Orange Outfits and Outdoors Activities: A Study of October, the Eighth Month of G’s Life.

Garrett turned 8 months old on October 1st. It’s been a jam packed few months of non-stop weekend activities for us, and we don’t show much sign of stopping for a while. The good news is, G rarely gets bored on the weekends anymore since he loves to get out of the house and see new sights, especially outdoor ones.

We went on a picnic at Oak Mountain with my sister and niece a few weeks back. The weather has been absolutely perfect lately, so that makes for quality outdoor time here in Alabama.

After our picnic we went to the park and G spent his first time on the playground.

He was pretty nonchalant about it.

In fact he’s pretty nonchalant about most things in life. Takes after his Daddy in that way. I’m sure if we had asked him what he thought of his first trip down a slide his answer would have been “Eh. It’s OK.”

He is officially on the move since my last update, which is probably why I don’t update nearly enough these days. It’s a good thing and a bad thing that he is finally crawling. Good in that I don’t have to carry him nearly as much these days. My back is thanking him for finally being mobile without me having to bend over and pick him up to move him to other rooms. But it’s bad because my trusty old babysitter the Around-We-Go isn’t keeping him happy too much longer.

He’s ok with it for about five minutes, then he remembers that there is 2,300 square feet of unexplored house out there and he wants freedom to go on a crawling expedition. But we got five good months of use out of it, and I’m grateful for that!

Since he started crawling it seems like I’m chasing him all over the house and constantly running blocker to prevent mishaps all around him. We haven’t baby proofed yet (shame on us), so I guess we’re just doing it as we go along. So far we’ve taken everything breakable off the tables in the living room, and removed everything from the hearth in front of the fireplace. I keep waiting on him to go over and swallow one of the fake rocks in the bottom of our gas fireplace.

Right now I can call him and he will follow me around the house. He doesn’t do much hand/knee crawling yet and I really doubt that he ever will. So far it’s all on his belly, like a tiny Army man scooting on his torso all over the house. It’s easy to keep tabs on him as he crawls, because he constantly says “Eeeee! Eeeee! Eeeee!” with every movement. He’s like a little Forrest Gump imitating what Mama did with the Principal every time he’s on the move. At least it lets me know where he is in the house because he’s very vocal when he’s crawling.

It’s when he gets quiet that I start to worry.

Some day’s he can be a little stinker, trying to get into everything. The minute I open the refrigerator door, he is crawling as fast as possible, yelling “Eeeee! Eeeee! Eeeeee!” trying to race me before I can get the door shut. And then there was the time he had me locked in the shower, unable to escape because his little fingers were right in the way of the shower door opening. We were in a standoff for a while before he finally moved his hand and I could slide out the door without harming any of his little digits.

I started shutting the bedroom door so that he can’t escape too far in the house while, and he has discovered the doorstops. He absolutely loves the (((BOY OING YOING OING))) sound they make when he flicks them. And the other day I might have figured out another reason why he loves them so much. I’m betting his future wife will just love watching this video.

And he will hate it.

Sorry dude.

Pretty embarrassing, huh? Well, you should have seen how embarrassed your Daddy was in Walmart yesterday when you pulled out a Kotex from inside my purse and started waving it around right in the middle of the Hardware department. I thought it was pretty funny, but J was mortified.

He’s a mess somedays. He makes me laugh on a daily basis now. I’m so thankful for that. Here’s some more future blackmail photos that cracked me up:

Let me just say upfront that I had no idea he had a gigantic BOOGIE in his nose as I took these photos. I was tickled at his hair poking out the side of his head, and oblivious to the big green booger until the photo session was over.

He was hamming it up this day, showing off his mooby cleavage and making all sorts of funny faces. In hindsight maybe he was just trying to get me to pick that booger out of his nose.

He’s also mastered sitting up on his own recently. Abs of steel, I guess. Didn’t get those from me.

And he can pull up on things and stand up, but hasn’t mastered cruising so much yet. Usually he just winds up back on his bottom when he tries to walk.

He’s become infatuated with shoes, especially the strings. He will sit and play with a pair of shoes for a good twenty to thirty minutes.

I guess I should be more concerned about all the germs on the bottoms of the shoes, but really I’m just glad to have something to entertain him for a while. Whatever works, you know?

He’s also constantly trying to grab every one’s glasses. Finally I give in and let him try them on for size.

