The Slide

This past weekend we went to Pittsburgh for a visit with Daddy's family there. Grandpa T set up a plastic slide to go down the hillside in front of their house. Mr. Mister loved going down it (although it took some wax paper on his butt to make him go fast enough). Here are some really cute pictures of his progression down the slide.

Abuelita

We had a fun surprise visit last Friday from our Mexican Mama. She is the field director for the missions organization we worked with in Mexico City, so we spent a lot of time serving under her and with her during our time on staff there. We hadn't seen her in over a year and she hadn't met Mr. Mister yet! She was in town for meetings and got to sneak away for lunch with us. It was wonderful catching up, speaking some Spanish, and hearing all that is going on in la Ciudad de México. And Mr. Mister enjoyed getting to meet his Abuelita!

I Love Walking!

Football

Fall means football. Daddy and I have opposite loyalties so we had to make rules early on when it came to influencing Mr. Mister's choice in teams (assuming he even likes football). There are two rules:

1. We can't buy him clothes for our team...only our friends and families can do that.
2. We can build up our team, but we can't talk negatively about the other person's team.

So, here we are into Mr. Mister's second football season of life, and unfortunately it looks like he's choosing the wrong team. But he does look cute in that little jersey! (And if he's going to have a Steeler's jersey, at least it's Ben Roethlisberger, representing my college Alma Mater.)

Nice Hair

We haven't given Mr. Mister a hair cut in a while. Here are some cute hair pictures...

Famous

A couple weeks ago, we went out to eat with my parents. While we were waiting for our meal, Mr. Mister began to get a little fussy, so my mom took him and walked him around. When she came back, she told us that a woman she didn't know stopped her and said, "I know that baby!" It ended up to be a woman who works in the nursery at church. We were laughing that the 1 year old knows more people than we do!

Growing Up

Here are some cute things Mr. Mister has been doing lately...

• He loves to go down the slide at the park. He has a huge smile the whole way down and can almost do it all by himself.
• He is becoming quite the helper. Whenever I'm folding laundry, he likes to help. He'll take a piece of clothing out of the basket, look at it and move it around and then put it to the side...just like what he sees me doing!
• He's getting better at walking. Today Daddy and I were in the kitchen and Mr. Mister came around the corner walking completely on his own, all the way to the table. It was the first time he's initiated such a long distance walk.
• He's (finally) in a cuddle stage! He has never been much of a cuddler and now he'll lay on my chest and just rest with me. It's such precious time with him.
• He has many new words that he says very seriously, thinking that we should know what he's saying. A couple are consistent like do-da (doggy), but others are completely random. They are all very cute and it's fun to see him communicating.
• He's added a new face to his repertoire - the angry face, which he makes on command. I'll try to get a picture of it to post on here.

Back In Action

Like everyone else in this area (and hundreds of thousands in this state) we were without power for a couple days due to the 78 mile an hour winds we had all day on Sunday...remnants of hurricane Ike. We just got our power back on Tuesday at 4:00. It was kind of fun and adventurous to live in the simplicity of no electricity. The hardest part was not being able to cook, although we did make toast, eggs, and coffee on the grill Monday morning (thanks to my outdoorsman husband). Here are some fun things that resulted from our multiple day power outage:

• We sat outside drinking coffee fresh off the grill with two of our good friends Monday morning. It should have been a work day, but life stood still and we just got to hang out and catch up.
• Mr. Mister had his first Happy Meal! With nothing to eat or cook, we went to McDonald's for lunch. He had chicken nuggets (without the skin), apple slices, and milk. And it came with a toddler toy, which had no small pieces...brilliant.
• We enjoyed dinner with my family where we grilled everything that had defrosted from our freezers.
• I cleaned the refrigerator (what better time than when there's nothing in it).
• We took naps.
• We read.
• We went to bed early.

After our lights came back on, we realized how often we use them when we don't really need them. Now we want to have a candle only night once a week.

Despite all this no-electricity fun, I was glad to use the oven last night and to take a warm shower. It is a reality check, though, when I think of how many people in this world live without these things daily. I hope I'm not so far removed from my dear friends in Neza that I view my conveniences as needs.

4 Hours of Freedom

I don't know if I've shared this on here yet, but my friend and I recently started watching each other's kids once a week. She takes Mr. Mister for 4 hours on Tuesday afternoons and I take her little guy for 4 hours on Wednesday mornings. It has been so refreshing to have this chunk of time by myself each week. A lot can be done in 4 hours without a baby! I've used the time to run errands, clean the house, pay bills, etc....things that either take a lot more time with a baby or are squeezed into too-short nap times. At the end of October, I'm starting my masters classes again, so that time will probably be filled with school work instead. However, my dream is to one day take a 4 hour nap. I doubt I'll ever really do that - I'm too much of a doer to not be productive with that time. But it sure sounds nice.

Clothes?!

It got a little cool today..it was only 60 degrees when we were heading out the door. So I put some light weight pants, a long sleeve t-shirt, and socks on Mr. Mister. He's definitely gotten used to wearing as little as possible this summer, so I think he was a little confused as to what I was making him wear! He tried to pull his socks of immediately and kept inspecting the sleeve of the shirt and pulling at it. While these cooler days make me excited for the jeans and sweatshirts that accompany fall, I'm not excited for the days of bundling him up every time we go out the door.

First Steps!!!

Mr. Mister took his first steps yesterday! He loved walking back and forth from one person to another and had a huge smile on his face the whole time. It's super cute and fun to watch him. The cutest part is that he gets really excited to get to the person he's walking toward and just falls forward the last couple steps. So it should be just a couple weeks until he's walking!

Back To School

It's back to school time, and Mr. Mister looks like he's ready to go! I think he'll have to leave the Blackberry at home though.