A lot of things have happened since my last post. This update is basically for family. 

Some things that Dylan's been doing lately: 

We've been teaching him to Pray. He puts his hands together, usually until we're done. Still won't shut  his eyes but we may have had a break through tonight - I got him to shut his eyes while singing a song he likes. It's part of the actions. 

He says random words all the time.  "Yeah, nuh uh, Hot, Mama, Daaad, bye, hi and probably some more. The ONLY word he'll say on command is "Hot".

Tonight I asked him if he wanted me to sing and he put his hands together like he was praying and motioned yes. We usually start all our bedtime songs with "Jesus loves me" I'm wondering if he's associating Praying with Jesus and our songs about Him. I think so, but will probably take a little bit longer before I know for sure. 

Throwing - EVERYTHING- Since we've gotten Chloe (our puppy/dog) he has learned how to throw balls. He throws everything for her and then he throws everything just for the heck of it too. Which is somewhat a problem, especially when he's mad and throwing a tantrum. The other night we watched him pick up his cars and not want to walk over to clean them up so he threw them over into the basket. He made them all . I was shocked. 

We took him the other night to watch Bolt - his first movie in theaters. He sat through it all and LOVED it. We will def be doing this more often. Since then he's watched the trailer of Bolt on our Apple TV and he can't understand why we don't have it all. 

We decided it was time to cut his hair. :( So many people were commenting about how cute the little girls hair was. Even when he was wearing blue and shoes with skulls! 

He's also into lining up all of his little cars and toys. I snapped a couple pics of them the other night. 

(Nothing special, but I thought they were kind of unexpected.)

I'll get to the Christmas tree pictures soon...

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The Piano Man.

We're still here! I have just been busy. I'll make an effort to update soon.
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Bananas!

Mr. Independent. He's been wanting to try everything recently. He looks to us as if he's asking us to show him how to do whatever it is we're doing. We do then he spends the next hour trying to figure it out. I really need to take some pictures of him playing with his new favorite toy, his broom. With out hardwood floors I'm constantly sweeping, the other day when I was finished I gave into his request and I showed him how. He has been dragging my broom around ever since. So we went on a mission to find him one that's his size. Now he carries it around constantly. When he wakes up it's the first toy he runs to get. I'll try to get it on film this week.

However, I did manage to capture the first time I gave in and let him hold his banana. He's growing up so fast. It's KILLING me!




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Cousins

Dylan seems to grow leaps and bounds when he's around his cousins. He just instantly grows up. Here are some pictures of them eating breakfast while watching cartoons.



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My lil Cutie.

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Park With Mommy

Here's the slideshow! He really had a good time. I have more of him at the playground, I plan to add them a little later.



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My sweet Boy

I took Dylan to the park today. We had a great time and I plan to do this more often. He really enjoyed it. I'll post a slide show a little later. But I couldn't wait to post this. I need this for my wall!


posted by Mommy.

More pictures.

We went to the park on Friday with Aunt Cindi and Connor. It was Dylan's nap time so he was pretty quiet until right before we left for lunch. Here's a few pictures of the boys hanging out.

Grandma Marsha sent Dylan some wooden blocks for his Birthday. We let him open them early He's been playing with them nonstop since. I think he likes the bucket the best though. :)




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Dylan Turns One!

We had Dylan's birthday party on Saturday. Here's some pictures of the event. I didn't get a picture of when he was finished with the cake but I know people did and will get one posted soon. He wouldn't touch the cake at first. He wanted Daddy to hold the cupcake. We tried to let him use his hands but he insisted on using his fork. We plan on celebrating his b-day again on Tuesday, his actual birthday, so hopefully he'll be more open to using his hands.




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Daddy & Dylan hanging out

The other day I took Heidi's car to Carmax to get an appraisal. What a surprise - they don't offer you what it's actually worth. :) While we were waiting Dylan LOVED to playing in all the Jeep's in the showroom. He has so much fun pretending to drive like Daddy.

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Park

Another slideshow.



posted by Mommy.

This one too!

 

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New Camera!

I've been messing around with my new camera. I LOVE it. Although I haven't figured too much out yet. Here's a few pictures.

 

 

 

 

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Per request of Grandma

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California

Here's some pictures of our California trip. I've been meaning to post them but I keep doing other things. This wasn't intended for this purpose but they're CA pictures.



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iLetdown

So I did my part for the "failing economy" last night and bought an iphone. However, while I may have stimulated the economy, this "marvel of modern technology" is leaving me a little less than stimulated.

I have no where else to voice my opinions about my toy since I ditched my blog, so I'm hijacking Dylan's.

Things that piss me off about my new iphone:

ITunes - in order to login to itunes to download music, movies, tv shows, etc. your iphone must be connected to a wifi network. It won't even open if you are just using a regular cell internet connection. This is retarded. I assume the reasoning is that they want you to have a strong signal so that the download isnt interupted... but who cares! If you lose cell reception just have the download resume. This isn't a very big deal with the amount of wifi networks everywhere I go, but its still a PITA. On the drive into work today I wanted to download some songs and couldn't.

Instant Messaging - I thought they fixed this when they came out with WebApps for the iphone, but apparently any kind of Instant Messaging program is non existent on the iphone. No Google Talk, No AIM, Yahoo, etc. Apparently there are some 3rd party apps that you can install, but you have to hack the phone (which I'm not comfortable doing yet). Apple saying IM capabilities are coming soon, but how soon? And why the hell wasn't this available on the first edition? I maybe use my cell phone to actually make telephone calls about 300 minutes a month. I use SMS, IM, Email and the internet connection to communicate.

