Ozias and Stella; Cousins of 2008

Turkey or Goose?

With the holidays upon us, I wondered if Ozias was my silly goose or my little turkey. I think he's quite convincing as both.

Hide and Seek

Our favorite time of day is when Daddy gets home!

Zias Wears Dad's Shirt

Like a choir robe for the little guy!

Street Painting Day

Grandpa and Oz

Eating summer strawberries together at Grandma and Grandpa's. What a sharp little bow tie he's wearing! :)

Oz 11 Months

Some fun pictures from April. Includes a tired baby from the zoo trip, bubble-beard, friends having a snack at Swap-n-play, a co-op at our church.

Spring Break In Redmond

What a great time relaxing and playing with our kids. Meals together, prayer, walks in the rugged landscape, and sincere grateful hearts for God's creation and community.

Ozias at 10 Months

I have the cutest baby ever!

I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom either. I mean seriously. Get a load of this kid.

Nathan asked me if I posed this picture because it's just so darn cute, but I promise I didn't. I was actually trying to work and when I looked up, he was reading in his tent! (Well, actually, eating his book in his tent.)

I outgrew my jammies!

I vant to eat your beets! (No seriously, I love beets.)

My name is Baby O.

What in the world...? What's wrong with your face?

You've got to be kidding me.

Eat a Lime! (For those of you that don't live in Portland, this is a popular bumper sticker sold by a local pirate band. It's sound advice for those who are at risk for scurvy.)

Doubled our age

In a few more days, Ozias will have been out of me for as long as he was in me. I'm not sure what that means, but it seems like it's a landmark that should be commemorated with some recent pictures and videos. Our new stage, "Mobilization" has progressed so quickly that when I was emptying the videos off the camera, I thought that he looked "so little" in the ones at the beginning of the file, when in reality, it was less than a month ago. For example, there was a video of him struggling to pick up a piece of noodle with his whole hand that is only a few weeks old, but now he can use his "pincer grasp" with the best of them.

My favorite part about this new stage is that he can play by himself while I get things done. Not that I actually accomplish much, since I have to put down whatever I'm doing and pick up the camera every 5 minutes! Here's a few of my favorites from this month

The ball is our all-time favorite toy!

I just fed myself some egg yolk!

I love this picture!

Christmas in Dundee and Idaho

We spent a few days in Dundee with Nathan's parents and brothers having the traditional present giving time on the eve of Christmas. We also made rootbeer together and tried to carbonate it using dry ice. Snow of 18-20 inches made it hard to get out of Portland. We put on our chains and drove 25mph all the way to Grandma and Grandpas.

Noises

I love snow days! I can finally get to all the things I've been wanting to do forever. I even managed to clean the bathroom! This is one of my favorite videos of all time. Watch for the following fun treats:

*The blank stare

*The travelling drool

*The spit bubble

*The monkey screech

We're at "that stage!"

Ah, we've finally made it to the stage of playing in the tupperware drawer, sneezing out peas, making runs to the potty (ok, so it might be a little too early for that one, but it's so obvious when something's coming down the pipe and I don't want to see that in a diaper!), and well...danger. I just want to let everyone know that I (Christy) had nothing to do with the last picture. (FYI, I added a few more months to the monthly picture list under "Our Triannual Blupdate.")

Here are some of my favorite pictures from last month.

Sarah Comes to Visit

So nice to have Sarah here for the day to play with Ozias and catch up with her "gypsy" life! Today it's snowing outside, we've had a couple days off of school and we're using it to clean the house and take "crawling lessons"! He's so close! In fact this morning I yelled for mom to come in after he'd taken 4 or 5 solid crawl-steps, but he hasn't tried it any more today!

These are a few of my favorite things

I think I'm going to market this. I call it "Abs of Steel by Zias."

'Tis the Season

I just spent 6 hours at church/church related activities today. It's the season of Christmas play practices, planning for Advent Conspiracy workshops and more baby showers...always the baby showers. Red Sea is, apparently, trying to set a churchdom record for most consecutive months/years in which someone in the church is pregnant. I'm pretty sure we haven't missed a month since we got here 3 years ago. Anyhow, the upcoming Christmas season promises to be a busy but happy one. We started out the holiday season with a bang by attending a friend's halloween/birthday party and winning the prize for the BEST COSTUMES!!! Not bad for 2 days work, if I do say so myself. In case you can't tell, Nathan is a garden gnome on a mushroom, Christy is a pink flamingo, and Ozias is the cutest garden gnome ever. We had a "lawn ornament" theme. Ozias is getting closer and closer to moving on his own, even though I'm doing nothing to encourage it. I have no idea how to babyproof our itty bitty little house so I'm just counting on him being immobile until the economy crisis is over and we can sell our house. Or maybe I'll put him in one of those hamster balls...kid size, of course.

Our birthday and a half was super fun with a surprise party planned by Nathan so well it was a complete surprise!! Although, after the party I found an e-mail in my mailbox from Nathan that said "Remember everyone, this is a surprise for Christy. She thinks I'll be at school, so no telling!" He had replied to all on an e-mail list and forgot to delete me. Lucky for him, I didn't check my e-mail that day. So now Ozias is not a newborn anymore (6 months seems to be the cutoff for that kind of thing) and I'm as old as my grandpa. (He just stopped getting older when he hit 29. We've been celebrating his 29th birthday every year as long as I can remember.)

Twice in 2 weeks!

This nap trick is really working for me. It seems unheard of that I could post to the blog twice in 2 weeks! I just had to add this video of Ozias sitting for everyone's enjoyment.

Our Tri-Annual Blupdate

Someone accused me a couple of months ago of not doing a very good job keeping our blog current and I thought, Well, maybe it can be our bi-monthly blupdate. (I know, it would technically be bupdate, but blupdate has such a nice ring to it.) Anyhow, I guess I need to change it to Tri-Annual at the rate we're going. I'm finally getting some time to sit down and add stuff to the blog because I just discovered that if I put Zias' binky back in his mouth when he starts waking up from his nap, I get a second bonus nap! What a fun trick! I hope it lasts.

So we're already past his 5 month birthday and the weeks are ticking down to our birthdays (my whole birthday, his half birthday.) I'm trying to think of a clever name for those two days of the year, like, birthday and a half or something, so if anyone has any good suggestions, please pass them on. This week Ozias started sitting up all by himself. He also started making some fantastic noises with his lips. He's always made great "raspberry" noises, but now they're loosing their sweet quality and starting to sound like major diaper blowouts. But (so far) the sounds have nothing to do with what's going on in his diaper.

To catch you up on the last couple of months, Nathan has started teaching music and the German American School of Portland (GASP! No, it's not surprising that he got the job, those are the school's initials.) I'm still working 20 hours at my job with a mentoring program, which is fabulously flexible, so I work about half of those hours from home. My productivity might just double now that I've discovered the bonus nap trick! And Zias has been growing. And growing. And getting cuter. And cuter. Here are some pictures to catch you up on the last five months:

Ozias and Rabby the Rabid Rabbit - One month

Ozias and Rabby - Two months

Ozias and Rabby - Three months

Ozias and Rabby - Four months

Ozias and Rabby - Five months

Ozias eats Rabby - Six months

Ozias and Rabby - Seven months