Hello my name is....

Hello my name is Katherine and I am horrible at blogging...

I realize it has been quite a while since I blogged. At least I said from the start that I knew I probably would be horrible at keeping up with this! I can't even remember what all has happened since I last blogged. Awful.

A few weeks ago, we bought Jude a swing to hang on our back porch. He LOVES it. My grandmother loves to tell about how much I loved to swing when I was a baby, so he must get it from me! We must go swing a few times a day every weekend. He gets very excited and likes to tell us about what all he sees.

In BIGGER news.....Jude started CRAWLING!!! He has been trying for a long time...getting up on all fours, rocking back and forth, then face planting. He finally got his arms to move on November 11 right before we left for the day. 11/11/11 must have been lucky for him! As soon as he got that one arm to move, there's been no stopping him. It really is cute to watch him exploring and to see his face when he gets so excited because he realizes he can follow me and I don't have to pick him up and take him with me.

Here are a few pictures and videos from the last few weeks....

We took Jude for a walk to the park last weekend and he loved the swing, of course, the slide, and watching all the other children playing.

Swinging in the backyard

This how I find Jude most morning (when he goes back to sleep). Snuggling with his lovie. It's so sweet it makes me sad to have to wake him up.

This is good morning entertainment!!

Sliding for the first time

Telling us about what all he sees

Day 1 of crawling. He looked a little like a frog at first, but he's good to go now :)

Just because...

Just a couple pictures of my sweet boy....

One from his first carousel ride that I posted the video of.

And this is how I found him when I went to wake him up for "school"...snuggling with his lovie

A little behind...

So I've been a little behind on the blogging and I've been even worse at taking pictures lately. We went to Shreveport this past friday for my precious goddaughter, Caroline Smitherman's, 2nd birthday. She is getting so big and is such a pretty little thing! I'm not biased of course. It was Jude's first birthday party and he had such a good time watching all the other children play. He can't wait until he's big enough to play with them. Of course, I have no pictures :( I'm really going to have to get better about breaking out the camera. I know I'm going to regret that. After Caroline's birthday party, we went to Monroe to play with Parker, Jenna Kate, and Elizabeth. Parker's birthday was the 20th, so we went over to celebrate his 3rd birthday with him. Jude had so much fun with his cousins and it was the sweetest thing to see him so mesmerized by them and to see them play so sweetly with him. Saturday night, Elizabeth and Jenna Kate each read him a bedtime story and he just sat quietly, listened, and stared the whole time. We went to run some errands during the day on Saturday and, at the mall, Jude took his first carousel ride. He LOVED it! He has also become quite an expert at the jumper and we are waiting for him to slingshot himself out of it! It cracks us up watching him.

Here is a little peak at him. I will try to do better......And I promise to take pictures of the house soon.

Busy busy busy....

It has been a BUSY couple of weeks. We finally closed on our house on September 23rd!!! We have pseudo moved in, meaning everything we have has a place, except for things in the garage and things that need to go in the attic. We have not bought furniture for our formal living room yet so it's pretty empty, but we have everything up in the "playroom" which is the living room for now. We have some nit-picky things left to get, but other than that we are in! It is slowly starting to feel like home and we are loving it.

Jude has been going with the flow. He seems to like his new room. He has had some big things going on. At 5 months and 1 week exactly, he started sitting up on his own. He's now a pro and likes to sit and play with his toys. He is trying VERY hard to crawl. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth, but then either faceplants or goes backwards. I call him my little crawfish :) He also got to move up to a big boy carseat which he seems to really enjoy. He gets pretty amazed at the stuff going by out the window and gets pretty upset when it stops moving.

We went to the doctor for Jude's 6 month check up yesterday and he is a growing boy! He was 26 1/4 inches (50th percentile) and 16 pounds even (25th percentile). He got to start eating "food" yesterday too which was a treat. We started him on prunes of all things just because he has "issues"--you can use your imagination with regard to what since I don't feel he would probably want me writing about it for the world to see--and we want to go ahead and get that on the menu since we have to wait two weeks between foods and things like cereal tends to cause more "issues". I figure food can also only get better from here, ha! He LOVED them. Jude's doctor went on about how he would probably spit it out for a while and how it may take two weeks to get him to take in and swallow two tablespoons because he was going to be playing with it in his mouth and not know what to do with it, etc. etc. etc. UM...he swallowed the first bite and opened his mouth like he'd been doing it since birth. There was no clean up except to wipe his mouth off and a drop on his bib! Looks like we are going to have a good eater! We put the spoon on the tray of his high chair this evening (day 2 of food) and he grabbed the handle of the spoon and put the correct end in his mouth as if there was something on it. I guess he really was paying attention when he kept watching the fork/spoon leave my plate and go to my mouth.


This evening (third time eating "food"):

Unfortunately, my phone died and I lost all of the pictures I had on it. I have a few on the camera from the last couple of weeks and Scott has a couple on his phone. I am going to keep trying to recover from my phone and also get the other pictures downloaded, so pictures and videos are certain to come soon. I wanted to go ahead and write though before I forgot everything!

LSU vs Oregan

Labor day weekend, Aunt Katy, Uncle Dean, Erin and Matt came in town. We went to met them along with Megan, Jason, and Crawford, and some friends of Aunt Katy and Uncle Dean's from Lakeland at Pappadeaux's in Arlington which was literally right next to the stadium. Uncle Dean's latest "get up" was an LSU version of the Vatican guard uniform and he was every bit the part. We had such a great time with all of them and we were so glad Jude finally had a chance to meet them.

House update: We went to do our preliminary walk through yesterday and we should be ready to close September 23!!!! It's so close!

Jude and his friend

Jude likes to talk to his friend.....in the mirror

RECENT pictures....for real this time

Well after my recent realization that I had been doing a poor job of moving my pictures from my phone to my computer and taking more pictures with my actual camera, I vowed to do better. Soooo, I have some new pictures!!! The day after the recently posted video of Jude's first (actually second) roll from back to belly, he decided to take off. The very next day he was rolling all over the living room.....and is very proud of himself still every time he does it :) He at the same time started "scooting" or what I would to call doing the "inchworm." He will pull himself forward, stick his hiney up in the air, and push with his feet. He started yesterday and today trying to get up on all fours. I have a feeling I will be chasing him soon! We also went to the doctor today because unfortunately Jude has a stomach bug. Poor thing never missed a beat and has just continued to smile and play all day. We also discovered at the doctor's office that Jude is cutting teeth! There is one peeking out on the bottom! She was also able to see the top two coming down and said we may be seeing four at once. No wonder he has been a drool factory!

This peek-a-boo book is hilarious!



Day 2 of rolling.....we started at the burp cloth





We had one day of overcast skies and late in the evening temps in the upper 80s so we broke out the "big boy stroller" and he LOVED it. He kicked for our entire walk.



Can you give me a hand?


We went to see the house last weekend too and they are starting to do touch up work. They have installed our light fixtures, sink fixtures, granite, backsplash, air conditioning, etc. They had a delay in running the electricity to the house, but that is supposed to be up by this weekend. They will then start the landscaping and the last few things they have left to do. They are now estimating for us to close in the middle or third week of September. It's getting close and we are very excited!



Dining Room




Kitchen counters--not loving the backsplash with our granite now (we had a tiny square of each with a slice of grout about 1/8" thick to make our choices with---I mean who can really picture that?) but I'm hoping it will grow on me.





Foyer