Video Extravaganza

Feel free to skip this post if you're not a grandparent, uncle, aunt, or someone else who is as obsessed with my baby as I am. :)

I've taken a lot of videos of Sutton in the past two weeks, so I thought I'd share them all in one big video extravaganza post.

First, we have Sitting on a Box:

Next is him enjoying his Slide. Over and over and over. Also notice his smacking noises as he's going up the back each time:

He really wanted to get his Daddy's attention since he could see him through the window. So he stood on the table, Smacking the Window:

"Talking" during dinner. There aren't any real words in here. Just his baby babble. And watching his puppy chase a fly:

This is the Sutton original dance move. He loves dancing lately, and it's always the same arm movement when he hears music. He even danced to me singing today. Dancing and Talking:

Saying the two Animal Sounds I mentioned in yesterday's post:

And we try again in Animal Sounds 2. He gets really into the sheep one here:

Sutton {15 months}

15 months?! I feel like I've prepared myself for you being every other month, but 15 crept up on me. Do you have wrinkles too? :)

Sutton, at 15 months:

*You're walking like a champ, you hardly crawl at all anymore.

*Your hair is so long and curly but Daddy insists we can't cut it.

*You just learned where your belly button is.

*Your vocabulary hasn't increased much since last month as far as what you can say, but you understand so many more things now. You say water, blankie, uh oh, dada, all gone, hi, airplane (in your own way...) but you understand hungry, truck, puppies, shoes, upstairs, outside and lots more. This is such a fun age, teaching you new things and seeing you learn so quickly!

*You babble all the time in your made up language. Still sounds Japanese. ("Goya, goya?")

*Just today, we started working on animal sounds and you're picking it up really fast. You're repeating "oink oink" and "baaaaa" really well, so we've been doing those over and over all afternoon.

*Anytime you hear an airplane, you have to look in the sky for it, or look out the window. So glad we live in the air capital.

*One of the things I really want to remember about this age is our walks. We've been going on walks (just the two of us) in the mornings lately, and we always have to stop when you hear an airplane and I point the stroller so you can see it. We watch it go by, then we keep on walking.

*You're a very stubborn little guy. Lots of fits and tantrums. Usually when they're bad, it just means you're tired.

*You still take 2 naps a day. Your morning one is usually 2 hours or less after you get up, and then your afternoon one is 2-3 hours after you get up from your morning one. You can usually last for a little longer in the evenings, but yesterday you had 3 naps again because you couldn't quite make it til bedtime.

*Your favorite foods are mac n' cheese, animal crackers, puffs, grapes, yogurt. We might be phasing out of the goldfish.

*You're getting so skinny, but you eat a ton. And you still have your squishy cute thighs and arms. Love those.

*You LOVE drinking water. You drink so much of it every day. I should take a cue from you.

*I can't really go grocery shopping with you anymore. Unless I bring a snack. So I usually have to plan it at snack time, and that doesn't always happen, so sometimes you get an extra snack on grocery days. If you don't have that to keep you busy, you're constantly standing up in the cart (which you think is hilarious) and then you hug me and hold on...it's really hard to push a cart while you're doing that. On our last grocery trip, you said "HI!" to every single person we saw.

 Ohhhh...the gap-toothed grin. Haha.

*If we're eating and you see it, you have to have some of our food. Or at least you think you have to. So sometimes we have to go hide from you if we're eating. :)

*You're becoming more independent and at the same time you have your little bouts of "needing" us. You will lean towards other people when they hold out their hands to hold you, you'll go toward them if you're walking. You play by yourself all the time, especially if we're in the basement (you just love it down there) or outside. But if you're tired, you screeeeeeam to be held and cling to my legs. And when I drop you at daycare, there's a bit of separation anxiety even though you LOVE playing with all the kids there.

Gotta put those sticks into the neighbors' yard.

*You're in size 4 diapers, though we could probably go up to a 5. You wear 12-18 month size clothes...the bigger ones fit over your head better, so that's what you wear mostly.

*You sweat constantly, and I'm cold normally, so I'm always having to dress you cooler than me.

*You look best in blues and whites and some shades of green. Though really, you're cute in everything.

*You love being outside. We spend lots of evenings on our driveway (since the backyard has dog poop and the cement of the driveway is easier for you to walk on). You walk all around the driveway, picking up sticks and throwing them. Sometimes we'll take your 4-wheeler out there and you ride around on that. You always gravitate towards the street, so we're trying to teach you that that's off limits. You scream when it's time to go back inside.

The overalls shoot came about because I was going to clean your closet out...well, get all the clothes that were too small out at least...and I found these overalls that I'd totally forgotten about. SO CUTE! I prayed that you hadn't outgrown them before we even used them, and you haven't! They fit you and are just a tad big, so we'll definitely be rockin these this fall. Maybe I'll make your Halloween costume around them?

The closet didn't get cleaned, by the way. :)

Love you sweet baby!

