Like mother, like son

My mom has always told a story about how when I was little (maybe around 4?) I used to say, "I have to check on the furnace system!" and then I'd apparently go downstairs to look at it. Well, in the last few days we had to turn the heat on in our house. The furnace is in the laundry room, off the front hallway, so he can see in there as he walks around pushing his push toy around. He has been absolutely captivated with staring at the furnace!! Especially if it's on at the time, you can kind of see the flames through the little air vents on the side, and he'll just sit there and stare. He kind of fusses lightly while he stares, so we don't know if he's concerned, scared, or what. But he will stand there, glued to watching it, until it turns off again! Such a funny boy. :)

Micah's morning adventures

I have two stories to share from this morning...

First, I had just thrown away some doughnut pieces leftover from church on Sunday. I just dumped them into the trash can, then went about getting Micah's breakfast ready. He was playing happily, as usual, in the other room. I got to the point of mixing the water in with his cereal and realized that I heard some rustling behind me in the kitchen... I turned around to see Micah standing at the trash can, reaching in and eating the doughnut chunks right out of the trash!! I laughed so hard I almost cried! He had crumbs all over his adorable little face, and looked at me like, "What?" I called Steve at work and he got a good laugh out of it too. Hilarious!

Second, it was a few hours later. I had to run upstairs to get a phone number and make a quick call. While talking, I heard him in the kitchen (which is totally child-proofed, so I wasn't worried about his safety) playing with Haley's food/water dishes. This is common for him, as he loves to dump her water dish over when he knows we're not watching. I finished my call, then went back downstairs to find him sitting in a big puddle of water, chewing on something... I then noticed Haley's food spilled all over the floor too. Yep, you guessed it...he was eating DOG FOOD!!! Oh man. Luckily Haley's a small dog so she has very small food pieces. But still! I fished them out of his mouth (there were two pieces in there...I hope he didn't swallow any before that...) and cleaned up the mess, laughing again. Once again I called Steve, who got another good laugh...

My only afterthought to these two episodes this morning is, WHY didn't I think to grab my camera first?!

Micah's birthday!

It's finally here...the big birthday post! It was a busy week. My parents arrived on Monday afternoon. Steve was working on Tuesday, so we hung out at home and my parents got to enjoy some great time with Micah.

Wednesday was Micah's birthday (Steve took Wed-Fri off), and we had fun celebrating! We started the day off by going to breakfast at Walker Brothers. YUM!! I shared my pumpkin pancakes with Micah, which he loved (of course). That was his first taste of pancakes (I guess you have to start with the best!). He had gotten up really early that morning (he must have known it was a special day), so he took a nap when we got home. That afternoon we went back to Hawthorn Mall to do some errands and to let him play in their fun play area. He enjoyed that and my dad took some nice pictures.
He also unwrapped his first present. Here's a video of Haley helping him unwrap it (he didn't like the sound of the paper ripping, but he sure thought Haley was funny!):


On Thursday we all went to Royal Oak Farm Orchard, which is our favorite orchard that we patronize every year around this time. Micah had his first taste of their famous apple cider doughnuts! He couldn't get enough. :)
Then we went and took some pictures with the pumpkins.
Finally, we went apple picking! We gave Micah a baby-sized apple, and he couldn't get enough! He chomped down about 2/3 of that apple before we thought we should take it away. :)
The last major event of the week was his birthday party on Saturday. Since he loves rubber duckies, I made him a ducky cake:
He really enjoyed eating it, and didn't make as big of a mess as I'd thought he would!
I'd picked up a "First Birthday" balloon for his party, and he absolutely loved it. You'd think that was better than all the great toys he'd gotten that day.
Finally, he ended the day with a nice bath. I include this picture because he's just so cute in the tub!
It was a very busy, but fun week. We've come so far in the year that Micah has been with us, and we've really enjoyed watching our little boy grow up. :) The Lord has certainly blessed us richly with this precious gift!

Boys will be boys

Just a quick post about something that happened on Micah's birthday. We went to the mall in the afternoon so he could play at the fun kiddie area (see the very first post of my blog) and to do some other errands. My mom and I were in a store trying on clothes, so my dad and Steve were pushing Micah around the mall in his stroller. My mom and I were taking a while, so apparently they circled the mall quite a few times. Their report was hilarious... Every time they walked past Victoria's Secret, Micah pointed at the store! (They said he didn't point at anything else in the mall...) I guess it really does start at a young age! Scary!

