Tommy Feeding His Doggy

Just a note about this video: Tommy started doing this completely on his own. I have never pretended to feed Wrinkles or pretended that he was hungry or eating. On this day, we sat Tommy down in his chair and he started to try to feed Wrinkles.

Mealtime...The Pictures Say it All (plus a video of Tommy's first steps!)

Chocolate Mousse

Yogurt

Birthday Cake

More Birthday Cake

And here's a video that I have been promising my mom for a week now of some of Tommy's first steps. He started walking toward the end of June (just after his first birthday). It was actually a pretty low key event. We haven't been working really hard with Tommy to walk, I guess because it seemed like he was getting it pretty well on his own. He has been able to stand up on his own since about the middle of May so we knew those first steps were coming, whether we liked it or not:) Tommy took his first steps almost on accident. He was playing with his toys while I was working on the computer and it was almost like he took a couple of steps without even trying very hard or realizing what he was doing. I made a big deal of it, of course, and called Ben into the room to come cheer Tommy on (one of the perks of having a telecommuting job) and then Tommy realized that he had done something big. For the rest of the day he practiced and practiced until we took this video toward the end of the day. He can now walk much better and can go for much longer before falling, although he does still waddle a like a penguin.

Three Posts for the Price of One!

"Trader Joe's": We discovered TJ's recently 'cause it's right next to the Gold's that we go to. We ventured in one day and discovered that it is awesome. Produce that looks good and doesn't cost too much, a line of in-house breakfast cereals for cheap, more cheese than anyone knows what to do with and a complete milk-alternatives aisle. Hippies, veggies, hipsters, and vipsters (I just made that word up and I don't know what it means) everywhere. I suggest Joe-Joe's (Oreo-remakes) with candy canes. Get 'em before the season's through. Also everyone was nice there. We buy our Clif Bars and our morning bran there exclusively.

"Tiger-eating babies": You know this is going to be good, if only by the title. So, we teach the 11-year-olds in Primary, and our lesson was on the Jaredites. It was my job (this is Ben) to give a run-down of the historical-scriptural background for the lesson, and so I started in on all the genealogy--and so I started explaining, "And these people had babies, and they had babies, and pretty soon there were a lot of people, and they were very bad and fought lots of wars." To which our kids said, "Did the babies have swords?" "Were they tiger-eating babies?" That was the end of all semblance of sanity during the lesson. In the end, we learned that a good method of warfare is to use a pterodactyl as your mount and a crossbow as your weapon, and that the T. rex is a good way to keep people from stealing your sword. This reminds me of my motto when I was in fifth and sixth grade: "Don't bother me; I'm thinking about dinosaurs."

"Crackling pixels": It's November in the Valley of the Sun, and that means you should wear a windbreaker until about 9:30 or 10:00 am, unless you have a good tolerance for light chills. Well, we have been trying to imagine it's winter, and so we bundled up with the A/C on high and turned on the Sufjan Christmas album and got a fire going. Awesome.