Lots of changes!

I was just reading my update for Sean at 6 months, and I am amazed at how much he has changed over only a month and a half! First, he went from army crawling at 7 months to full on crawling just this last week. He is still a little wobbly with it, but has gained a lot of confidence over the last few weeks, so it's neat to see him experiment with what his body can do. He also like to pull himself up, mostly to his knees, but what he really likes is to stand up. If it were up to him, he would be standing all the time! But he is still working on balance and control, so he ends up bumping his head a lot : ( I feel like I should be wrapping him in bubble wrap and duct tape to keep him safe, LOL!

Sean also really is enjoying the various table foods we have tried over the last month. He really likes yogurt, sliced bananas, toast and Eggo waffles, and Cheerios. He liked canned green beans for a few days, now he makes faces at me when I give it to him. But when I mixed them with canned peas and carrots, he picked out the green beans to eat and wouldn't touch the peas and carrots! Which is funny, because he loved the pureed peas and carrots. I had to start introducing the more solid foods because he would mostly spit the pureed foods out and was starting to lose interest. Now I can still get him to eat it a little, but I have to add the baby oatmeal to them to thicken it up.

He is generally sleeping pretty well at night- the last week or so, he has been sleeping 11 hour stretches- usually from 8pm-7am. Occasionally he will wake around 4 or 5, and up until recently I have been feeding him then. But we are in the process of dropping that early morning feeding, since he is sleeping through it more often than he is waking for it anyways.

3 weeks ago, Mike's brother Brent came over from Austin to visit for the weekend. That was lots of fun : ) And then last week, we drove over to Austin as a family. It was Sean's first trip away from home, and he rocked it!! He slept and napped really well in his pack n' play at Gma's house, and had a lot of fun playing and meeting new people. I got to see two of my old friends from high school, Erin and Analee, who are both living in Austin as well. The weather there is awesome- it's amazing how much of a difference the climate can be only 6 hours away. It was very sunny and warm, and not too humid : )

I have been watching my friend Bec's baby Holden during the week, since she had to go back to work. Holden is about 3 months old, and he is a very sweet little baby. Sean is adjusting to sharing his mommy attention, but he is doing surprisingly well, probably because he is still so little. If we did this when he was 2, I'm sure it would be a different story ; ) I am still sceduled to go back to work at AT&T in March, but am unsure how long I will really want to continue working there. The job is great in the sense that it pays decent, and has incredible benefits. But I was never really happy there, and am having a hard time picturing working there full time again, while saying goodbye to my baby in daycare. If I really loved the job, I think it would be a much easier thing for me to do. But I still have a few more months to think about it, so I am trying not to stress too much.

Mike is continuing to work in the shop with Ranger (formerly Tiburon), and has also picked up some jobs driving the crew van. He has pretty much decided to not go offshore anymore, which was a difficult but important decision we had to make. Unfortunately our budget has been non-existent as a result, but we are making ends meet as best we can until we can find a permanent solution for Mike's job. We are tossing around several ideas, none of which have really come to a head yet. Ideally he will be able to take on the salary position in the office that he was originally offered 5 months ago. But we are tired of waiting around for this to happen, so it's forcing us to take a look at other options. We will be sure to keep everyone posted once we know what we will be doing.

Sean doesn't have another pediatrician appointment until November- right before my 27th birthday. Crazy!! So I won't have any height/weight updates for you until then. But I have been trying to take lots of pictures and movies of our little man so you can all keep up with him that way! Here are some pictures from over the last month.

He is so handsome : )

enjoying some time at the park

pureed some mixed veggies for him to try.... it got a little messy : O

trying to get into trouble....

Hanging out with Daddy at Gma's house