Week 48 & 49 - Keep 'em coming!

Week 48 & 49 - Keep 'em coming!
(7/11/10 - 7/24/10)


First let me say that I am the proud mommy of an 11 month old! WOW how the time has flown! In less than a month I will have a one year old on my hands! Look out world here he comes!!!

These past two weeks were very busy weeks for Andrew, he had another "burst" of milestones. The ones he achieved are pretty good ones, personally my favorite milestones. I know that a babies first real smile is always awesome! But for me there is one thing that barely inches that first smile out of the top spot! And that is waving! Andrew has been working on waving for a few weeks now. But unless you physically picked his arm up (while saying bye bye a million times) he wouldn't continue or start the wave on his own. His waves started out as full body/arm convulsions (hehehehehehe too cute) but then progressed over the last two weeks. He now does the ever cute backward hand wave, where he opens and closes his hand but it is in the wrong direction and he is waving to himself. He also initiates the wave about 60-70% of the time. You have to be the one to start saying bye-bye and waving yourself (or someone waves to him) and then he will pick his hand up and start waving!! TOO AWESOME!!!!

Another HUGE milestone that we got last week is "pulling to standing". He has been crawling for awhile now but never pulled up to standing until now. He is pretty fast though and will try and stand on anything, including things that can't quite support his weight. So we have had a few bumps and bruises as well as a scrap/cut under his eye from where he has fallen! He is taking a few steps (cruising), but hasn't quite figured that part out yet, but boy if I know Andrew cruising the furniture will not be too far away! I am sure that will be a video that I will post on this blog sooner rather than later!

As if the past two milestones weren't enough he is "imitating" a lot here lately. Andrew has never been an imitator (much to the worry of his mother) but recently his personality, a rather silly one at that, has started coming out. And Andrew has started imitating us. Most of his imitations are physical rather than verbal and our favorite one is "sneezing". If you either pretend or real sneeze he will imitate it. Although we learned rather quickly that this is his favorite imitation right now and that you have to watch where you initiate this because he will take his head and whip it downward without regard of where he is. We have had a few close calls where table tops were barely missed by his forehead!

Weeks 46 & 47 - Independence Day!!

Weeks 46 & 47 - Independence Day!!
(6/27/10 - 7/10/10)

These past two weeks we celebrated Independence Day with the family, and new found independence with Andrew! Andrew had fun at the 4th of July festivities! Unfortunately it was 94 degrees out and hot hot hot! There were a lot of different ways we tried to stay cool and dunking Andrews feet in the kiddie pool was one way, and he also loved drinking out of my cup of ice water and playing with ice cubes!

Fireworks went off at 9:30 and somehow we managed to keep Andrew awake although I am wondering how "awake" he really was. In the preceding weeks leading up to the 4th we had been setting off some small fireworks in the yard for Jacob and most of the time if there was any loud popping, cracking, or whistling Andrew would shriek!! He HATED it! That night however he barely flinched when the fireworks went off and would only be bothered to lift his head from my chest on occasion to even watch the bright lights. When I finally took him home he was asleep within 10 minutes! So I say he was just zoned out and tired!

Paul was off for the whole week so we had some "vacation" time to fill up with the boys. Since it was in the 100's for 3 of the 5 days and upper 90's for the rest doing "outdoor" activities weren't really an option with two small guys. So we went to the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy air and space museum one day and even Andrew got into the trip by pointing (his new found skill) and getting excited when we went in to see an Imax movie about fighter pilots. It was a great day!

Then another day this week we went to Old Town Alexandria with the WHOLE family! We had 18 people go and spent the day eating pizza and walking around downtown Alexandria which is a lot like a small "inner harbor" with boats, ducks (which we fed leftover pizza crust too), and street performers, and of course shops!
Overall it was a great two weeks and I am sorry to see them end, and Paul to go back to work!!!