Oden Adventures

More teething with nothing to show for it this week (but has made him unusually grumpy & clingy), but lots of crawling progress!  He's getting those knees to work for him.  He's also seemed to find another level of his voice this week & has been doing a whole lot of happy babbling.

Made it all the way to the end of the hallway!  "Now what do I do?"

Close-ups of the cuteness...

 "How dare you put me down!  I'm teething in here!"

 He's starting to do this sort of thing, too...

 "Hmmmm, this looks like a fun game!"

 "I like my new book...

 ...it's very tasty!"

 33 Weeks Old: The King Of Cute

Oliver applauds 33 weeks of life...

With a Patrick and now an Oliver Patrick in the house, this is always one of our favorite holidays!  Mostly we just stayed home and made/wore green things, but it was still a fun day.

Green pancakes!  (Not posting the disastrous attempts at creating shamrock-shaped ones...)

 Pinch proofed!

About 11:00am I thought, we need to get out and a bunch of stores had cute St. Patrick's Day cookies when we've been out & about the past week: Let's go get some!  Well, WHO KNEW that one must procure their festive goodies well before noon on the day of?!!  We went to THREE STORES and came home empty-handed.  Fortunately, a little later in the day, there was a knock at the door and the leprechauns (aka Granma Oden via the mail lady) had left some special packages there for the kids!

We had our annual festive fare for dinner, my saint Patrick's favorite: corned beef (w/ cabbage & potatoes)...and instead of the sought-after cookies, we had some leftover vanilla ice cream sprinkled with green m&ms )picked out of the large bag purchased for the sole purpose of motivating Vianne to potty train) for dessert.

This week included more progress on the trajectory towards crawling, trying out applesauce & blueberries, more what we think is teething but might be the cold his sister had, and his first trip to Disneyland.

 My sweet boy!

 He loves Mommy...

 ...but this is his face when Daddy comes in the room...

 Super(little)man!

 Starting to figure out that his knees can move forward, but working on the coordination of it all.

 "Hey, Mama...

 ...whatchoo doin'?"

 Our long hallway has become his crawling runway.  Vianne also like to be the Crawling Coach.

A lot of time is spent in this posture.  He seems certain there's a reason his body does this, he just hasn't quite put his finger on it yet...

We knew it was only a matter of time until little brother was subjected to/incorporated into dress-up...

A cooler Saturday, trying out a new outfit from Granma

 Fell asleep in my arms.  Sometimes, rather than trying to transfer him to bed, I just let go of the things I want to be accomplishing, and enjoy it.

 Caught with big sister's boot!

We hit another parenting/childhood milestone this past Monday:  Our first family trip to Disneyland!  We decided to go now as an early birthday celebration for Vianne's upcoming 3rd birthday (because they start charging admission at age 3...) and it coincided nicely with not-yet-too-crowded season and gorgeous weather and Patrick's spring break.

We had a GREAT time!  So much fun & cuteness was had and what a pleasure to introduce the kids to the wonder that is Disneyland.  They both did better than I had anxiously imagined (each had only one major meltdown ~ not bad for a long day!) and we have so many happy memories in our hearts & minds.