Colton Pulls Up!

Colton is getting so big and so mobile!  At 6 1/2 months he started sitting up and army crawling.  Now, at 8 months, he's getting better and better at real crawling, as well as pulling up.  Today when I went in to get him after his first nap he was standing in his crib, waiting expectantly for someone to come for him while chewing on the railing. :)  Thank goodness we lowered his mattress to the lowest setting last week - just in the nick of time!  Colton's so happy when he can stand up - I think he'll be one independent little guy when he is fully mobile.  For now, though, he has to settle for standing in one place - until, that is, he perfects cruising!

Fun with the Stowers!

My original blog was below but Jenn chastised me for not posting any different pics.  We don't have many that are different from Mark and Connie's, but here are a few:

Colton's 8 month monkey picture - we can't take them lying down anymore because Colton doesn't lie still!

Sitting with monkey.

Loving playing in the back of his new Gator!

Colton loves to try to bite the ears (or arms, or legs, etc) off of stuffed animals.  Connie is getting into the spirit of it with him! :)

This past week, Mark and Connie came for a visit.  We were excited to see them, and for them to see Colton, since it had been almost 4 months since our last visit together!  We did a lot of fun things together, all of which I was going to blog about until I saw that Connie already did! :)  Why mess with a great blog?  I thought I'd just direct you there for the story of our week together and lots of fun pictures...

http://gigiandgrandyinkaty.blogspot.com/

Time Is Short

I cannot believe how soon we'll be moving to Florence!  We officially booked our plane tickets recently and we fly from Detroit to Rome on June 15th.  I know that time is going to F-L-Y during these next few weeks...especially because we're busy with many visits on top of all the details we need to get in check.  We're thrilled to spend time with family, though, and wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's a run down of our next few weeks:

May 22nd - Visit from Mark and Connie

June 2nd - Visit from my mom and dad

June 7th - Visit from Mark and Connie

June 10th & 11th - Movers come pack us up and take our stuff away

June 13th - Ross leaves Orlando with our luggage and our pets to drive to Detroit

June 14th - Colton and I fly to Detroit where we'll meet Ross

June 15th - We head out to Italy!

I cannot believe that I can list every major event we have going on before we leave - and it's so short!  Of course that doesn't even count visits with friends to say goodbye, running to stores to stock up on baby items and other things we'll need to take with us to Italy, calling all our utility companies to cancel everything, finishing home renovations, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.  

*Breathe*

Ok, here we go!

Our BIG Boy!

This has been a big week for Colton!  At 7 and a half months old Colton has officially started sitting himself up from laying down and, today, pulling himself up to stand!  Well, he's only sat himself up twice and has only pulled himself to standing while in a laundry basket, but we're off to a good start. :0)  Colton really is a go-getter.  Never satisfied to sit still, he'll always find a way to get what he wants with no regard to his personal safety.  I'm starting to get nervous about life after mobility.  Knowing Colton, we're going to be lucky to get through the first couple of years without any major injuries!

So, here's a look at his pulling up progression.  We're hoping to post a video of it later this week.

"Hey guys, I kind of like the laundry basket!"

"Whoa!  The world is looking a little different from here!"

"Oh yeah!  Look at me, I can stand...and I did it all by myself!"

I also wanted to post a couple pictures that we never shared from Colton's life at 6 months old.  I fed him prunes because, well, they were for sale and I wanted him to try everything!  Big mistake.  Though he liked them fine, I did not like what happened later that morning...

Yes, folks, under Colton's feet is his own poop.  He had smeared it all over the place with his feet.

...And that's just what came out of the diaper!

Luckily I was not home for this and Daddy took care of all poop explosion related issues!  Even so, I don't think we'll be feeding Colton prunes again any time soon. ;o)

Scaredy Cat!

Ross and I finally got our acts together and re-did the landscaping in front of our house.  Actually, I don't know if "re-did" is the right word for it considering that all that was there before was two half dead bushes, some almost completely decomposed mulch, and a bunch of weeds.  We didn't do anything really fancy since we're about to move to another country.  We just wanted something that looked nice and was easy to maintain for those who will rent our place.  Below is what we ended up doing (pics are for my Dad, who desperately wants to see).

While we worked, we laid a blanket out on the front lawn for Colton so that he could "help."  He loved playing outside with his toys until....

A plastic cup that he was happily playing with rolled into the grass just off of the blanket.  Colton went to crawl to it and we found out that he is SCARED of the grass!  Yes, that's right - my child fears grass.  Lovely.  Below are some pics chronicling his fear (yes, I'm that kind of mom that runs into the house for the camera instead of rescuing her child). :)

"I want this fun cup but I'm really not sure about the green (brown) stuff!"

"Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!!!  What is this?!?  I do not want to touch it in any way!"

"Ok, seriously?!  I'm getting upset here!"

So, at 7 months old we have found out that Colton fears the ocean and grass.  Not only those things but he also gets clingy and scared acting at other random things - like when Ross was shoveling some rocks into the garbage during our landscaping adventure (I don't think the noise scared him because he watched for a minute before showing any signs of fear.) and getting held too close to the tree branches that he was studying (from a safe distance) as they blew in the breeze.  I really hope Colton gets over his fears - I would hate for him to be scared of so many things as he grows up!

Despite his fear of the grass, he managed to get pretty dirty playing in it.  We'll leave you with a pic of his dirty face just before we went in to take a bath!