Joey - 8 months

This month has been a crazy one.  Joey has learned SO much!

- Joey developed physically a lot this month.  He started pushing himself into the sitting position, pulling up on furniture, sitting down after pulling himself back up, and cruising while holding onto furniture.

- Part of Joey's personality is starting to show.  He definitely knows what he wants, and he wants it NOW.  Can't imagine where he gets that from...definitely not his mom.  He also is an explorer.  He loves going into new rooms, looking behind doors, and following us around to see what we're doing.  He also has the absolute sweetest grin.

- He gets mad if I play the piano without him.  He loves the piano so much, and seems to have already figured out that if you move to the right, it goes higher, and if you move to the left, it goes lower.

- He enjoys being around dogs.  If we're holding him and a dog is around, he fixates on the dog.  It's pretty entertaining.

- He LOVES his daddy.  Every time I call Neal and put him on speaker phone, Joey grins at the sound of his voice.  When Neal comes home from work Joey gets really excited.

- Joey took the second trip of his life to Utah.  We went out for my sister, Tiffany's, baby shower and to help her get ready for her son to be born.

Funny story about this redneck baby picture:

We were at the mall in Utah and Joey had an explosion in the Mr. Mac store (to the dismay of the salesman).  I had dressed him in the "extra" clothes I had been keeping in the diaper bag that morning and forgot to replace them.  So, we had to walk through the mall to a baby clothes store with Joey looking like a redneck baby.  Diaper, camo jacket, and American flag pacifier.  We got a kick out of it.

- Joey's first Thanksgiving! We hosted Thanksgiving this year.  Joey tried turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, and even a little bit of pumpkin pie.

- The day after Thanksgiving Joey helped me get all of our Christmas decorations hung up.

- He became obsessed with our TV.  We have to put up blockades to keep him from knocking over the TV.

- We went to visit Neal at work, and while we were there we went and saw all the trees at Festival of Trees.

- We didn't know it at the time, but Joey's first tooth was (finally) starting to cut through.  We were getting up with him about every two hours.  It was rough.  Now that we know what it is though, it's a lot easier to help him.

- Joey's friend Lila (and her mom, my friend, Jocelyn) came over to play.  It was pretty entertaining to watch them figure each other out.

- On his 8 month "birthday" I took him to the doctor to get a weight check done to make sure he was still getting enough milk.  Our little chunker weighs 19 pounds 1 ounce.  He's definitely getting enough ;)

Christmas Card

We were going to send out Christmas cards this year.  Then we had three major car repairs in a week and a half. So, needless to say, the Christmas cards went from the "want" to the "maybe next year" list.

So, here's the picture we were going to put on our card for you to enjoy:

We hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Joey - 7 months

I'm way behind the ball on this one.  Joey's been 7 months old for almost two weeks now!  Yikes!

To be fair, the day he turned 7 months old we were in the car for 11 1/2 hours driving to Utah.  Going over the mountains means no service to post a blog!

First off, I have a huge favor to ask you all.  I entered Joey into the Gerber 2014 Photo Search contest.  If he wins, he gets $5000 to put in a fund for his college education.  We entered this photo (cause we thought it was pretty dang cute):

I won't bog this post down with everything, so for instructions, go here. 

Here are some fun things that happened during Joey's seventh month:

- Joey figured out how to sit up better on his own, and then the real adventure - crawling - started.  He started army crawling at the beginning of October.  It was pretty cute.  Still is.  And my house will never be clean again ;)

- He's figured out how to open drawers.  It's pretty much his most favorite thing to do (under close supervision of course).

- We went to the park several times.  He likes going down the slide with mom or dad.  He hasn't quite decided how he feels about swings.

- He's become much more exploratory.  Looking behind doors, in boxes, and around corners have become some of his new favorite things to do.

- We went to Red Robin for "Tip A Cop" to support the Special Olympics.  Joey got to meet Sheriff Cook, and became a Jr Deputy.

- He discovered leaves.  We don't have a tree, but my parents have a maple in their front yard.  One of the days we were down there getting ready for the boys' hunting trip, Neal sat him in some leaves.  It was pretty cute.

- We went to the pumpkin patch.  Super fun.

- We carved pumpkins for FHE one night.  I cried.  I'm so excited to introduce Joey to the magic of the holidays.  Neal tried to carve Joey's pumpkin to look like Joey, and I think he succeeded!

- It was just Joey and I for Halloween (Neal left for hunting that morning).  Joey was dressed up as a pumpkin during the day, and was Woody from Toy Story that night.  My sister, Tiffany, (visiting from Utah) drove up from my parents to see our house, and then we went to my grandparents' house.  In the evening, Joey and I went to our ward's Halloween party, and then went trick-or-treating to the houses in our neighborhood that belong to people that we know.  Then we waited at the stairs (which are right inside our front door) for all the trick-or-treaters to come!  It was a fun night :-)

Other random fun pictures from this month:

Gerber Photo Search

Hi all!

So we could really use your help.

