first valentine's day...

CJ had a fun first Valentine's Day. Three weeks ago, he met a little girl at church and is quite smitten. He would grab Anna Grace's feet, and they would giggle. Then she would grab his feet, and they would giggle. They had so much fun playing together. Her mama and I agreed we must let them play more. The next time they would grab each other's hands and talk to each other. They are soooo cute together. CJ decided he wanted to make her a Valentine. Since his fine motor skills are still a little lacking, I helped out. This is what he made Anna Grace...

And here is my little man in his "truck-a truck-a burning love" Valentine's Day outfit.

And lots of wet kisses for mama! I love it!

my mom's amazing...

When I was pregnant with CJ, I knew we were having a boy. I had always wanted a girl, and I had always wanted my mom to show off her spectacular sewing skills by making her beautiful outfits. But when I was pregnant, something changed and I wanted smelly, messy, crazy little boys. I knew that had to be from the Lord, so I wasn't surprised when we found out our little Sprout was a boy. My mom hasn't been able to make frilly dresses, but CJ was dressed in high style the last two Sundays with Gran originals.

water baby...

Can you tell by these adorable faces that this guy LOVES bath time?

snow!

While most of you are sick of the snow, we finally got our dose of it last week. After a week of anticipation and watching the weather forecasts, we finally got ours! YEAH!!!

It started snowing while CJ was taking his afternoon nap, and Scott was so excited that I barely got a coat on CJ before Scott had him out in it. You can tell he is still a little groggy in the pictures. He didn't really know what all the fuss was about, but his daddy sure was excited.

no more tears...

Over the last few weeks, CJ went from the happiest baby ever, to super cranky. I thought he was getting a tooth, but no tooth came. I thought he might be allergic to blueberries and his tummy was upset, but no allergy. I thought he was tired of hanging out with me all day, but he's actually quite attached to his mama.

Finally, I realized he wanted to M.O.V.E without help from mom and dad. He is always happy in the mornings, but by late afternoon, we had lots of days like this...

Poor baby just couldn't get it together. He started rocking on his hands and knees around Christmas, and I thought he would be crawling quickly. But when we got home, he started a love affair with our leather ottoman. He loves to stand against it, and quickly figured out how to cruise up and down it. Once that started, he was anti-crawling. The only time of day he would happily try crawling was first thing in the morning, in our bed. When you would put him on his tummy any other time of the day, there were lots of tears and screaming. :( So, mom and CJ spent a lot of time wallowing in bed in the mornings. Some days he would only last 5 minutes, and other days he was content to practice for 45 minutes.

I am still amazed at how things "click." On Monday he couldn't crawl. By Tuesday morning he was going, going, gone! We were at a friend's house for dinner that night, and I couldn't believe how he moved quickly and intentionally to explore everything. Wednesday was a wash because we spent the day at the doctor. It turns out our little man had a double ear infection and some junk in his lungs. (He is totally fine by the way.) It didn't slow him down at all, and by Thursday, he was taking a few steps with confidence. He can easily go three steps back and forth between Scott and me, and has gone as many as six. That being said, I don't think he will be crawling for long. Then on Friday, he figured out how to crawl up on a box and then pull up to the ottoman. His other new trick of the day was discovering how to stand up in his crib. Then this morning, he bypassed the box and went straight from crawling to pulling himself up. Such a big boy!

Here are some pictures from today...

"I've always wanted to play with these! Finally Connor has to share them with me."

"Yeah...I can get to Connor whenever I want to! I like it when she licks my hands."

"Did Connor go behind the couch?"

"Nope...where did she go?"

"I'll head over to the ottoman and get a better view."

"Here I go..."

"I did it! Now where is Connor?"

eating puffs...

I tried to give CJ ground turkey a few weeks ago, and as soon as it hit his tongue, it was spit right back out with a look of disgust. I have since ground it a little finer, and he likes it mixed with apples, butternut squash and potatoes, but any thicker than a paste and it wasn't going into his sweet little tummy.

So to encourage actual chewing, we got some banana puffs. He liked them, but my little, independent man wanted to feed them to himself. Here is a recap...

"Hummm...what is this thing mama put in my mouth?"

"I don't know what it is, but I like it!"

"I want to do it myself..."

