Ball explosion :)

Cam having a blast throwing balls out his his playpen/ball bit. And he helped pick them all up too!

Cam and the doggies

Every once in a while Cam comes home from daycare full of vim and vigour :) Tonight was one of those nights! After racing around inside, he went outside to chase the dogs - sans shoes as he went out the doggie door - and had a blast. Funnily enough, it only wound him up instead of tiring him out - c'est la vie!

ps
Happy Birthday, Grampie!

Happy 4th of July

We were invited to spend the 4th of July up in San Jose with our friends Derek, Evelyn, Adrianna and Garret. It was a gorgeous day up there - mid 80s - their friends Mark, Cherry, and their two daughters joined the fun too.

Cam's 4th of July was all about food and fun :)

After some time playing in the pool with the kids (without getting wet, natch), it was popscicle time.





Next: back to the pool.







Then it was time for a 4th of July themed Jello bowl! (no alcohol :) )









After Jello, it was time to play house with all the kids running in and out. Amazingly, no fingers were smooshed in all the excitement.




The kids' sugar was low, so cupcakes were brought out for everyone to enjoy.






Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July!!!

Just for Cousin Isley :)

All your hard work paid off: Cam now has a new parlour trick - animal noises :)

Momo kite

Cam is chattering up a storm and a lot of it is "mommy/daddy" decipherable, but he's getting better every day. He'll be paakin' the caa in no time :)

Elmo is still an object of great affection and Cam refers to him as "Momo". While at Walmart on Saturday (I know, I boycotted for over 3 months. Trying to boycott again.) I found an Elmo kite, total cheapo thing, for $1, and got it for the boys. I should have looked to see if I could find 2 of them because of 1) the learning curve to put it together, and 2) Cam's fascination with anything daddy touches - best to have 1 for each of them.

While daddy tried to get Momo up in the wind tunnel of our backyard, the long green streamers at the bottom proved to be a ton of fun for Cam as he chased them around. He eventually got a hold of one and got both himself and daddy tied up pretty good. After K got them both untied, Cam got a hold of the streamer (started w/2, down to 1 now) again they were both wound up again in 2 seconds flat. The last time Cam wrapped the streamer around his throat! (everyone is fine) Momo, of course, bounced around on the ground, stepped on and is in quite sad shape, but the 4th try got him up in the air.

I'll look for another one next month :) For a buck it provided a lot of entertainment, mostly good!

Birthday Fun with Mommy

We are up in San Jose to celebrate Mommy's milestone birthday! A fun bbq at the park by Evelyn + Derek's house this afternoon - the boys running themselves ragged at the amazing park. Ahhh - good times :)

If only we'd had video - Garrett and Cam were hysterical together. Cam tries to keep up with Garrett (who is 5 months older and 7 lbs heavier) and they both seem to want the attention of each other's parents :) Garret is part monkey; he climbs up the little rock climbing wall near the slide with ease. Just hoping Cam doesn't pick up on that, lol.

Sarah, Charles, Grant and James joined us too - so much fun! Sarah had her camera and got this cute shot of Cam - goodness only knows what he was looking at with such wonderment and confusion. Probably Garrett climbing up the rope gym - luckily Cam didn't try that! We had a blast with everyone (my friend Deb joined us too) and are really looking forward to the big birthday treat - Kevin and I are going to Sent Sovi in Saratoga for dinner. Just the two of us.

Sit down for this part, folks. You'd think it was the "going to dinner alone" part, but you'd be wrong.

Mike and Sherry (this was MIKE'S idea) are going to babysit Cam at their house tonight. Not sure if Hell has frozen over or if we should buy a *lot* of lottery tickets tonight!! :) Mike is our chauffer for the evening so we don't need to worry about imbiding too much wine (and also to escape the house in case Cam won't sleep). We're all staying over at Mike and Sherry's (doggies included) for the night and will go home in the morning.

