We had a great Christmas. Aiden especially liked the toy he got that made noise. and bows. and bags. and trying to eat tissue paper. You know… normal baby stuff. ;)
Isaac loves this particular Christmas present… nice glare, right? lol (Isaac wants me to mention that this is apparently his thinking face.) Thanks, Mom & Dad!
Santa and his reindeer…
He was really good about having stuff on his head all day, lol…
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
He has taken to carrying stuff around in his mouth while he crawls lately. I am trying not to be disgusted.
Aiden was the littlest reindeer at the ward Christmas party tonight. He met Santa for the first time, and sadly he was not a big fan, but while he looked a lot like he was going to cry in the beginning, he held it together.
What a kind patient Santa!
Aiden is three-quarters of a year old! He had his pediatrician appointment today, so we can pretty confidently say that he is 17 lbs. 7 oz., 27 inches long, and his head is 17” around… that’s a lot of sevens!
This nine month old loves to grab everything—books off shelves, necklaces (he broke one of my chains this week :( ), remote controls, etc. He is cruising around furniture and walking confidently while holding onto someone’s hands, but it is very rare that he will take a step without both hands firmly attached to someone or something, so maybe he won’t walk on his own for a while yet. He is crawling really fast when he’s after something, responds to his name, eats most anything we have given him so far (cottage cheese was a big fail), and smiles at strangers most of the time as long as they don’t try to hold him.
Aiden got his first kids’ menu and crayons tonight! Never mind that we didn’t actually order anything for him, and we didn’t even let him touch the crayons… He was happy just waving the menu around in the air and smiling at the waitress. :)
I can’t wait for Christmas. It’s my very favorite holiday, and I’m so excited that this will be Aiden’s first! We decorated the tree and the front rooms. Aiden is fascinated by the lights.
We took family pictures and wrote the annual letter. As always, it is a challenge to get two adults, a baby and a dog facing the right direction and looking normal, but we continue to try.
Aiden is in the spirit of giving.
That’s right world, he is really too big for the sink, and I finally gave in and switched to the tub. Someone from work gave us this great bath seat, and he adjusted quite nicely to sitting in the seat and playing with the temperature duck while he was scrubbed.
I have to say, it kind of weirds me out how not baby-like he looks here. Is he really growing up so quickly?! What happened to my little semi-alien looking cone-headed newborn? Was that really so long ago?
Moving on, here he is rough-housing with Daddy. I still don’t love anything that means he might possibly get hurt, and it’s no secret that Isaac is totally accident-prone, but Aiden sure has a blast playing with Daddy.
Finally, Aiden is lately in love with talking on the phone. Mostly, he just smiles a lot when someone is talking to him, but sometimes he babbles a little or at least makes noises so someone can tell he is there. It’s actually pretty hilarious. The kid has a temper though, and he doesn’t like to have the phone taken away. We are working on not throwing temper tantrums, but that’s a difficult concept for a nine-month old.
Today Aiden was practicing feeding himself small bits of bread. It’s hard for him, and he mostly just drops the bread on himself or has it fall off his tongue, but he’s trying anyway. I went into the other room for a minute and heard him giggling, so I poked my head around the corner so I could see what was happening. He had his arm stretched way out to the dog, who was gently licking the bread in his fingers, and he was giggling up a storm. He did this a few times, but of course not while I had the camera out, which is far too fascinating to not stare at.
This is the best I could get, but I still think it’s hilarious. We are going to have a lot of work to do teaching him about not throwing food to the dog…
For Black Friday, I did NOT go shopping. We decided to go to Muir Woods with much of the family that was in town. We were not as clever as I might have hoped, and Muir Woods was super more crowded than normal! It was still gorgeous. It is trips like this that convince me we live in one of the most lovely places on earth because of how many different kinds of natural beauty we have nearby.
These are some of the tallest trees in the world…
cutest little tree gnome I’ve ever seen:
That evening, I was lucky that Danielle was willing to watch Aiden while Isaac was at work so I could go to the temple for Curtis’ first time through. It was wonderful to see so much family there, and I was excited to see that all the lights were up already! It definitely gave me the bug to want to get Christmas decorations up at home!
We had a big Anderson Thanksgiving this year with both of my grandmas, Uncle Dean & their three daughters + family, Uncle Ryan & family, Aunt Janae & family, and our family minus Mandy. It was quite a big group, but nice to see everyone.
Aiden was pretty fascinated by his cousin (second cousin? cousin once removed? what is my cousin’s son to Aiden?), Finnley, who is almost exactly one year older.
