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!!).

Pictures

We had Cass's picture taken last week. If you would like to see the proofs, click on this link: www.garcia9month.photoherald.com.

Wednesday Afternoon

I don't work on Wednesdays and Fridays, so today was one of my days off. This morning we went to see the photographer to get Cass's picture taken. I thought his little plaid overalls were so cute so I tried to get a picture of him in them when we got home. He wouldn't sit still, so this is the best picture I could get. He is trying to get into the dog cage.

Here is Cass eating his afternoon snack of shredded cheese and lunchmeat. He is such a big boy now, he can feed himself finger foods!

But as you can see, only about half of the food makes it in his mouth. This picture doesn't really do the mess justice . . . he had about a half cup of shredded cheese and meat down his shirt. It was such a mess - the cheese had melted and was sticking to his skin!

To get him cleaned up and avoid getting cheese all over the carpet in the nursery, I decided to just strip him down right by the high chair. You can see the little pieces of food all around him (which he then tried to eat off the floor) . . . the white specks on the right are lunchmeat and the yellow ones on the left are cheese. Oh - and the little specks on his chest and belly - that's some of the remaining melted cheese.

Here's the cleanup crew!!! :)

Sunday afternoon

Here are a couple video clips of Cass from this afternoon . . .

The first video captures Cass making his screeching noise . . . over, and over, and over. You'll notice that part way into the video our dogs Norm and Tina start making quite a bit of noise while they are playing together. It wasn't until I watched the video that I noticed Cass's screeching noice sounds kind of like the noise the dogs make - I wonder if they are training him to be a dog??

Uh oh . . . I think he maybe does think he is a dog. What I thought was him crawling around on all fours playing ball appears to be more like fetching . . . :)

First Train Ride

Charlotte recently opened it's light rail system, so today we decided to take a little family trip and ride it. We boarded in "uptown" (which is what Charlotte's downtown is called) and rode through south Charlotte to the end of the line and back. I was nervous about Cass sitting still for that long because it took about 45 minutes, but he was so good! I think it was a combination of the motion and all of the things to see out the window that kept him entertained. When we were done with our ride, we stopped at a little grocery store/deli and had ice cream, then drove to a fried chicken place that was ranked by Southern Living magazine as one of the top 10 fried chicken restaurants in the nation. We weren't quite as impressed as the magazine was, but it was still good!

Another one!

As I mentioned in my last post, Cass LOVES his activity table. So, we got him another one - we happened to find a bigger and better one at a garage sale for less than half the retail price (I love a bargain), and it's just like brand new. Now he can play with both at the same time - he is just in heaven! Oh, and you can see I finally figured out how to solve the problem with him falling down . . . pillows!!! I'm obviously a first-time mom - it just takes me a while to figure these things out, but I'm learning! :)

Favorite Toy

Here are a couple pictures of Cass playing with his latest favorite toy. As you can see, he can now stand up if he has something to lean on. He isn't very graceful at sitting back down . . . we have to watch him real close to try to save him from falling and bumping his head on the floor.