My poor little guy has been grumpy all week. I think he's teething. I've been doing whatever I can to keep him happy but that also means I'm not getting a whole lot done otherwise. Luckily the house doesn't get too bad with just the three of us around. He even woke up crying last night. I got up and gave him some teething tablets, tried soothing him a little, and then put him back down hoping he'd put himself back to sleep. Luckily he did and he woke up at his normal time this morning.

We went to lunch with some friends on Sunday and Matthew sat in a restaurant high chair for the first time. He enjoyed it.



Gilbert bought this outfit before we even started trying to get pregnant. The shirt has Darth Vader on it and says "Sith Happens". The little shorts have "Dark Side" written on across the butt. He wore it to our friends' daughter's birthday party on Sunday. The weather was great and the little shorts were perfect.





Here he is playing with his Leap Frog Learn and Groove table from Grammy. He LOVES it:



With our transition between California and Texas taking longer than we expected it to there were several shirts that I thought he'd never get to wear. He grew so much during that time that he outgrew everything I had packed for him and there were things in his boxes he hadn't even worn yet. It has also been in the 80's for a while so I couldn't put any long sleeves on him. Lucky for me, it was in the low 60's the other day and I got to put this onesie on him. Gilbert bought this when I was pregnant:



We went to Bruce and Vicki's for dinner the other night and the boys got to spend some time playing. I only got one picture of them together and they weren't all that close to each other. I tried to get one of them together when they had their pj's on but Elijah got excited and smacked Matthew in the face and that put an end to the moment. I think Bruce got some good pictures. I'll post them when he sends them to me.



This is his little taggie blanket that he likes to chew on. Someone gave it to him for his 1/2 birthday.



Mean mommy took a picture of grumpy baby but this picture makes me smile a little.



I left him playing on the floor after he ate while I was doing laundry and when I came back I found him using his bib as a cape:



I also caught him mid-drool:



Teething baby gets his hands on his burp cloth:



One of his happy moments this week:



We got this tub as a gift at one of our showers and I've been waiting for the chance to use it. Well, now that he's sitting up on his own we can finally use it! Here are some pictures of him in it. I didn't have a wash cloth or any toys handy so I had to censor it after the fact and I thought I'd be a little silly about it.





My friend Valerie gave me this t-shirt the day we found out we were having a boy. I can't believe it already fits him. It's size 12 months.



Here's another gift we got at our shower. It's a toy drum that has other musical instruments inside it. We let Matthew play with it for the first time yesterday and he enjoyed it. Here he is playing with it this morning:





Here are a few new videos, too.

Matthew LOVES bananas. Here's his first taste of them:



Here he is playing with his toys in the living room:



So while Matthew has learned to roll over. He hasn't figured out how to roll back onto his back. He gets stuck on his belly and then fusses and squirms because he can't figure out how to get out of that position:

This week was fairly quiet. Matthew and I didn't get out much so we just played together in the living room for the most part. Now that he's sitting up on his own his favorite thing is to sit on his blanket and play with his toys. He's figuring out how to make his toys make noise.

Here are some new pictures.



This is seriously one of the best sights in the world.




Here he is with some of his favorite toys


He enjoyed his carrots the other day but decided he wanted to talk while he was trying to eat them. I put the spoon in his mouth and he proceeded to blow air out and managed to get his carrots everywhere. His nose, his forehead, his highchair. Everywhere.





He has also figured out how to get his foot into his mouth.


This was taken this morning. Just because he's cute and we love these pj's.


Matthew got his first fruit today. Some pediatricians recommend starting with veggies first so babies don't develop a sweet tooth. Who knows if that's true but I decided I'd go ahead and hold off on the fruit. Well, he made it through all of his veggies and he seemed to like them all so we gave him peaches today. Surprisingly, he didn't like them. At first we thought it was just because he was groggy, but he didn't want to open his mouth when I brought the spoon towards him. We'll try again tomorrow and see how that goes.

Tomorrow is church, which means it's an early morning for us. Sundays are always busy. We have a birthday party to go to in the afternoon for our friends' little girl who just turned 2. She calls Matthew "Mackew". It's cute. Other than that, we're doing well. Gilbert's work is going well and I'm just trying to make the most of my time with my little boy while he's still little. He's going to be walking before I know it.

The weather was great this weekend. Saturday started off a bit cloudy and cold but it cleared up and the rest of the weekend was sunny and in the 70's. I got to enjoy both of my boys all weekend and we spent some time with our friends at the park.

I had Matthew playing on a blanket the other morning while I was cleaning up a little and when I turned around I found him wrapped up in the blanket:





Here he is "talking":



I had some fun taking pictures of Matthew right after his bath. Check out the rolls. He's so cute:





Much to Mommy's dismay, Matthew has decided he prefers to sleep on his stomach. I know that because he's rolling himself over onto his stomach I really shouldn't be worried. I can't help it, though. I still check on him a couple of times before I can fall asleep.



