Marin has been in such a cuddly mood here lately. For the past couple days it has been a hug and kiss fest. He will pretty much give me a kiss any time I ask him and then of course he gives me kisses whenever he feels like it too. You can tell when he wants to give you a kiss because he grabs your head in both hands and then pulls you toward him and then gives you the biggest kiss on the cheek. Then if you make the "kiss sound" yourself and say, "Oh that was such a good kiss" he just smiles the biggest smile that lights up his whole face. He's so adorable. Of course his mamma thinks so! Speaking of mamma, he still won't say it! We try to get him to say it and he just grins at us like, "Uh huh, yeah right." Much to dada's delight he continues to say dada at least a million times a day. :)

The little guy is currently napping. He's going through a big growth spurt right now. We had a doctor's visit just a couple weeks ago and since then he's already gained over a pound. A lot of his pjs don't fit anymore and his onesie collection is quickly being transferred over to the outgrown box as well. Someone is gonna be happy come yard sale time because we have a lot of stuff to sell already! We just filled one plastic tote box and have almost filled a second! That is just in the last couple weeks! My mom had brought a pair of pajamas for Marin when she was here last month and had tried them on him and declared them too big. Well, I hate to break it to Mimi, but that pair of pjs doesn't even button! Well, they button, but when you pick him up the buttons pop open. ha.ha. He's getting sooo big! I think his extra pound has come in the form of height though because he's looking sooo skinny to me these days. Well, everything but his little (should I say big) legs! They are some hams, let me tell ya!

Well, I was planning on running errands this afternoon, but if Marin wants to sleep, who am I to stand in the way? I had put him in his high chair to pour some bottles and he was in there less than 10 minutes playing with a toy and fell asleep in his chair! Oh well, so much for the bananas I had planned on feeding him while he was in there! It was a few minutes before he was supposed to be eating, so I had decided to do the bottles first. He had other plans and decided a nap sounded more fun. I can't say that I blame him!

Last night, I looked up all of the stage 2 foods that Earth's Best sells. We want to make sure we give him a chance to try all of them. I must say that the variety is a HUGE step up from stage 1 foods! I think pretty much all baby food brands only have carrots, sweet potoatoes, squash, peas, apples, bananas, and pears in their stage 1 line up. Marin has a couple days of banana left. Then he'll go to apples and pears. Then, we move up to stage 2! We go at least 4 or 5 days in between each newly introduced food, just to make sure he tolerates it well. So it takes a while to introduce all the foods. He seems to like sweet potatoes best so far, even better than bananas which he isn't as crazy about as I first thought. He is an orange vegetable boy so far (sweet potatoes & carrots).

We have a ton more pictures to add to his blog which we will try to do this weekend. Tonight is going to be busy as we have a ton of errands to run. You know its just killing me that we have to go to both Target and Wal-Mart. ha.ha. :)

Well apparently Marin was so excited that Taylor Swift won Entertainer of the Year last night at the CMA Awards that he couldn't possibly go to bed. He stayed up until 2:30 am. Yeah. It was a blast, let me tell ya. Matthew finally gave up and went to bed at a little after midnight. I had night shift duty and was hoping and praying that he'd go to bed soon after.

It was not to be. I gave him a bath. I put him in comfy pajamas. He spit up milk on said comfy pajamas. I changed his pajamas and said a few ugly words in the process.

Finally, I rocked him and sang to him. We'd tried that earlier and it wasn't working. He was too wound up pre-bath to rock. He's is such a little snuggle-bug though. I call him, "Mommy's little cuddle". And so I held him tight and rocked and rocked some more. He was snoring after about the 18th verse of Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I eased him down into his crib and backed out of the room as slowly and quietly as possible and he was down for the count.

Everyone always says that Marin is such a happy baby. I tend to agree. He's happy as long as he's being tended to, getting your undivided attention, and being held. And that's just fine with me.

Marin somehow managed to scratch his face. It looked really bad for about a day, but by day 2 it was nearly healed. I was in the kitchen and he was in the living room in his Exersaucer. Our house has an open floor plan (the downstairs public space is basically one big room) so I could see him from the kitchen. He was fussing, of course, but he usually does fuss when he's playing "alone". He likes for you to sit right beside him and watch him play. From what my parents say, I was the same way as a kid. ha.ha. I guess I'm "payin for my raisin'' as the saying goes. Since he didn't cry out or anything, I don't know how or when he actually did it. I just came back in to get him out of his Exersaucer and he had this 3 pronged scratch running across his cheek. It looked sort of like he had red cat whiskers drawn on his face. There are no sharp objects on his Exersaucer (he's played in it loads of times and never gotten a scratch) so we can only assume he did it to himself. I felt kind of bad that he'd hurt himself, but I had just clipped his nails the day before and they are really short, so I don't guess there is much else we can do. Kids are going to get hurt I guess. It's just part of growing up. You can child proof your house, but you can't child proof your child. ha.ha.

