What a big boy!

Nathan is not much of a baby anymore despite my efforts to keep him one. Pictures are worth 1000 words I guess...

Musical Genius?

Nathan has many wonderful toys and books. He goes through little streaks of playing with specific toys intensely. Right now it's his xylophone. He loves it! I joke that he's a musical genius. (he does seem drawn to his instrument toys, but most babies are probably interested in these sorts of things that make noise.) We are enjoying this age where Nathan is so interactive and clearly understanding many things. Being new to this, every little new thing he does makes him seem like a genius to us. I guess that's being parents... We'll try to keep it in check.

the virtuoso xylophonist

well, not everything is pure genius

Nathan likes to take the xylophone into his tent to practice.

Nathan's Birthday Weekend

The great thing about a Friday birthday is that the festivities can last all weekend! Nathan enjoyed receiving presents throughout the weekend, and had a blast at his party today. He LOVED cake once he realized it was food. Not very surprising, but fairly cute.

Thanks to all who kept us in their thoughts and/or spent time with us on his birthday. It really does take a village to raise a child...

Happy First Birthday, Nathan!

What a year it's been. Happy Birthday little guy- we love you, Nathan!

"Curious Nathan" visits the dishwasher

I turned my back to put away a clean cup and look what happened...

end of the first year

Nathan is fast approaching his first birthday. How the time does fly. He's quite a busy guy these days. In the last six weeks, he has perfected his crawling and gets all over. Now he pulls up, crawls up stairs, and gets into everything. It's a great age. We love it. Here are some recent pictures.

a rare moment at 8:20am... Nathan loves his blanket. Yes, we still let him sleep in bed with us in the early morning. We are pushovers.

Recent Pictures to start 2008

We've been slow to sift through recent pictures but here is a set.

Nathan is going through a puppyish phase of mouthing everything.

Nathan's first Christmas was great. As you can see, he loved many things about it: ornaments, nativity sets, stockings, presents, costumes. At the ripe age of 10 months, he is now crawling decent distances to get himself to interesting things, and get into trouble. We are loving it.

with his present from Mom and Dad

Christmas Eve (2 pics above)

Santa found Nathan in Minnesota! Christmas morning was lots of fun.

Because I couldn't resist!

Christmas season

We're really enjoying the Christmas season with Nathan. We had a great time celebrating with extended family a bit early. Nathan and his cousin Max were coincidentally wearing matching sweaters- it was quite fun. Nathan opened his first Christmas present and has been enjoying his animal train every day.

Below are some of our attempts at taking a Christmas picture of Nathan. You can see how well this is going- Nathan is more interested in the tree, ornaments, toys, or us than smiling and sitting still for a picture. I guess that's normal :)

Nathan's First Christmas Tree

We bought our Christmas tree last weekend at a farmstand near our house, and finally finished decorating it yesterday.



Here's some video from yesterday. We have a lot to learn about editing video, so it's pretty long:

As you can See, Nathan is very excited about the tree. And he's got a few new tricks under his belt, including clapping his hands. He's getting really close to crawling too (although we've been saying this for a while...).