Dinner with just the two of us. Wow. The last time that happened, I was about 10,000 months pregnant with Cam....oh, about 20 months ago :)

We can't wait! More details later.

ps
dinner was amazing, and even better, Cam slept the *entire* time we were gone. Apparently 6 neighbours on Mike and Sherry's street, plus Evelyn, were on call in case Cam got to be too much. We're glad to have averted any trouble and might have to try the babysitting thing again sometime. Thank you so much Kevin, Auntie Sherry and Uncle Mike!!!!!!!! You all made it an amazing, wonderful, perfect birthday!!!

Ready...set...go! (non-cheaters version)

When we picked up Cam from daycare today, he was playing a new game with a couple of other little kids in the room: all the kids stood on one side of the room touching the wall until Cam yelled "Go!" then they all ran as fast as their little legs would carry them to the other side. Too freakin' cute! Here Daddy and Cam are reenacting it for the camera :)

Easter egg hunt

Happy Easter! After Cam got up, we hid a half dozen big Easter eggs with little toys in them throughout the house for Cam to find. It took him a minute to realize what was going on, but he had a good time looking for them and trying to get them open :)

He got his first "car" - a Lightening McQueen. He loves it but still prefers Thomas the Tank Engine over all other toys. Except George, of course!

We think we are on the tail end of the ear infection, but he's still up quite frequently at night. The weather is nice, so we'll try to spend a bit of time outside playing with the doggies. Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!

Birthday party for a buddy

Today we drove up to San Jose to go to Garrett's second birthday party - Cam had a blast! The party was at The Little Gym (similar to the Wee Workout place in Paso Robles but, oh, about 10x as big!!). There were tons of mats and after Cam watched Garrett jump down from two stacked mats, he started trying to do that himself and pretty much mastered it by the time we left - we'll see just what he's climbing (and jumping off of) on at home this week :)

There were about 30 kids there, ranging in age from 1-8. Everyone had a great time and by the end of it, Cam was lying down on the gym mats saying "nite nite" :)

The car ride was great in both directions; seems that turning the seat around has made a huge difference and Cam slept pretty well, then hung out checking out the scenery until we got to our destination. He was happy to get home and let out a huge sigh when Kevin laid him down in his crib - he was probably tired of being in his carseat, lol.

We didn't bring the camera in with us but if we get any photos from Evelyn, we'll be sure to post them.

Drive-by with Cheeze

Another parental indulgence - for a while, I've been thinking that Cam would enjoy one of the little kid lawnmowers that makes bubbles as you push it. At least, I (we) knew I'd (we'd) get a kick of watching him play with it. One somehow made it into my shopping cart at Target today, and viola! Instant happy kid with new toy!

This is a bit of video of him playing with it in the house; turns out, you have to push the thing *fast* in order to get the bubbles to come out, and Cam has needed a bit of time with it indoors to figure out manuevering it so it works in outside. As he passes Kevin with the video camera, Cam looks right up at the camera with the cheesiest grin :) It then gets really dark as K follows Cam into the kitchen where he crashes into the cupboards by the stove - no one was hurt :) Enjoy!

Paaaak the caaaah in the fraaag

Umm, the title pretty much says it all :)

Neither hail, nor sleet, nor closed door...

A bit of video of Cam riding his trike. He's not using the pedals just yet, prefers to push with his feet, but he gets a bit of speed going! Still figuring out the whole "turning" thing, but no dogs or grownups were injured in this video :) No doors were injured either.

Good times :)

After our trip to Wiamea Canyon, Uncle Pat came over for a beer and to hang out for a while, which thrilled Cam to no end. They had a great time playing before Kevin took Pat back to his hotel to relax and pack for his early flight on Sunday (another 28+ hours of traveling ahead for him to get back to Macau).

Thanks for coming to Kauai, Uncle Pat!! Come visit this summer!

Fun at Brenneke Beach!

While Daddy, Uncle Pat, Grandpa and Grandma were ziplining today, Cam and I meet Derek, Evelyn and the kids down at Brenneke Beach. We started off on the slides, then worked our way down to the sand and water :)



Cam took a little bit to have fun playing in the sand. He did enjoy playing (read: knocking over sand castles :) ) after a little while but we had to keep him distracted so he didn't chase the chickens roaming around.