On a much funnier note, we were out in the yard talking to a few of our neighbors yesterday and our one neighbor was walking her dog "Miss Boo". Miss Boo is an adorable black and white cocker spaniel. I kind of glanced over at Miss Boo (who was standing there innocently on leash) and noticed that she had something in her mouth. I alerted her owner to the fact and we were horrified upon closer examination that what we could see had feet---it was a dead bird! Her owner and I started squealing and jumping up and down. Our other neighbor says, "I'll handle this" and she very bravely pulls the carcass out of Miss Boo's mouth. She informed us that she used to work at a vet's office, so she's done this before. ha.ha. She also said that she felt a tad bit responsible because the dearly departed was in her yard, courtesy of the murderer that resides in her home (her cat Finnigan). :)

Before Marin was born, when I had plenty of time on my hands, I used to do A LOT of reading. Matthew and I fought over the newest best sellers (trying to decide who should get to read them first). We're too cheap to buy two copies. :) Now we both have a stack of unread books between us. He's currently working on two different books that he's been trying to read since April. I am currently reading the latest Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol. Matthew and I are huge fans of the action/political thriller type genre, our most favorite author being Vince Flynn. I was therefore shocked and appalled when I happened to walk by a bookshelf in Target today and see that Vince Flynn's latest novel has been sitting there for almost a month and we hadn't noticed! I guess that is what having a baby does to you. We usually don't make it out of the diapers and formula section, with the occasional detour into the baby clothes just for kicks. :) So, I guess you know that Pursuit of Honor is on my reading list too. Sorry Vince...I'll get to you soon.

What started out as a sans-baby trip to get a Coca-Cola icee from Target turned into a self pity party about how many unread books that I had at home that I really, really wanted to read. So I decided to skip the 20 people deep line at the icee counter, drove home and sat on the porch and read until it was too dark to see outside. Ahhh, that was nice. Now, I'm hiding out in Matthew's office while he watches Marin. I have to milk the fact that he's going remote control airplane flying tomorrow while I watch Marin alone for all its worth. ha.ha. While in here in the office, I jumped on his computer to see just what other books we've been missing. I haven't had the heart to break it to Matthew that we are as far behind as we are on our book list. But here are the ones we've missed in no particular order. My goal is to have all these read soon, you know, at least before Marin goes to kindergarten.

Steve Berry The Paris Vendetta (ah ha! not due out till 12-1-09)
Vince Flynn The Pursuit of Honor (sadly missed its debut on 10-13-09)
James Rollins (my other most favorite author) The Doomsday Key (missed it on 6-3-09)
James Rollins Alter of Eden (still hope for it on 12-29-09)
James Rollins Untitled Sigma Book 6 (surely I'll be ready by 4-27-10)
Jack Whyte Order in Chaos (out Aug. 09?! Where have I been?!)
Raymond Khoury The Sign (out now, again, seriously, what have I been doing?)
Alex Berenson The Silent Man (currently hiding out on a shelf in the closet)
Alex Berenson The Midnight House (2-9-10: I'd better get a move on, its a series!)

On a side note, Alex Berenson's first novel The Faithful Spy is THE BEST book I have ever read. Even though Vince Flynn and his character Mitch Rapp are my favorite books overall, I enjoyed Berenson's book the best. Awesome story if you are into the CIA action themed fiction stuff like we are. If you are interested in any of the books off of my list, I highly recommend you read The Faithful Spy first. If you don't like it, you won't like any of the others on the list. :)

So I guess I'd better get OFF the computer and get back to readin' me some Brown. After that, I'm going to try to sneak to the book store and pick up Flynn before Matthew finds out. :)

As of Tuesday, November 3rd, we all welcomed the final member of the neighborhood trio of baby boys! There are now 3 boys in 3 houses in a row--ours and our neighbors on either side of us. They are all 6 months and younger too! Marin made his debut in April, Baby "N" joined us in July, and now Baby "B" is here! The mom of Baby "B" and I are already making plans to spend every day at the pool with them this summer! Yeah!