First pic of our new family!



1 year ago!

My BIG baby!

WOW! Im not even believing I have a 9 month old. Elliot is the joy of my life. We pretty much spend every waking moment together so we have become best buds. He is crawling now and is VERY fast. He is pulling up on just about anything and everything he can. He is pretty fearless. I have seen him let go and try to stand on his own a few times but he falls within a few seconds. He is babbling and says "dada" and several other sounds, but not "mama" :(. Im pretty sure he is holding out on me because it makes me crazy. He is sleeping really well and eating most things i give him. He does not always eat a whole serving of baby food but at least he takes a few bites of what i give him. He is sleeping really well and only wakes up in the middle of the night occasionally for a bottle. The Pedi said he does that when he is going through a growth spurt. I agree because he usually drinks an entire 8 oz bottle and then goes right back to sleep. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. He has been learning to wave hello and bye bye. Yesterday he even put a sound to his wave. It was really cute. I tried to get a video but he wouldn't do it a second time. He has learned to clap in the last few weeks and that is so cute. He claps all the time now.

We started going to a KinderMusik class on Saturday mornings. Elliot really likes being there and he LOVES the teacher. She is such a fun lady and sings and talks in a really high pitch and Elliot just stares at her like she is the most interesting person in the world. During parts of the class, the babies are suppose to lay down and the parents are suppose to massage them. Elliot doesn't so much like to lay down. He is more of a crawl across the room and love on the little girls kinda baby (and by "love" i mean grab their face and pull their hair).

We went to an event at my parents church last weekend and put E in the nursery for a few hours. It was the first time I had left him with anyone I didnt know or in a nursery type setting for that matter. He did really well for the hour that he was in there. It is still really hard for me to leave him. It is really more of a problem for me than it is for him.

In the past month Elliot has been sick twice. We went 8 months with no illness and now 2 right in a row.

Elliot is starting to test boundaries. He will look at me and then race to Lexie's water bowl as fast as he can to see if he can get to it before I come get him (he has only gotten to it once). At work, I sometimes work on my laptop on the couch so I can watch Elliot while he plays. He is really interested in my computer and is constantly pulling at it. So I decided this was the perfect opportunity to teach "no". Brian and I try not to use "no" often, instead we just redirect him to play with something else. However, its really important that he understand when he hears "no" there is no negotiating. SO, I sat down with my computer ready for him to come grab it. As soon as he did, I took his hand, said "no" very firmly, and redirected him to play with something else. After about 30 trials of this, he seemed to understand it. WINNER? MOMMY! So the next day when I sat down with my computer to work, I was sure he would remember "no".... no such luck. He came to me with a new game plan. I took a video of our interaction the second day... WINNER? ELLIOT!

On a related note... I have vivid memories of my dad trying to punish me and not being able to do it without laughing.

ELLIOTS FAVORITE THINGS
Bath Time
Baby Einstein
Anything Dangerous (plastic, electricity, cords, sharp corners)
TRASH CANS (really i have never seen a kid who is so obsessed with TRASH! One of the girls i work with calls him Oscar. He can spot a trash can across the room and be into it before you even realize he has seen it.
Andy, my bosses son. Elliot loves him and wants to be big to play with him so badly.

Elliot loved riding in the cute little wagon!

	Elliot really liked to eat the grass

best picture of the day

awkward pose but at least we are all looking at the camera.

I expected this pose to be really great. This is what Elliot and Lexie did for most of the pictures. She looked around and he ate grass.

this is the best one we got.

Monday Elliot will be 9 months old. I cant even believe it! time just flies by. I will post a blog on Tuesday after our 9 month check up.

This is a great read. Here is an excerpt from Sled Driver https://galleryonepublishing.com/sleddriver/

There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.

It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet. I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat.

There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury. Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him.

The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace. We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the ” Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios. Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.”

Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then, out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”

And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn. Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.” For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A.came back with, “Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”

It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast. For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there.

Just some pics we took this weekend when we took Elliot and Lexie swimming at my parent's house!




HAPPY MONDAY EVERYONE!