We entered Joey in the 2014 Gerber Photo Shoot contest, and we need your votes.  If he wins, he will be given $5000 to save towards his college education.  It would be SO awesome if we won!

This is the picture we entered:

To vote, go here and click "view gallery."  From there, search with our ID number: 80978 in Colorado.  Then just vote!

Each person can vote once a day.

Thank you!

In other non-Joey news

Most of you have probably been keeping up on Facebook, but I want to post some pretty important things that have happened to us over the last four months or so.

Neal got yet another promotion at the Union Colony Civic Center.  He's now the "Technical Services Coordinator" aka the Technical Director for you theater folks.  It was a HUGE leap of faith for him to apply for and accept the job.  It comes with a lot of responsibility, and he had a LOT to learn in a very short amount of time.  Now that we are a couple months into it, he's really enjoying the job, and he's learning a TON of stuff that he didn't understand before about budgeting, managing, and much, much more.  I can't express in words how proud I am of him for taking the leap.  I am so grateful everyday that he takes providing for his family seriously, and that he strives to do his absolute best at his job!  I know it will give him so much more understanding in his career field.

We bought a house, and moved to a little farm town!  It's a pretty blue house, about 2100 square feet (700 of which is unfinished).  It sits on about a quarter acre so we've got a good sized back yard.  Our neighbors are super sweet and helpful.

We got to meet the local volunteer fire department, and figure out where the closest urgent care was to our new house.  I was getting a sandwich made so I could sit down and eat while I fed Joey and then put him to sleep.  While making said sandwich, I was cutting some delicious colby jack with a cheese slicer (that I never ever use, so don't ask me why I used it at that moment) and slipped and just about took the tip of my thumb off.  It was pretty gnarly.  The firefighters seriously freaked Joey out, so he screamed pretty much the whole time.  The only time he calmed down is when a specific firefighter of the SIX firefighters that showed up at my house picked him up and started playing with him.  I'm guessing that firefighter was a recent new dad because he seemed to know exactly how to calm Joey down.  I'm so grateful Neal works close to home so that he was able to come home and take me to Urgent Care (where I got three stitches).  I am grateful that my in-laws were able to come over afterwards and help me get ready for our housewarming party that was that weekend.  I am grateful that my cousin was able to take my stitches out so we didn't have to spend the money on even more medical bills.

 I LOVE staying at home with Joey.  He brings so much joy and happiness to my life and I am so glad we made the decision to take that road for our family.

Well....that's about it!  :)

Joey - 6 months

I cannot believe that a half a year has gone by since our little dude was born!  People kept telling me time would go faster once he was born, and I didn't believe them.  Now I do!

Our little guy's half birthday was on Sunday!

Here he is all smiley and happy with his big blue eyes:

He's so grown up already!

Alright.  This month was a big one:

- He started rolling from back to front and then about two weeks later figured out how to roll from front to back.  It's now his main form of transportation (besides his favorite, which is mom carrying him...EVERYWHERE).

- He has still been rocking the solid foods.  Some have them have cause a little...hem hem...trouble...in the latter end of the digestive system department, but we're working on getting that one figured out.  He loves sweet potatoes, bananas, bread, and anything that's on mom and dad's plates that he can try and get to.

- Mom's going back to completely dairy free.  He went from sleeping about 8 hours in a row (with a dream feed about half way through) two months ago to having several nights where he's woken up every 1-2 hours.  Thankfully, about the time that mom feels like she's at her breaking point, he has a good night.  But, we're going to try cutting dairy back out and see if that's the culprit.

- He's started falling asleep on his own.  We read a story, rock while we sing three songs, and then he gets laid down.  Sometimes he needs a little more help, but usually he just lays there still and quiet until he falls asleep.  He's SUCH a good little guy.

- He has started sitting up on his own.  It has been pretty cool to watch him progress from needing support while sitting up to learning to catch his balance when he starts to fall, to not having any problems sitting up now.  Just today he started sitting up while in his stroller instead of leaning back onto the back rest.

- He got to meet his Great-Great Grandma Kidder.  She adored him, and he didn't freak out when someone new held him.  We were able to get a five generation picture, and for that I'm grateful because he may be the only great-great grandchild that gets that opportunity with her (she's 98).

- He also met a new buddy, Sarah, who is my grandparents' dog.

- We took our monthly trip down to the temple.  He LOVED the fountain.

- His naps are getting better.  Some days (like today) take a little coercing to get him to sleep longer, but he's getting better at doing it himself.  I'm pretty sure part of the problem is he gets distracted while he's eating and so he doesn't totally "fill up" and then he gets hungry half way through his nap.

- We went up to Estes Park and had a picnic in Rocky Mountain National Park.  We saw some elk and did a short hike.

Here are some other fun pictures from this last month:

And this last one is probably my favorite.  I caught this one while we were in the annex at the Denver Temple.  He was staring and the huge statue of Christ.  There's a look of "Hey, I know that person" on his face, and I love it!