First Visit to the Dentist

Today was John Grayson's first trip to the dentist and he did a GREAT job! They flossed his teeth, cleaned them, counted them, checked them and covered them with fluoride. He hopped into the chair like a big boy and did exactly what they asked of him without a complaint. I couldn't be prouder :-) He ended his visit with a balloon animal (a green dog) and a bag full of dental goodies. I never knew that one kid could be so excited about bubble gum flavored dental floss and a new toothbrush :-) The dentist did mention that he's going to need braces (thank you pacifier!), but other than that, his teeth are perfect!

I managed to snap a few pictures during the visit:

Eight Months Old!

Delia is 8 months old today! It's hard to believe that we're in the home stretch of our first year with her. She continues to amaze us and bring us tremendous joy and laughter.

At 8 months old, Delia:

• Is into EVERYTHING! Now that Delia has mastered crawling and pulling up, she is enjoying her new-found ability to explore. She doesn't care if we're in the room with her or not and always seems to head for things that she shouldn't be touching. Delia is definitely proving to be a spunky little girl! Luckily she knows her name and acknowledges it, most of the time :-)
  
• We're still waiting for that first tooth to appear. Delia has been teething for over a month now with no results.
  
• Eats Cheerios. Delia has finally started eating finger food, and she loves it. We've yet to find a food that she won't eat.
  
• Waves bye-bye, sort of. If you say "bye bye" to her enough times, then she starts to move her hand.
• Sleeps through the night (for the most part). Finally! There are still times when she wakes up in the middle of the night or wakes up early, but she's doing so much better than she was a few months ago.
  
• Has found her voice, including those girly shrieks and squeals. These are sounds that John Grayson never made, so it's definitely a change for John and I. We're pretty sure that once she starts talking she's not going to stop.
  
• Took her first trip to the beach. Delia loved the ocean and the sand. It didn't take her too long to realize that sand doesn't taste very good.
  
• Continues to be an incredibly happy little girl who thinks that her big brother is the most amazing person in the entire world. Thank goodness John Grayson adores her too, and it's so cute to watch him hug her. Yes, the hugs are a little too rough, but pretty soon Delia will start tackling him back :-)
• Knows one word--"Mom"--and uses it whenever she wants anything. It's pretty cute, but it will be nice when "Daddy" is added to her vocabulary.
  

Here are a few pictures of Delia at 8 months:

First Day of School

John Grayson's first day of preschool was on Monday and he had a wonderful day! We switched schools this year so he would be closer to home, which would allow me more time to get things done around the house and would work better with Delia's nap schedule. Although we're very sad not to be at Bon View anymore with MaMa and our friends, JGray seems to be adjusting nicely to the routine at Mount Vernon.

John Grayson will go to school on Monday and Wednesday mornings 9:00-12:00 and we can drop him off for free play as early as 8:00. His teachers, Ms. Bridgette and Ms. Staci, have their hands full because John Grayson's class is 9 boys and 1 girl!! Luckily the boys seem to be very well behaved and are lots of fun. Hopefully JGray will make some great new friends this year!

Here are a few pictures from the first day of school:

Getting ready to leave for school

Waiting on the porch to leave for school

Walking into school with Daddy

Beach Week 2009

August of last year Allison and I made a promise, as we were heading back from our beach trip John Grayson noticed Digger's Dungeon on the side of the road. For those of you who are not in the know, Digger's Dungeon is the home base of the best (and John Grayson's favorite) monster truck in the whole world, Gravedigger. So of course this year we had to stop on our way down to the beach. Upon our arrival, we were surprised to find that Digger lends space in his Dungeon to other monster trucks such as Superman (the monster truck).



After spending some time walking around the garage we made our way to the field of old Gravediggers. Gravedigger has gone through many iterations since its inception, in fact they are now on Gravedigger XXII (I am beginning to scare myself with my knowledge of Monster Trucks). Right after this picture was snapped some other Monster Truck afficienado walked over and said, 'Boys, this here is Gravedigger I, this is a piece of American history right here', indeed it was.

For the first few days of our beach week this year, the weather was not great. You know those vacations where you spend a bunch of time watching the Weather Channel trying to figure out when you are going to get your first ray of sunshine...that was us, learning a lot about the low pressure system sitting off the shore of the outer banks. During the breaks from the rain we took the chance to walk down to the beach. Delia was a huge fan of the beach almost immediately.
Just like last year John Grayson was facinated with the ocean. Seeing that this year we had to fear him running out on his own we institued a 'hold Mommy or Daddy's hand' rule whenever touching ocean water.


As the cold and rain prevented us from even using the pool at our house, we took the chance to take the kids to do some other activities. On this occasion we took them to paint the wild horses of Corolla. While we didn't see any real wild horses, we sure painted the crap out of some cardboard ones.
On a seperate note, if I offered a program where I had kids painting cardboard horses that were likely to be thrown away soon after, I would use water soluable paint. Well, the folks who run this program obviously don't think like me because we all now have clothes that have permanant reminders of our horse painting experience.


Later in the week the weather got much better. The waves were still pretty fierce from the weather earlier in the week so we spent most of our time in the sand. In addition, there were all kinds of flags telling us to 'not swim'. We found out later that some did not take that advice.

Delia was a huge fan of the sand, after she learned that it was not something to be eaten she spent the rest of week crawling around, often times toward the ocean but we are still able to catch her.

While digging and playing sea turtle, Delia managed to cover her entire body in sand. In fact, upon further investigation when we returned to the house we found that she managed to cover her entire bottom as well (still trying to figure out how that happened seeing that she was in a diaper the entire time).



While we had designs on hitting up the dungeon again on our way out of town, our desire to get to kids home before nap won out. While the weather was not ideal, it ended up being a great week with our friends and the kids and really look forward to going back again next year!