our sweet little angel

sleeping so peacefully...

ice! - a charlie brown christmas

we went to ice! last year. it was the grinch then, and very cool. but everyone has a special place in their heart for the charlie brown christmas, right? it was very fun and very cold. (how cold do you think it is in here? one. ok, ok. after a little googling, it's apparently kept at sixteen degrees in there. much better than one? uh, no.)

anyway, a few photos documenting the day:

santa!

we were in tennessee this weekend visiting with nana and pop. nana had let us know that the franklin santa was already at the mall, and that there probably wouldn't be much of a line yet. so we all decided to tackle the big event.

as we were standing in line, cayden started getting a little fussy - it was time to eat and we had left the bottle in the car. i started to get a little worried that he wouldn't do so good with santa, so we asked rachel and justin if we could go first.

he was a pro though! just a happy little fella. after we had his photo taken, we got ethan and lexie in on the fun (nana wanted one photo with all the grandkids in it). all three of them did great and we got one with all three of them smiling (i'll have to get that one from nana).

overall, a great first santa experience. no worries, i totally expect a meltdown next year.

six months old

new moon

yes, like many others in the blogging world, i'm writing about new moon. it comes out this friday, but guess who gets to see it tonight? that's right. me! a dear friend at work was able to score some advance screening passes, and i got two of them for me and jeremy. i feel like our entire office will be there tonight... and you know what? that could be fun too. the showing it at 7:30, but i'm riding with a friend to the theatre right after work. we were told to get there an hour early for the line; we're thinking we'll be as close to the front as possible. i mean really, free tickets or not, who wants to sit at the very front of the theatre? not me. here's hoping we get a decent place in line, and ok seats. yay!

cayden's first christmas

jeremy and i are both really excited about all the upcoming holidays. i know cayden won't remember these first few years, but it should be a good time for us all experiencing them as a family for the first time. i set out on a mission to find a baby's first christmas ornament for him, and found the most adorable thing ever on etsy. i got it from this shop; if you're looking for adorable hand-made ornaments, then take a look.

on his hat, it'll say: Cayden's
on the little heart: 2009
and, on the banner at the bottom: First Christmas

cute, right?

trying out bananas

last week, night two of avocados was a BIG, FAT FAIL. he wouldn't even open his mouth to try them out. that's ok. we'll save what was frozen and try it out again in a couple of weeks. tonight, we decided to try bananas. we have a couple that were on the verge of needing to be thrown out, so we mushed half of one up (and froze the rest for future meals). it was, um, interesting to say the least. i think the bananas must've hit all the different tastes. and even after swallowing it, he would occasionally get a shiver. too cute. and laugh out loud funny.

a new experience

cayden's been sitting up fairly well these last couple of weeks, so we decided to see how he'd do in a shopping cart. we ventured out to tj maxx to find the kiddo a winter coat. their carts are a little bit smaller than the normal cart (read: about half the width of normal ones), so we felt ok trying it out. and he did pretty good. about half-way through, you could tell he was getting tired of holding himself up... walking him around the store took care of that though...

(and yes, we were the parents who whipped out a camera in the store to document his very first ride in a shopping cart. we're cool like that.)

finally!

after almost six long months, i was able to meet papa rip! yay! and he got to my house just in time to feed me. my great-granny allen also came over (momma didn't do a great job with photos, did she?). anyway, we all hung out for a while. and i slept most of the time. i guess i do that a lot. i'll grow out of it one day though.

either way, i'm looking forward to seeing papa rip more over the next week. he's silly. just like daddy...

first real food

i kept going over lists to see what a good first food would be for an almost six month baby. i read that avocado was a good one to try out, and easy for both baby and parents - it doesn't have to be cooked first! we mashed one up last night to see how cayden would do with it. i was impressed. his first reaction was pretty much as expected, but overall, he handled it well. we'll try the avocado again for three more nights and then move on to something else (maybe bananas!). everything i've read says to try a food for at least three days; if the baby is going to be allergic to it, it would show up by then. maybe tmi, but i'm interested to see how this affects his poop. weird, right?