Hat

Cass loves to wear Daddy's hat . . .

Practice photo . . . first of many . ..

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm playing with my new camera quite a bit. I figured out how to take monochrome (which apparently is the fancy term for "black and white") pics. And, I'm also working to perfect the art of blurring the background, and it seemed to work here - the dark color in the background is actually Chris sitting on the chair in his sweats with a computer on his lap . . . who would know, huh?

New camera

I know. This is not a picture of Cass, which is the purpose of this blog and the reason you all read it. However, I am SOOOO excited . . . I got my Christmas present early - a new camera!!! Cass was taking a nap when I got it and the dogs got tired of having the flash go off at them, so I resorted to taking pictures of my orchid which is just starting to bloom. The great close-ups that I can take with this camera are amazing. I took 133 pictures the first hour that I had the camera. :) I have a lot to learn about it, but will be practicing a lot, so expect to see a lot of posts with pictures of Cass on here in the coming days!

Now he's REALLY walking

You may remember from my previous posts that Cass took his official first steps on Halloween. Well, apparently he was just giving me a "sneak peek" at what he could do, because since then he would only take 3 or 4 steps, and then would revert to crawling. Until last night. All of a sudden he just started walking around the house! He was a little wobbly, but he sure did it! Dad was quick enough to grab the camera and get it on tape. And by the way, yes, I realize his outfit looks ridiculous. He had been wearing jeans earlier in the day and spilled water on them, so before his nap I put some pajama pants on him and didn't bother to change him once he woke up. Of course he decides to do something very video worthy when he's dressed like that. :)

Here he is on day 2 of walking. He's already showing some improvement, but as you can see he still wipes out. Fortunately, he usually just laughs when he falls and gets right up and tries again!!

Halloween

Here are a few pictures of Cass on Halloween. He was a little fuzzy bear.

Today was a big day for Cass . . . he finally officially walked!!! He's been taking a few staggering steps and then falling for a while, but I don't think that really counts as walking. However, today he took 13 steps toward me! He was so excited. He immediately did it again - 11 steps the second time. I was so glad that I was off work today and got to see his first steps. If only Chris had been here. He was hoping to get off early today, but got here about an hour after he did it. :( He didn't take anymore steps tonight after Chris got home, but in the pictures below he looks like he may have been thinking about it.

Here's Cass and his friend Noah that lives down the street. Noah is about 6 months older than Cass. He was cute - he had a little puffy Goofy costume.

And to reminisce, here's a picture of the little guy a year ago. He's changed so much - he's not a baby anymore!

Balloon Festival

We went to the Carolina Balloonfest yesterday, which is a hot air balloon festival that is held in Statesville, about 30 minutes north of where we live. I heard about 50 hot air balloons participate, and they all lift off together at 4:30 in the afternoon. We got there a little late, so we missed that, but we still got to see a few balloons lift off . . . apparently they were the ones that had trouble getting off the ground with all the others.

Here's one of them. It's kind of hard to see, but there are people in the basket and it's sitting on its side. Looks like this was definitely one of the balloons that had trouble lifting off. We were surprised at how close we could stand by a balloon - you can kind of tell from this picture that people were standing right next to it, and running away when it tipped over on its side.

Cass LOVED watching the balloons since they are so big and colorful. There were tons of families with kids there - it was some good family entertainment!

It got a little cool at the festival in the evening and I didn't have any gloves for Cass. But - I had socks in my diaper bag . . . I thought they may do the trick, but Cass obviously was not comfortable (or maybe embarrassed . . .hee hee), so it didn't last long.

At the end of the festival, they did a "balloon glow" where several of the balloons fired their propane to make the balloons light up - it was so neat! This picture doesn't really do it justice, but you can kind of get the idea.

Taste test

Here's Cass doing a taste test of milk v. water. I stopped recording after about a minute of him alternating sips from each cup . . . he kept on dong it for probably another minute. I'm not sure what the verdict was though - I think it may have been a tie.