More Cheese Pics

My typical Wednesday consists of getting to spend most of the day playing with Cass. :) Then, during his naps, I check the grocery ads, get my laundry going, work out on my elliptical trainer while watching Food Network and reading a magazine at the same time (you know a mom is always multi-tasking!!), and after Cass's naps we head out for our weekly grocery shopping. After having this routine for a while, I've learned how to keep Cass content when we get home so I can get the groceries put away . . . .CHEESE!!! As you may have seen in one of my previous posts, shredded cheese is Cass's favorite food and he makes quite a mess with it. I snapped some "action shots" of him eating his cheese this afternoon. After I took the tray off of his travel high chair (which we are temporarily using because his regular chair needs to be disassembled and deep cleaned because there is shredded cheese in every nook and cranny), I could see that most of it ended up in his chair.

Friday

Work has been busy lately and I haven't posted for a while, so I got a few pictures of Cass today. We have a "Pack n' Play" set up in our living room but really hadn't put Cass in it very much - we primarily just used it to store Cass's toys so the dogs wouldn't get them. It seemed kind of like a cage so we felt bad putting Cass in there and hadn't even tried it. However, one day when Daddy was watching Cass he put him in there, and Cass loved it! I guess it's no surprise, since there are so many toys in there. If you look close, you'll see an orange "toy" by Cass's left hand - that's Daddy's beer koozie that Cass likes to play with. :)

Here's another one of Cass in his Pack n' Play, peeking over the edge. See what he's holding in his hand? It's a rubber spoon that his Great Aunt Linda and Uncle Al gave him, he loves it because the entire thing is thick rubber so it's sort of flimsy and great to chew on. I have heard that around this age kids will pick some sort of toy or blanket as a security item, so I've been waiting to see what he chooses. I think this is it. The last couple nights, he gets a hold of it around 5:00 at night, and it stays with him the rest of the night . . . through dinner, through the bath, through nursing before bed, through brushing his teeth, and into bed. It's hilarious. I sneak into his room once he's asleep and take it out of his crib because I'm a worry-wort . . . I'm sure he can't hurt himself with it, but I worry about some freak accident where he'll choke on it in his crib or something. He doesn't seem to miss it when he wakes up in the morning, but he sure is glad to see it when it reappears during the day!

It's amazing the things that entertain Cass . . . I think he'd pick the spicy brown mustard bottle over a toy any day. I had to re-arrange our refrigerator so that the plastic condiment bottles were on the lower shelves, because the minute we open the fridge door he's there looking for something to play with.

Cass has become a pro at standing up. He pulls himself up on almost everything, but he hadn't stood up in his crib until yesterday. I looked in the video monitor when he woke up from his nap and he was standing in his crib!

When I went into his room to get him, I realized what he was doing when he was standing in his crib. Those little teeth (he has 4 of them now - 2 on top and 2 on the bottom) were gnawing the finish off of the crib! Here's the evidence . . .

No matter how tired Cass seems to be at night, he always gets a second wind after he takes his bath, and loves to cruise around his room naked and play after he gets out of the bathtub. We have a little game we play now called "no, no, no". He knows when he is going after something he shouldn't (like the blinds on his door), and he starts squealing and giggling before he gets there and cracks up when I say "no, no, no". As you can hear, I don't say it with much authority, so it's no wonder he thinks it's a game!

4th of July

Our neighborhood had a little parade for the kids on the 4th of July. Here's a picture of Cass in his "float" in front of the house. I had to take this opportunity to snap a picture of my hanging flowers which Chris DID NOT want me to get . . . he didn't think I'd be able to keep them alive, but I've had them for 2 months now, thank you very much! However, you can see the ones on the right (which get the west sun) are starting to look a little rough. Hopefully they will make it through the rest of the summer!

Here's a closer picture of the little guy in his float. :)

This is the "parade". It's led by a golf cart playing patriotic music, and just consists of kids on their scooters or bikes and a few dogs decked out in red, white and blue. Chris and I pushed Cass in his stroller - you'll see us after the guy in the navy shirt walks in front of the camera, look for Chris in a white shirt and I'm in a dark pink shirt.

Our neighborhood had planned a potluck dinner, bouncy house for the kids, and fireworks for the evening. It started raining right before the potluck was supposed to start, so we ended up staying home and eating the meatballs that I made for the potluck and watching a movie. Around 10:00 the rain let up, so we still had the fireworks show. It was down at the end of our street, so Chris and I had the perfect seat watching it from our balcony! Cass was in bed and didn't seem to hear a thing (whew!!).