november sneak peeks...

I know I always say that I love the kits Heidi puts together, but this month she really outdid herself. The colors, the papers and the embellishments were just perfect! I really, really liked this one. Here are some peeks.





Check out the gallery at Freehand Scraps on the 1st!

partytime! well, sort of........

Cannon was not too impressed by his party. Really the only thing that broke a smile was the balloons. He is still playing with those days later. We had a the grandparents over for lunch for burgers and cake of course!

He did not want to be away from mama the whole time. He seemed confused when we all stopped what we were doing to sing him Happy Birthday and the cake was a pretty big let down as well. He liked smooshing it in his fingers, but was not that interested in eating it.

He really didn't need anything for his birthday so we told everybody to just get him Target gift cards (I mean, we really always need something from Target, right!?!) so he didn't really have any gifts to open. I did get him a few books that I wrapped up so that he could experience the unwrapping ritual, but even that was not really a big hit.

Oh well, maybe he will be more interested next year. I have a feeling he is going to be our quiet, contemplative one....not really interested in a big fuss.

I loved the cake! It tasted sooo good too!











Charlie loved reading all Cannon's cards aloud to us.

harvest festival fun....

Our neighborhood's annual Harvest Festival was on Saturday. Charlie loved all the games and prizes of course. Cannon was not too impressed. The weather was perfect, even a little on the warm side for Fall.

mmmmm......straw. Right in to the mouth.

There was a trolley that drove around the neighborhood. Eric was the tour guide, telling jokes and pointing out interesting facts about the community.




All the kids loved the Donut Game, it always had the longest line. Charlie finally got a turn and he was such a little cheater! He was constantly using his hands to get the donut in his mouth.




So much fun with the family. It really is no wonder why Fall is my favorite season, is it?

cannon at one year....

Happy Birthday sweet baby boy! This past month we have seen some major changes with you. You have become such a happy little guy. You are exploring anything and everything and your little personality has made an appearance in a big way.

Here are a few things about you at one year old...

- You are doing much better with your eating. You will eat most baby foods and are really starting to enjoy solids such as bananas, graham crakers, pears and cheerios. You do not seem to like cheese. You still have a little problem with pocketing the food onto the roof or sides of your mouth, but you are getting better. I think you just need some more practice. You are also doing pretty good with a straw cup. The OT advised against a sippy cup for you so we are going straight to the straw. You are still figuring it out, but have done it a few times on your own.

- You are crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything. You love to be standing up and in the action at all times. You will crawl around the furniture if you have a motivator (the remote or one of Charlie's toys) but otherwise you are not doing it consistently. You love to climb the stairs and hang out by the fireplace.

- You have beautiful, bold blue eyes and your hair is lightening up to a reddish light brown color. It looks very red in the sunshine. I love it.

- You are still an earlybird, usually waking by 6am. You usually take a pretty decent nap in the morning and then a short nap in the afternoon. You wake up grumpy from your naps and usually need some extra attention to snap out of it. Bedtime is around 7:30pm.

- You are wearing 18 month clothes and size 4 diapers. You weighed 20 pounds 2 ounces and were 27.75 inches long at your one year appointment today. (10th percentile for both)

- You are throwing little temper tantrums when you can't have what you want or when I take something away from you. How do you find every little tiny of anything in the carpet and why do you have to put it in your mouth?

- You are become much more interactive with us. You love it when we sing to you. We have been singing a lot of Patty-Cake, Twinkle-twinkle, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. You are just learning how to clap. It is so fun to see your reactions to the things around you. We can definitely see that little person inside of you is starting to shine through

- You started randomly shaking your head from side to side about 2 weeks ago. Now if we do it, you will do it to. It is the funniest thing.

- You like to imitate the noises we make. From high pitched squeals to whispers, you will usually imitate any sounds you hear. We have not heard any first words from you yet though.

- You are seeing Amy, your OT, once a week to be sure you stay on track and continue to work on the small feeding issues that you have. You finally like Amy and you have fun showing her all your new tricks every week.

- You are still not really into watching anything like Baby Einstein. If it is on, it will occasionally catch your attention for a few seconds, but then you are on to your next activity.

