Goin' for a ride.

One of Chase's favorite gifts that he got for Christmas was this little wagon/push toy. Here's an amusing video of Matt pushing him around his parents' house on Christmas morning. Chase, as you can see, had a pretty fun time.

Merry Christmas

We have had Christmas part I. Yesterday we had 3 family gatherings. Today we had 1. Tomorrow we will have Christmas Part II, with 2 more family get-togethers. This morning we went to Matt's parents to see what Santa (and Aunt Lauren and Aunt Kate) brought Chase. Here's a picture of Chase sitting in the middle of all the presents.

Here's a picure of Aunt Lauren reading The Christmas Story to Chase yesterday.

Up to no good

Chase actually hasn't been that interested in our Christmas tree or wrapped presents this year. So that is a good thing in a way because it means that I don't worry about him trying to pull down all the ornaments. Occassionally if he is crawling by the tree he will take a particular interest in it. Here are some pictures I took of that happening.
Wait! I can ALMOST reach it...

...almost got it...

Starting early

Matt went ahead and gave Chase an early Christmas present...a mini putter. It is a 'for real' golf club, just scaled down for a small child. When Matt told me that he wanted to buy Chase a golf club, I was imagining one of those hard plastic baby kind of golf clubs. I didn't really envision Chase with a metal golf club before he could even stand. I guess Matt thinks that it's never too early to start, huh?
Here's Chase holding his new golf club in one hand and Matt's in the other. I am fine with Chase having this "real" golf club, but just for the record, the first time he swings it like a baseball bat in the house, I'm hiding it. And THAT is no joke.

More glamour shots

Here are some more pictures that Emily from a Small Fry Photography took of us about a month ago. I'm so happy with how they turned out...

Dad's home!!!

Most evenings when Matt gets home, I am cooking dinner and Chase is enjoying some time in the Johnny Jump-Up. It's pretty cute to see how excited Chase gets when he sees Matt walk in the door. Here's a video that I took in an attempt to capture that excitement.

Bad hair day

It seems like Chase's hair and teeth have both been growing and changing with rapid speed. Each morning he has "bed head" and it's pretty funny. We took some pictures the other morning in the hopes of capturing how out-of-control his hair was that particular day. It's kind of hard to tell from these pictures but we tried...
This one was just too cute not to post. I don't know how it's possible but I love this little baby more and more every day. This picture will maybe help you understand how that's possible.

Puffs

This is probably not the most exciting video but Chase has been doing really well with eating his puffs. I think it's really cute to watch him go through the motions of so intentionally picking up each little puff (gotta love those fine motor skills) and shoveling each of them them into his mouth. Sometimes it's only one in his mouth at a time...and other times he manages to get about 4 in his mouth at a time. Good stuff.

Photo session

A couple of months ago we got a pretty cool gift. At the Junior League Bargain Sale there were lots of items to bid on in the silent auction. One of the items available to bid on was a photo session donated by Emily from Small Fry Photography. Betty Ann bid on this photo session and "won"! She decided to give it to us so that we could have pictures taken of Chase. Well Emily ended up taking not only pictures of Chase but also of all 3 of us as a family. We were really excited to see how great they turned out...Here are just a few.

New friend

We got so lucky and found an amazing fit for a babysitter for Chase on the 3 days a week that he is not with Betty Ann. We found Leslie, who has a sweet 6-month-old little baby, Samantha. Leslie is a stay-at-home mom who was looking to keep one other baby. It works so well for us since they live only about 5 minutes away from us and Chase and Samantha get along really well. I admit that I was so nervous to leave Chase with someone he didn't know (especially since he now has a touch of stranger anxiety). But Monday was his first day and he has been very happy both days when I pick him up. I think that's a good sign! When I picked him up on Monday, he had a wooden spoon and was playing the "drums" with a cake pan, grinning from ear to ear. Here's a picture of Chase and Samantha playing yesterday, enjoying the nice weather.
They had fun playing peek-a-boo with Leslie using this blanket, apparently.

Leslie got a kick out of the fact that Chase was able to play with 2 toys at one time: one in his mouth and one in his hands (remember the duck video??). :) Here's how it happened pictured below. See? No hands!

Here's the sweet happy boy below.

Another hat

We bought Chase a little Santa hat and took some silly pictures with him wearing it...Here's one of them.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I didn't want to post this picture because I'm ashamed that we still don't have Chase's stocking up yet. We keep trying to find the right 3 stockings that all match and stocking hooks that all look good as well. So it's a work in progress but at least we have our tree. I've been trying hard to get special, unique ornaments every year since Matt and I got married so I was happy to pull all those out. We're hoping to catch some after Christmas sales to find some good deals...

Duck bath

We got this inflatable duck bath tub as a shower gift before Chase was born. I was excited at the time because I knew it would be a fun thing to use with him. The only thing was we had to wait until he was big enough...and strong enough to sit up and actually play in it. So, we pulled it out this weekend to give it a try. Chase wasn't quite as excited as we thought he'd be. In fact he wasn't really sure what to think about the whole thing actually. At one point he seemed scared and just wanted out. Hmm.

The boys

When we went to Henderson for Thanksgiving we took this picture of my sisters' sons, Jake and Justice with Chase. I love how Justice is holding on to Chase. They are all going to be a handful when all 3 can run around after each other.

Naptime challenges

So you already know that we lowered the mattress since Chase now can pull up. We didn't want to take any chances of him dangling over the edge again. Well a few days ago, I went in to get Chase up from his morning nap and this first picture is how he looked when I first walked in.

This was the next move I watched.

And, as you can see from this picture below we're back to square one. Matt's not very happy with me because he wanted to go ahead and lower the mattress to the very bottom but I thought we should wait... Hmm. Probably not a good idea considering we are well on the way to needing to do just that.

Matt??! Get your tools out again...

Chase's new hat

Matt and I have been slightly obsessed with hats since even before Chase was born. We picked out some really cute newborn little hats but obviously couldn't have predicted that our perfect little one would have a head in the 90th percentile. Unfortunately many of the cute little newborn hats were all be too small for Chase's head. Anyway. We have been on a mission for a while to find a cute hat for him now. We found one a few weeks ago and I thought it looked pretty cute on him with this particular casual "look". :)