Ballunar

We decided to spend some time at NASA this morning for the Ballunar Liftoff Festival. The boys pulled over yesterday to view the hot air balloons while they were running errands, but we stopped on site to see more today. We watched a few hang gliders and some kind of flying go carts while we were there. Matt enjoyed watching all of them, but got a bit scared when they began firing rockets into the air. We stepped away and walked around at that point.

Matt walks with his daddy, proudly carrying his loot from the day. He picked the biggest inflatable prize he could have from the duck game he played. He wouldn't let us hold it for him.

Deep in thought!

Once in "Daddy's truck", he still wouldn't part with any of his goodies. He even has his blue balloon next to him. It was funny when he asked for his water on our way home. I wasn't sure what he was going to sacrifice to hold onto his cup. Amazingly, he managed to hold it all and still finish his water.

Happy Halloween!

Matt went to daycare in his costume, and wore it most of the day! He really did well with his costume, with the exception of his accessories, which you will see later.

Here he is with his friends at daycare. That's Miss Susie pushing the "Bye Bye Buggy". He loves going for rides in that thing!

The kids got out of the buggy long enough to go trick or treating at the receptionist's desk. Miss Janie gave them some treats along with some kisses as usual!

I caught up with Matt just long enough to get a picture with my little golfer! I had to hold the clubs though.

Here's Matt checking out his clubs.

I tried to snap a photo of him with his hat on, but he ripped it off before I could push the button. He's very modest, wouldn't you say?

It looks like we took the smile right off his face by trying to get a picture of him with his golf clubs. He was not happy that we were trying to add things to such a snappy ensemble.

Here's our little Bobby Jones, sans the clubs.

After a walk around the block and a seemingly pro trick or treating evening, our worn out and sweaty little golfer checked out his load of treats!

Think he slept well? He did! It was just hard to tear him away from the candy, while convincing him he couldn't have any of it.

Before he would leave his stash, he had to tell us the colors and shapes of all of the candy. He was so excited to tell us all about the candy.

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.