8 Months

The calendar flips again and suddenly our baby is 8 months old. We're getting to that time of year when it seems as though the fast forward button is pushed. . . Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and then we'll be celebrating a birthday. Before I get ahead of myself, though, I better savor a little snapshot of the brightest part of my day.

He is frequently referred to as "my little stinker" cause no matter what he's doing, when you look at him and say his name, he looks right up at you with a huge grin, then continues with whatever antics he was up to.

He loves life. He's laid back yet full of wide-eyed curiosity about the world. At times it seems as though he knows that one day, he'll grow up and be an adult and have serious responsibilities. But for now, he's going to enjoy every second of being an innocent babe.

He's not crawling or very mobile yet (aside from the occasional rolling episode--see below), but seems to have go-go-gadget arms. We have to keep a 2-foot radius around him of anything we don't want him to grab. I guess it's good practice for when the crawling starts, cause he's been keeping us on our toes!

He has discovered that doing barrel rolls on the changing table is loads of fun and merits a gold medal to Mommy or Daddy for a successful diaper change.


He's very talkative, and now makes all sorts of different sounds. When I hear a "ma" or a "da" I do a speech lesson with him (saying "ma ma ma ma ma" or "da da da da da"). He just looks at me and smiles. Silly Mommy!

He's becoming quite the literary connoisseur, with definite favorites among his book collection. I read him one, put it down and pick up another and he reaches for the one I just put down because he wants to read it again. Dear Zoo is a current fave, and Mr Brown Can Moo, Can You? always draws big smiles. And we can't forget the perenniel favorite, Duckling and Friends (he's been a fan of this one since he was about 2 months old!). Eric Carle, though, you can take him or leave him. And some Sandra Boynton are big hits, but a few always leave him looking around the room for something more interesting. I think it's amazing that he's already got preferences and each month more and more of his personality shines through.

Here's to an amazing 8 months. . . we can't wait to see what he has in store for us next!

Harvest

That word just makes me think of fall. . . golden and brown-hued leaves and crisp autumn air, a bounty of crisp apples, pears, pumpkins, and squash filling the kitchen. We have our own harvest going on right now, but it's not the golden-hued produce typical of the season. When the garden's at 7,000 feet, it doesn't necessarily follow nature's rules. June's bounty is just now making an appearance, a few days after fall has officially begun.

No matter. . . our homegrown tomatoes taste great, even if the calendar and crisp temperatures have me pulling out recipes for warm bolognese sauces rather than fresh gazpacho or caprese salad.

Savor the season, regardless of which one it truly is!

Happy Birthday to You!

Hayden was quite the social butterfly this weekend with TWO 1st birthday parties on the calendar. On Saturday he partied in honor of Wilson and on Sunday it was in honor of Cara.

As I'm sure is the case at most kid's birthday parties, madness and mayhem ensued. At Wilson's party, our easy-going guy took it all in stride, discovering that colored tissue paper is quite amusing.

And a quick group shot before the Birthday Boy had a meltdown. Hey, it was his party, he could cry if he wanted.

Sunday's festivities were a bit more relaxed with just the playgroup buddies hanging out.

(those boys sure do love to chew on things!)

Cara enjoyed her cake, then we snapped a quick pic of the one-time college buddies with their kids. Doug and Rich have been friends since going through Basic Training together back in 1995. Bet they never imagined themselves celebrating their kids' birthdays together. . .

Happy Birthday to the newest "big kids"!

USAFA, Class of 2029

We're starting him early. . . Friday's lesson was Thermodynamics. Although Hayden was studying up on a slightly more elementary lesson during Daddy's lecture: colors.

Hayden and I were the special guests in Rich's 4th period class on Friday. And with Daddy as the instructor, maybe he did pick up a little something about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. He was quite enthralled by the end of class!

Who knows if he'll decide to make his Mommy and Daddy's alma mater his own, but how fun to think that 20 years from now he could be sitting in this very same classroom!

Favoritest Things

I apologize for the lack of new pictures here lately. I can't believe it's a been a week since my last post! I don't really count it as a whole week, though, since we weren't in the state of Colorado from Thursday to Sunday. More about that in a bit. . .

Before we were gone, Hayden discovered a new favorite toy. These cups are brilliant. I've actually had them since before he was born and we've pulled them out for him to play with before, but they just recently moved into the "absolute favorite" category. With all the noise-making, light-flashing, sensory-stimulating toys out there, the best ones really are the simplest.

Oh, and those things which aren't really toys are pretty popular, too. The telephone and my camera, for instance. . .

So, you're saying, "where did they go this time?" To Panama City Beach, Florida, of course! We made the trip for a reunion with my favoritest friends ever. This amazing group of women started out as a Book Club back in 2004 and quickly grew into so much more. Then the attrition started in January 2006 (darn the military!), and now only 3 of the original 9 are still in Colorado. We headed to Florida for the first of many planned reunions. Six of us were able to make it, no small feat seeing as how we probably should call ourselves the Baby Club instead of the Book Club (there were 3 children among the group when we started, now there are 10, with more on the way). Thanks to wonderful husbands/fathers and some baby juggling, we got plenty of time to relax and catch up. So, while I enjoyed time with my friends, Rich took over baby duty.

We don't have many pictures from the weekend (Dad's just not a camera kind of guy!), but I did snap a few of Hayden's reunion with his dear friend before Dad took over. He hadn't seen this little cutie (6 weeks his senior) since July. My how things have changed! Sharing his favorite toy was the highlight of the visit.

Thank you for a wonderful weekend, friends, kiddos, and daddies!

The hills are alive. . .

We spent last weekend up in the mountains at our condo and set out on a hike on Saturday. There are thousands of trails in Grand County, but we were looking for one that wouldn't involve driving too far to get to the trailhead and that didn't go too high. What's too high? Well, it's not recommended to take infants over ~8,000 feet. Easy when you live on the East Coast. But when you've been at 7,000 feet since conception, well, we didn't think that rule really applied.

We wanted to hike Byer's Peak, which overlooks our little home in the Fraser Valley. But, at 12,800 feet, we decided that might might be a little too high for Hayden. So we settled for something slightly lower (11,500 ft) that afforded some fabulous views of Byers Peak (that's it on the left, and Bills Peak is behind it on the right):

Our desitination was Bottle Peak. Summiting it involved a 5-mile roundtrip and you could drive up to nearly 10,000 feet before starting the hike. We loaded up with water and snacks, then set out on our journey.

Needless to say, it was a gorgeous day. I love this time of year with slightly chilly mornings and evenings, but warm, sunny skies during the middle of day. And thunderstorm season has pretty much moved on. I couldn't help but channel a little Julie Andrews (as Marie von Trapp!) while hiking.

Hayden was having a grand old time until we reached tree-line. Although it was warm and sunny, the wind was pretty fierce and he was not happy about it. We took a pit stop behind a small rock outcropping for some snacks. That lifted his spirits!

Unfortunately, as soon as we resumed the hike (and were victim to the wind again), he was not happy. So, within a half mile of the summit, we had to turn back. Despite not reaching the top of Bottle Peak (that's it in the distance--on the right), we had a fabulous time.

And check out those dimples! Hayden is starting to get very expressive and he has several different smiles, depending on just how happy he is. I just want to pinch those cute, dimpled cheeks!

Ten Days Apart

I had been meaning to post this since early last week and now I find that it's Sunday night. . . better late than never, right!

After returning home our fabulous tour of southwest Colorado last Monday night, some friends joined us for dinner. Cody and Katie are fellow '99 USAFA grads and Cody was teaching in the Engineering Mechanics department with Rich until he left to go get his PhD. We've kept in touch and were thrilled to find out via Christmas cards last year that they, too, were expecting a baby boy in late January. Little Riley arrived on January 21, ten days before Hayden! It's been fun checking out Riley's blog and seeing the parallels and differences in the boys, born so close together.

Katie got in touch to say that they'd be in Colorado for the long weekend and would love to get together. Since we already had our trip planned, the only chance we had was Monday night. So, they headed over to our house for dinner. Actually, since we had just pulled into our own driveway 2 hours earlier, they picked up some pizzas, then headed on over (thank you!!).

After a long day in the car, Hayden wasn't his normal, happy, easy-going self, so the boys didn't get a chance to play together much. We had a few minutes for a formal introduction with some slobbery hand grabs and face touching. Baby language for, "nice to meet you."

Katie managed to get a couple better pics than the one we got. Scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry to see a few other cute ones of Riley and Hayden.

Too bad these boys won't get to play together more often. . . hopefully our Air Force future will intersect with this great family again. Can you imagine these boys in 1st or 2nd grade together?!?

A Great Weekend

I'm in love. And I'm not talking about Rich. Oh, he is fully aware of this love I have and he knows he can't compete. Luckily, he doesn't have to. . . I'm in love with the mountains and I can have them both.

Our weekend journey took us to southwest Colorado, through the Black Canyon, the San Juan mountains, down the "million dollar highway," and to Durango and Mesa Verde. The highlight for me was those mountains. . . my heart swells up in my chest just thinking about them. And I spent about all day Friday and into Saturday morning just gawking at the surroundings from our campsite in the city of Ouray. Yes, there are lots of pretty mountain towns in this great state, but nothing quite like Ouray. The town of 831 people sits at ~7,000 feet and it is literally surrounded by several 13,000+ feet peaks. And I mean immediately surrounded. Not off in the distance. We're talking reach out an touch them or gawk for hours on end. How this girl who grew up in the state of Florida, with a peak elevation around 300 feet fell so head over heels in love with the mountains is beyond me. I just know that being among them gives me a feeling like no other.

So, onto what you're really here for. . . the pictures. We left in the early afternoon on Thursday and arrived at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park around 7 p.m. We had the campground to ourselves, well, except for some deer.

When we woke up on Friday morning, we just had to head a few hundred yards down the road to get to the "big hole in the ground". 2000 feet below, the mighty Gunnison River carved out this impressive canyon. We were careful not to get too close to the edge!

(his Zoolander pose):

The canyon was impressive. But I was about to fall in love. We headed south to Ouray. Pictures just can't do the scenery justice. Here's an attempt, though. First, as you're heading toward the town (it's nestled behind that mountain on the right):

And next, looking down on the town from the perch of our campsite:

We set up camp and shortly after, a rainstorm rolled through. Hayden didn't mind hanging out in the tent. He took inventory of our equipment, giving special consideration to the lamp.

After our rainy evening, the sun was shining bright--perfect for some hiking. We trekked right to the base of Cascade Falls, then hit the Baby Bathtubs trail.

Hayden enjoyed some zzzzzzz's while Dad did all the work:

We hit the road yet again, heading south toward Durango down the "Million Dollar Highway". It's a good thing Rich was driving. No guardrails on winding, mountain roads and I couldn't stop gawking out the window at the views!

For the last 2 nights of our trip we planned to stay in a hotel. We thought 4 nights of camping might be a little much for our little guy. It was nice to have running water just a few feet from our sleeping quarters after using pit toilets the previous 2 nights. After our comfy night on a real mattress, we headed out to Mesa Verde National Park to check out some cliff dwellings built by the ancestral puebloans around 1200 A.D.

We headed back to Durango and wandered Main Avenue, checking out the Silverton-Durango rail station, the cool shops, and a brewery for dinner.

Hayden's favorite stop was the toy shop. We just knew he'd love this tub of baby treasure!

Monday morning came and it was time to head back home. I'm always sad when a great trip is coming to an end. At least we had to drive through the mountains to get home!