He doesn’t just grab glasses, but also hair, ears, noses, chins, lips, goozles, etc. And he HURTS. He’s got a super strong grip and these razor sharp talons that I have to constantly keep trimmed or he will do some damage. I’m ready for the grabbing stage to end before we all have permanent Scarfaces.

So during this month of outdoor outings there have been several Fall Festivals. We kicked off the month with a visit to Homestead Hollow with Nana and Papa.

There were plenty of great Fall photo ops there.

Garrett LOVES, and I mean LOVES to go to these outdoor festivals. He loves people watching, he loves being outside, and he loves riding in his stroller. Combine all three with some nice weather and he is good to go.

And it doesn’t hurt if he can lay back with a bottle and kick his bare feet up.

Homestead Hollow is in Springville, Alabama. There are tons of vendor booths set up with every kind of art and craft imaginable. They have a petting zoo, and bouncy things for the kids.

There are lots of good foods to eat, too. Somehow a fried pie always makes it home with us. Except this time we forgot and left them in his stroller in the back of the Yukon and then when I found them weeks later they were green and moldy. Whoops.

Homestead Hollow takes you back to a simpler time when there were still General Stores.

It’s also a great place to pick up your Confederate flag afghans.

Or ruffly Christmas themed toilet seat covers.

But I strayed from all those gems and got this cute stack o’ jack o’ lanterns for my flower bed.

After Homestead Hollow we went to visit Russell in Oneonta.

It’s been a few months since Granny passed away, and he seems to be doing really well.

We enjoyed our visit with him. He took us out in the backyard and picked some apples from his tree.

It’s always a Kodak moment when Russell has a 20 foot pole with a saw on the end and J has a fish net ready to catch some apples while trying not to get bonked on the head.

We all enjoyed that. Papa carried G around and nearly lost his Bass Pro Shop hat in the process.

Nothing worse than a thieving baby.

But luckily the thief is easily distracted by some belly tickling.

You better hang on to those glasses or they’ll be next. The little klepto.

Other outings this month included a trip down to Granny’s house on the lake yesterday. While we were in the area we took Garrett to the chapel where we got married and snapped some photos.

Here he is sitting on the column where we signed our marriage certificate during our wedding ceremony, and near the place where we lit our unity candle. And now four years later just look at the results of that unity.

Isn’t he sweet??

I could just eat him up somedays.

He loved the leaves on the grass around the chapel.

He’s thinking “Hmmm. What is this strange crackly thing?”

“It looks kinda bland, but it sure does look like it’s got some crunch to it.”

“I wonder if I can snarf it down before they catch me?”

“Here we go.”

“Mmmm, crunchy. Like a pork rind.”

“Aw man! Busted.”

“Guess I’ll settle for a few fingers.”

Can you see those two top teeth starting to poke through in that picture above? Unfortunately that means long nights for mamas and daddies around here. Tonight before bed I was putting orajel on his gums and he bit down on the end of my finger so hard I yelled a very dirty word. Then I had to apologize to him for cussing. He’s got some serious chompers though! I’ll be glad for them to get on through and stop driving him crazy. He is drooling to high heaven again, and flicking his tongue in and out and all around his mouth in a semi-obscene way. I’m going to have to start putting chapstick on him this winter if he doesn’t stop all the lip licking.

This picture makes me wish I had named him Ren. That hair is never going to lay down until he’s old enough for some hair gel.

This picture cracks me up:

Today we took him to the Great Pumpkin Patch and he was bored out of his gourd.

And he looks JUST like my Daddy in this picture:

He finally gave us a look like, “If I smile with my eyes will that placate you enough to get me off this Itchy and Scratchy Show that is a hay bale? THANK YOU.”

He did seem to enjoy the wagon ride though.

I think he thought the tractor was sexy. I know I did.

Here we are on the wagon ride.

Here he is searching for pumpkins with Daddy. He’s deep in thought about which punkin to choose:

Found one! We chose the lumpy bumpy one that nobody else wanted. Because we are unique and different like that. And it was small and easy to carry, and we are lazy like that.

Did you notice anything odd about that picture above? Anything? No?

If you are super observant, you’ll see that G is finally wearing some shoes!

And looking back through these photos, I realize something else. Please try to ignore my affinity for dressing him in orange outfits throughout this past month. I’m obviously in the Autumnal spirit.

Plus it’s a great color for him, don’t you think?