scotty boy is 4 months old!!!

its true. he turned 4 months old last friday and we took him in for his 4 month dr appointment. he officially weighs 16 and 1/2 pounds and is 26 and 1/2 inches long. the doctor also told us that we could start feeding him rice cereal!
so we got him a new high chair. he was instant friends with the zebra toy.
and we gave him his first meal of rice cereal. he did such a good job of eating. a trait that james and i proudly passed onto him.
still, there are some things that scott is going to have to get used to. he didn't love having a messy face.

see the first feeding in action:

iowan bbq

the other day we had a bbq with a bunch of james' school buddies and their wives.
L-R: Shalise (her husband Devin is taking the picture), Ashley & Luke, Me & James, Alicia & Mike, Kelly & Andy
we had real authentic iowan beef (i'm sure since it was purchased at an iowan grocery store) and real authentic iowan lemonaid (country time... where else would it be made?) and then we sat around the fire pit and soaked in the iowan breeze.

so many new things...

it's been such a very long time since i've posted and so many things have happened. here's a little list of some of the fun things we've been up to.

on september 13 james had his "White Coat Ceremony". The best part was that his mom came to stay with us for the weekend!

here we all are after the ceremony. doesn't james look handsome in his coat?

and here's scott with his grandma palmer.


later that day we all went on a nice walk.

and then we saw this really scary turtle.

apparently he's a "snapper" turtle because he snarled like a dragon and almost bit off more than one of our extremities. i wanted a picture with him because he was such a freaky turtle.

james (the more loving one) wanted to save the freaky turtles life.

scotty had so much fun with his grandma palmer.


we can't wait for her to come visit again.



since we last wrote on this blog, scott has decided to make leaps and bounds in his abilities.
here are a few of scott's new tricks:

you have no idea how big of a deal this is. usually when we lay him on his tummy he
burrows his face into the blanket and yells until we pick him up.


scott was a bit skeptical about his first time on the bouncy chair. but he got the hang of it.



scott has found that he can hold onto things. which means a lot of new things are getting sucked on.

but more than anything scott LOVES sucking on his fingers. this has brought on a whole new challenge when it comes to putting clothes on him. its like playing tug-a-war to get his fingers out of his mouth so we can put a shirt on him!

and scott is getting so much better at sitting up! take a look:


but sometimes the best tricks are the old tricks.
like sleeping...


last week we had a few cold days so we had to snuggle scott up real tight when we took him outside. you think he's cute in summer clothes? you aint seen nothing yet...

i'll let the pictures do the explaining.




but luckily summer isn't completely over. this past weekend the temperatures got back up in the 80's so scott and i went to a fun park with some friends. we walked on the beach in our bare feet.

and scott even got to swing on a real swing!

we can't wait for the new week to begin to see what fun adventures we can have!
we'll keep you posted...

Z is for Zoo.

for all of you out there who thought iowa just had farm animals...
well, you were wrong.
we're pretty much living in a mini-africa.



the truth is i took scotty on his very
first zoo outing today. our friend christia and her sons julian & gabriel took us as their free friends on their seasons pass. unfortunately james had to go to school today, but we tried to have as much fun as we could without him. we saw all sorts of animals! there were giraffes,

zebras,
lions,
and scott's favorite animal was the wallaby (that you can see there in the grass behind him)
probably the most annoying and equally funny part of our zoo experience was the fly that absolutely would not leave scott alone. it kept landing on the poor kids nose! it was so cute though, that i just had to get a picture.

this is christia and julian

as you can tell, scott was having a rip-roarin time.
post-zoo piling in the car. we had three happy (and tired) campers.
when we got home i decided i needed to take a picture of scott's whole outfit. he is sporting his brand new Iowa Hawkeyes outfit and his cute Van's shoes that one of grandy's friends gave him. and of course he's laying on the very cute blanket that his aunts steph and kim made him. he's just such a loved and happy little boy.
oh, and since all the other pictures were of animals more often found in africa, i decided i needed to bring it all home and get a picture of me milking a good ol' iowan cow. okay, the cow is fake, but the feeling is the same.