend Graham went on his first big trip. We went to Pennsylvania to visit mom’s family and friends. We haven’t been up there since the Thanksgiving before Graham was born and it was so nice to get back up there. I was actually pregnant the last time we were there, but no one knew except me and Casey. I wasn’t sure how we would all do on the drive, but it went surprisingly well. We were all piled in the minivan with enough stuff for a month (we were there for 5 days, 2 being travel days). I did most of the driving and drove around DC which is never fun, but we didn’t get stuck in any traffic. It was busy, but at least it was moving. On the way up Graham only napped for about an hour. Yep, a 7 hour drive and he only slept for one of them! Thankfully my parents were both in the back entertaining him the whole time or I am sure he would have been screaming. We had a great time visiting and Graham eventually let everyone hold him and play with him. Of course if I was in the room or nearby he would whine for me and crawl over to me. He is fine with everyone until he sees me!

We had a great time visiting and I spent a lot of time digging through old pictures and documents. I have been doing research on our family tree and found a ton of great stuff up there. I have so much stuff now that I need to organize, but I need to focus on Grahams’ first birthday for the next two weeks. I can’t believe it has been a year already and there are so many things I want to do that most likely won’t get done. I am planning to make a book of photos of his first year, but want to have pictures from the party so I won’t make it until later. Still, there are thousands of pictures to sort through. I don’t take one or two pictures, I take hundreds. Most aren’t good, but I of course save them all anyway. So it is a huge mess that needs to be organized. Most of them haven’t been printed and I want to print some. We are having a small party too so I need to get everything ready.

Anyway, back to our trip. Graham did a great job sleeping and taking naps there. We took him around visiting lots of strangers and he did great. It was kind of nice for me to have other people to entertain him and even though he was crawling around he was in a new place he didn’t get into nearly as much as he does here. Now that we are home I spent all day moving the cat’s food bowl and water bowl and keeping him away from the cat. We have gates, but none are installed yet so I have to really watch him now. He also likes to eat just about anything he gets his hands on! The second something is in his hands it goes to his mouth. I am constantly fishing stuff out of his mouth. He always holds his mouth as tight as possible to keep me from taking away his awesome new find. Today he managed to get a handful of cat food in his mouth before I caught him and it took several attempts to get it all out of his mouth. He seemed to be enjoying it, yet he hates jar baby food. What does that say about jarred food?!? Although I think if I put it in the cat bowl on the floor he would happily eat it.

A few pictures from our trip. I have a couple videos too that I will add soon.

With Uncle Gary and Christine

With Uncle Ned

Opening his birthday presents from Uncle Gary and Christine

Well today I cut Graham’s hair and it looks a bit funny. Guess I should have taken him to someone. It is really hard to cut a baby’s hair! I knew not to cut too much because it always dries so much shorter, but I snipped a bit much on the bangs and they look a little silly now so I just did the side swoop to try to hide it. I am hoping it will grow out some before his birthday pictures!! I set up a little chair on the deck, put the camcorder on a tripod and gave Casey my camera. I was so busy getting everything together that I didn’t check the camera. I take pictures on manual mode which requires you to make lots of adjustments… Casey was snapping pictures and when I took the camera to take some of him I noticed it was on manual. I knew it was going to be bad because the last time I took pictures I was inside and dark. We were on the deck with lots of lights. Yeah, none of the pictures turned out. Way, way, way overexposed to the point that I can’t fix them. So no pictures of his first haircut. I guess I will just have to write the story in his baby book! I did save some hair. This is the last time I will be cutting his hair. From now on the professionals can do it! I do have a little bit on video so I will work on that sometime this week.

After the haircut photos:

“so big” this is his new favorite thing to do

Black and white expression of the week

It took 11 months, but my days of sitting Graham down and having him stay there have ended! He has crawling down cold now and is getting really good at moving around the house. Crawling to standing, sitting to crawling, crawling to sitting. He is still working on going from his belly to crawling. He can do it and has done it before, but doesn’t practice much. He is already such a little perfectionist despite my attempts to make him less like me! Perhaps he will grow out of some of it, but anytime he makes a mistake or things don’t work according to his plan he gets very upset. Cries or throws something (don’t know where he gets that….). It is pretty funny to watch though. So we are now working on getting baby gates. They cost a small fortune and there are so many different types! Hopefully we will have some soon, but for now it isn’t too much trouble to just following him around and keep an eye on him. It is pretty hard for me to get anything done now and cat is not happy. I feel really bad for him because we can’t really teach Graham gentle yet and he LOVES the cat so he chases after him all the time. I am hoping JD doesn’t start acting out.

Saturday afternoon we put him down for a nap and I could hear him making noise so I brought up the webcam to see this:

I had to go in there and put him back down because he eventually just stood there screaming. He hates sitting down from a standing position and gets really upset when he “falls”. He didn’t want to sleep, but he was clearly tired and eventually gave in. He hasn’t stood up in the crib since. I guess when he gets more comfortable with going from standing to sitting he will try again.

Here are some pictures for the week. I took these the other morning. He found my box of receipts and had a blast. They were organized…… now they are in a pile again.

I got a lot of good ones this day so I had to narrow them down. Lots of cute faces.

I loved the last one so much that I took the food off his face in photoshop (well, most of it) and made it black and white.

My black and white expression for the week. Same day, removed most of the food. I like catching different expressions. I was going to use the smile picture, but there was something I liked about this face.

We have had a big week here! Today Graham crawled for the first time. Yesterday he stood in the middle of the room by himself for a good 20-30 seconds before falling. He has also finally started saying mama, although not really to me yet. At least he is working on the sound. He has also started saying ba and pa again. He has said them in the past, but then forgot I guess and became obsessed with dada. So yesterday I walked out the door to do a little yard work and I heard Casey yelling my name. I didn’t freak out, but I assumed Graham had fallen or something so I rushed back in and Casey said “look at him!!”. There he was just standing in the middle of the room, not holding on to anything. Then after a few more seconds he fell back onto his bum and then rolled back. So he of course started crying while we were cheering and clapping for him. It was so weird seeing him stand there like a little man. I see him standing all day, but he is always holding something and for some reason it was different when he was standing there all alone. He looked so old to me and it made me a little sad! Then today I was downstairs typing up a quick email to Melanie and I noticed a little hand trying to grab my computer and I looked over to see Graham crawling towards the computer! So I grabbed the camcorder and tried to recreate the moment. Unfortunately Casey was on a call so he missed it!

He is also starting to point at things, but his pointing is really just a fist in the air. He loves the ceiling fans and always “points” to them. If you ask him where the fan is he looks up to find it. So cute. Is is also really excited about talking loudly. When we go to the grocery store he gets so excited and likes to talk as loud as he can, which by the way can be heard all around the store. Yes, I am that lady. At least he isn’t crying. I tell him no, quiet talk and he looks at me like I am a crazy person. I am also now that lady that I used to hate. The one talking to a baby while walking around the store. You might as well be walking around talking to yourself!

I don’t have many pictures this week, but I do have a black and white expression that I actually took last week.

I also took these today with the camcorder. He was eating some of my spaghetti and had it all over his face. It doesn’t take a very good picture, but I didn’t have my camera with me.

Here is the crawling video: