More pumpkins!

With the rotting pumpkin in the garbage, we decided to go ahead with our painting job on the second pumpkin we got at the pumpkin patch. Matt proudly donned one of my painting shirts and picked out his colors.

It took him a minute or two to get the brush out of the paint and onto the pumpkin.

More paint for an already overloaded brush.

Let the finger painting begin!

Silly me, I thought he'd have fun painting the pumpkin, but it turns out that painting my shirt was more fun!

He looks at Nick, wondering why we are giving him such funny looks about painting the shirt.

With the brush thrown aside, it was time to invest the whole hand in the painting endeavor.

At one point he just started slapping the pumpkin with a hand full of paint.

Here's the only picture I could get of Matt with his pumpkins, after he went and played in the yard with all the leaves and sprinklers. He was quite a mess after everything!

Here are Matt's finished works. The little pumpkin was from his friend Abby's birthday party on Sunday. He was quite proud of his pumpkins!

Our son the goofball!

The other night, we got home from work and Matt showed off his new version of walking that he has picked up from a playmate at daycare. I have seen them do this walk together and it's quite amusing, but I had to get in on film for Nick and couldn't resist sharing it.
Here's our highstepper!

Tonight, while playing Potato Head, Matt decided we both needed to try on the glasses. I couldn't resist the pictures!

He looks like an old man peeking over his glasses so he can see better!

He decided that running, while having your vision greatly distracted by a pair of Potato Head glasses, is a good idea! Luckily, no one was injured in the filming of this incident!

A Day of Pumpkins!

Over the weekend, we took Matt to a pumpkin patch at a local church and let him explore. Turns out, he explored everything but the pumpkins. He kept climbing up on the haystacks, and on the palettes and walking around on them. It was a tough transition back to the car after that visit, but he survived!

He wouldn't dare sit still and pose for a picture on the hay. He was too busy exploring all the new things.

He was picking out a pumpkin from the ones used to price the rest. Notice, he's one from the "top of the line" pumpkin. Great taste, I guess.

Once we got the pumpkins home, we decided to get messy with the taller of the two we bought. Yes, it will probably rot by next Wednesday, but we had fun anyway!

Matt was okay with holding all the tools, and helping scoop with a long handled spoon, but when it came time to touch the pumpkin "goop", he just wanted to watch.

He did help me get the seeds and goop from my hands by flicking them off violently!

I tried to get him in there, but he held on tight to his spoon instead.

He looks like he was helpful, doesn't he? I was almost elbow deep in the pumpkin! He did help put his hat on when we were all done.

I'll have to get a picture of him with his pumpkin on the porch. We'll be painting the other one this weekend. That should be interesting...

New favorites

These days it's easy to figure out what Matt is doing in the house. There are really only 2 things he does on a regular basis at home without prompting, which are watching "Finding Nemo" and reading "Mat Man". I really don't know how the whole Nemo thing started, but he is a real addict. I can tear him away for meals and he definitely plays while watching (at times), but he just loves that movie right now. "Mat Man" is a book from the Handwriting Without Tears program I use with the kids at work. I recently went to the preschool training and came home with some of the tools and introduced them to Matt knowing he isn't of preschool age yet, but what can it hurt? He fell in love with Mat Man, and that includes his new favorite book, making Mat Man out of the wooden pieces as well as listening to the song non-stop in the car.

Here he is with all of his remotes out ready for us to turn on Nemo, and reading his Mat Man book while waiting on us! His favorite word in the book is now "octagon", which he says for virtually every shape with a big grin on his face! I guess he likes the way it sounds when he says it.

Occasionally, we can get him to play with other toys while downstairs. He loves legos now and loves to build cars with his new set we got him.

He also recently discovered that it is fun to wear the container as a hat!

Here he goes, running away from me with his new hat on.

It's dark and blurry, but if you enlarge it you can see the blurry figure with the neon green hat, running down the hallway! He is such a goof ball! He keeps us laughing, and I can only hope that the next little has a sense of humor like Matt!

Playtime before gametime

Matt had a big day today! He got his second haircut at the barber shop. I think we were all 3 so traumatized by the first one, it took us a good 10 months to go back. Matt watched as his daddy got his hair cut and then sat in Nick's lap to get his own done. After the initial fright of the clippers, he calmed down and the whole barber shop got to watch Noggin on tv while Matt got his hair cut. He did so well and he actually looks like someone made an effort to cut his hair. It's not his usual cut on the run in the bathtub cut that I give him!

He played outside tonight with his sand & water table while he and his daddy talked about the upcoming USC game. His favorite thing to say on Saturdays is "BOOTY!" (the USC quarterback), followed closely by "FIGHT ON, DADDY!". He's becoming quite the little fan even though all the games have been passed his bedtime. He watches bits and pieces of the recorded USC games on Sundays so he can see his favorite quarterback throw the ball.

Here they are modeling their SC shirts and playing in the sand.

Check out those haircuts! I can't believe what a big boy Matt is turning into!

Since tonight's game started right at 7, we watched the intro to the game, and Matt said "night night, Booty!" while waving at the tv. Things like that bring tears to his daddy's eyes! Don't get me started on our little lefty quarterback in the making and what it does to Nick when Matt throws him a spiral!

Playground!

Matt's newest favorite thing to do is play on the playground! Recently we've made a couple of trips to some of the indoor play places around town since the weather has not permitted much else. He has loved it and enjoys exploring the whole place! I end up getting quite a workout trying to keep up with him. Here are some pics from our trip earlier last week.

He's getting a couple of new teeth in, can you tell?

