Excuses and Red Hot Apples

HI!

Miss me?

When I first had Sutton and he was just a lump of human who slept all the time, I always though "Gosh, this is a breeze! I still have tons of time to myself, I can blog and read and nap. I don't know what people are always complaining about being so busy when they have kids..."

Well...

SUTTON IS CRAZY AND HILARIOUS AND ALWAYS GETTING INTO EVERYTHING.

So, I haven't had as much time to blog. Or take pictures. Sad.

It's been real hot out too. Like 110* hot. So those are my excuses. Satisfied? :)

This weekend is my first weekend at home without a wedding since MAY and I'm so excited. SO excited. We went to the pool yesterday and plan on going again today. We might even make it to church this weekend! Our church life has been neglected, I'm sad to say, and I miss it.

The even better news is that I have the next TWO weekends off also! And I have fun fun things planned. Hopefully photos will be involved.

I found some old pictures on a memory card from back in April. Sutton looks so much different in these photos. We were having dinner with Luis and Val, and they'd brought red hots, and Val started telling us about this recipe her mom made when she was little that was melted red hots and apples. So of course we googled the recipe and tried it.

It was...interesting. And I spilled it on my placemat. But fun!

The men did the cooking. For a change. :) Just kidding. Adam usually does the cooking in our house.

Meanwhile, Val and I played with Sutton.

Flyin'

Adam bought this little foam airplane for Sutton at Hobby Lobby. Best $2 ever spent. Sutton LOVES it. We don't understand his love for airplanes because there's no way he could already realize that his Daddy loves them...but maybe he's smarter than we think.

You don't see him doing it for very long in this video, but he likes to "fly" the plane around in the air and make airplane noises. Sometimes he gets so loud he's yelling. He'll do it in his carseat for like 10 minutes. So funny.

Mudwater Tri 7.10.11

Yesterday morning, in the wee hours, Adam and our friend Ryan headed over to Lake Afton to compete in their second triathlon. The wives (Risa and I) and Sutton waited til a bit of a more decent hour (but still...6:30am...eww) before we left to go watch.

Neither of us were able to watch them in their first tri, so it was really cool to see them compete. We both just kept saying how proud we were of them!

Despite the early hour, the heat was ridiculous. It ended up getting up to like 110* yesterday afternoon, so even at 9am, we were sweating buckets. I can't imagine how bad it was for the athletes.

I took along my nice camera and got some photos of our boys! They started out swimming...

Our friend Liz was there competing as well!

Adam jogging into the transition area to get ready to bike.

Ryan leaving transition.

 This was the longest portion we had to wait to see them again. It was hard to try to get pictures when we had no idea who was coming til they were right there. But luckily, I didn't miss either of them.

Adam saw us on the sidelines and said a quick "Hello!" to Sutton before dismounting and getting ready for his run.

We got to see them about halfway through their run, still going strong but feeling the heat.

Saying hi to Sutton again. Sutton was a.n.g.r.y. at this point. Hot and tired.

Finally the finish!!! Here's Ryan...

And Adam. Good job guys, we're so proud of you and how well you did! Can't wait to cheer you on at the next one!

4-Wheelin'

Just a little video to show Uncle Michael and Aunt Sara how much Sutton loves his 4-wheeler they gave him for his birthday. When they first gave it to him, he was way too wobbly to ride it alone, but now he can cruise around all by himself!

4th of July

I had a bit of a breakdown in the morning on the 4th because this was the FIRST time that a holiday wasn't Sutton's FIRST holiday. Dumb.

Our pictures of the holiday are majorly lacking. We had a really good day, but didn't bring the camera out much.

We started the morning off by heading to Newton to have lunch with my parents. We took our dogs along, so Sadie got to meet my parents' dogs, and we had fun sitting on the deck watching all four of them play.

Sutton had a fun time playing with Grandma, but it was definitely nap time. I rocked him for about 2 seconds before he fell asleep on me.

The pups got tired too and everyone found a spot to sleep. My dogs are s-p-o-i-l-e-d and of course hogged all the spots on the couches. Disregard Adam. He's weird.

