Fun with Alton

Some gratuitous Alton cuteness....

Alton Rolls Over!

So Alton rolled over alone for the first time on April 22. We were in the midst of moving from our corporate apartment to our new house and on our very last night in the apartment, we gave him a bath, then put him on the bed and I was doing a little baby massage. When I flipped him onto his tummy to rub his back, he rolled onto his back all in one motion--woooop! Since then, whenever we put him on his tummy he would try so hard to roll over, usually stopping himself from completing the act because he would "chicken wing" his arm out and get it in the way. But on May 25 we put him on his tummy and not only did he flip over to his back quickly, he did it about 7 times in a row! Each time we put him back on his tummy, he would roll right over to his back.

We took some video of the little man in action. Now he won't spend any "tummy time" playing at all. Whenever he is on his tum-tum, he rolls over to his back right away. Hopefully once he starts being able to roll over from back to tummy, the crawling and scooting will not be far behind.

Mother's Day

My first Mother's Day was fantastic! Alexa and Brian came down from Seattle for the weekend to explore our new house. We made the world's biggest cheese fondue...Alexa and I both maintain that you can never have too much cheese, but our dairy hangovers in the morning should have clued us in to the fact that yes, you can. Despite the melted mesclun of bleu, jack, gruyere, romano and fontina in our stomachs (just typing that made my tummy hurt a little bit), we powered through and ate a chocolate fondue as well. Weeks later now, my selective amnesia has already kicked in and I wouldn't mind doing it again.

Sunday morning Andy dressed Alton all snazzy-like and made PINK chocolate chip pancakes topped with strawberries for us all. Alton got me flowers, a knitting book I wanted and some yarn. Now if he could just help me find the time to knit....

Our House in the Middle of Our Street

We bought a new house! Our adventure in Oregon can "officially" begin because we have our new digs. We listed our condo for sale as soon as we left California, so after a few weeks settling in to the corporate apartment we started out with a realtor to hunt for our new home. We visited lots of nice places, and are happy to share some of the highlights with you:

• A house used as a rental where the master suite was clearly occupied by the teenage son in the house...approximately 40 pairs of Nike Air Jordan sneakers were carefully posed around the room.
• The mother/daughter who were so dedicated to maintaining their Hawaiian Tropix orange glow that they had a tanning bed in one of the bedrooms.
• The family who had commissioned a work of "art" to match their mid-80s couch with the sprays of color that look like fireworks--in shades of pink, silver and forest green. It complimented their living room decor, which featured porcelain plates, prints and figurines of forest creatures like grizzlies, bald eagles and squirrels.
• The "diynetwork.com" house, where the people had decided that they didn't just want to try ONE of the painting techniques they saw, they wanted to try them all: brushing, sponging, striping, bold colors, tone-on-tone, a CHARCOAL room...we would have had to fill the bed of our truck with primer to try to cover up what they had done.

Our new house is in a very cute neighborhood; it's a newer development off of a street that winds and curves and goes off into the country near the horse properties and llama farms. Our subdivision has a little park and is a two-minute walking distance to the elementary school (aww, can you picture little Alton in school?). The house has a front room where we have put the beautiful piano that Ma and Pa Rhyne gave us. There is a living room that opens up into a dining area with a sliding door to the little patio in the little backyard. Nice big kitchen with a GAS RANGE and a bar where we could put barstools for fun, and a small powder room in the little hallway that has the door out to the garage. Yay! A garage for Andy to work with power tools and build Minerva a doghouse and wear safety goggles and say things like "cantilever," "joist," and "hacksaw." It's two-story, as most houses in Oregon are, and the upstairs has a laundry room and three bedrooms, which includes a master suite with walk-in closet, bathroom and a huuuuge soaking tub. Then there's a second bathroom and a small office-type room that has a window but no closet; we have turned that room into a playroom for Alton. We are going to take a little walking photo tour and will post that later. We're mostly unpacked at this point--our move-in date was April 21, but we've been in the house for about 6 weeks now. So wild to think that this will be the house where Alton takes his first steps! Come visit!