First Steps w/His Walker

Here are Graham's first couple of steps with his walker. As you can see they are pretty shaky, but they are steps!! No worries about his fall at the end...we were right there to pick him up and he was fine! :)

Graham walking from Willa Armstrong on Vimeo.

Daddy...the Roaring Lion!

Here's a clip of Graham while he was trying to eat his finger foods. Daddy was making him laugh by roaring like a lion...which is one of Graham's favorite animals currently. We love hearing his precious laughter!!

Finger Food from Willa Armstrong on Vimeo.

Finger Foods

Oh the fun of finger foods!! What a mess! :) Graham had some carrots and cheese as part of his dinner this evening. I don't believe much of the food made it into his mouth, but we allowed him to 'play' around with the food a little more than ever before. We were hoping that he would start eating it...since it seems everything he plays with goes straight to his mouth, but I don't think that really happened with his dinner! Oh well, he's learning. He sure knows how to get cheerios from his tray to his mouth without any problems!

Once again I have some great video of this, but am unable to upload it at this time! Hopefully very soon!

Walker

Graham is doing a lot more cruising around the furniture, pulling up on my legs, standing up against the wall, etc. He's able to stand alone for a few seconds, although he doesn't believe that he can yet. He's learned to squat down to the floor rather than falling down and is gaining more and more balance every day. We took some video of him taking a few steps with his walker, however due to some video uploading issues I cannot post those at the moment (and I haven't taken much time to try to work through those...hopefully soon). But, here are some pictures of him using his walker. He's not so sure about pushing it forward, sometimes he'll start to and then pull it back to him right away. But, he's learning!!

Fridge Magnets

I had wanted to pick up some fridge magnets for Graham so that he had something to play with while I worked in the kitchen. We came across a set for just $1.00 at Target and went ahead and picked them up. I need to keep an eye on him as they are a bit smaller than I would have preferred, but with supervision they are a great toy! He loves them too. He really likes pulling them off of the refrigerator. Eric's worked on a few math problems with him as well. I think we might start learning debits and credits this week! :)

Escape

As you can see from the picture below, our poor little cat does have a place to escape too. However, he's watched closely most of the time by two little eyes! Here Graham is keeping an eye on Sam, hoping he'll come back upstairs to get caught! Good thing Daddy did a good job of securing the gate!! :)

Our Sweetheart!

Standing in the Crib!

Look who figured out how to stand in his crib?? :) The first time he figured out how to stand in his crib it really scared him. He seemed to not know how to get back down. I went in and quietly helped him back down. Since then he has had no problems, and I know he stands up before & after going down for his naps. He loves 'playing' in his crib...a little too much sometimes as he will take quite some time before going down for his naps on some days! Here he is so proud of his new accomplishment!

As you can see there are two blankets in his crib. The polka-dot blanket does not belong in his crib, rather it belongs on the rail that he's currently holding on to. This blanket ends up in his crib at least once everyday though!!

Friends

Graham's best buddy is Sam. He loves to chase him around the couch, down the hall, under the table and everywhere else that Sam tries to hide. Sam can't even get away now when he's in his normal sleeping spot on the couch by the window. However, he does get fair warning. Graham is so excited when he's closing in on him that he let's out a super loud, high pitch squeal! That's when Sam knows to take off!! He is pretty good about sticking around when Graham's not squealing. He allows him to pet him and has not yet once laid a claw on him!

9 Months Old

This week marked Graham's 9-month birthday. He's growing so well and we were excited to have another well-child check up with the Pediatrician to see his actual 'number's'. The appointment went quite well. She asked a lot of questions about development, and to most of the questions the answer was definitely YES! She was very impressed with his ability to stand, cruise and crawl! He gave her quite the earfull as well!! She said that he looked great and we were doing a good job! Here's his current stats:

29 3/4 inches tall
21 lbs 6 oz

18.10 inches - head circum.

Good Job Graham!! You've come a long ways from that little 6lb 9oz baby!!

The Hard Way

Graham decided the other day to take the hard way by going under the exersaucer rather than around. He decided that he needed a challenge, crawling on the carpet was getting too easy, so this posed a perfect challenge. It didn't take him long to figure out his way through...and out he came on the other side. He was very proud of himself and has since done this numerous times!

Hmmm...escape!

The doggy door has been discovered by one little curious boy! We're going to have to keep a close eye on him whenever the door is open, cuz it would be the perfect escape route!

