JJ likes watching himself

Here's a little video of JJ watching himself record a video of... himself

JJ in July

Here are some recent pictures of JJ.  First, having brunch at Blue Star Cafeteria with Uncle Eric and Aunt Jess (who took the pictures).  We asked JJ where his nose was, and he showed us by picking said nose.

Here he is looking slightly more mature (except for the food smeared all over his face).

Last week, Miss Ana took JJ to LocoMotion, the inflatable play place. We have taken him there several times as well but hadn't discovered the costume room!  Leave it to Ana to get him in a costume and capture some cute photos.

And since I've been pretty bad about keeping up with JJ's baby book, I thought I'd list some of his current favorite things.

What JJ loves right now:

• The pool, sprinkler, pouring buckets of water on himself or anything having to do with AGUA!  (He says "agua" but not "water.")  Often he will pull my bathing suit out of the drawer and hold it up saying "Pool! Pool!"
• Red grapes.  He gobbles them up these days.  For some reason he calls them "boota."
• Smoothies.  He demands one almost every morning by doing the smoothie dance and saying "moo mooie, moo mooie."
• Running on top of our bed.  A potentially dangerous pastime, we recognize.  He says "book-a, book-a, book-a" while he does this.
• Dancing, especially to the theme song of "Jack's Big Music Show," and doing the so-called "dop-a-dee dance."  We don't know where that one came from.  He also likes the Britney Spears song "Til the World Ends" and sings along to the "oh oh oh" parts.
• Cars.  He loves to watch cars drive down our street.  He calls them "ca-car"s.
• Tickling people.  His technique isn't great yet, but it's cute to watch because he says "tickle tickle tickle tickle" in a high-pitched voice.
• Books.  He's pretty into books right now.  Two of his favorites are the "uh-oh" book (a book about cats that involves a broken vase: uh-oh) and the "no-nina" book (which contains a picture of a moon, aka nonina).
• Brushing his teeth.  Mostly he just sucks the toothpaste out of the brush.
• Giving kisses.  Well, maybe HE doesn't love this, but we do.  He will usually kiss us on command, on the lips no less.  He also kisses pictures in his books, stuffed animals, photographs of people, and images on our iPhones.

As you can see, this kid has a lot of interests :)  I'm sure I'm forgetting some big ones, so maybe Daddo can add to this post later.  Time for bed.  As JJ says, "Nigh-nigh!"

Summer Fun Collection

Here are a bunch of pictures from the past month or so.  We went to the Austin Zoo, a petting zoo, LocoMotion Inflatable Play, and our own backyard.

 Trying out his new sand and water table.

 Helping Daddo build his playhouse.

 Water fun!

Traveling petting zoo at the farmer's market.

LocoMotion!

Driving the "car-car."

Slide!

 Ball pit!

Austin Zoo.  Kind of a dump, actually, but if was fun watching JJ feed the deer.

Making a quick phone call

Mama? Daddo? The phone is out of order.

JJ demonstrates his technological prowess

His training is complete. He would like an iMac for Christmas.

JJ knows his parts

The ol' blog is seeing some neglect these days. I'll try to start posting some more videos. We keep filming them, but never take the time to share.

It seems like just about every other day JJ is able to say or understand a new word. Here he demonstrates a little knowledge of body parts.

Happy Easter!

We started off Easter weekend with the Circle C egg hunt on Saturday morning.  JJ was a little too enthusiastic - we put him down on the grass to get started, he took two steps, then face-planted into the ground and wailed in pain.  But he recovered and eventually got the hang of picking up eggs and putting them into his "Easter BAG."  (Stupid Mommy forgot to bring a basket. Doy.)

Easter morning JJ opened his basket (put together collaboratively by Grandma, Grandpa and the Easter bunny).  He got lots of fun stuff like books, clothes, Elmo socks, a fish bath toy, and a Cookie Monster bib, all tucked into a green pail with a shovel for digging in the sand!

 
























We met up with Aunt Jess and Uncle Eric for brunch at The Lion and Rose Pub. I got my Easter ham in the form of a ham and cheese omelet. Andy embraced the British pub-iness and had the fish n chips. JJ was happy to finish his meal off with some vanilla ice cream! (I'm not sure why I'm telling you what we ate.)

It already feels like summer in Austin.  JJ kept cool this afternoon in the kiddie pool.  He loved it in there!


Happy Easter!

Remembering Grandma NeeNee

We haven't felt much like posting lately. Our most avid blog reader and frequent commenter, JJ's Grandma NeeNee, got sick in January and we lost her on April 4.  It's heartbreaking to think that JJ will grow up without knowing her.  She was a wonderful grandma to him in the time she had.  She had a knack for choosing really special gifts for him, like his beautiful rocking horse, his endlessly entertaining Winnie-the-Pooh airplane, and his personalized growth chart and piggy bank.  She loved JJ to pieces and got such satisfaction out of making him laugh.  We miss her terribly.  Here are some of our favorite pictures of JJ and his grandma.

A couple videos

It's been a while since I've cleared the old video camera. Here are a couple quick videos from February.

First, we have JJ mowing down on his Cookie Monster birthday cake. It's a bit lengthy.

And here we have JJ being playful and attacking the cameraman. He's grown a lot more nimble than this in just the last week. More on that soon!

When the cat's away, the mice will play

With mom gone on a business trip this weekend, us two guys have the place to ourselves. Here a couple videos showing what we've been up to.

First off, we have JJ's first foray into stage 4 baby food with some delicious chunky stew. We have slipped JJ plenty of different kinds of "people food" already, so to speak, but this is his first dining experience designed with the toddler in mind.

Next up, we've got JJ feeding himself with a spoon. For about a month now, we've been able to hand him a spoon with yogurt on it and allow him to take things the rest of the way. This is the first time he's been able to take on the whole task by himself, albeit with limited success.

After all this eating, we needed to burn some calories. Here is JJ on his new backyard swingset courtesy of Grandpa Moore. I shot this "Blair Witch Project"-style, so expect a migraine after watching.

Finally, here's JJ showing off his dance moves to Sean Kingston's "Fire Burnin".