Another trip- New York!

Caed and I are off to Long Island, NY by way of Washington Crossing, PA and Northport, NY to visit his Grammie and Grandpa in Southold. We are very excited as we will see my sister and her kids tomorrow, and then old family friends in Northport, the Butlers, and then out to Southold to hopefully enjoy more family, the beach and the boat! We've got Caed's own little life preserver and we're hoping he loves being on the water. He's never been in a real, fast boat before! (we took a pseudo water taxi across the muck at Broadway at the beach in Myrtle Beach, which he loved but isn't quite the same!) We are also travelling by ourselves and Jon will meet us in Southold on Friday. We'll actually be picking him up from the airport and going to one of Jon's favorite NY pizza places Mama Angelina's (i found a website for them: www.mamaangelinas.com) (and it's second on my list to Chef's). We are sure Caed will be a NY eater! He already loves bagels, now he just needs to grow a little more to fit his mouth around a good NY deli sandwich. :) There are other favorites we can enjoy until then though!

We will be missing all our friends in DC this week- our Mom's group picks up again and a new couples group we want to be a part of as well. It's so nice to have people to miss in DC- friends that give us an attachment to the area. We'll have more pictures soon!

Zoo animals

Lions and Tiger

Good thing I've got a good lens to catch the snoozing tiger far away from us:

More Zoo

Muskrat and various Monkeys

The Muskrat enclosure was just the right height for Caed, there were so many crawling around!



Funny Monkey






Outside the small mammal house



The only gorilla halfway available for a picture

Visit to the Zoo- with dad!

Elephants and Hippos

Last Saturday we were going to go up to the Baltimore Aquarium, but the weather was so nice we decided to do something outside and go to the zoo. We had every intention of getting out of the house early, but didn't end up leaving until 11! Jon hasn't been to the zoo in a couple of years, so he had a good time too. They have done remodeling too, which was fun to see. We highly recommend a trip there if you come by DC.

Inside at the Elephant House:






The Hippos have an indoor part at the elephant house and Caed and Jon got a better look while I waited behind the crowd:






The pygmy hippo:

At the playground

I promise posting videos will get boring, but I couldn't help getting some footage today when we were with our other friends. Just a look at all the other mom's and kids that we got together with today. (I also realize I have some skills I need to improve on!)

Then I have just a little footage of Caed on the playground, for those grandparents and family who want to see some of Caed!

On a roll!

Caed is always so good at telling us good night:

Since figuring out the video posting, I took another video tonight. Jon took a look at the blog and realized there were few pictures of him and he said he was the absent father (and found some of my grammatical mistakes- sorry to those of you who catch them, I don't do too much editing- I just type away and try to catch spelling errors!). This video should prove otherwise- he's very good about putting Caed to sleep at night and he did it tonight- so I thought I would get a little footage of it. I promise not to put an overload of video on here now!

First Video Post

Caed on his car from Aunt Kik and Uncle Ken:

I am being brave and trying something new. I have always wondered if video-ing to the memory stick would work for showing videos online easily. Since the blog started an easy process of uploading to the blog, I thought I would give it a shot. The video isn't wonderful, it's just my experiment!

1,2,6...9,10- Yeah!!!

Auntie April came over for a visit on Sunday (yes, April moved out about 3 weeks ago!) which I was particularly happy about since I wasn't feeling well. He misses waking Auntie April up at 8am!! Last Sunday and this Sunday April has been counting with Caed in anticipation of completing something (like counting while she's changing his diaper so he doesn't fuss and can anticipate the end at 10). This week he clearly was catching on. She would count and Caed would say the number 6- and then when she would say seven, he would skip eight and say '9, 10- yay!!' It is so cute! He really is a little parrot! We are loving this stage a lot.

He also takes advantage of these visits and gets Auntie April to do whatever he wants her too- he loves playing with Auntie April:




I didn't even notice until I came to post the pictures that they are doing the same pose here, and it wasn't planned- soo cute!

Impromptu Playdate

Last Wednesday we had a playdate in the morning at a friends house on Capitol Hill. We were there until nap time and then came home. At about 4pm I got a call from a friend Michelle and she needed some playtime for her kids before heading out on a road trip to tire them out! She has two kids (I think they are 18 months apart) and her oldest is Miles who is 22 months old. This was a great opportunity to expend some of Caed's energy too. The boys played in the pool (nakies!!), we made a quick dinner for them and her daughter fell asleep before they left our house that evening.



Michelle and daughter Lucy

Trrruucckkkks and Trac-Tors!

We teach Caedmon all sorts of things, and we try not to limit what that is based on our own "abilities" (If that's the right term to use here). We teach him equally about things found on our walks as we teach him body parts, as we teach him parts of what we are doing and anything else- animals, numbers alphabet, etc. But Caed has taken a very good liking to trucks. It was one of his first words. Trrrruckkkk! is how it would come out- with lots of force and intention. Trucks were indeed that- trucks. Cars were nothing, a tractor might be a truck, and an SUV might be a truck, but we tried to keep things straight. Lately though in his ever expanding vocabulary, he's switched everything to TRAC-TOR! yes, so a car is a tractor, a fire truck is a tractor, a truck is a tractor and almost anything that moves with wheels is a TRAC-TOR! (if you catch him on a particularly stubborn morning, your name can be trac-tor too) He's certainly all boy with his love of vehicles- and we can't figure out other then some male hormones what's attracted him to these tractors and trucks!

Our neighbor Nathan has a small black truck and Caed LOVES when Nate is home and he can get inside and run around the back of the truck. In fact, Caed was already a fan of Nathan, but his truck sealed the deal. He runs to Nathan, and leans to Nathan to have him hold him, and "talks" to him all the time. Nate is a good sport because he plays with Caed and loves having him run in the flatbed of his truck. They even have a "drumming" game where Nate with drum on the edge of the truck and Caed will "repeat" it after him (not an exact repeat). It's so cute to see him bringing people out of their shells in our neighborhood. Everyone loves to see his new skills and hear him say Hi or Bye. It's a constant answer to prayer that our son is so friendly and is able to make so many friends with our neighbors, and they love having him around!