Drag and Drop File Storage - When my iphone is connected to my computer I expected to be able to just drag and drop files to it using Windows File Explorer. It has an 8GB harddrive, but it doesn't even show up in My Computer as a drive. Everything has to be done through the itunes program - very lame!

Camera - It has a still photo camera built in - but theres no zoom functionality. No flash either. My Blackberry Pearl had both. You can zoom in and crop pics after you take them, but not before taking the picture. You also can't do anything with the pics after you take them. You can't attach them to an email or SMS them (as far as I can tell). You can use them as wallpaper or look at them in a slideshow, thats it.

Emails - the interface for email is fricken awesome - except for the fact that you cannot attach files. You can recieve attachments I think, but I can't select a file (like a photo) from my iphone and send it to someone. You can view documents using web based products like Google Docs.

Flash - the browser doesn't support Flash. Lame.

I LOVE the interface for this phone, the Ipod, the web browser and the Maps functionality... but I really miss the overall customization and functionality that I had with my Blackberry.

Apple better fix these things soon, and frankly I was under the impression that they already did.

Oh, and Dylan is pretty much walking now. He'll take 5 steps at a time and then fall. Its the coolest thing ever. Just wish I could film it on my new iphone, but it doesn't record video either!!

posted by Daddy.

Park Fun

We went to the park on Saturday. Here are some pictures. Notice my little watermark. :) I just learned how to do that. Like I need it. But it's fun and new. He surprised us and kept the sunglasses on the entire time. He insisted on taking them off as soon as we were in the car.

posted by Mommy.

posted by Mommy.

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Ice Cream!

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Good Morning!

This morning I woke up to the sounds of a blow torch next to my head. I only heard it twice so I was confused to what it was. When we came downstairs there was a red cast coming through our front door window. It looked like we had been tented in. We opened the door and there was a hot air balloon which had landed in front of our driveway. I took this picture a while later so it doesn't show the full affect. I would have had more but Dylan decided to take a pretty bad spill and was bleeding. This was the first accident that has resulted in blood. Sorry no picture of that. :) I'm still not sure what was bleeding, I'm thinking it was from his tooth going into his lip. Ouch!

posted by Mommy.

Mommy Mad Skillz

So I have picked up a new hobby. Photography, or rather fixing my horrid photographs in Photoshop. I'm nowhere near good but here's a picture I like. The below pictures are also "enhanced".

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Rockstar Mode

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bright eyes

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Car Seats, Strollers and High Chairs

Today we figured out we have about 800.00 worth of brand new baby stuff laying around waiting to be returned, waiting to be used or decided on if it's what we actually want.

First of all, Dylan's out grown his infant car seat so I sold it with the stroller in our garage sale last week. I didn't get as much for it as I would have if I would have held out longer but I liked the couple who bought it so I gave them a huge deal.

So I did all my research and found the most perfect convertible car seat. It's a Maxi-Cosi. A European brand that just started delivering to the states this year, it's Comparable to the Britax, which is the "gotta have" of all the car seats. To be honest I think they're overpriced and ugly and the only reason why mom's pay the money is for their safety standards. European have higher safety regulations that are met. Which puts this Maxi-Cosi in pretty good standing here in the US, and when you have a husband like I do, you need a really safe car seat. :) Just kidding hun.

So anyway, I bought this car seat. It looks Blue, right? Well my husband and I argued ove if it's blue or purple or if I should pick another color for about 3 days before he caved and said "just pick one!" So I did. I bought it in Night owl. It came and man was I excited, I pulled it out of the box and thought, "OMG, it's Purple!" Then I pretended not to notice and hoped that Justin wouldn't. Well he noticed. And boy is it purple, but in my defense I showed him the picture and he said it looked purple on his monitors at work but Blue on my laptop and on his! So it's sitting in the box in our garage. I put a post on Craigslist to see if someone wants a deal, since to return it I'll have to pay 30.00 in shipping.

So then we bought this car seat. It's really the one we wanted from the start but our BBRU didn't have it in yet. After the purple fiasco I found it at another store closer to Justin's work. We bought it and love it. I'm a tiny bit concerned about it being such a light color, worried about it showing dirt. Dylan doesn't seem to care. I really thought it would be a huge thing to him. Silly me. He's strapped in and can't move, so he hates it.

Since I sold my kick butt stroller, I had to replace it! So we replaced it with this. Which is still sitting in the box waiting for me to decide if it's the one I want or not. I'm not quite sure it is because since then I've found a few more that I'm considering. Too many to show you. If you can recommend any then please leave it in the comments. I want a child tray, cup holder for mom, and a decent size basket.

When we were stroller shopping I saw the new Baby Trend line. Baby Trend is a very affordable but stylish line. So we bought this high chair. I know, I already have one, it's why we decided to take it back and just wait and get a new booster seat down the road. We were given our high chair, it's pretty old but still works.

Today I am expecting our third car seat to be delivered. Ugh, I know. But we needed one for my car and debated on just using the purple one and we even looked at the cheaper car seats. But we didn't find one we even liked a little bit. Plus I had a coupon for 20 bucks off and I didn't have to pay shipping and sales tax so it's actually just about what one of the cheaper ones would have cost us at target. Hopefully this one comes in gray like the picture shows. I went with the darker color so it would hide dirt.

See this is the kind of crap my husband has to put up with. Me not being able to make up my mind. It's a sickness really. He handles it well. You should see us decide on where to eat.

I'll be posting some more, actually about Dylan later.

posted by Mommy.

Before & After