Progress!

This week was so eventful! Joe started sitting up by himself. Let me qualify that statement. If I sit him up, he can stay there by himself.....until he flops over. BUT, he doesn't flop over right away! Progress! He's doing so well!

The doctor's 6 month stats are in. He's almost 25 in and 13 lb 4.5 oz. She's never given me any "percentile" stats on him. I'm sure that's because he isn't on a normal growth curve since he was so small when he was born. She did say that he's catching up and growing well. He's doing all the normal 6 month things, just in a smaller body.

He also tried his first taste of rice cereal. This is the first thing he's ever had to eat besides milk, other than the time Do thought it would be good to let him taste peach popcicle. I thought for sure we'd never go back after that, but we did! As you can see from this picture, he is NOT fond of the rice cereal. Not nearly as fond as he was of the peach popcicle anyway. We've given the cereal to him a couple of times this week and he just curls up his lip at it. I'm not sure we are going to have much luck with the rice cereal.

Alex continues to do well at her track meets. This week she finished 23rd out of gobs of girls after having been sick with the flu bug for two days and not running for three. This being the flu bug that spread like wildfire through our house to everyone except Joe. Thank goodness for small blessings. And yes gobs is an exact amount.

Joey came home from Iraq yesterday for his two week R&R. The trip as he put it was "long and arduous." He left Iraq on Tuesday (which was really our Monday) and got to Dallas Saturday morning. I'm really impressed with what the DFW airport does for returning soldiers and sailors. They have members of the community come out for each returning flight and stand with the families to cheer for the men and women coming off their plane, wave flags, hold signs and provide them with snacks and drinks. I'm so glad there's still some show of appreciation that we are doing for our heroes. I can't wait to see Joey and the kids this week!

Ok, Joe's on my lap as I type this and he's saying thats enough talking. He has some things to say.

Do - this picture is for you....... This is your "bonding over helicopters" outfit.

Seriously? 6 Months already? Happy half-year birthday Joe!

Tomorrow is Joe's 6 month birthday. I am really finding it hard to believe that he's half way to a year old. I look at him and think about how much he's grown and changed. It's all pretty amazing. I think he's so big but then when I talk to my friends who had babies after me but were born full term, they are so much bigger! Most of my friends babies were the same size as Joe when they were 2 or 3 months old. Joe is just now fitting into his 3 - 6 month clothes. He's almost a full size behind his age. The doctor says he'll catch up over the next 6 months so we'll track that and see.

We took Joe to the mall to have his 6 month pictures taken yesterday (That's where the picture above is from). They turned out so well! He's a pretty happy baby and he thinks Mom, Dad, Alex and Maddie are hysterical so it wasn't hard to get some smiley pictures. Interestingly, he is a vigorous, almost violent smiler (head and arms thrashing about) but he rarely if ever laughs out loud.

For anyone who has ever gone to have pictures taken at JC Penney, Sears, etc....you know that right after the pictures are taken, they load them up on the computer and then start doing their magic...putting them into collages and cutesy pictures and fuzzy borders and all that jazz. Then the pressure is on to hurry up and pick your favorites so they can move on to the next person. So we are all standing there, sorting through the pictures, super-hungry by this point. I keep asking Paul what he thinks and he seems distracted so I turn around and he's looking at his phone. I asked him what he was doing and he says "oh, nothing." Yeah....so he was looking at his Fantasy Football scores leaving me to the stressful picture picking. Nice.

Joe has TWO teeth now and has discovered his love of spitting (see picture as evidence of this). I keep trying to get it on video to post here but he's too sneaky and won't do it when I want him to. I know a video of him spitting sounds more gross than cute, but it really is cute. Maybe that's just the mommy in me talking.

In our house you have to have a nickname. Its just what happens with Paul. For example, Abby (the dog) became "Goat" because she has a beard. Then we got Maizie and she was "Baby Goat" even though she does NOT have a beard, and is in fact bigger than Abby. Then they became Mazola and Goatina. The list goes on. So Joe now, has quite a few nick names. Paul's favorite so far is "Hoho." This would only make sense to you if you watch the Ni Hao, Kai Lan cartoon. Hoho is her little monkey friend. I've included a picture for comparison sake. You all can be the judge.

Here's Hoho....

Here's JoJo....

And here's Yoda. I know, odd that I include Yoda, except that I happen to think he looks a lot like Yoda in this picture, NOT Hoho. Again, you can be the judge.



Joe can't wait to meet his Uncle Joey and take his first vacation in a few weeks. I'm sure we'll have many pictures and stories to share once we are home from that trip.

Love to all!

Alex's First Cross Country Race

This week was Alex's first cross country meet. They've only been in school and practicing a few weeks so none of us really knew what to expect. And the kids are in 7th grade so they've never run in any official capacity or anything so it's all new to them. For example....to get the kids prepared for what they'll experience at the meet, this last week, the coach brought out the starter gun to their practice. Alex said, the coach held up the gun and one of the kids yelled "He's got a gun!!!" Too funny. I digress....

The 7th grade girls ran first and they had to run two laps around the course which was a total of 2 miles. Alex did FANTASTIC and came in 19th out of 70 girls. Her time was 15:48. We are so proud of her! Here is a picture of her crossing the finish line. (Notice how blurry she is compared to the rest of the photo.....just further evidence of her super speed through to the finish.) The other picture is of her after the finish. I'm impressed with how pretty she looks after just finishing a two mile run!!

Joe has some new tricks lately too. He's started rolling over a lot over this past week. He really likes being on his belly. Even in his sleep he rolls from his back to his belly and sleeps that way.

He's also got a tooth breaking through and between that and the day care crud that we still can't shake he's been having a few rough nights. But I can understand being upset with all that madness going on in you head....would make me cranky too. Between the crankiness, we got some cute pictures this week to share.

Here he is in his new exercise jumper. He was very pleased when the frog started spinning as you can see from his big smile.

Big sister Maddie introducing him to the wonders of the cell phone. Should I be worried?