We had a ton of food. Isaac and I did three bowls of veggies, and we have enough left over to last us a LONG time.
Some of the guys went out front to play football. I like how awkward Isaac looks in the above picture, lol. He really didn’t look so awkward in person.
Everyone enjoyed talking and playing cards, and Patrick entertained many of the kids for a long time by telling funny stories.
Aiden had so much fun on his first Thanksgiving that he didn’t nap (or even get cranky!) until everyone was gone, around 8 PM. He was pretty zonked by that time.
All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, Sophie broke into Haylie’s dog food container later that night and ate about four days’ worth of food, so she isn’t doing so well today. Apparently she felt left out of all the eating, having not gotten a single scrap. (sigh)
I am in love with this new board book. I got it as a Christmas present for Aiden when Brooke took me to a gorgeous bookstore that has ladders and smells like books as soon as you walk in. Then I loved it too much to wait for Christmas. Good thing Aiden doesn’t understand Christmas yet.
I love this book because it has great vocabulary for a baby book (clever, yearns). It uses end rhyme and some alliteration, and the pictures are adorable too. 
It’s pretty amazing. I especially love that Aiden likes it!
Crawling is a fun new adventure for Aiden, who is finding exciting new places to play and hide.
For instance, he lately loves it by or behind the toilet in our bathroom, and he gets there lickety-split when I put him down to brush my teeth or do my hair.
You’d better believe we are cleaning around our toilet more regularly now than we ever have before.
So apparently we are going through La Nina, which means to me that our weather is harder to predict and more flip-floppy than we are used to. We’ll have a week that is so hot it’s setting records, and then we’ll have cold and rain. It’s weird.
Anyway, I am learning that it takes a lot longer to bundle up myself and a baby than it used to take to bundle up just me. He has little shoes that don’t just slide on like mine do, and wiggly arms that take some maneuvering to get in a jacket…
It’s worth the effort to get him snuggled up in this little teddy bear coat though. 
Aiden has taken to cruising around the furniture lately. He loves to pull himself to standing and take a few steps here and there. Sometimes he takes his hands off entirely and just leans on the couch or something. His balance leaves something to be desired, but he is certainly working on it. I find this semi-terrifying, but he thinks it’s a blast.
He is also working on his second tooth! This one is not coming in as smoothly as the first one seemed to. It makes me sad.
Some things I love about our eight-month old…
*how he turns around more often now when we say his name... I think he is finally recognizing it
*how he is fearless and trying to cruise around furniture a step or two at a time and trying to sit from standing even though he ends up falling down fairly often. This is also terrifying for me, but I'm trying to keep him as safe as I can without keeping him from learning.
*how he bounces himself to sleep sometimes in his JumpNGo
*how when he is dozing off in my arms, he looks up and me questioningly if I talk as if to listen for more, then smiles and/or coos and drops back off
*when he tries to give kisses (even though sometimes he just licks my cheek or often he grabs my face with one hand and my hair with the other)
*how he lights up when he sees me or Isaac or Sophie (or my mom or dad)
*the way he is getting more expressive every day… pulling funny faces and making his opinions clear
*how he looks like Peter Pan in the green sleeper he just started wearing... it has no feet, and for some reason, he reminds me of Peter Pan
Thanks to all of the veterans, my grandpas included, who have been brave and dedicated enough to fight for the freedoms we enjoy in this amazing country we are fortunate enough to live in!
Aiden says thanks too. It looks a little like we posed this, but Aiden did it all himself and was kind enough to not move while I pulled out the camera, lol. He was so sleepy…
It was my first birthday as a mommy. We went out to eat. Twice. It was a lot of food.
We also had cheesecake. It was AMAZING. I am trying to ignore how fat I feel now.
What a fun thing to be a mom! I got a webcam for my birthday, so if any grandparents or cousins out there want to Skype or something… Aiden is now available!
Thanks to everyone who made this such a wonderful birthday! Love you all! and Happy Half-Birthday to Stephani!
We finally did it. Aiden’s hair has been SO uneven… and it still is. At least now it won’t hang all long and mullet-like over his collared shirts/rompers.
We put the drape on him kind of as a joke… it didn’t stay on for longer than it took to get a picture. He didn’t mind the clippers at all. We gave him a block to play with and let him watch in the mirror, and he was perfectly happy.
Bye bye baby hair. I saved some of it for the baby book. Sappy, sentimental mommy? I suppose, but it’s just so soft!
He really wants some chompers to come in quickly.
Can you see his first tooth on the bottom yet?