Micah's birthday post is coming

I haven't had time to sit down and put together a post about Micah's birthday week yet, but it was fabulous! I'll try to work on it this week sometime, so check back! In the mean time, I did add a link to pictures from the week to the right hand side of the blog. Check them out! :)

Micah's front-facing adventures

Since Micah is almost one year old (on this Wednesday!!), we decided to turn his car seat around to be front-facing yesterday. My parents are coming for a week-long visit tomorrow, and we wanted to have the car seat all set before they get here and are riding with us. So, Steve flipped it around and put it in the middle of the back seat. We went out driving yesterday afternoon, then out to dinner, and WOW, Micah was so quiet the whole time! He was very interested in looking out the front window of the car, seeing the dashboard, and seeing Mommy and Daddy in the front seat! We had dinner at Applebees, and by the time we were done it was dark out. He saw the glowing neon Applebees sign outside the restaurant and was fascinated by it! He hasn't been out in the car when it's been dark much (since it's starting to get dark before his bedtime now), so he was very interested in watching all the cars, stop lights, signs on the side of the road, etc. glowing in the night. It was so neat to see him taking in new sights and to see his eyes light up. Nothing compares with watching your child learning new things. I love it!

Bigfoot

A couple days ago I took Micah to the mall to go looking for shoes for him. I want shoes that have a very thin, flexible rubber sole since he's not walking on his own yet, but I think will be relatively soon. I went to Stride Rite since they'd just sent me a coupon and a brochure on their new "cruiser/early walker shoes". They measured his feet (we've never had that done before), and they're a 5 Wide. The salesgirl said he'd probably need a 5.5 W so that he'd have room for growth. Well, wouldn't you know that the cruiser shoes only come in up to size 5's?! So that was a no-go. I tried Nordstrom's next, knowing that they had a good selection of baby shoes. We tried a pair on him, but they had a slightly thicker sole than I wanted, and he wasn't able to push his stroller around while walking normally in them. So that was a no-go too. I've been looking at shoes online and came across Preschoolians a few weeks ago. They seem to be just the right option for us at the moment, after finding out that Micah's feet are just too big for what the normal stores offer! I'm planning to order his shoes soon so that they'll be here for Micah's birthday. I'm just glad I was able to find some that I'm happy with and that will fit him perfectly (since you can order any size in any style!). Plus, they're cheaper than the ones I was looking at in the stores!

In other news, Micah started clapping in the last week or so. It's so cute - he likes to do it when we go to his room to get him out of his crib after naps, or first thing in the morning. :) Steve's next thing to work on with Micah is "Touchdown!" (putting his arms up like the refs do). He kind of does it, but we'll keep working on it...

Micah's first haircut!

Well, we did it! After putting it off for far too long, we finally took Micah in to have his first haircut yesterday. I did well, only tearing up slightly as we walked in the door. :) We knew Micah was going to hate it, since just having his hair washed in the bathtub is an ordeal. But we also knew that he couldn't go on with his overgrown hair forever either. Here's the before pictures (he thought the race car was very cool until she started touching his head...):
Here are the action shots...he hated it, as predicted!!
And here's the after picture (wow, was that traumatic...):
I think he looks adorable, of course, and I'm glad we finally did it! He really looks like a big boy now, much more like a toddler. We took him to Kid Snips, so they gave us a nice certificate for his first haircut, complete with a polaroid and a few locks of his hair. :)

Micah's favorite commercial

I never would have guessed that a baby could have a favorite commercial, but Micah definitely does! I'm going to see if I can add a link to it on youtube here...

As soon as he hears the water draining out of the tub at the beginning of the commercial, he turns his head to the tv and watches the rest of the commercial. His favorite part is whenever the rubber ducky is on the screen! He gets the BIGGEST smile on his face whenever he sees the ducky. :) It's SO cute!

We've since discovered that he really loves anything with duckies or chicks on it. :) He has a crawling toy that he pushes and it rolls on ahead of him that has four ducks on it, which he loves. He loves to play with his rubber duckies in the bathtub. And whenever he sees a picture of a ducky or a chick, he always smiles! That makes me smile too. :)

Stairs!

This morning has already brought a new development...Micah has now discovered the stairs! It actually happened while I was on the phone with Steve (he's in Oklahoma City), so it's funny that Micah chose that moment to do it. There were two bottles of sunscreen on the third stair up, and that's actually what motivated him to get up those stairs! I'm still shocked at how much he has learned over the last two months - it's been such a joy to see him do new things all the time. We are officially one month from his birthday, so we'll see what else he's picking up between now and then...