Piano with Avery

Today Ginger and Avery came over for a lunch and a little play time. Not sure how much more we'll be able to see each other before her little baby comes! Avery was so excited to play our piano, and Sutton just stood next to her for the longest time watching before he decided he wanted to play too.

Black and White

Pardon me while I cry a little because he's already older than he was when I took this 30 minutes ago. I can't handle the cuteness.

More to come from our overalls photo shoot...

Balancing and Belly Laughs

I blog about all the fun, cute, awesome stuff Sutton does, so in the spirit of keeping it real, let me just tell you...he's in a bit of a difficult phase right now. He throws lots of fits, disobeys all the time, and really likes to hit.

But I love him. And we're working on it. :)

I got a couple videos yesterday of him being super happy and fun. So here you go:

You can see a little bit of the whininess coming out in this one:

Spoon!

Sutton's been trying to use his spoon himself during mealtimes lately. He knows what he's supposed to do, he just can't quite make it happen. And, after a long wait, and after I do the sign for it (thanks for teaching him, Becky!), he finally says "All done!"

Wire Stand {My First Project}

Since I'm a photographer, you all may think that that means I'm creative in other areas, crafty even.

I AM NOT.

I wish I was, but it's just not a skill I have. My dream is to find something I'm really good at making and to open an etsy shop and make millions, but I don't see that actually happening.

In my pursuit of furthering this skill, I have been given several pieces of furniture that I plan on refinishing. We're 1 for 1 so far. I started small and easy. It's a black wire stand. Required no sanding, no priming, just needed a punch of color...and 2 coats of spray paint did the trick.

Before:

After:

Just a fun, bright teal since that's one of my business colors. And below, you'll see it serving it's purpose: holding my photo sleeves and mailing supplies in my office. I thought about doing the "dipped" look and dipping the legs in bright green or something up to the bottom shelf, but I think that's a little ambitious of me at this point. :)

State Fair 2011

Not quite sure why, but I love the state fair. It's so dirty and Kansas-y and full of questionable people, but I love it. Maybe it's just the time of year, maybe it's that I know I get to spend a few hours with Adam doing nothing but indulging in fair food. Who knows. It's fun.

And Sutton actually enjoyed it this year! Several people asked us if this was his first fair, and we said no, it was his second but that he was really little the first time around. I remember last year, hoping that this year he'd be able to do more. We've still got a ways to go, but he made the fair so much more fun than it's been in the past years.

(Disclaimer: All pictures were taken with our little point-and-shoot because it's SO much easier to carry around, but looking at these kind of makes me want to scratch my eyes out because I had no control over the exposure.)

Had to have our pre-fair snack of goldfish. Just readying the tummy.

It was a lot colder this year than last. And a little rainy. For those of you who aren't from Kansas, it cooled down from 100 degrees last week to about 59 this week. I guess I shouldn't be surprised...after all, it IS Kansas.

We first stopped at the indoor food court to feed Sutton his (non-fair-food) lunch. He kept giggling during lunch...he was just excited to be there, I guess.

My first purchase, the annual bierock.

Adam got things started off with a slice of pepperoni pizza.

Sutton was enjoying his mac n' cheese.

Then we walked over to the livestock area. I hadn't been here in past years - I didn't even know where it was! But we wanted to be sure to go there this time since we knew Sutton would like seeing the animals.

Umm...weird.

Then it was over to the petting zoo. Another new thing for us. Sutton had fun petting all the animals.

Can I just say that I have the most attractive husband in the world? And now that he's a Dad...oh my gosh...it's all over. I'm just smitten. :)

Teeny baby goats cuddled together for warmth. They are not yet trained up in the ways of the world, they weren't begging for food like the older kids. (Haha, get it?)

This baby piglet was TINY. You totally can't tell the size here, but take my word for it. There were two others to the right sleeping under a heating lamp, so they must've been pretty new!

The camel tryin to give me a smoochie smooch.

This one had its tongue sticking out the whole time.

See?

Then it was time for more food. Fried cookie dough! Holy cow. SO GOOD. But they gave me three cookies and after two, I was done...they were just so rich. Adam got some roasted corn, but that picture must've somehow got deleted. Sad.

Then we had to make a stop at the John Deeres so Sutton could climb around a little. We decided to make this photo a tradition. So here he is last year at the fair, and this year! 

Had to test out the hot tubs.

Enter the caramel apple. This was his FAVORITE. He was begging for a bite, so Adam let him try it, and he couldn't get enough. We had no idea how crazy he'd go over this. Adam ended up eating most of the caramel off and then just giving the rest to him.

Lol. So I know this is an unattractive picture of him, but it made us laugh so I had to post it. GET IT SUTTON!!

He honestly, held onto the apple on the stick for the next hour until we left. I had to pry it out of his hand in the carseat on the way home and he got real mad but he was making a huge mess and it was turning all brown and gross.

Our little family at the fair! Such a fun day and fun memories. Can't wait til next year when Sutton can try more of the food and get really excited about all the animals. (Please notice he's still holding the apple.)