April's been a good, but seriously bipolar month so far. One day it's 70 degrees, the next day it snows. Joey got his first bad cold. It was so sad. If there's one thing he loves in life, it's milk, and a stuffy nose kept him from nursing like he wanted to. The only time I've seen him madder is when I tried to use the booger sucker on him (I'm sure there's a nicer name for it, but I don't know it).
On a brighter note, on the sunny days we've been spending a lot of time outside. Joey loves playing the grass, scratching at the trees and riding in the swing. The 2 year old neighbor girl loves mauling him half to death in her version of affection.
The best news of all I don't have a picture of yet, but I WILL remember the camera today...putting it by the door now...This nice man in my mom's ward has a big garden plot that is used exclusively for growing grass and dandelions. He's letting us use it to tear up and plant as we please. Awesome! We got some library books on gardening and are trying some pretty crazy ideas involving cardboard, bags of compost, and sprouting seeds in wet paper towels on a foot warmer. More to come.
Ok, blah blah blah, here are the pictures.
James and I hatched this great story to tell my parents on April Fools' Day about how a family he home teaches asked us to puppy sit their giant pit bull...but we're really not worried because Ruggles (see, we even named him) is great with kids and only pees outside. We were even going to have a giant water dish on the kitchen floor. And then we forgot to tell them. Oh well. Above is a picture of half my April Fools dinner. I made a meatloaf in two cake pans, layered them and frosted them with mashed potatoes and ketchup. It was awesome. I told James that we were having hamburgers for dessert and cake for dinner, since the hamburgers weren't quite done yet. He got a little shock when he took his first bite of meatloaf cake. True to my word, we had "hamburgers" for dessert. We remembered to take a picture only after the "cake" was gone. I think the hamburger cookies turned out awesome. The ketchup and mustard were a little disconcerning, but they tasted like frosting, honest.
James and I hatched this great story to tell my parents on April Fools' Day about how a family he home teaches asked us to puppy sit their giant pit bull...but we're really not worried because Ruggles (see, we even named him) is great with kids and only pees outside. We were even going to have a giant water dish on the kitchen floor. And then we forgot to tell them. Oh well. Above is a picture of half my April Fools dinner. I made a meatloaf in two cake pans, layered them and frosted them with mashed potatoes and ketchup. It was awesome. I told James that we were having hamburgers for dessert and cake for dinner, since the hamburgers weren't quite done yet. He got a little shock when he took his first bite of meatloaf cake. True to my word, we had "hamburgers" for dessert. We remembered to take a picture only after the "cake" was gone. I think the hamburger cookies turned out awesome. The ketchup and mustard were a little disconcerning, but they tasted like frosting, honest.This month Joey had his first experience with solid foods. Here are pictures of the first 3 times he tried rice cereal. As you can tell, his opinion of the stuff has improved.
The only hard thing is getting the spoon free of his death grip to reload. He's also learned to grab the food off of the spoon before we even get it to his mouth. So now dinner is immediately followed by a bath.
I guess you can't tell in this picture, but if you blow it up really big, you can see that he has 2 little toofers! He got one last Wednesday and the second one the next day. Our little punkin is growing up!
April was Italian party month...didn't you know? Elena (my mission trainer) came down with her mom and brother who were visiting from Torino this month. We had nice noisy party where everyone gained at least 3 pounds. Everybody had a good time, except Joey who woke up hopping mad to see all these strangers in his nice quiet house.
Elena and her family came back down for a quick visit the next week. It was her birthday, so we had some (delicious, if I do say so myself) cupcakes. Fun times. I miss Italy.
Now that Joey is basically an adult (eating cereal, sitting up, 2 teeth, how much more grown up can you get?) he let us know in no uncertain terms that he was done with his infant tub. Above is a picture from last week of him, reclining in his little whale tub, chewing happily on his fishy toy.
And here's what he does this week. He won't lean back no matter what we do. You can't see it, but he's got a death grip on the side of his tub, lest we try to make him lay back...that was SO last week!
The only hard thing is getting the spoon free of his death grip to reload. He's also learned to grab the food off of the spoon before we even get it to his mouth. So now dinner is immediately followed by a bath.
I guess you can't tell in this picture, but if you blow it up really big, you can see that he has 2 little toofers! He got one last Wednesday and the second one the next day. Our little punkin is growing up!
April was Italian party month...didn't you know? Elena (my mission trainer) came down with her mom and brother who were visiting from Torino this month. We had nice noisy party where everyone gained at least 3 pounds. Everybody had a good time, except Joey who woke up hopping mad to see all these strangers in his nice quiet house.
Elena and her family came back down for a quick visit the next week. It was her birthday, so we had some (delicious, if I do say so myself) cupcakes. Fun times. I miss Italy.
Now that Joey is basically an adult (eating cereal, sitting up, 2 teeth, how much more grown up can you get?) he let us know in no uncertain terms that he was done with his infant tub. Above is a picture from last week of him, reclining in his little whale tub, chewing happily on his fishy toy.
And here's what he does this week. He won't lean back no matter what we do. You can't see it, but he's got a death grip on the side of his tub, lest we try to make him lay back...that was SO last week!
Oh, and he wants to crawl too, but can't (much to my delight). This is my favorite stage where he can sit for a long time and entertain himself, but he can't get away and destroy the house.
Our little stud muffin turned 6 months old yesterday! No cake for him yet, but I did bake him a yam. My quest is to make him like all the things that his daddy hates (Grandma Affleck calls them the finer things in life): yams, squash, cantaloupe, asparagus...so far I've been successful. He's got his Daddy's good looks and his Mommy's good taste. As it should be.
He liked it! Now we've got another color to wash out of his clothes.Here's a video that is definitely sideways and possibly won't even work. I tried.
Ok, for some reason I can't drag my pictures into the order I want them, so we'll just jump around. 
