Peyton's First Snow

Monday evening we went to bed with the promise of snow the next morning. Sure enough, the neighborhood was blanketed in white when we woke up. It snowed throughout the day - Patrick estimates that we got about 4 or 5 inches. We bundled the family up in layers upon layers of clothing and set out to take a walk. Nellie kept running up to each of our neighbors' porches hoping someone would let her in from the cold. She was not interested nor amused by the white stuff. She was just darn cold and wanted to go inside. Peyton didn't have much use for it either. We sat him down in the snow, betting that he would take off crawling, examine the snow, try to eat it, something noteworthy. Instead, he just sat there, apparently too cold to want to do much of anything. We took the hint and brought him inside, but not before we snapped a few pictures. After all, you only experience your first snow once.

More snow pictures and other January events are here.

Peyton's First Steps

Peyton had his 9 month checkup last week, and he's doing really well. He weighs 23 lbs, 14 oz which puts him in the 90% for weight, so that means he's back on the charts after soaring above 97% there for awhile. The doctor was pleased with his developmental progress: he's clapping, crawling all over the place, pulling himself up on furniture, picking up objects and moving them from one hand to the other, eating all kinds of foods, picking up food and feeding himself, drinking out of a sippy cup, mimicking sounds (he loves to make raspberries), babbling like crazy, and overall a really healthy kid. On Friday, we noticed that 4 of his top teeth are coming in all at once. He has let us know that this makes him quite unhappy.

We told the doctor that Peyton would stand on his own if he was distracted and didn't realize that he wasn't holding on to anything. She suggested putting some objects in his hands so he would think that he was holding on to something. So, this was Peyton last Thursday:





And this was Peyton this evening (5 days later):




Pretty soon, he'll be running all over the place!

Where did he come from?

Conversations with people about our son often go like this:

Person: "Oh! What a beautiful little boy!"
Us: "Why, thank you very much! We realize that we are biased, but we think he's pretty cute!"
Person: "Would you look at those beautiful blue eyes and blond hair - where did he get those from?"
Us: "Yes, we think its quite remarkable that he has blue eyes and blond hair."
Person: "Well, are you sure he's yours?" (This is usually directed to Patrick)
Us: "How could anything that cute not be ours?!"

While we are certain that Peyton is 100% Ragas and Harrell, the jury is still out about who he looks like.