We are still here

I know I have been very lax in my posts recently. I'll blame it on catching up after "vacation". But we are still here and there is so much to add. It might get done in several posts. I'll put all his medical news in another post.

So Samuel is now getting into everything and gets mad when I put the gate up to keep him out of our front room. Tonight he climbed an entire staircase (supervised) at Bishop Hudson's house. At our house, he's done the first 3 steps to the landing, then stopped. And, what's great is he knows how to back down them to get down. He hasn't tried (yet) to go down head-first. But he is training for the speed-crawling event for the 2010 Olympics. I'm sure he'll qualify. Last week, when he started the stair climbing, I left him for a second to get his juice and when I came back he had crawled from about 3 feet away and was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs facing the second step. I was gone for about 5 seconds I'm sure.
He's also starting to copy what he hears. Such as, I cleared my throat the other day...he did too. He was making noises, I made the same noise, he did it again. He's even trying to say uh-oh when I do. The lesson: I need to stop calling people idiots when I'm driving.

The last post I said he's got a tooth. Well, he's getting another one right next to it. He's been smacking his lips for over a week trying to suck it through. It's cute when he makes a fish face for sucking so hard!

I also told about his silly face. Well, I have multiple pictures of the silly face, or toothy grin, as I like to call it. He's such a silly!

We keep Lucy's dog food and bones on the floor in the pantry. Under normal circumstances Lucy would NOT take kindly to Samuel messing with her stuff. But there is always an exception to the rule and today was it:



While we were in Virginia, we had the opportunity to take Samuel to the beach for the first time. It was dusk but it looks like we were there in the middle of the night. Maybe Kevin couldn't see the waves coming in and that's how he got his pants soaked. Yeah, I'm sure that's what happened. :) Samuel liked the water once he was used to it. This pic is the first wave touching his feet and the second after this was captured, he started to cry. But only for a second and he was ready for more. He really wanted to sit in the sand...
Also while on "vacation" we started to have some issues with going to sleep. Thank heaven for swings! I don't know what I would have done to get him to sleep that night. I remember I put him in the swing then went in the other room with my mom. Kevin and my dad were in the same room with Samuel. I heard him stop crying and the silence turned into 5 minutes. I said to my mom, "Samuel is asleep." I turned the corner and he surely was soundly asleep.

Speaking of sleeping in funny positions... Today I went in to check on him and he had fallen asleep in some yoga-type pose. His legs were crossed and he was bent at the waist on top of them. On the way down he caught the crib bumper pad and squished it for a little pillow. I felt so bad for him being all twisted up but then remembered how much I enjoyed being in that position when I was pregnant with him. He gets it honest I'd say.

Some other fun stuff:

So much to say and nobody understands:



And this is a baby chair similar to a Bumbo. It's great because babies can't get out of it so you don't have to worry about them crawling all over the place...they just stay put!