St. George Trip

Darren's first year of dental school ended in June, and we went to St. George for a week to visit family. We had a lot of fun with my siblings and Britton loved spending time with his cousins. The first day, we left him with my sister and her kids, and Darren and I went canyoneering in Orderville Canyon in Zion National Park with my two brothers. The canyon was beautiful and a lot of fun, but the water was freezing cold and we had to do a lot of swimming. I think August or September would be best for our next canyoneering trip in Zion.

                                              

Britton loves water and enjoyed playing down at the Virgin Rive with his cousins. He also loves playing in the sand, dirt, mud, etc.

Catching up on pictures of Britton

Britton's souvenirs from mom and dad's spring trip to Mexico. 

Britton loves to dress up in mom and dad's clothes. We still have him wear his eye patch everyday for one hour to strengthen his right eye. His right eye is getting much stronger and rarely crosses anymore, but he was recently given a prescription for eyeglasses as well to help correct his eye.

I might be biased, but I think Britton is pretty adorable. The picture below is one of my favorites.

 This next picture is Britton kicking back at the dinner table. He loves to slouch back in his high chair and put one foot up on the counter. We have to get after him about his table manners but secretly we think it's pretty cute.

 The last picture below is Britton eating barbeque baby-back pork ribs. If you don't already know, Darren makes the best ribs in the world. He's done a lot of research and experimenting to learn how to make the most perfect fall-off the bones ribs. Britton thought they were pretty good too.

First birthday

Britton turned one on March 9th and it's taken me a month to get around to uploading these photos but here are the photos from his birthday and a couple other just cute photos.

Britton likes to wear my nursing cover as a cape, but his super hero days are over because Britton is weaned! Mom and Britton feel liberated by his new independence :)
As you can see in this photo Britton has become quite the ham. He is still a little shy around strangers but will occassionally perform for others besides mom and dad. His new favorite thing is the shimmy which is quite entertaining. He dances sporadically throughout the day but always without fail while eating.
We gave Britton this dump truck filled with legos for his birthday. We didn't expect much of a reaction but his eyes lit up, his jaw dropped and he crawled at lightening speed to the truck when we wheeled it into the room. I wish I could get the video to upload so you could see his expression - very excited.

11 months

Britton loves climbing through the bar stools. It's always fun to watch him get stuck and then struggle to get out. This is a photo of him successfully climbing all the way through the bar stool. I can't believe he'll be a year in two weeks.

I'm not going to try to catch up on the last couple months but I'll just say that I can't believe my little baby is almost a year. Britton is now 10 1/2 months. He now has four teeth, has graduated from baby food to table food, and received his first hair cut this week. I didn't think I would cut his hair this early but as you can see from the "Before" picture below, he had grown a mullet so a haircut became necessary. Below are the "Before" and "After" pictures. Other fun milestones over the past few months include waving, clapping, playing peek-a-boo, and giving kisses.

Before

After

Halloween

I promise this picture was taken on Halloween - I've just been horrible about updating our blog. Britton was Hobbs for Halloween and Darren was Calvin for our ward Halloween party. We dressed Britton up again on Halloween day but didn't take him out for trick-or-treating 1. because he can't have candy and 2. because he had a fever on Halloween which is the reason for the dazed look in the photo but his fever was gone by the end of the night. So we celebrated the holiday with pumpkin soup, pumpkin crescent rolls, pumpkin carving, and Halloween music.

Seven Months - Crawling and First Teeth

Britton has been mobile for a few weeks, rolling and scooting his way slowly around the room but Tuesday night of this week he finally figured out the whole crawling motion and now he has taken off. He can already move from room to room and he especially loves to crawl when you're not watching. I swear I step into the kitchen to grab something, look back, and Britton is on the opposite side of the room getting into something he shouldn't be. His favorite areas of our living room are the bookshelf and the TV stand. He loves pulling on the DVDs out and turning on the DVD player which also turns on the TV. We might have to do some rearranging of the room for his safety and my sanity.

Britton also has his two bottom teeth now. They both came in two weeks ago. He was a little fussy that Friday night so we just put him to bed an hour early but he slept fine and was still his happy mellow self through the whole teething experience.