Happy Birthday Harrison!

My sweet boy is one year old today! I can't believe how quickly this year has flown by. It seems like just yesterday that he was a little helpless blob and now he's so full of energy he just doesn't stop.

We had a couple of celebrations for Harrison's birthday.

First, we traveled to Waxahachie to celebrate with Mark's family last Thursday. Harrison got to see Grandma and Grandpa along with all four of Mark's siblings, so it was lots of fun. I made him his own little cake, just a yellow cake with white buttercream icing. We set it down on his tray in front of him, and he really had no idea what to do with it. After taking a little bite off of my finger he warmed up to it some, but really only had a couple more bites. Is this really my child? Who doesn't like cake, and WHO doesn't like buttercream icing?? Oh well, we certainly had no problem finishing it for him!

Harrison did enjoy taking a handful of icing and decorating Mark's face and my hair with it. Ugh. And since he got the icing all over himself he spent the rest of his afternoon in the only spare onesie I had on me (bad mom!!) and no pants. Whoops!

Here are some pictures from that party...as usual he has his crazy expressions working overtime. Look at some of those faces he makes. Priceless!!









We had our second birthday party back here in Austin. On Saturday my mom came in town and we celebrated with Harrison's friends Shane and Hunter and their families. It was fun to see the three little guys "play" with each other, and their older brothers and sister were great at playing with them too.

All of the boys took turns cruising in the sweet new ride his Aunt Susie and her family got for Harrison.




This time he showed zero interest in his cake. Didn't even want to try the icing on my finger. Is this really my child? :-)


Here are some pictures from that party:




Here are the moms and dads with their boys:



We tried to line up the three boys for a group shot, but the birthday boy did not want to sit still!


On his real birthday, Harrison and I met Daddy for lunch. He was in a great mood and smiling at all of the waitstaff. Then we went to the mall and had pictures made...I just wanted to be sure and capture his sweet little face on his actual birthday.

His little plaid shirt from his Aunt Julie is SO cute!!




After we got home, he was playing with his ring stacker, and figured out how to put the rings back on the stack. He was so proud of himself--you can see him get all excited after he does it right. Yay Harrison!

Big Day

One year ago today we were wondering if Harrison would have to share his birthday with Groundhog Day. He was already one day overdue, and as we now know he certainly wasn't in any rush to appear.

So, it's hard to believe that here we are one year later...and, he decided to make today a special day.

Harrison has been trying really hard to stand up without holding on to anything. If you are familiar with yoga, he has been doing the "downward dog" pose for a while now, basically standing up, bent in half, trying to figure out how to get his top half lifted up to a standing position. Today he did it! I was so proud of him, and I know he was so proud of himself. He was just beaming as I was saying "good job"!!

Later in the afternoon he was crawling around my feet, trying to get me to pick him up while I was getting his dinner ready. I bent down and got him to stand, and then backed away quickly. He took 2-3 steps towards me without even thinking about it! Of course he fell right back down on his bottom, but he did it!!

Boy, am I in for it when he figures this out. He is already into everything, but once he can walk he will really be into everything.

Here are a few pictures from today, and a short video of him doing his favorite thing...zooming his bus! In the bathtub he is playing with the suction-on basketball hoop we got him for Christmas. He just loves it.

Looks like this weekend I'll have to pack up his 6-12 month clothes. All of a sudden his sleeves are too short and so are his pants. Guess he's done a little growing this past couple of weeks.



Total destruction of the kitchen before 8am this morning...



Harrison loves his baths!



Zoom Zoom Zoom

Crazy Boy

Who needs toys when you can play with Clif bars in the pantry?

Often we joke that Harrison has lost his mind. He will get on these kicks where he just kind of goes crazy. He will scream and laugh, crawl around really fast throwing toys everywhere, or push his shopping cart through the living room, bashing into things as he goes. It is pretty hilarious, and quite entertaining.