His favorite thing to do is combine toys. Unfortunately for him, the toys do not always combine well, like a riding toy inside a closed playhouse.

He is always one step ahead of his current activity. He stayed on that dog only long enough for our incredibly delayed camera to catch him riding it.

He explored the top of the pirate toy last, and thankfully made a gracious exit when we headed off to our first library story time. He waved at the entire place and yelled, "bye bye, playground". The other moms in the place got a big kick out of his grand exit.

Here's Matt this morning when we went to play on our neighborhood playground. It's the only shot I could get of him while still for at least 3 seconds. He borrowed a car from a boy at the playground and explored all over, driving the car on the bench, down the slides and over the bridge. Then, after about 30 minutes of playing, he walked on the sidewalk toward the street and said, "all done, playground". I had to convince him to get back to his stroller so we could walk home.

25 weeks & a trip up to Dallas

Over the weekend Matt & I took a trip up to Dallas to visit with family and friends, while Nick was with family in Tennessee. We stayed with Grandpa & Granny (No pictures again! I am so bad about that.), but were able to get together briefly with Matt's cousins and my brother and sister-in-law. Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long to get them all together for a picture. It was very cute how all of them tried to cheer Matt up to take the picture while he tried to let everyone know just how far past his bedtime we had pushed! He had been working on saying their names for a while, so it was good to see him able to practice in person.

Figured we'd update the prego belly pics since we hadn't taken one in about 6 weeks. Here's the latest belly! I am feeling huge, and looking back at my pregnancy with Matt, I am bigger. We'll have to wait to see what the doctor says about the big belly on Friday!

Pool party

We had some friends over last weekend for one last pool party for the summer. Matt slept through a big portion of it, as usual. I can't complain about our good sleeper, but I felt bad he missed out on some serious playtime! He managed to slip right into the mix though and seemed to have a good time with all of the kids.

Kirk and Skyler look on as Matt, Abby and Luke play in the sandbox.


Matt learned how to make it impossible for me to get all of the sand off of him before he went inside for the evening!

Matt & Abby hung out for a little Nemo watching time. Notice how Abby is holding Matt's hand! They are too cute together, even with their glazed over looks!

Matt decided to fight the more aggressive hand holding technique Abby tried.

Oklahoma visit

It was off to Oklahoma for a visit with Nana and Pawpaw over the weekend. We also got to see Matt's Uncle Mike, and his cousins Abby and Dom. Matt was a bit moody and clingy over the weekend, but he had a great time with everyone. Matt is becoming quite the little traveler. I started preparing him on Tuesday for our Thursday flight. We were set to meet Nick up in Oklahoma for the weekend, so Matt & I were left to the flight up there by ourselves. We made it up there without much drama. The only incident we had was when Matt's straw cup decided to become a waterfall while we were flying! We both got rather wet, but were able to dry by the time we landed. Here's Matt with his first guitar lesson from Pawpaw. He also managed to learn how to say "OU" for Pawpaw as well. I think Matt melted his heart a bit with that one!

Matt wasn't very cooperative with the photo shoot in the front yard, but we managed to get a family picture anyway.

Here's Matt, holding all his toys including a stick he found in the yard, a large nut that fell off one of the trees, and tucked away inside that hand is the cat's ball he toted around all weekend.

Matt took Pawpaw for a walk around the front yard. Notice Matt's feet are a bit blurry. He just wouldn't stop moving long enough for a picture!

Matt stopped briefly to pose with me and Nana, but we think it's only because we bribed him with his favorite playmate of the weekend, Joey the kitty. He and Joey chased each other around all weekend. I don't know who was more worn out!

One more brief stop for a quick picture with Nana! Then it was back to running up and down the hill in their front yard.

Matt has become a little back seat driver recently. If the cars take too long at a green light, he's been known to tell them, "go cars". Nana and Pawpaw shared in his new talent of telling everyone if there's a "red light" or "green light" in his sight. The only problem is that he does this while we're driving on the freeway too. He sees the lights at the intersections on the frontage roads and lets you know. One good thing about his awareness in the car is that he is also able to spot police cars quickly! That could come in handy, once he learns how to say "police" a little more clearly!

Baby pics!

UPDATE FROM AUGUST 17TH APPOINTMENT WITH THE DOCTOR: The due date has been moved up to December 19th. Looks like we will be at home for Christmas for sure! Now I may have competition to share my birthday though!


Here are the ultrasound pics from Friday! I am 21 weeks pregnant as of today and things are looking good so far.

For the last pic, tilt your head to the right and you'll see the face.

Matt even got a high five from the baby during the ultrasound. At one point the tech said, "ooh, long legs", and Matt randomly shouted out "YEA!" We all had a laugh at that one. Who knows what he was thinking.

Hanging out in Matt's room

Finger Puppets

Matt recently discovered his finger puppets, given to him by our good friends the Brodes. He loves putting them on his finger and then saying, "Hi, Matt!" He's a real crack-up these days!

Here he is posing for a close up instructional shot of how to put on a finger puppet.


Time for the belly shots!

I am now 19 weeks and we decided it was time to start taking the belly photos.

Here's the nice profile, with my frizzy Houston hair and all.

Matt has begun talking about and to "the baby" in my belly. At times we can even solicit a kiss for "baby". He often tells the baby "night, night" and we can't wait for him to feel a little kick at the sound of his voice!

We really need to invest in a faster camera. Matt had just kissed my belly here, but pulled away quickly right as the camera took the shot.

His closet is still his haven and he often puts some of his stuffed animals in there and closes the door. Tonight he took ALL of them in there and shut us out!

All I can say is "Blair Witch Project" for this close-up.