We Got A New Camera!

We recently bought a new digital camera and have been having a blast taking tons of JJ pics. He is growing bigger every day and surprising us with what he is learning. His new word is Jay-Jay, which he says in a long, drawn out way. It is too funny. His hair is super curly, but a little too long and he kinda has the old man come-over look going - actually it's not so much as a come over as it is a comb front. Regardless, we are ready to take him for his first cut. This should be fun - Ugh! JJ at dad's work party. There were John Deere's everywhere!

We tried and tried to get JJ to put on this big, furry winter hat that Jerret picked up in China. It actually looks more like something you would find in Russia. JJ didn't care for it too much.

We actually got the hat on him at this point, although you can't really see it with our dark couch in the background.

JJ loves to drink bath water from the cup I use to rinse the soap off of him. It is so interesting because they let him drink from a tin cup in the orphanage so he naturally wants to try and drink from every cup he sees. He also likes to drink from water bottles, although he sometimes gets a little too excited and spills it all down the front of his shirt.

here is a pic of my nephew AJ with JJ and my dad. JJ loves his cousins!

Our Quiet Weekend

We had a nice, relaxing weekend at home although the weather wasn't so nice! Saturday turned bitterly cold and I am sad to report that we have now turned on the heat in the Hartman house.

JJ has recently figured out how to manipulate door handles. The interior doors in our house all have lever handles, which he can just reach and pull down to open. (He can't get outside though because those doors have the round knobs - plus we keep those doors locked at all times). I thought it was so cute how he would try and open all the doors inside the house, until he hit the closet. Once he finally got the closet door open he found all the *cool* stuff we keep in there and decided to drag it all out, piece by piece. I was laughing hysterically at the mess he was making and his "oooohs and aaaaahhhhs" with each find when I saw this...He found my Wal-Mart shoe rack inside the closet and thought it looked fun to play with. I am so surprised it didn't break by this point, and in fact was still laughing with him, having a good old time when the next thing I knew this happened...

Apparently, he didn't like my laughing at him. (Is it totally wrong of me to have snapped a pic before I helped him??)

JJ is doing great and is surprising us daily with new things he has learned. His new love is the Wiggles, and he has made a nightly routine of bringing us the remote control so that we can play the day's episode from TIVO. He knows many of the songs, and although he can't sing them, he definitely knows how to dance to them! He has also recently learned how to play hide and seek, and will put a blankie in front of his face, pull it down and say "Boo!" His vocabulary is still limited to book, ball, balloon, bye, kitty-cat, da-da and mama; but I say - he's still learning English! Aunt B swears he said "shoe" today, but we have yet to hear it. Oh how I wish we had the $$ for another!

We had a nice weekend. I went to an awesome baby shower. For those of you who are long-time blog readers, you know that I cannot stand the huge mega-showers. This one was quite the opposite. Very intimate, yet very informal. We ate right away, a simple menu of stuffed bread sticks and salad, and played one shower game. It was a super creative game called "Guess the pregnant celebrity" where the hostess found 10 pics of celbs when they were preggers. She blacked out the faces and we each had to guess who the person was. The one with the most right answers won (it wasn't me). After our game we made brownie sundaes (YUM!) and ate them while we watched Sarah (the guest of honor) open her gifts. It was seriously the best shower ever!

Toothpaste Really Does Work!

Mom and Dad were busy cleaning the house and decided to pull JJ in the kitchen while we let him tried to feed himself. Thank heavens he was on the tile and not in the dining room where we usually eat, because as you can see, he took this opportunity to dump his food all over the place. I love how he looks at us like he totally knows he is busted.

He is such a happy boy. The white stuff on his head is toothpaste. See - Jerret's work party was Saturday and we were outside for a good 6 hours. The mosquitoes around here have been terrible due to all the rain we've been having and JJ got about 12 bites that night. I was looking for something to stop him from itching when Jerret announced that toothpaste works the best. He said his mom always put it on he and his siblings when they were young. Me, being the skeptic that I am, didn't believe him and had to Google "toothpaste on mosquito bites" before I would give it a try. Low and behold, I found all kinds of ways to stop the itching and toothpaste happens to be one of them (tee tree oil and hemorrhoid cream are among some of the others).

In other news - I had a big win at work this week. There are really only two reasons a proposal writer should ever get excited about work; one is wins and the other is an extension. I happened to get both last week. The win was for the largest job my company has ever been awarded - a $53 million project at Dover AFB. Yeah me!