I'm sure he's going to hate me for all of the bath tub pictures I take with strategically placed objects. At least I'm strategically placing those objects and the whole world won't see him naked 20 years from now =)



Squash! It was a hit:





The weather was so nice on Saturday that Gilbert decided to dress Matthew up in his Dodger gear and take some pictures in the back yard:





I love the baseball on the butt of his onesie:


Matthew got his first taste of grass while we were taking the pictures:


We had our church barbecue yesterday and it was a perfect day for it. Matthew took short nap when we got to the park and then he spent some time playing with Elijah. The food was great. It was great spending time with everyone.





Here's another one of Elijah, just because he's cute =)

Houston, TX (no pictures, but a long story)

I remembered today that this blog is meant to be about our family, not just the boy. I also realized that though I've mentioned that we've moved to Texas, I never mentioned why. Here's the short version of the last 8 months of our lives:

It started with our friends, Brian and Rachel, announcing that they were moving to the bay area of Houston to plant a church. At the time, Gilbert and I looked at each other and said, "We'll miss them, but good for them." That was that. Three days later Gilbert started joking about moving to Texas. I laughed. We laughed. We joked. Within a few hours Gilbert got a phone call from someone who randomly said, "Hey, you want to move to Texas?" Gilbert got off the phone with them and called me. At that point it stopped being a joke and we knew we really needed to pray about it. We needed to know if God was trying to get our attention. After much prayer and seeking advice from those we trust and are accountable to, we came to the decision that we would go with Brian and Rachel to Texas. I was 7 months pregnant at the time and we decided we would stay until after Matthew was born and we would try to sort things out with our condo and Gilbert's job. The plan was to move in the spring of 2008.

Gilbert, Matthew, and I flew out in December for a job interview, to meet the people that would become our family, and to look for a place to call home. We put an offer in on a house while we were here and Gilbert was offered the job. We decided we would make the big move at the end of January. The process with the house was long and stressful. We were in Houston for 4 weeks before we got into our house. We held the house with an open hand and even looked into several rentals in the process, just in case. Ultimately, things worked out with our home (thanks to a few key people who have been amazing to us) and we've been in our home for almost 5 weeks now.

When we got here, our church was still meeting in our friends' home. The church started out with about 4 or 5 families. The adults are outnumbered by the children. Since moving here, we've added a few people to our "core group" and we had our official launch on Easter Sunday. There were 120 people at OneLife's launch. We had a lot of people at our second Sunday service as well. We will have a barbecue this coming Sunday to get to know more people and so far we have at least 30 people say they are coming and they are bringing friends. God has been good to us and our family here. We know that this season will bring growth and with growth come growing pains =). We've never been more excited to see what God has in store for us.

That's the SHORT version of our story. I'll make sure to post updates along with those of our growing precious boy.

Well, the boy just keeps getting bigger and bigger. In the last week Matthew has started sitting up on his own for 5-10 minutes at a time, had his first bottle, got a "big boy" car seat, tried sweet potatoes, had playtime with his buddy, Elijah, and watched his first Dodgers game with Dad.



Here he is getting his first bottle. I only gave him 1.5oz the first time around in case he didn't want the bottle. I think this boy could care less where his food comes from as long as it ends up in his tummy. He has had 2 more bottles since and he already holds it by himself.





Matthew is such a ham. He's figured out that he's supposed to look at the camera when the orange light turns on and he has even started smiling or making a silly face most of the time.



Matthew and Elijah have stared at each other before but they've never actually interacted with each other. We decided to put them on the floor together and see how it went. Within a couple of minutes they were reaching for each other and trying to play with each other. It was hilarious.









Matthew has just about reached the weight limit on his infant carrier so we went and bought him his "big boy" car seat. It's so funny to see him go from looking huge in his car seat to looking tiny. We joke that it's his throne because it's so well padded and so big. He's still faces the rear of the car and he will until he's a year old. They can face forward once they reach 20lbs AND 1 year. I think he's content in the mean time because he sees himself in his little mirror.



Sweet potato! It was a hit. I would definitely say he liked it better than the green beans. Check out the sweet potato face









Here's another example of Matthew hamming it up for the camera. Gilbert has started calling him "honeybaked" because of the faces he makes for the camera. I set him in his jumperoo and he made all kinds of fun faces.











Yesterday was opening day at Dodger stadium. We have signed up for the MLB package so that we don't have to wait for the Dodgers to play the Astros in order to see a game. Matthew got to watch the game with his daddy and he even wore his Dodgers hat. His onesie says "Little Rookie". I wish I had planned it but I didn't realize he was wearing a baseball onesie until I started taking pictures of him.

Well, the stinker has moved on from peas and has now tried green beans. He definitely was not a fan of green beans the first time around. I think now he's starting to get used to them. I call him a stinker, not only because of dirty diapers but also because he kept making the funniest faces and trying to spit out the green beans... until I turned on the camera. He ate whatever I gave him when the camera was pointed at him but as soon as I turned it off he clamped his mouth shut. He's such a ham. Here's a little video of his first taste of green beans:



AS I said before, he was definitely more open to the green beans today. He ate his entire serving and when I went to take a picture of him, this is what he gave me:





This next one was taken yesterday while he was playing in his high chair:



I think this one is just cute because he's playing with one of his "new" toys. He actually got it for Christmas but I waited to open it until recently.