He has started "zooming" his toys, mainly his school bus, fire truck, and balls. With a toy in one or both hands, he will push it across the floor and make vroom/zoom noises as he goes. It's pretty cute, because he is really playing with the toys and making them do things. Here he is with his school bus.

This week he started really pointing at things. The main attraction is the fan in our bedroom. As soon as he enters the room he points at it and says "dah" (which is definitely different from "da da") and smiles. You say fan, he says "dah" and it goes back and forth for a while. It is so cute to watch him get his fingers into a pointing motion, because it still takes him a bit to get there, so you can watch him work on making his fingers go that way.

Earlier this week I was working in the kitchen while Harrison was crawling around playing in the living room. He had been playing with a box, just putting toys in it and pushing it around. Well, I looked up to see the box moving across the floor...he had somehow gotten it on top of him and was crawling around underneath it. Hilarious! I was able to catch the tail end of it on video:

On Friday his friend Hunter came over and they played for a little bit. It was fun to watch them laugh at each other, and they both seemed to have a good time!







We let Harrison run around naked before his bath the other night. Naked babies are so cute!! I can't remember what he had for dinner but his stomach sure was full!





Harrison does still love to play with Mr. Dragon. It is so easy to make him happy if you just get Mr. Dragon out and have him spit toys at Harrison!



Today for lunch we tried roast beef and Harrison loved it! That's my little carnivore :-)

An Apple a Day

I got some small apples, not much bigger than a golfball (who knew they came that small??) and peeled one for Harrison to have without any help from me. Who knew he'd love it this much? Now we are having one a day because he just sits in his chair happily and munches on it.


You can get a good look at three of his top four teeth here too. He sure did like using them to chomp on the apple!

Tooth #6

Just a note to let you know that tooth number six arrived yesterday on the top right side of Harrison's mouth. Now we have four teeth on top and two on bottom. He loves to grind them together...guess he is just sharpening them for use later on my shoulder where he likes to chomp every now and then.

E-I-E-I-O

So as you may know, Harrison is not the easiest kid to feed a meal to. He is always waving his hands and trying to mess with the spoon. As a result, we resort to many different things to try and keep him from getting food everywhere. Last week I started singing songs while eating. I am definitely not a good singer, nor do I know all of the words to many of the children's songs. But, Old MacDonald is pretty hard to mess up so I've been singing that one quite a bit. Well on Friday, Harrison decided to sing along! After I say E-I-E-I-O, he says it too!! It is so cute, and really makes all of our messy meals worth it.



Harrison continues to be a really good eater, really enjoying a wide variety of foods. He likes many vegetables: peas, broccoli, green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash. Fruits are always a favorite. He loves apples and blueberries, and just recently has started begging Mark for bites of banana whenever he sees Mark eating one. He'll climb up Mark's leg and just smile really big until Mark bends down to offer him a bite. I have been eating grapefruit and every time Harrison has shared it with me. He makes a face since it's sour and then just opens his mouth for more. We mix ground beef and chicken with different vegetables. He loves yogurt and really seems to like cottage cheese mixed with blueberries. Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon is one of his favorite things for breakfast. Along with Cheerios he will feed himself bites of grilled cheese sandwiches, turkey lunch meat and waffles. Lots of good stuff!



Last Tuesday we went over to play with Harrison's friend Shane. They had fun crawling around together. Shane has a pack-n-play filled with balls, kind of like his own personal ball bit. We put them both in there together, and while Shane likes to roll around in the balls and play with them, Harrison decided to start throwing all of the balls out of the pack-n-play. Nice. Guess who won't be getting a bag of balls for his pack-n-play anytime soon!

They have two dogs, and Harrison was so excited when we arrived. The dogs greeted him with a few licks and he just grinned from ear-to-ear. He started panting like a dog and got right down on the floor with them. He didn't care that they licked his face and just laughed. I think he couldn't believe his good fortune that there were real live dogs there to play with! It was very cute.

The past few days Harrison has started saying Da Da a lot. He knows Ma Ma too, but doesn't use it as much. It is just great the way he looks at Mark and says it.