- You love to take baths, especially with your big brother. You just splash and splash like crazy.

- You have 6 teeth and at least one on the way. Your cheeks get bright red when you are teething and you are constantly drooling and chewing on everything. Your appetite usually decreases as well.

- You have gotten pretty social and will usually crack a smile at any stranger that tries to get your attention. Everybody always comments on how beautiful you are. I have to agree with them every time.

His party is not until Sunday so I will share some pictures of that soon. He did have his one year check-up today and had to get his shots. I know, what a mean mama I am to make him get shots on his birthday! The doctor said he looked great. His right testicle still has not descended, so we will have to see a urologist about that. More than likely he will have to have a small surgery performed to have get that fixed. Bummer, I was really hoping that would take care of itself over time. Luckily, it should be a short and minor procedure.

We had a special birthday lunch at Taco Bell.

This is his face when he is squealing.....I love that you can see all his teeth in there.

It is just about impossible to get a decent picture of these 2 together.

Some pictures from this afteroon. He was much too busy to give me a smile. Don't you just love those cute, chubby little hands?

And of course the rock goes right in to the mouth just like everything else. Yum!

He is getting excited for his party, I can tell! :)

one year ago.....

This same week last year was one of the worst weeks of my life. I was in the hospital waiting to see what was going to happen with the baby inside of me, we sold our home and Eric had lost his job. All in one week. To say that I felt as if my world was falling in on me is an understatement. I wondered how this could all be happening at once, but I really couldn't worry about it. I had one focus and that was Cannon. He saved me during this time. As we said good-bye to a home that we loved, the home that I thought we would raise our kids in, my mind stayed focused on Cannon. And when Eric lost his job and it became clear very quickly that he was not going to get a comparable job anytime soon, I had to fight for Cannon. If I could change things for him, how his life began, I would do it in a second but since that is not going to happen, I feel blessed that I had him to help me keep things in perspective. There were many days that I wanted to feel sorry for myself or wanted to just give up, but I couldn't because he needed me.

This past year has been hard. I still miss our house. Eric did get another job pretty quickly, but it pays about half of what he used to make. We have made a lot of changes to our lifestyle and we have tried to figure out what is really important. I guess I am sharing this because I have been surprisingly emotional this week. I have thought a lot about that night as I laid in the hospital bed, knowing that it was probably going to be the last night I was going to pregnant. It was the last night I was ever going to feel a baby kicking and rolling around inside of me. And now, that little peanut is turning one tomorrow. He is healthy and he is happy. That has made it all worth it. That is all we could have ever asked for and we are so thankful.

a very lucky little boy....

A few weeks ago, my cousin Brad offered to send us a laptop for Charlie to have. I mean really, what 4-year-old do you know that doesn't have their own laptop, right? Actually, we were very touched that Brad thought of Charlie and was generous enough to offer it to him. He even got it all set-up with Charlie's username and set disney.com as the homepage. Charlie is in heaven. He loves that he has his own password. He loves that he figured out how to press ctrl+alt+delete. And he loves that it is all his very own. The only thing he does not love is that he is having to rebuild his favorites list. Yes, we could have transferred his favorites, but we decided not to since he had way too many. Like hundreds too many. Eric is convinced he is going to be on the show "Hoarders" when he grows up. He is definitely our little packrat. Especially when it comes to his favorites list.

Anyway....Brad, thank-you so much for thinking of Charlie. You made him one very happy little boy and his parents are very grateful as well. Love and miss you.

busy, busy boy.....

This is what we have resorted to around here lately-

Cannon is a busy little boy. He is curious and he is fast. I can look away for just a second and the next thing you know he is nowhere to be found. His two favorite spots to explore are the fireplace and the stairs. Ugh. And did I mention that he was fast? He can make it up those stairs in record speed and it scares me to death every time. Even though it is a total pain keeping tabs on him every second, this is also one of my favorite ages. It is so fun to see him explore all these things for the first time. Figuring out how things work, what noises he can make, how far he can push the limits. So amazing how those little brains work.