Happy Birthday Grady

Today our little man turned ONE! What a day. We began with an early morning wake up at 7am which Grady was unimpressed with given he usually sleep until 9am or later. But he needed to be able to have a nice nap before everyone arrived rather than right through the middle of the party! Lots of present opened and good laughs shared with good friends and of course CAKE!

Happy Birthday Grady!

Opening presents with Mom

Opening presents with Dad

Presents taste good but not as good as.....

CAKE!!!!!!

The "Panda" face brownie and cupcake arrangement

Grady's individual 3D Panda Bear Cake

mmmmm Cake

Hello Black Beard did you enjoy your cake?

Happy Birthday

Bye Ana

By Ana, have a great trip back home to Brazil. We will miss you and hope you come and see us when you get back. Thanks for the babysitting and love you gave to Grady. He'll miss you too!

Good Dog Rebar!

Grady is developing an increasing interest in the dogs. It is nice to see him aware of what is around him. The dogs do not agree. Whereas Rebar used to be Grady's protector now she wishes he would leave he alone. This mostly has to do with the fact that he tries to sit in their "lap" i.e. on their head and often yells into their fur. We are working on him learning to pet gently but that will take some time. Until then the dogs will have to keep their good manners and wait it out:D Rebar is still really good at letting Grady explore but sometimes later at night she would just like a rest so often gets up and walks away when he comes to play. Mardi almost always goes the other way when Grady comes crawling towards her. Sometimes she tries to play but unfortunately gets it a little wrong and so gets told "No"

Trying to sit in Rebar's lap. This consists of crawling towards you then quickly turning around and coming butt first until his butt meets something solid then he attempts to sit on whatever it touches! Often he does not target the lap very well :D

Butt-lap connection reached. Rebar no so keen on it

Petting Rebar. What a nice girl!

More petting and crawling

Swimming Lessons

This summer Grady did 3 seperate weeks of swimming lessons. Sometimes I took him and sometimes Brian did. Overall he really enjoyed them and there were no tears unless he had not napped that well that day (his classes ended at 7:15pm). The biggest perk for us was that this seemed to be a turn around point for Grady and the lessons made him so tired that he slept through the night for the first time since 3 months (and even then he only did it for 2 weeks). So now Grady sleeps 12 or more hours without waking each night and has at least one good nap a day! Plus by the end of lessons he was trying to blow bubbles in the water, kicking his legs lots, sliding into the pool and letting his head go under! Way to go Grady.

All ready to go in his life jacket.

Doing some floating in the pool with mom.

Trying the slide at the end of class.

(I tried to add more photos but picasa was not being cooperative)

Bouncy Castle

We thought Grady didn't like bouncy castles. We were half right. They are scary when there are other kids bouncing around but pretty darn fun if you've got the whole place to yourself! Too bad Taylor and Avery were waiting so long for Grady to like it that they left before he got to go in alone without those crazy girls jumping around!

Standing/First Steps

Grady took his first steps (or step really) on Aug 11. He still prefers to crawl but his favorite thing to do right now is stand up without holding on. Way to go Grady, I'll be chasing you in no time. Looking forward to the aerobic workout!

Eating

I don't like this

Watermelon is better

yup much tastier

Drummer Boys

Ever since that fateful first lesson Grady has gotten a taste for the drums. Brian now takes him down regularily to sit on his knee while he plays. Grady gets two sticks and Brian gets one. Together they make music. Grady really enjoys it and can often be found playing by the drums or with them even when Dad is not around. Pressure's on Grady!