The Joy of Packing

We have been packing up our house these past few days. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate after only about 5 years! We will most likely be closing on the house in the middle of next week and moving immediately after that. Fortunately, Dylan was around to make the packing more bearable. We stuck him in a box with a few toys and he loved it. Here are some of the shots we got of our little mover...

11 Months

Dylan is 11 months old today! Just one more month before his big 1st birthday party. Dylan has really taken to a variety of foods this month. He seems to love everything from peas to celery, apples to bananas, chicken to salmon, and rice to bread. The key is that he has to feed himself or his mouth is sealed. He has not mastered the art of spoon-eating yet, but his finger dexterity is excellent. It is actually a lot more relaxing for us at meal time because no one has to feed him.

His absolute favorite food is peas, which he eats almost every night. If there are peas on his tray in the midst of other foods, he always makes sure to hunt down all of the peas before eating anything else. We call him Mr. Peabody sometimes. Also, he has recently started to eat larger food items instead of having us cut them up first. For instance, he doesn't like apple chunks, he just prefers to eat the whole apple.
In other family news, we bought a new house! I came home from work one night in late January and Crystal informed me she was ready to find a bigger house and that she wanted to start looking as soon as possible. The little man and all of his stuff have caused our house to look like the great baby explosion and I had to agree that we had already outgrown it. After much searching and some frustration, we finally found one that we both love. It has 2 stories, 4 bedrooms (with an optional 5th one), 3 bathrooms, and even a swimming pool. We didn't intend on buying a house with a pool, but it works out nicely because Dylan loves swimming so much. So if you want to come stay with us, come during the summer. We have plenty of extra space, but I'm not going to rent out swimwear, so bring your own.

Here are a few more pictures...

First Haircut

Yesterday we took Dylan to get his very first professional haircut. Crystal had trimmed back some wild stallions around his ears a few months ago, but Dylan was definitely due for a real cut as you can tell from this picture taken last week...

So off we went to Mop Tops, which is a salon dedicated to keeping little ones cropped and cute. Instead of regular barber chairs, they have little animals for kids to sit on like you would see at a playground. Dylan loved sitting on his elephant and watching Mulan on his own personal little TV. We were not sure he could sit still for more than 5 minutes, much less the time required for an adequate cut, but it turns out that our little guy is actually a model citizen when it comes to getting his hair cut. He sat relatively still for the entire 20 minutes and didn't fuss or cry once, even while other little ones were screaming around him. Here is a good picture taken in the middle of the cutting process...


In the end we were very pleased with the whole experience. We saved a few of his longer curls for scrapbook purposes, got a number of pictures, a bit of video footage, and one handsome, little man to take home. It is amazing how grown up he looks with his new haircut. We haven't gotten him to settle down enough to get a really good picture of the new do, so this one will have to suffice for now...