Big boy

Oops, it has been a long time again - over two months! I look back at the previous posts and he looks so different. He's starting to look so much less like a baby. Sad.

We continued with our busy summer. J called it "Summerpalooza." I think I'm glad it's over. We went to MN at the end of July and I headed over to WI for a family reunion while J went up to the Boundary Waters with some college friends. It was going to work out perfectly, but the night that we got there Abel came down with a fever and was sick the whole time, with roseola. Poor guy.

Hanging out with Uncle Nik

With Aunt Sandy

Abel & cousin Jocelyn
Reading with Grandma - with a terrible rash :(

After we got back from our trip, it was time to move! We have lived in a one-bedroom apartment since before Abel was born, and he was growing out of it. God was so faithful to provide for us in a few weeks, and we moved at the end of August. We are thankful for more space!

Helping pack
And unpack (this is at the new place and we had already put the tupperware away - taking it out is one of his favorite activities)

We went to see J's sister last weekend as it had been several months. Abel loved it. They have a dog and a swimming pool, two of his favorite things.

Here are some more pictures from the past couple months. He's getting so big! I can't believe it has almost been one year. He's such a great little boy and we love him lots!

Crawling

Here are two videos of Abel crawling. He's been doing an army crawl for a while now, and has added some crawling in there, but he had never decided to go all the way. Finally in the last few days he's made the jump.



Now we're going to be really busy!

Summer update

Once again I have gone a long time without posting. This time it is because we have been traveling - we went to Montana to meet up with my family and then to Yosemite with friends. Lots of car time for Abel! He didn't really like it too much, though you can't tell from the picture.

Montana was great! It was a lot of fun to see my family and good for Abel to see everyone, and vice versa. My sister and brother (and their spouses) hadn't been around him since he was two months old, so he had changed a lot. He loved my niece - every time she came close to him he would start giggling. It was really cute. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures because my sister had the good camera and I can't figure out how to get Snapfish pictures onto the blog - they turn out really small when I try to upload them. I'll have to ask about that.

We went to Yellowstone one day - here we are in front of Old Faithful.

Yosemite was fun too. J climbed Half Dome with some friends. It's a 17-mile hike, and they did it overnight. Impressive! I stayed back with Abel and we slept. :) This was our second time visiting the park and I was reminded how much I like it - I think we have decided we will go back every year.
Abel is good! He's getting really close to crawling - he has his army crawl down pat and can get up and crawl for a bit, but just needs to decide to do it. He's eating all sorts of foods now. It seems like eating takes up a lot of our day. He will be 9 months old tomorrow. Time is flying!

I took two pictures to show his crazy hair. I combed it down at first and then tried to get it to all stick up. After a bath it looks pretty funny.


He's starting to pull himself up on things. Sadly, we don't have too many things around for him to pull himself up on, so he's going to get bored quickly. He uses me a lot. Poor kid.

A long time

It's been a while since our last post - two months actually! Sorry for the delay. We were busy in April with visitors and then our AC adapter went on the fritz so our computer wasn't working. All that to say, no pictures of Abel.

He's been changing a lot! We started solids, and he's eating like a champ. He's had bananas, avocado, sweet potato, peas, green beans, acorn squash, oatmeal, rice and prunes. He seems to really like everything except for the green beans, but J was clever and snuck them in with the oatmeal and now he will eat them.

He wasn't much of a fan at first

But now he loves to eat!

He has also gone mobile. He has been rolling in both directions for a while now, and about a month ago he developed a little scoot. Unfortunately, he could only scoot backwards, which caused him some frustration. But he has now mastered the army crawl and can get to where he wants to go quicker than I want him to!

He came from across the room to get my shoe

And, he has teeth! His two bottom teeth have come in. In the first picture I don't know if you will be able to see them, but I think you can in the second one.
Here are some more pictures from the past couple months.

Grandma & Grandpa

Grandma and Grandpa B are here for a visit! Abel is getting lots of love and attention (and new clothes!).

We had him dedicated at church on Sunday. It was a nice service. The pictures didn't turn out that well at church, but we got some good ones afterwards. My mom got him a new outfit - he looked very handsome and all grown up!

We went to the zoo one day. I don't think he really cared about the animals. Maybe in a few months. We thought they were cool. They had zebras, giraffes, elephants, tigers, bears, chimps - it's a pretty good zoo! The chimps were fun to watch. They were giving them bananas and they would peel them and eat them nicely and then eat the peel. Ha.

We gave him a bath yesterday and my mom thought to try out his sunglasses - isn't this picture adorable? I thought he might be bothered by having them on, but he didn't mind a bit. He usually is pretty active in the bath, kicking and splashing, but once we put the glasses on him he was really chill. Maybe it was the new view.

Here are a couple other pictures from the week, and from earlier - I haven't updated the blog in a bit.

He's getting really close to sitting up on his own.

He likes to roll over a lot now, and has started trying to do it in his swing. Maybe we should strap him in.

Family Pictures

I realized recently that almost all of the pictures on here (and that we take in general) are just of Abel. That's okay because he's pretty cute, but I want to try to be better about taking pictures of him with us too - so that later he realizes that he does indeed have parents. It's hard to remember to bring out the camera in the evenings, but we got some the other day.

So far he hasn't turned out to be the chunky baby I thought he might be earlier in life (and that his dad wishes he would be), but he still has cute little rolls on his legs.

We swaddle him at night and for his long nap. He doesn't really like it that much but it is necessary keep him from flailing his arms and waking himself up. I will often come out in the morning to find that he has gotten his arms out. Lately, he has been really cute when he wakes up - he will just talk and coo for a while, playing by himself. I think this was right after a nap.

Of course, then the hand goes to the mouth - he loves to chew on those hands! J is fearful that we may have a thumbsucker, but we're hoping it's too early to tell.