Catching Up

It's been a while since my last post, so we have some catching up to do. It's been a great ten days, busy with friends and errands and activities and some new "firsts" for Carlton. I'll start with a shot I'm posting just because it's adorable, from a couple of weekends ago. (The thing in my hand is strawberry smoothie made by Mark, who's quite the smoothie connoisseur...one of our weekend traditions!)

The boys got some good playtime that weekend....Carlton is okay with tummy time if it means fun time with his dad. He's also big and strong enough now to play airplane games, so bring on the fun!

That Sunday, the 11th, brought one of Carlton's latest "firsts," the first taste of rice cereal! He'd been acting hungry lately, and showing signs of really wanting food, so we decided to try it. Here is basically the sequence of how the first feeding went:

"What's this stuff, Mama?"

"I'm a little unsure about this..."

"Here goes!"

"Aack! It's just as bad as it looks!"

"Hmm, now that it's over, maybe it's not so bad after all....I got to make a good mess!"

The first feeding WAS pretty funny, but Carlton's getting used to cereal and starting to swallow a bit more these days, as opposed to it all running down his chin. You can see him trying to figure out how to get the food all the way to back of his throat to swallow; it's so neat to see him processing and learning new things.

Another recent "first" was his first time in his doorway jumper. It's fun to see him explore with his feet and learn about the cause and effect of the movement of his feet on the floor and the movement of the jumper. It hangs from the doorway between our kitchen and laundry room, and it's a great new place for him to hang out with me while I'm cooking dinner.

We recently had some friends over for a pancake breakfast, Peter and Sarah (and baby Henry), friends from our childbirth class that we took through our hospital. It was fun to see them now, several months later, no longer as pregnant, expectant couples but as families of three! Here are the proud dads with their sons.

And lastly, Carlton turned five months old a couple of days ago! To wrap things up, here is a shot of our sweet little five-month-old in his nursery, sitting up like a big boy in the rocker.