Trip to the Zoo

We had a fun trip last week with our American friends from Italy. My friend, Louise and her family lived in Bologna at the same time as us. They moved to France shortly before we moved back to the U.S. She's in Utah visiting her parents, and we had fun at the park and at the zoo together. One of the highlights was the baby giraffe.

I forgot my camera, so I have to say thanks to Louise for the cute pictures.
Aaron puts EVERYTHING in his mouth, of course. The special today was pine cones.
This is Louise and her youngest, Daniel.
This is Jullian sharing gold fish crackers with Aaron. The last time I saw Jullian he was barely one. He is quite the cute little boy now.
This is Lauren, Louise's oldest, standing with us in front of the giraffes. She has the same birthday as Aaron, and they were both born in Bologna.

Aaron has had a fall everyday for a few days where he gets new scrapes and bruises to his head.
I normally put shoes on Aaron, but this day I didn't. You can see the frightening result on the bottom of his foot.
These stairs are just outside our condo. Aaron absolutely loves to go up them twenty times a day. He hasn't figured out the going down part though.

Aaron eating a dandylion. I've given up trying to keep everything out of his mouth. I try harder about things he can really choke on, insects or other live critters, and really dirty things like dog poop. I figured a dandylion won't kill him.

he loves to eat, this boy!

I finally got a normal sized high chair for Aaron. It's much better on my back. He loves to feed himself, especially bananas. He's trying more and more foods, and unfortunately starting to get a little more picky. The last couple of days Aaron has been really clingy to his dad (a break for mom!). He's walking better, talking more to himself, and so much fun. At his one year appointment he was exactly 22 pounds, so we turned around his car seat to be front facing and he's loving the new view.

1 Year Old!

Well, Mom and Dad survived until his first birthday without any major catastrophies! There's always next year. I have to say that being a mom to Aaron has far exceeded any expectation or dream I had of what it would be like to be a mom. We love this little guy with all of our hearts. Heavenly Father put him in our family for a reason. Maybe He knew that Aaron would be tough enough to survive his crazy parents. When he was first born I'd say a lot that I just couldn't imagine life without him. I feel even more so now. We love you Aaron!
This kid gets his love of eating (especially chocolate) from his mother. From the start he just dug right into the cake. Aaron actually had two cakes. One that he ate when family in Italy were watching on the web cam, and the other on his birthday when Julie's family came over.

It's finally getting warm enough to play outside

Just wanted to point out the double binky. One apparently isn't quite enough.
This is when dad feeds Aaron.
This is when mom feeds Aaron. Notice a difference?

This is outside our condo. Aaron LOVES pushing anything around. Usually it's the chair in the kitchen or the cart at the grocery store, but it was warm enough outside to actually push his toys around.

Aaron's first step

This is the first time I've tried to add video. Hopefully it worked. Aaron starting walking May 13th. We got home from the airport. As soon as we got home I put Aaron down and went into another room. He started crying for me. When I came out Paolo was holding him. Paolo put him down to see if he would walk to me. Prior to this, all other attempts had been futile, but this time he just went for it. He took about 10 steps for his first "step". He can go the whole length of the house (which probably isn't saying much). But he still isn't walking without encouragement. I have to say that I love being a mom and seeing my child reach different milestones. It's fun to see him accomplish different things and grow.

Washington D.C.

We went to visit my mom in D.C. this weekend. The highlight being of course spending time with my mom and step-dad. It was fun to see the sights too. This is Aaron in our hotel room. He's hard to keep still after his bath long enough to get him dressed.
Aaron was a trooper on the plane and being dragged around. This was stopping for lunch while seeing the museums.
This is in the Air and Space Museum.
One of the major highlights was going to see a professional baseball game. We went to see the Nationals. We got killed 11-0, but it was so much fun to see.

This is our friend Melanie, who was a student in Bologna while we were there. It wasn't very long, but it was nice to say hi. Melanie had to put up with me during my whole pregnancy and was my pizza and gelato friend. She humored a lot of my crazy cravings!

Thanks to Mom and Jim for having us for the weekend! We loved seeing you.

May 2, 2008

This is Aaron's second trip to the park. The first time it was bitter cold. This day was really warm and I let Aaron crawl around and try new things.
The first thing I tried to do is let him crawl around on the grass. He had fun touching and feeling it. But everytime he went to crawl he would hurry and pull back his hands as if he touched something hot. He wasn't used to crawling on that kind of texture. He never did crawl on the grass.


Poor kid, what parents do to make themselves laugh. Good thing he liked it too. :)