Max eats baby food

The day Max turned 6 months old, I gave him his first bite of solid food. He had some whole grain rice cereal mixed with a bit of warmed breast milk...mmm! I'm not sure why they call it solid food because most baby food is really soupy and mushy. He liked it though. In fact he kept diving toward the spoon to eat it. He has gotten the idea now that he just has to open his mouth and I'll put the spoon in. So far, Max has only had the rice cereal and mashed bananas, but avocado and sweet potatoes are in the near future. It hasn't been too messy yet, but I'm sure that's in the near future, too.

I like when Jed gags toward the end of the video and says, "that is pretty yuck".

Silly Brothers

Eli is the only one who's been able to make Max laugh like this. Gotta love baby belly laughs!

Max has a tooth!

On Saturday, the morning of Eli's party, John discovered at tooth in Max's mouth! I guess Max wanted to add something else to the Easter weekend festivities. I was expecting his tooth to appear at any moment. It's tiny and you can barely see it, but it's there. He is proud of his first tooth! Eli says that Max must have got the tooth that he lost a couple weeks before.

one tooth in, one tooth out

Easter 2012

We had a nice Easter celebration this year. The weekend was full of fun stuff. We had Eli's birthday party Saturday and then dyed Easter eggs that evening, the boys did their egg hunt Sunday morning, we managed to make it out to some bluebonnets to take some pictures, and Sunday night Max was dedicated at our church.

The Easter egg dyeing and hunting is fun and all, but I don't like the whole Easter bunny idea. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's the fact that it's all commercialized and the fact that Easter is about Jesus, not the Easter bunny. Plus, I think the idea of a giant bunny coming to my house is kind of creepy. I originally bought some stuff to do Easter baskets for the boys, but I was feeling anti-Easter bunny and decided that I didn't want to do them every year and returned all the goodies. We ended up telling Eli and Jed that the Easter bunny came and hid the eggs, that way they wouldn't have to think that he came into our house to deliver anything. The boys didn't ask details about how he got the eggs we dyed. It's all confusing to me. So, next year, I think we the Easter Bunny may just hide some plastic eggs that he brought himself. I always thought it was gross to eat the dyed hard boiled eggs that were laying in the yard for hours. Anyway, I digress. Eli and Jed had a fun time finding the eggs and dyeing them, so I guess it was a success...except for the fact that there was one egg that we never foud. I bet a raccoon found a nice Easter treat!

To help explain to Eli and Jed why we celebrate Easter, I got some eggs called Resurrection Eggs. They're plastic eggs with little things inside like a loaf of bread or a linen cloth or a nail, along with bible verses and a little explanation of the Easter story of Jesus. They sort of understood what it was about. Eli liked the spear and talked about how much it would hurt, and he also thought he got jipped because the last egg was empty (for the empty tomb). It was a good tool to at least introduce them to the story of Easter. I like that way better than the Easter bunny and all the candy and Easter baskets!

Max's dedication was a special moment. At our church, children’s dedication time is a special time set aside to introduce kids to the community, pray for them, and let their families know the church community is there to support and encourage them as they strive to raise their children well and in our shared faith. I'm thankful Mammy and Uncle Dan and Aunt Lisa were there to share that time with us, and I'm thankful for our church community.

Eli is 6!

Eli turned SIX years old on April 10th. We did our usual party at Garrison park with snacks and cake. Eli first wanted a monster truck theme, then he changed it to a Lego theme, which is convenient because I couldn't find any monster truck decor. He requested a lemon cake with vanilla icing and no decorations on top except for some sprinkles and candles. Again, convenient...I can do sprinkles and candles. In reality, Eli didn't want any Lego decorations on his cake b/c I was going to put some of his Legos on top and he didn't want his Legos to get dirty. I love a low maintenance, low stress, low cost birthday party. It's all about the celebration with friends, right?


Eli's birthday celebration was really several days long. I took him to the Lego store to pick out what he wanted, and we also went to the Build-a-Bear store where he picked out and stuffed a longhorn. He named it Bevo (sigh), that's what we get for living in Austin. They had plenty of (Baylor) bears, but Eli didn't go for that. Then on Eli's birthday, I took cupcakes up to his school for the class to celebrate. After school on his birthday, we invited some friends to Locomotion jumpy house for a birthday playdate. Eli chose to go eat at P.Terry's for his birthday dinner. I think he felt the birthday love!

I can't believe my boy is six. He has lost his first tooth, he can tie his shoes, help with chores, help out his brothers, he can read and write, among many other things. He's in big boy territory now. As every parent out there says, "He's growing up way too fast!"