He tried to use his pincer grasp the first few times, but his hands were so wet that the puffs were turning to mush and sticking to his fingers. He quickly resorted to picking the whole thing up in his fist. And while it was much easier to pick up this way, it was hilarious to see him try to get it in his mouth. He would get his fist almost entirely in his mouth, and then the puff would fall out. But he kept trying for a long time.

He then decided to work smarter, not harder. He bypassed the whole "pick it up" thing and went in mouth first. Success at last!

He has since stopped bobbing and can now pick them up, but I just had to share these. It was too funny...

i love my dog...

mama's little helper...

I am trying to encourage CJ to be a helper. I want him to think it is fun to help, and I want him to think helping is a natural part of our days together. He has become very good at helping mama

• turn the lights on and off in his room. Daddy changed the old switches to the new toggle kind so he can do it himself.
• carry things when I am carrying him. His favorite thing to help carry is my keys. Eventually most things end up in his mouth...but I guess it still counts as helping.
• hold a variety of things while I am changing his diaper. And it is great for me because hands don't end up in the poop...gross!
• fold laundry. He actually plays with the clothes, but I ask him to help me by handing me things. He thinks this is a pretty cool game.

CHECK OUT THOSE TWO LITTLE CHOMPERS!!

life's about to change...

When I set these pictures to load earlier today, I though I would write a post about how much CJ loves standing and how I was 100% positive that he would skip crawling and move straight to walking. But we had a breakthrough today. Something clicked this morning and he got the left hand/right leg and right hand/left leg moves down so-so. We weren't ready to call it crawling yet, but by this evening he was flying across the floor. Early today, he would take a few crawls and then rest, but by tonight he could move easily across the entire living room.

It is totally amazing to me how much changes in a day. I am so blessed to be able to stay home with my little man and see it all. And it has been such a blessing that Scott has been home so much as well. I am one thankful mama.

We took these pictures about a week ago. Earlier this month CJ started to hold on when we would stand him by the ottoman, and he was quickly crusing back and forth down it. For my little dare devil, it was only a matter of time before he was turning around and letting go. He is a very steady "stander" now. At first he could only last a few seconds, but now he can easily stand for a minute or more and has even tried to take a few steps. I think the reason it took him so long to crawl is that he wanted to walk so bad.

So without further ado, here is my standing man...

Taking a rest after a lot of standing practice...

And my favorite little boy and favorite big boy smiling at me. What more could a girl ask for?

hard day at work...

Scott and I were doing a tally the other day and we realized that by the time he deploys, he will have been on leave for almost 6 of the last 14 months. Crazy huh? He feels like he owes someone something, but it has been a product of being in classes for a year and waiting to get into another training session to get ready to deploy. The other day he had to put on ACUs and go into the office for almost a whole day. It was so strange not to have him around. I have gotten used to him being around, and we both like it. When he got home, CJ was just about to settle in for his afternoon nap, so Scott volunteered to put him down since he hadn't seen him since the night before. While he had CJ, I took the opportunity to put some of CJ's clothes away, and when I came back to the living room I found this. My two favorite guys all snuggled down for a good nap...

pirate ships...

Well, not really pirates, but they sure were cool! When we heard the full sized models of the Nina and Pinta were in Pensacola, we had to go see them. Papa got off work early one beautiful afternoon and we had a great time touring them with him. How cool is this?

Papa, his little buddy and daddy.

And since Papa was with us, we finally got to take a family picture. Yeah! Unfortunately all CJ wanted to do was eat the anchor, so it was hard to get him to look at the camera. Silly boy...

"Hummm, what's this? I wonder what it tastes like?" was CJ's thought of the day. There was so much fun stuff to look at, and he was engaged the whole time we were on the ships. For a guy his size not to fuss once during the hour plus we were out, I was impressed. He had a great time.

He was having so much fun playing with his Papa that I couldn't pick just one picture of his cuteness...

After lots of fun and playing, I had a tired little boy. He found a comfy shoulder to take a ride on back to the truck, and as soon as daddy started driving he was out like a light all the way back to Nanny and Papa's house.

We decorated CJ's room with a pirate theme, and I was able to get some great pictures of nautical things to frame and add to his room. We haven't found the right frames yet, but we will soon enough. And stay tuned for pictures of CJ's room. Once I catch up with other posts, I promise to take y'all on a blog tour of our house. Won't these look great in a pirate room though?