Real food? What is this?

We started cereal with Holden a few weeks ago, and while he was a little hesitant at first ("ummm, excuse me, but WHAT is this stuff??")...we now have quite the cereal expert on our hands. Definitely a learning curve for both of us in the best methods for successfully navigating food to his mouth and actually into his tummy, and sometimes I really think his favorite part of "mealtime" is banging on the highchair tray with his extra "play" spoon (strategically used for distraction and the "oh look, here's your spoon...fake out, here's Mommy's spoon with cereal, yum yum yum!").

Time to move on to fruits and veggies! We'll see if I'm motivated to whip up homemade batches of baby deliciousness on the weekends...hmmm...

Thankful

Come Thanksgiving you used to find me taking pictures of pies. Now I pretty much just take pictures of my baby (it can't be helped, his adorableness attracts the camera!), so I really don't have any Thanksgiving shots to share with you that don't feature Holden in some form or fashion. Oh, but rest assured there were pies. This time only three for the six (and a half) of us, an extremely reasonable ratio.

As we scarfed down turkey and cornbread dressing and allll the other good stuff last Thursday, I paused for a moment and felt especially thankful for my amazing parents this year. I'm also really thankful for pie, but having a baby is kinda a big deal...and while coconut cream pie would have helped, I don't really know if I would have survived those first couple of weeks without my mom and dad by my side. Maybe more details on the survival of the early days will be provided a little later, and maybe not - I got a little teary just thinking about it now, so apparently six months later the waves of exhaustion and newborn terror are still palpable. So for now I'll continue to pause briefly and say thank to my parents. For everything. Absolutely everything.

Holden enjoying some naptime with Grandpa over Thanksgiving weekend...

...and doing the same thing six months ago when he was almost a week old.

Can you believe how much he's grown and changed?!? Me either.

So, I disappeared...

...into a world of busy season and baby and LIFE and heeeere I am, alive and well!! And in the spirit of playing catch up, I'm going to try to blog every day in December. Just putting that out there while I'm feeling a small burst of optimism and motivation. So it may not actually happen, but I'm going to try. Some days it may just be a picture of Holden, which is probably all you really want anyway.

And in the interest of not trying too hard right off the bat and hurting myself, we're going to start on a light note with some silly faces. I like to call this Holden's "little old man lips" look; he's been sporting it quite a bit these days, probably as a side effect of figuring out these two teeth he has. He's entirely too much fun and giggly and happy, so I try to soak up as much of it as I possibly can. Rock on, little old man lips - I love you.

How?

How have the last twelve weeks just flown by? In the beginning, it didn't feel like time was flying - it felt like I was stuck in an endless eternity of sleep-deprived madness. But then we kinda got the hang of things and starting having FUN together...and now my sweet boy is hanging out in daycare and I go back to work tomorrow. During busy season. Which is its own kind of endless eternity.

I wish I'd written more. I have a million phone pictures, and I've jotted half blog posts here and there, and there's a rambling Word doc that kinda captures things...but I know there are little moments that have already passed that I may not hold on to.

I miss spending time with him already.

Holden adorableness, July 2nd edition

I find myself taking a ridiculous number of pictures with my phone every day to capture these little moments with my kiddo...and as much as I love the "real" camera, it's WAY less convenient when I have a child in my arms.  So...here's a day in the life, filled with unedited phone pictures.  How very un-Erin-like of me, but I think this might be our new normal.  I love this little guy so much.

Ok, so this one is a phone pic from Craig - while I took Harrison to the vet, he played "tough guy" dress-up with our child, even slicked back his hair with baby oil and everything.  Oh dear.  ADORABLE.

Trying to get this guy in as many of his teeny clothes as possible before he outgrows them - today's adorable striped airplane onesie brought to you by Carter's, dangerous land of sales for tiny adorable things.

Did you know being a baby is really tough work?  Really, really tough.

Head kisses from Mommy!  Oh, Mom, you're so embarrassing.

Again, being a baby is REALLY tough work...so sometimes it's best to just take a break and nap on Mommy.  Ahhh, that's better.

Tell me a story, Mom, I'm wide awake!

The kid is wearing a onesie AND pants AND socks - this basically never happens because we're changing diapers far too frequently to bother with complete outfits.  Seriously.

Chillin' on the playmat for a change of pace - ooohhhh, lights and sounds and different things to attempt to hit with flailing arms!

I give you...dramatic baby.

I also give you...suuuuper baby!  He tends to get fussy at night before bedtime, but we've discovered that he really likes flying through the air as super baby during this time.  Craig has obviously been tasked with the super baby flying since it's just not in my nature to hold him like this.

Welcome to our world.  It's kinda awesome.