Afterwards, everyone came back to our place to get cleaned up. The kids had a blast playing together! Once we turned on Thomas the Tank Engine, all playing stopped and everyone quieted down to watch TV :)


Later on, Grandpa and Grandma came over to babysit Cam while we went out to dinner (for the first time since Cam was born!) with Uncle Pat to a really nice place in Poipu Village. Cam ended up getting to stay up until 10pm (long story) but went to sleep once we got home. Thanks to Grandpa and Grandma for giving us the opportunity to get out!

Another great day in Kauai! :)

Yay, Uncle Pat is here!

Big smiles, big hugs and Uncle Pat has a new shadow :)

Even though Cam hasn't seen Pat since last July, he was *thrilled* when he saw him standing in the doorway. The boys are currently on the lanai. The "big" boys are drinking beers watching the little one throwing Doritos to the chicken and various birds that have descended upon us.

One has already flown into, and right out of, the condo. Screen door now closed to prevent that from happening again!

Just another day in paradise.

Chef Boyardee-to-Be

We had a bunch of apples that were just begging to be turned into an apple pie. Since it was a rainy, icky day, it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Cam was a big help; he climbed up on the stepstool and helped to stir the apples to mix them in with the cinanamon, nutmeg and sugar. Won't be too long now before we can get him helping with making dinner for the family!

ps
don't you just love Cam's "Blue Steel" Zoolander look in the photo on the right? Our boy will be a model! JK!

A boy and his frog

We found this fantastic tent in the clearance isle at Target, believe it or not. Cam's in love with it :) Ever since we rearranged the house (moved my office back into the master, the large sectional couch from the living room into the family room) there is a lot more space for Cam's stuff. Which continues to somehow amass itself :) Of course, buying kiddie tents isn't exactly going with the theory less is more.

Cam loves hanging out in his tent and seems to like it best when all three of us are in there. Its a tight fit, but we make it work. Auntie Trina has sent a book for Cam's birthday showing all kinds of stories and rhymes that you can use your hands to tell (along the lines of "Isty Bisty Spider" which Cam loooooooves) and that's his favourite book to check out while he's hanging out in the tent.

Good thing we've got the room to have this thing up! :)

Sunday trip to Barney Schwartz park

Since today was the last (boohoo) day of our holiday vacation (back to reality tomorrow!), after Cam woke up from his afternoon nap, we took him over to Barney Schwartz park to play for a while. Its been a while since we'd been over there - 3-4 months! It was a bit chillier than we'd realized temperature-wise but that didn't slow Cam down at all; the last time we were here he needed to hold our fingers to walk - this time he ran around under his own steam!

Daddy showed Cam how to "climb" up on some of the stuff at the park (hmmm, that might not have been so good in retrospect!) and they both had a great time sliding down the slide. Cam did it over and over, even got brave enough to do it on his own :) There is a tube that kids can crawl through - last time we were here Cam could stand up in there with lots of room to spare. He tried to stand up in there and bonked his head! Little dude is getting tall.

We had a lot of fun, got a bunch of great photos (little dude still seems to grow and change every day) even bumped into one of our neighbours' with her two children. Maybe all this fresh air will help Cam sleep better tonight (never too early for a Christmas miracle!! Only 352 days, right? ;) )

We're a bit late with this but Happy New Year to all our family, friends and loved ones!
Love,
Cameron, Michelle and Kevin

Still loving the new camera

Saturday hijinks before the Halloween party - Cam getting thrown up in the air by daddy :) If I could catch his 28lbs, I'd do it too, but I don't trust myself or my biceps! Cam loves this of course, even though its a tad scary for mommy. As far as he's concerned, the higher he goes up, the more fun it is!

Yay its the weekend!!

Everyone is just happier on Saturdays, aren't they?

We have a fun weekend ahead of us: this afternoon we are going to our wonderful neighbour's Katherine, Jason and Ryan's Halloween party later this afternoon (yay, get to wear our 100% polyester giraffe costume when its 90° out!) and on Sunday we're going to see Grams at her house in Atascadero. More details later!!