Cousins

Alex had a great time last week and his cousins, Charlie and Henry were in town. Being surrounded by older kids made him wanna be a big boy too because soon after they left he started crawling. I have also noticed other changes in him that suddenly make him a not-a-baby anymore. On one hand it's exciting to see him grow up so fast, but on the other I can't believe the baby stage is almost gone!!

Here's a clip of the boys sitting at the table. Alex just had his lunch so he's just observing what's going on, where Charlie is happily eating his food, while Henry is misbehaving a little. It's fun to watch.

Weeks in Review 10/17/2011, 33 weeks

A bit over two weeks now have gone by since my last post.  And it's definitely been an interesting 15 days.  Since the last post, we went on a family vacation to Miami Beach.  It was nice getting away for a few days and just relaxing.  We did some of the usual beach-y things, including spending time on the beach itself.  The beach there on South Beach is beautiful and in early October isn't too busy.  I personally found the water to be a bit chilly, though my wife thinks that I'm a weenie.

But I digress.  We're not sure yet if Alex likes the large bathtub as I'm sure it looks to him.  He sort of poked his foot in (or really mommy put his foot in).  And what he did was look slightly frightened and slightly perplexed.  The end result wasn't the sand castle and frolicking in the water vacation we may have wanted.  Instead we spent more time walking around the shopping and touristy areas of South Beach.  And that's fine by me.  Alex seemed to enjoy looking at new and different things, plus it was nice for a change of scenery.

However, don't think the whole trip was touristy areas and nic-nac shops.  We did take a quick trip to the Miami Children's Museum where alex got to play with squishy things and see mom and dad act kind of goofy.  Well, dad act kind of goofy.  We also found a nice city park and playground (which I am currently mayor of) with swings for him to swing on.  It's fun to watch him sit in one of the smaller swings and just smile as we push him.

All in all it was a good vacation.  And again, Alex traveled quite nicely.  No major meltdowns and no major issues.  Not really sure I'd recommend South Beach as a family get away spot, but it really worked better than it could have.

Last weel, then, was a much more normal week for us.  We tried to get back into the swing of things and tried to settle back into a bit more normal schedule.  I do know that Alex was glad to be home.  It was so cute to see him when we brought him back to his room.  He definitely recognized it and appeared to be glad to be home.  And you should have seen the smile on his face when we stared playing his Romanian kids music.

Perhaps the biggest item of note for him was he now has at least one new tooth.  And of course, they are coming in slightly out of order.  He got his bottom two teeth first, as is normal.  And now he has two (well, one and a half) of his upper teeth.  However, they're not the front to.  Nope.  They're the canine (partly) and the one between the canine and the front teeth.  (Dentists all over are groaning at my lack of knowledge of the teeth).

He's also moving closer to crawling and maybe even walking.  I suspect that our next entry will come when he does one or both.

Flip Friday

I missed last week's post being in vacation and all, but here is a short clip of Alex and Michael jamming at the Children's Museum in Miami. We took our little one there for an afternoon but I think Michael and I had a bit more fun than he did. It's funny how sometimes I think he's much bigger than he actually is because he's not that tiny baby anymore I hold in my arms six months ago, but still, he is not big enough to understand and play the tambourine... we tried though.

Week(s?) in Review 10/2/2011, 31 weeks

Ok, so last week's post didn't really happen …. It ended up being a rather busy week and frankly the post just slipped my mind.  However, what came out of it was a decision that instead of weekly entries, well start doing this bi-weekly.  Turns out that as time has progressed and Alex gets to be a little bit older, the big events tend to happen a bit less frequently.  This means that I've had a hard time lately coming up with what he's been doing each week.

Now, of course, as we decide to do this, it's after a rather busy week for our hot rod.  The week started with a trip to Guguta, a Romanian (well, technically Moldovan) mom's group.  Alex seemed to enjoy himself and it's great to see him around other children who are also learning Romanian (or Moldovan in this case).  I'm sure Feli has some video of this she can post at some point.  After that, a coworker of mine came into town for the week, so we had to head to the airport for that.

Since my coworker was in town to work on a big project with me, Feli decided this was a good week to get out of town.  So, she decided to make a trip up to the Philadelphia suburbs to visit a college friend and her two girls.  From what they tell me, they had a grand time hanging out.  Oh, and I think my little guy liked being the center of her two girl's attention.  I'll let Feli write more about that part of the trip if she decides to.

The second half of that trip had me driving up to Bucks County, north of Philly, to meet up with them for the Philadelphia Biblical University homecoming.   And after that, it was spending the night with a dear friend, Lucille.  We haven't seen her since Feli's baby shower almost a year ago.  It was good for her to meet Alex.

That's the review of the week, now a bit more about hot rod and his development.  He's started sleeping on his stomach at night.  Guess he takes after mommy on that one.  He's also starting to scoot.  He's not crawling yet, but he has started pushing up on to all fours and then scooting his legs backwards.  I remember seeing one of my nephews doing the same thing, so I know it's only a matter of time before Alex is crawling around and basically keeping us even busier than before.

Flip Sunday again!

After mentioning that we hang out with Veronica and her Camila and Elena, it's only appropriate that I post some proof of that. With three energetic kids, two of them running around and one wanting to be held almost all the time, didn't give me the chance to record as much as I should have. Each kid, seven months, two and five years old were as cute, funny and beautiful as they could be. Their mommies could not be happier watching them interact. Check it out!

 

Flip Fri... Sunday!

Being away from home breaks the routine in so many ways. Alex and I hang out with my girlfriend, Veronica and her girls for a few days. We had a blast and you can see pictures here.  Of course Friday came and went without me having the time to post any video of him. Here it is a segment with daddy making Alex giggling.