sickie boys

Well, it was bound to happen, and so it has. Our lil boy has a cold. Daddy caught a cold at work last week and Alexander started coughing last night. Mommy stayed home today to help with taking care of AAA since Daddy's still feeling under the weather, although a lot better than the last couple of days. Although Daddy feels terrible that AAA got sick and we're bummed AAA isn't feeling well, we're hopeful that with lots of rest, liquids, positive thoughts and TLC, our silly monster will be all better soon! (By the way, did I mention that we're on our 6th consecutive day of rain!)

updates

been a little remiss lately with the updates - busy with the planning the boy's first birthday and what not. but i've managed to get some stuff updated tonight. i've updated most of the photos through november. some pictures still to be uploaded include a large set of halloween pictures (although there's a couple of good ones in there with his costume), his birthday photos, more wine tasting and stuff from december. i think i managed to get nearly 200 images up tonight but there's at least that many more. plus i have video to edit and upload as well. living in the future does have its drawbacks.

i'll have more up later this week.

enjoy.

i can walk!

the last few days Alexander has been stumbling a bit on his own. taking a tentative step or two and then falling down. tonight, just 2 days before his birthday, he finally put it all together.

[quicktime]http://dinaandphilip.com/site/media/Media/realwalking.m4v[/quicktime]

and in other news, his grandpa loses a bet. by one day!

the largest river in the world

some of you (all three of you) may have seen an amazon.com widget appear and disappear in the post section the other week as I played with the programming. having finally figured out what was wrong (as is typical, it was me) the widget now lives where it should be, in the right side column. under the media links. the widget contains stuff on Alexander's wish list and while it'd be awesome if he got everything off of it, what would be even cooler is if you used the widget as your window into amazon.com. assuming i've got the links on the page correctly, they'll take you as well.

why the special link? if you're gonna buy something at amazon.com anyway, why not help us get a little bit from it? every purchase you make using our associate link nets us a tiny percentage of the purchase. add that up enough times and we're talking about a good deal on diapers - no more napkins Alexander! you don't pay more, or get penalized in any way, but amazon.com recognizes that we as associates, proselytized you into amazon.com buyers!

obviously this isn't a huge deal - I don't expect that we'll be turning around and purchasing a new tv or something from all the dough rolling into our account. but a few extra bucks now and again would be pretty cool when we're talking about offsetting Alexander's expenses.

thanks!

and check out this great deal on a PS3:

i'm walking! (almost)

for a few weeks now Alexander has been motoring along the couch and bed - holding on to the edge and scooting along. within the last week or two he's decided it's time to get moving and while holding onto someones hands loves to walk around. but, this particular toy is probably his favorite right now - aside from playing fun music, it affords him some freedom to move around - albeit not much considering we have to follow closely (apparently the skill of stopping and turning and balancing, come sometime after the skill of moving my legs forward).

[quicktime]http://dinaandphilip.com/site/wp-content/video/walking.m4v[/quicktime]

skeleton

the other weekend we went to an actual pumpkin patch where you can actually cut your pumpkin off the vine (assuming you get there early enough!) Alexander got dressed up for the occasion!

climbing his way to success

i took this video almost a month ago, forgot about it (i have quite a bit of video like that!), but have got it uploaded now. i took this one morning with bad lighting when he was determined to climb the stairs. you can see here he's pretty fast - imagine how much faster he is now. plus he thinks he's some kind of expert and can stop and turn around when he wants. [quicktime]http://dinaandphilip.com/site/media/Media/stairs.m4v[/quicktime]

musical instrumets

I completely forgot to post this last week, but when we visited Arizona, we stopped by the Musical Instrument Museum. From Alexander's point of view the best part was the area where you could get hands-on with some of the instruments. Here he shows true aptitude for the xylophone-style of instrument.

The photo I wish I had was the image of him playing the theramin. I think he may have broken new ground in usability as he exhibited a new technique using his feet. With some practice I'm sure he could really change the face of theramin playing.

mangia!

at 9 months and a week, Alexander has stepped up his eating. threatening to eat us out of house and home about 15 years too early! I thought I'd take a pic of the refrigerator the night before he eats.

the first image is of his servings ready to go and his sippy cup with formula. not shown is the water he loves to drink out of the glass.

the second image is the foods we've prepared (home cooked, steamed and chopped!) in large amounts awaiting repackaging in Alexander-sized servings.

for tomorrow Alexander will be eating: pears and apples, apricots and prune, oatmeal, Greek yogurt, flax seed, squash, sweet corn, sweet potato, broccoli, carrot, lentils, pinto beans, cottage cheese, tofu and formula.

phew. no wonder we're tired after getting everything ready.