The Real Truth

For those of you who can't tell, this is a squishy, bloody eyeball. Jeff brought it home from his work especially for Serif. Dad's got quite the collection of toys that he's super excited to share with Serif. Another reason why he's glad Serif's a boy. Hmmm, me too for that matter. (smile)

He's 9 months old today!!! Yikes! I need to post his 8 month developments! Soon, very soon. Promise.

the boy got a new toy!

so Michelle sent me a link to a baby newsletter she gets that said around this time the boy might start developing an attachment to toys, objects, etc. what better time to introduce him to some of daddy's tacky stuff?

mommy got a new hat

now when someone asks "what's his name?" mommy can just point to her noggin.

and i think the boy likes it too


oh, and the boy joined a gang too.

Weeeeeee!!!

Serif and Bessie (Grandpa's dog)

Swim Lesson's 4 & 5

I'm a little behind on posting this. I've been a wee bit busy lately. Serif's lessons are continuing to go very well. Lesson 4 he started swimming underwater! The best part of all is the fact that he did it with no tears and loved it! We love Wednesday's now and love taking him to his lessons! We look forward to his progression and love seeing him have fun in the water! We're doing more and more dunks, turns, grabbing the wall and now swimming to each other. It's awesome! We have one last lesson in this session, which will happen this Wednesday. We will then take a short break and resume mid-August. We'll definitely be hitting the pool during the break to keep 'warmed up' to everything.

Sorry we don't have many photos or video. We may try to get one for his last lesson. It's tough getting video when you're suppose to be in the pool teaching him!

Dave Macon Days - 2009

This year was a bit different for us at the Dave Macon Days. Everyone we normally go with canceled at the last minute, but we still went anyways and had a lot of fun. The weather was rainy across Nashville, but seemed to hold off in Cannonsburg. It was gorgeous out and the perfect weather to hang out on a quilt and listen to some great music . . . or to enjoy carnival food and funnel cakes!

We met up with some friends that we haven't seen a while, Lila, Michael and Evan. Evan is 2 weeks older than Serif and is so much fun! Lila use to cut Jeff's hair before we made the move to Nashville. We miss her dearly, but that drive gets a little crazy these days. Sorry Lila! It was so great seeing her again and having the opportunity to catch up with the boys. (Evan is the one that introduced Serif to the bouncer/jumperoo). Thanks Evan!

Serif and his friend Evan.

Evan, befriending Serif.

Serif befriending Evan right back. =)

After catching up with the Stuteville's, we met up with my neice, Lindsay and her boyfriend Matt. We laid out the quilt, grabbed some grub and enjoyed some time in the grass in the beautiful weather. Serif got to enjoy his first tastes of lemonade and funnel cake. He especially loved the lemonade. Once the sun started going down, we walked the craft boothes and headed home. Serif seemed to enjoy the evening and did so well. He fell asleep on the way home and had a great nights sleep. We'll be back next year and hopefully more people will be able to join us again!

Serif's first tastes of lemonade.

Serif and his cousin Lindsay.

Serif playing with grass and Daddy in the background making funny faces at the camera. heehee.

He's Standing Up!

Jeff discovered the other day that Serif would grab on to Jeff's hands and pull himself up from a sitting position. Tonight, I decided to put together a toy that my sister got him for Christmas. I put him in his crib with a couple of toys and the next thing I knew he was pulling himself up. Needless to say I ran in the living room to grab the camera so I could show everyone how much fun standing up is! Below are a few photos of him playing with his new toy. He loves it!



Thank you Aunt Gerrie, Uncle Bubba, Lindsay, Brandon and Hunter for the super fun toy Mommy just put together for me! I love it!

Swim Lesson #3

I started to title this one 'What! No Crying?', but thought I'd stick with the numerical order.

Serif was awesome this lesson! He certainly impressed us with how well he did and we were shocked that he did it all without fussing! The only time he cried was when we were getting in to the pool. It took Jeff and I both a few minutes to get in the water because it was so cold! I think Serif was feeling the same way and when we finally just plunked in, he screamed. After some snuggling and walking around to get use to it, we started on the laps. He cried a little during the first lap, but after that we only saw a pleasant little face and even got some smiles! After 15 minutes of laps I thought for sure when it came time to jump in he would cry, but no. He didn't even act like he was going to! Amazing!

We got to take this little frog bath toy with us for this lesson to help him with the 'this is fun!' idea. He didn't play with it when we were in the water, but he did enjoy it's encouraging hops and 'Yay Serif!'. =)

I didn't know this until this lesson but Jeff gets so nervous and worked up every Wednesday from the time he gets up in the morning until lessons are over. He hates to see Serif so upset and just stresses over it. Hopefully after the encouragement of such a great lesson his stress will be much lighter next week. Here are a few photos of Jeff and Serif when we first got to the pool before we started getting in to gear. I love Serif's expression in each of these and couldn't pass up posting all 3 photos. Can you see Jeff's stress in the 3rd picture below? hehehe.

Here's a video of the last jump-in and lap. His jump-in was a little bit of flop, he normally goes a little deeper than this, but he still did great!!!



Serif, we're so proud of you buddy!

An Afternoon with Dad

I love it when the boys do things together and it's hard for me not to grab the camera and photograph the moment. It was such a nice weekend that we were able to do quite a bit in the yard and with Serif sitting up so well (but not running around) it made it easy to include him and still get things done. These were actually taken a few weeks ago when he was 7 months, but I thought I could go ahead and post it before I start posting too much in to his 8th month!

Serif and Dad. Heading to the back yard to mulch.

What's all this stuff in the bags Daddy?

This is a lot of mulch Daddy.

Just hanging out.
(We've discovered lately that this is Serif's look 90% of the time.)

Can I help Daddy?

This mulch sure is pretty Daddy.

I like watching you Daddy.

Are you coming to get me Daddy?

Yay! Daddy's getting me! I love you Daddy!

Serif's first time 'driving' as they take the car back to driveway.

Swim Lesson #2

Although we don't have a photo from today's lesson, I'd still to post how things went. The lesson went a lot better today. We slowed down a bit and spent the entire 30 minute lesson in repetition, encouragement and praise. He cried the majority of the time, but the more we repeated swimming the more he began to calm down. The instructor's goal was to get him more comfortable and to get rid of some of his anxiety. We did lots of swim laps where we just pull him along in a frontward motion and then about half way through the lesson we began jumping in. We would do 3 laps of swim to one jump-in to ease him in to it and make him comfortable with it. After the second or third time he would stop crying before jumping in and we saw him holding his breath. It was nice to see him picking up on what he's suppose to be doing and to know we're serious when we say 3 he's going in.

Jeff and I were both a little nervous for today's lesson since he screamed so much last time. We both felt bad for him, but also know it's the best thing for him. It was so nice to see some relief with his anxiety and see him do so much better today. Yes it was still a lot of screaming and crying, but with that came calmness, a couple splashes of water from him playing and we even almost got a full smile from him. All that made it worth it and has made us look forward to next week to see how the progression continues. Next week will be more of the same repetition but we get to bring bath toys and he might start back with a few back float laps.

Yay Serif! We're so proud of you!