A fun and busy couple of weeks

With a birthday party, visitors, time with friends, a trip to the doctor, and preparing for upcoming trips, we've had a busy time these past couple of weeks. Caden's laughter and chatter brighten everyone's days, and he has been especially enjoying playing catch (we roll a ball back and forth), shaking his maracas in time with fun music, and petting kittens and chickens.




Happy Birthday, Owen!

On Saturday, January 6th, Caden's friend Owen turned one year old. We gathered with family and friends at the Union Hotel in Occidental for pizza, carrot cake, and celebration:

The birthday boy eats a cupcake

Yay! Birthday balloons
















A trip to the doctor

On Friday, we ventured over to Santa Rosa for Caden's 9-month checkup. All is well, though Caden wasn't too happy about his flu shot; we'd promised him that this would be a doctor's visit without any shots. Our little guy now weighs 19 pounds, 10 ounces and is 30 inches long. He has therefore gained 12 pounds, 14 ounces (almost tripled his weight) and grown 11.5 inches in the past nine months. Here are updated figures showing his growth trajectories:

Other fun stuff

Last week, our friend Amber, who knitted Caden's famous green cozy hat, came to visit. She has her own matching hat, so we had to take a picture of the two of them together.

Speaking of things that are green, in preparation for our trip to Missouri this week, we ordered a new (green!) folding stroller for the little bug. It is lightweight and will be much easier to travel with. We test-drove it around town this past weekend, and Caden seems to really enjoy his new wheels.

Other fun activities have included visiting Jarrett's house and his kittens, which Caden was quite interested in, and visiting Brian and Tessa's chickens. Caden has been eating a lot of egg yolks from those chickens recently, so we decided that it was important for him to know where his food was coming from:

Caden spends quite a bit of time playing with his books. We read lots of stories to him, and he will often mimic us by picking up a board book and "reading" it, which means that he turns the pages, looks at the pictures, and babbles and hums. Here, you can see him reading with his stuffed animal friends.

Mommy has been working on a lot of fun craft projects, including knitting a warm hat and making super-cute fancy leather booties for Caden to wear to Jerry and Misty's wedding this coming weekend in Missouri.

A blast from the past

We've been doing some early spring cleaning, going through our file drawers, and we recently found the order information for the photo that Caden had taken while we were in the hospital. We had forgotten to fill out the paperwork right after his birth, so Mommy emailed the company, and they uploaded his first portrait, taken when he was only one day old.