ready for spring!

Hudson is getting very close to walking, but so far, sticking with mainly crawling. He loves to "crack" himself up making him laugh which is so funny. He put quite a show on for Nana when she visited last week showing her all his new tricks. He would giggle each time he saw her so excited to play with her. He tried whipped cream in the picture above....big hit. So now we have him and all the dogs begging for it! We are doing some major house cleaning and organizing hoping to get it on the market soon. This comes with big mixed emotions as we love our little house and area, but it is time to move on! John will also be starting a new job in a few weeks. He is leaving the firm to take an in house position with CVR (an oil company).

Some new pictures....

After lunch with Kelli, Emily, Ali and Ainsley at the Classic Cookie. Guess he ate too many cookies! After this post you may not think so, but I swear, the kid normally eats really healthy things too!

Standing.....on our own!!!

Sharing a snack with Benjamin.
Pushing our toy around. He loves to ram it into something, make himself cry, then we ask him if he needs help, he nods his head "yes", then laughs when we come to help him. OVER AND OVER AND OVER again!!!!
His girlfriend Ainsley who had finally decided to give Hudson a chance after playing hard to get. She did lots of flirting today waving and smiling across the table and even impressed him by eating lots of green beans and peaches! She knows the way to his heart.

The above is first tastes of a french fry....big fan! Not that this will surprise anyone!
Still loves the hummus!!
This is what he does with his feet at his high chair!
We attended Oliver's first birthday party on Valentines Day. Of course, the dog was the best toy there!
More kisses for Benjamin!

The morning do....

This picture doesn't do it justice, but this is what is morning hair do looks like! We just can't bear to cut these curls, but we have had some greetings from strangers on what a cute "girl" we have!!! Must be those long eye lashes to! It is hard to believe what trouble this sweet, cute innocent face can do. In the past week, we somehow turned in our HDTV into a standard mode so it won't only show blurry black and white! The cable company could barely figure it out on the phone and almost had to come out! Luckily, they helped us change the mode! Turns out he hit the channel up and volume down at the same time to change it! Then he turned my cellphone until a yellow screen that said "downloading" and it had to be reset to! Maybe we will have an engineer for a son someday!

Meet my friends

Here is my girlfriend Ainsley. Well she doesn't really want to be my girlfriend. She turns her shoulder at me when I try to kiss her, but I think she is just playing hard to get.
Luckily, Clayton likes my kisses!

This is Gage. He is a year old! He is teaching me how to walk.
This is my new bear outfit my Nana bought me. I am outgrowing all of my clothes! I guess that is what happens when you eat a whole avocado each day.

Baby it's COLD outside

We have been staying busy indoors with the cold temps outside. We continue a couple of playgroups this year and also started Kindermusik with our friends Ainsley and Benjamin. The kids LOVE it and act like little kindergartners with their facination with the teacher! The first class, Hudson mainly focused on stealing other kid's binkies, and also tried to make out with a few other friends, but this last class behaved a little better! He especially loves the drum the teacher has. He continues to practice kissing and greets dad each day with a big smooch and says "aaahhhh".

He continues to out eat us for meals and especially loves when he gets to eat off our plates after his meal is through. He has some new favorites as demonstrated in some of the pictures - hummus, meatloaf, veggie burgers and goldfish crackers. He even had a bean burrito and a quesadilla last week. He continues to love meal time and starts nodding his head for "more" while he has a huge mouthful! He kicks his legs and squeals when he sees more food coming in his excitement. You would swear we never feed him!

His favorite toy continues to be his wooden stacker. He is really good and getting the rings on there but gets really mad when his ball and other toys don't fit! So when that doesn't work, he tries to open one of the dog's mouths to put the ball in there!

He also has discovered cabinets! He loves to open and close them. He is starting to balance pretty well standing and is good at picking things off the ground while standing so walking is getting close.....yikes! He continues to be a ball of fun and learns something new to amaze us each day. We can't believe how much he understands. In just a couple of months we will be celebrating his first birthday!

new tricks

We have had a great week here. We all celebrated New Years Eve/John's birthday down at the Lake with our friends the Koons' and Abplanalp's. Hudson got spoiled with more Christmas presents!

He has learned some new tricks this week that he is proud of. He loves to try to drink water out of the bathtub but that usually doesn't go so well. He also enjoys eating cheerios off of his tray with no hands. He also loves to shake his head up and down when he wants something - so much for the "more" sign....I think I have given up! He is also improving his ball throwing skills which is getting him a great deal of attention from the dogs. He cracks up when they retrieve it and bring it back to him.

Christmas and Kisses!

We had a great time celebrating Hudson's first Xmas in St Louis. While we were in town we also got to celebrate two special engagements - Hudson's Aunt Dana and soon-to-be Uncle John's engagement as well as Hudson's Uncle Evan and soon-to-be Aunt Lyndi'. We enjoyed getting to spend some time with their families as well.




Christmas was a great time for all. Hudson enjoyed climbing over the stacks of paper and boxes and helping everyone rip some paper. He especially enjoyed his new drumset by grandpa and new car from grandma, and a nice big bath towel from Aunt Sam. He also is getting ready to sport his new t-shirt from Aunt Dana, that says Lock Up Your Daughters. This doesn't seem to be a problem yet since he scares most babies right now by greeting them with a very loud "AAAHHHH" and then follows that with a tackle to try and kiss them. Hopefully his skills will improve with age. He LOVES to kiss, just about everyone and everything including our pets and pictures of babies in books or boxes! It is rather sweet as long as those five friendly teeth don't surprise you with a bite.







Hudson enjoyed meeting his cousin-in-law Keely and also got to see his old pal, Alejandro while we all enjoyed some Mexican food and one of our favorite places, El Maguey.



He continues to increase his appetite daily and we are all amazed with how much this child eats. We aren't sure where it goes. He eats just about everything. So far, the only thing he doesn't like is tilapia...not bad. Pears and avocado's and cheerios still top his list of favorites. After these "feed myself" meals, we usually make a dash for the bathtub which he still loves.