Moving on from one no-no to another...Sam's water dish!! I'm beginning to believe there's something magnetic about his water dish as it seems to attract Graham CONSTANTLY!! There's only so many ways I can say...'No, we don't play in Sam's water dish', 'Let's not put our hands in Sammy's water', 'That's Sammy's water...not yours', 'Graham...NO'....oh, I could go on!! :) There has been a couple of times now that when I give him a pre-warning that he listens and doesn't go straight for it, so maybe it's slowly starting to sink in! With continued consistency it's only a matter of time until he really does fully understand....then we'll see if he will obey! :)

Puppy

Graham has a stuffed puppy that he loves. He smiles whenever he sees his puppy and lets out a loud laugh when you make the puppy 'bark'. Now that he is crawling around he's found an unique way to take puppy with him....by carrying him in his mouth. I'll see him crawling around with an ear or tail in his mouth as the rest of the puppy hangs. It's quite a funny site to see...he looks like a dog carrying around his little puppy!

This picture makes me laugh. It looks like Graham did not like something I said to him and gave me quite the face! I have a feeling I'll see many faces like this over the years to come.

APPLESAUCE!!

We made applesauce this weekend! We purchased 1 1/2 bushels of Lodi apples and had our work cut out for us. We started Friday night around 7pm (although I had washed & de-stemed most of the apples earlier). It was a lot of fun for Eric & I to work together on this project. We finished up by putting our 21 1/2 quarts of applesauce in the freezer around 11:30pm! What a productive evening! Now we have plenty of applesauce to last us until next years crop! :)

Bathtime Fun

Bathtime has taken on a whole new experience now that Graham has learned to crawl and pull himself up. When it's time for bath, I go to the bathroom and begin pouring his bath water. It doesn't take more than a minute before a squealing, smiling baby arrives at the door of the bathroom. He then crawls over to the edge of the bathtub and pulls himself up to watch the water being poured. I've also learned that during one bath time, I don't know if I can even count the number of times I have to stop him from trying to stand, return him to sitting down and say "Graham, we do not stand during our bath!!". It sinks in eventually, right? :)

Story Time

Graham is a very active baby, and he has been since day one! He loves to wiggle around and is in constant motion. However, he does enjoy reading books. He will usually sit still in my lap as we read through several books. We do this several times a day, as we both really enjoy that time. Sometimes though he is wanting to be too active to sit in your lap for story time, however he still wants to read the books. On this particular day, Eric was reading to Graham and I snapped a few pictures. It shows how excited Graham gets about his stories. This book was about baby animals and had pictures of some of his favorites, a tiger, a puppy and a lamb. The puppy always makes him laugh!

Too excited to stay seated, he had to stand up to see the book.

Time to give the tiger a kiss...

Big Boy Car Seat

Before we went on vacation to Arizona we decided to take out the infant car seat from our vehicle and install the convertible car seat. That way we could have the infant car seat all packed and ready for travel. Since returning home we have just left the convertible car seat in since Graham is definitely big enough for it! Graham seems to really like it as the seat sits up higher and he can see out the window a little better. I think he'd like to be front facing even more, however that can't happen until at least a year old...although Dr's are now recommending two years! Not sure how he'll fit rear-facing that long, but we'll see! :) Here are a couple of pitures of Graham while we were traveling down the interstate.

Toothy Grin

As of June 27th, Graham is one toothy little boy. He now has 6 teeth! There are two on the bottom and four on top. He had one or two days where he wasn't quite himself while cutting the top four teeth, but overall he handled it like a toothing pro!

Friends

This summer I am trying to get together with a couple of friends every week to do a Bible Study. We're reading through the book 'Lies Women Believe, and the Truth that Sets them Free' by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. So far the book has been excellent and our weekly meetings have been great. It may not be the most in depth study nor do we have the best environment in which to interact, as our children are crawling, walking around. However, it has been very good to dig a little deeper into each others lives and to encourage & help equip one another in our daily walks with Christ.

This morning as Katie D. & Katie P. (I think I was given the wrong name!) were getting ready to leave, we put the kids together to get a picture of them. The pictures turned out so cute...and you can really see how the kids were place all nicely, then Tyler & Graham both started to fall. Well...Tyler started to fall, Graham started to wiggle & squirm. Poor Virginia didn't know what to do as she couldn't hold them both still! We feel so blessed to have such good families to build relationships with...both for our sake and our child's sake!