Sutton really wanted to take this hat home but we made him leave it there. :)

  

We came home and we all took a nap. Then we headed over to our friends' house for BBQ and fireworks. Risa had made two awesome fruit pizzas. This was the fireworks themed one:

And the flag themed one.

After the sun started going down, we went out on their driveway to watch the 'works. Sutton got his own pint-sized lawn chair (thanks to Reid for letting us borrow his chair!). I think he liked it.

Baby Austin slept in the background so he wouldn't be woken up by all the crazy noises.

True to form, Sutton got real sweaty. His entire head was wet. Gross. So we stripped him down. He seemed to be having a good time til the bigger/louder fireworks started. There was a pretty loud boom to our right, and he turned towards me with outstretched arms and burst out crying. After that, whenever he saw them explode in the sky, he'd cry. So we ended up leaving pretty soon, but got a good show on our drive across town while Sutton slept in his carseat.

 And two random photos on the camera that Adam took. Sutton already LOVES airplanes. He likes to "fly" them around in the air and make airplane noises. This one is a little big to do that with.

One of the days I was at work last week, Adam took Sutter bean to the pool to pick up chicks. :) That pink pacifier'll really get 'em.

Stats and Some Other Fun Stuff

After Sutton's 12 month check-up on Monday, here are his stats:

*Weight: 23.6 lbs (50th%)
*Height: 29.5 in (50th%)
*Head Circumference: >97th%

So he's evened out everywhere but his big head. :)

I got a new camera lens yesterday. It's wonderful. I have a wedding this afternoon/evening (outdoors in this heat...wish me luck) and I can't wait to use it a bunch. But I thought I'd test it out on Sutton and his new found love for this snack cup.

 

It's true love. If you want him to eat something he won't eat, put it in the cup. If you want to keep him busy, put some cheerios in the cup. Last night we had a BBQ at some friends house and afterwards played some games. He stayed busy for a good 45 minutes eating goldfish out of this cup. When they were gone, he fished his puffs out of his diaper bag, handed them to me, and gave me the cup.

For those of you who don't currently have kids or haven't seen these...they have these rubber flaps that allow kiddos to put their hands in to get snacks out, but they don't spill. Pretty handy.

Also...a couple things I forgot to put in his 12 month post:

*Sutton's started standing on his own. He likes to pull up on things, then let go, and get alllllll excited. He stands there for probably 10 seconds, all wobbly like, then throws himself down. I feel like if he didn't love the falling down part, he could stand on his own a lot longer. Last night, he walked next to me just holding one of my hands.

*Ever since his birthday, we've changed his eating a lot. He has oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, lunchmeat, cheese, fruit, and cheerios for lunch, an afternoon nursing, and some of what we're having or veggies and fruit for supper. Then he nurses before bed. He likes to feed himself, but that makes a huge mess and he doesn't always get it in his mouth, so I usually help him a lot.

*Weaning update: AHHHHH! So we've cut out the morning nursing. That's totally fine. I mix whole milk with his oatmeal, we're good to go. I've been trying to get him to take a bottle or sippy cup of breastmilk and cow's milk in the afternoon and the first day it went great, he sucked it down. Ever since then, it's resulted in a tantrum and so I end up giving in and nursing him because I know he's hungry. Haven't decided on a game plan other than continuing to try to get him to drink milk out of a sippy cup throughout the day. I feel like we're wasting a lot of milk though.

In other news, Sadie is right at home. When I wash the sheets on our bed, I have to cover the mattress with our comforter because the dogs will still get up there. The other day I took a nap while Sutton napped, so I had a naked pillow on the bed too. A few hours later, I found Sadie all comfy up there.

Sutton's 1st Birthday {The Invite}

Our fifth and final birthday post. Phew. Sorry to overload you, I can't help it.

Since designing stuff like invitations is what I do, I felt a lot of pressure to design a cute invite. Being creative comes much harder for me when I'm doing something for myself. I find it really hard to photograph Sutton like I would any other baby, so designing the invite was just as hard. OH, THE PRESSURE!

But...I thought it turned out pretty cute!

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