I can’t believe that it’s almost Thanksgiving!  This year seems to have just flown by.  Last year at this time we were getting ready to celebrate our first Thanksgiving in Minnesota w/ Terry & Kari (since I was way too fat/preggo/uncomfortable to drive 8 hrs), and now we are getting ready to celebrate our first Thanksgiving in Iowa.  Terry & Kari are hosting this year which means I get to see my nephew for the first time.  I’m so excited!

Master Financial Accounting before Dad does...Check!

And of course the very next weekend after stuffing ourselves full of turkey, stuffing and potatoes we get to cap off our “Year of Firsts” with Mason’s First Birthday.  Crazy to think that almost one year ago our lives completely changed forever.  There are definitely some days that I long for life pre-baby…but he’s such a good kid that we count our blessings every day.

Surprisingly he still isn’t walking, but he can scoot around on all fours faster than most kids I’ve seen.  And he’s a pro at the stairs…both going up and coming down!  He’s “cruising” around the furniture and even lets go sometimes when he’s playing…but as soon as he’s realized what he’s done, he either drops to his knees or grabs back a hold of something!  No talking yet either…a lot of “MAMAMAMAMA” and “DADADADADADA” and “BABABABABABABA” and “THATHATHATHA”, but they don’t seem to be attached to anything in particular.  They are just his favorite sounds.

All dressed up and ready to party

I tried to find a picture with no drool...as you can see, no such luck!

Seven months and ten days old…that’s how old Mason is now.  Holy cats have the months flown by!  I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to have a giant belly and a needle stabbed in my back as a doc is getting ready to slice open my abdomen.  Yep, almost forgotten…but not quite!

So last Tuesday I rubbed my finger along Mason’s gums to see if a tooth might be the reason why he was being so crabby.  Turns out…it was!  But of course at that time it was just barely through the surface.  Now, a week and a half later it’s not much bigger.  So that makes me wonder…do I put in his baby book that he got his first tooth two weeks ago?  Or does it not count until it’s all the way in?  Great question…I know.  And definitely not something that I ever thought I’d need to be considering.

Mason has gotten to be pretty good at pulling himself up; he can do it from a seated position, and from the “crawling position”.  Now if he could just figure out how to crawl!  He’s almost got it…he gets up on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth, and even pushes himself backward quite well.  But that does nothing but make him mad since that’s not at all what he’s trying to do!  Put a bottle on the floor in front of him and watch him get REALLY upset as it gets further and further away!

He still loves jumping (as anyone who saw him over Memorial Day can attest to!) and has recently discovered the swing at the playground.  That is good for minutes and minutes of laughter  Baxter is getting less and less fond of him as the days go by, mainly because Mason doesn’t know how to pet…just pull.  But Bax sure does love it any time Mason gets in the high chair!

He loves to swing!

Ugh.  So hard to believe that Mason is 6 months old already.  It has just flown by!!  We’ve been so blessed to have such a happy baby on our hands.  Sure, he has his crabby moments, mainly when he’s tired…but who isn’t crabby when they are tired?!  Dan said this morning that he just wants him to hurry up and start crawling, because every time we set him down, he just gets mad.  Sitting in the same place all the time is apparently boring.  Careful what you wish for, hon.  He’s going to be crawling before you know it and in to EVERYTHING!

Over Memorial Day weekend we went back to Nebraska and was able to celebrate Mason’s baptism with our families.  He looked so cute in his little suit!  And of course he went back to daycare spoiled because he wasn’t set down for 5 days straight.  They appreciated that .

Of course he also came back from his first vacation doing a few other things as well.  The day after we got back he rolled from his back to his tummy at daycare for the first time, and by the end of the week he was waking himself up at night rolling over!  He’s also a jumping fool!!  Apparently jumping is his new favorite thing to do, whether someone is holding him, or he’s sitting in his exer-saucer at home or the jumpy thing (yep, that’s the technical term) at daycare.  Jump, jump, jump.  That’s all he does!

This weekend he supervised Mom & Dad while we did some landscaping in the back yard.  It wasn’t good enough for him to supervise from the patio, I had to put the Snugli on and he had to supervise from my back.  It was pretty funny – and he really loved it.

And last but not least on the Mason front…Dan and I swear that he said “Hi” this morning.  Of course most of his noises lately are just funny grunts…but this morning, he looked right at Dan and grunted twice, and both times it sounded like “Hi”.  But…we are crazy, so we may have been hearing things