He knows what the ceiling fan is, and when we ask him where the fan is he looks right up at it. He calls it the "da-wu" which sounds nothing like fan, but that is definitely what he is referring to. Whenever we enter a new room in the house he looks up for the fan and talks about it.

Currently one of Harrison's favorite books is "Dear Zoo" which was a hand-me-down from his cousins. It is a book where you lift flaps and there are different animals under the flaps. When we get to the monkey I always make monkey noises (oo-aa-oo-aa if that makes any sense...) and say that's what the monkey says. This morning when we were reading it we got to the monkey page and he made the monkey noises!

It is so much fun to see him learn all of these new things. It makes every day more fun and rewarding.

One day last week while Harrison was playing in the living room he decided to read a story to himself. It was too cute not to share.

11 months old!

Hard to believe that Harrison is 11 months old. CRAZY!!

Just wanted to post a few pictures of him that show how grown up he is looking. It is just nuts. Where did our baby go? He hasn't been eating too well this week, just being kind of picky. But, tonight he chowed down on some brisket from Rudy's. Guess he knows that is too good to pass up.

Here are a couple of pictures from New Year's Day. He looks so grown up (and cute!) in his little button down shirt.

Long overdue update

Here we are...trying to get out of baby jail :-). He loves to hang on the gate and try to open it. Thankfully he hasn't figured it out yet!



My apologies for not updating since last year...happy 2010 to everyone.



We had a fun trip to Birmingham right after Christmas. Thankfully Harrison was great on the airplane. Although he didn't enjoy being held for that long, he was at least cheerful and charming.



He had a great time on our outings while we were there. We went bowling and he loved watching all the action. He could be as loud as he wanted to and he fit right in with the crowd at the bowling alley.



The next day we took a trip to the local museum, which was great fun. There were kids everywhere, and he had so much fun watching them. The top floor was filled with a model train exhibit, and he really like watching the trains go round. We also visited the bottom floor with the mini aquarium. He had fun watching the fish in the big tank and tried to touch the fish when they swam by.



His favorite part of the visit was the "just my size" area. It had a few things that were perfect for him. He loved the water table, where the water pours down a metal table that was just the right height for him. There are all sorts of little water toys to play with there, and he was just thrilled...and didn't even care when the kid next to him dumped an entire beaker full of water down his front. That ended our time there, but he definitely had fun.

Another highlight of his trip was his visit to the "books and trains" store (Barnes and Noble). He couldn't believe his good fortune when I plopped him down in front of the train table! He had a great time banging trains all over the table and walking his way around it.

Harrison took his baths in the kitchen sink, which his cousins thought was very funny! He was happy as could be there, and didn't seem to mind a bit. He really had fun just watching his cousins run around and play, and liked to play cars with them. He's already all about anything with wheels. We had a great time even though it was a short visit, but it was good to get home because Harrison sleeps much better here!

Last weekend Harrison figured out how to drink from a straw. He just had to watch me do it once, and then somehow he was able to make it work. He was so excited! He just smiled and let the water run all down his face...what a mess, but at least now he is easily entertained by drinking water from his straw cup.

We had left one kitchen cabinet un-babyproofed because Harrison had enjoyed getting into the tupperware. But, once he figured out how to take ALL of it out of the cabinet while he hung from the shelf that rolls out (danger!) we decided to make that one off limits too. What a mess!

Since Harrison is fast as lightning and will get into anything and everything he is not supposed to, he sometimes has to spend a few minutes in his pack n play to keep him out of danger. While he protests at first, he soon starts doing his new trick and cracking himself (and us) up. He will smash his face against the netting and make his little nose stick up like a pig nose. It is so funny, and he just laughs hysterically. He really loves it if you do it too, and he pokes at your face while laughing. It's hard to see here, but really is too cute.

Harrison is pulling up on everything, and cruising along the furniture. He has stood on his own for a second here or there. It won't be long before he is walking. Scary. We'll have to really keep an eye on him then, as he is already into anything he can get his hands onto!