Well, once again, I've fallen off my own personal bandwagon and gotten several weeks behind on updating this blog. My apologies to anyone who has checked the blog in the past few weeks only to find no new information!
The month of November, thus far, has been a very busy one and since we are on the verge of the official holiday season, the busy factor is only going to grow. {sigh} Work deadlines are also looming ever closer for both Kent and I as we deal with monthly financial closes, preparing presentations for board meetings, prepping for year-end close and the annual audit, completing & getting approval for next year's budget, just to name a few of the special projects that we are dealing with on top of our regular work loads. Needless to say, the end of the year and therefore, the holiday season isn't generally a fun one for us. :)
However, I do realize that the real reason you have logged onto this blog is to hear the latest news and see some recent photos of Erik! So, enough about Kent & Kelli - let's talk about Erik. I mentioned in my last post that Erik had 3 molars breaking through. Well, he now has all 4 of his 1st molars that have broken through the gums and are mostly all the way out. It is very odd looking at him when he laughs now that he has more teeth. It also makes me that much more hesitant when it comes time for his bedtime nursing. Thankfully, he hasn't bitten me in a very long time!
We didn't do anything for Halloween this year except answer the door and dole out candy to the more than 200 trick-or-treaters that come through our neighborhood. Yeah, I typed that correctly - 200+! Our neighborhood is near several apartment or condo buildings, so we get a lot of kids from there. Plus, we live in a rather large neighborhood and the neighbors on our street have earned the reputation of being exceedingly generous to the kids. Kent did the honors this year and couldn't believe how many kids came by. Sometimes, they would come in groups of 10-15 with a second group swarming onto the porch before the first group was gone. Kent tried to keep an accurate count, but lost the battle early on! Erik loves our front porch and he was thrilled to see all the action. He stood in the doorway with Kent to greet the kids and wave at people. We let him stay up a bit past his bedtime so that he could enjoy the festivities; thankfully, none of the costumes seemed to scare him (can't say the same for myself!).
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| Erik standing in doorway waiting for next group of trick-or-treaters |
Erik has had his first pony ride! This past quarter, the Sabbath School theme for Erik's classroom has been the farm. There are 3 rocking horses that are brought out near the end of the program for the kids to ride on. However, Kent & I (okay, mainly Kent) spend the majority of Sabbath School chasing Erik as he runs up front to sit on the horse. It's so much fun to go back to our seats with a screaming child who refuses to walk on his own, so you end up half dragging/half carrying him back to his chair! The local elementary school was holding a Fall Festival and when I heard that there would be pony rides, I knew that the Johnson's would be attending! Erik wasn't afraid of the pony at all and actually went "hands-free" for a good portion of the ride. I've added some pictures below; you'll note that Erik doesn't crack a single expression in any of the photos. Even though he loves the pony ride in Sabbath School, he was trying to figure out how the real deal worked!!
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| The beginning of the pony ride - he's hanging onto the saddle at this point. |
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| Just past the half-way point: no hands and he finally looked up from the saddle |
In other Erik news, he has begun to show an interest in feeding himself! Up to this point, he has been very content to let Kent or I feed him. We have actually been very happy about this as it is faster and so, so much neater! However, we were aware that he would need to develop this skill on his own soon. Well, Erik has taken matters into his own hands and started "asking" to hold the spoon as we fed him. He is now able to hold the spoon on his own and get it from bowl to mouth with a pretty consistent success rate! He still needs some help actually getting food on the spoon, but he does pretty well otherwise. He is also kind of neat - if he can feel food on the outside of his mouth, he will wipe it off with the back of his hand (I'm sure he will ask for a napkin any day now!) I've included some of the pictures from the first few "self-feeding" episodes.
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| Holding the spoon all by himself! |
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| Eating raspberries out of a little jar (one of his favorite things to play with in the kitchen) |
And one last picture to tide you over until I can update this blog again!! This was taken by Katelyn Pettijohn who babysits Erik on occasion. He had a fever a week ago that resulted from his MMR immunization; fevers require that Erik stay home from daycare until he is fever free for 24 hours.
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| Reading outside! |
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