TJs first girlfriend

Emma is TJs Uncle Ben's (by upcoming marriage) niece. So, we live in Kentucky, there is no blood relation and we decided TJ and Emma should be meant for each other. However I am not so sure they agreed. At first the were disinterested in each other.

Then they began to get closer

And finally, Emma went in for the hug. TJ screamed and cried, causing Emma to scream and cry and they would have nothing to do with each other for the rest of the night. Its true love!!

Figuring out feeding

With TJ approaching eight months we have had a lot of figuring out what to do about foods. I make my own baby food, and TJ is quite an eater usually, so this has been an adventure. So even with my attempts to be healthy, TJ's extended family still gets to him. Above is TJ's face right after his first bite of ice cream. He was not quite 7 months of age, "I think dairy is supposed to wait until after 9 months-year," mommy kept saying, but grandma Nancy insisted he would like it. And he did.

Now TJ is becoming quite independent so there is a lot of him wanting to feed himself. Notice the skill with which he inserts the puff directly into the ear canal.

And TJ is the pro with the sippy cup (other end up kiddo)!

And finally, when TJ is teething he can convince grandma and grandpa to give him just about anything to chew on!

The birds and the bees...and the lions!

We have made several trips to the zoo this summer, and believe me it never disappoints. When we went with my mom, the nun, cousin Kate and kids earlier in the summer I thought we had narrowly avoided a very awkward situation, that is until that evening. I said to Laney, "Tell Aunt Sarah what was your favor tie part of the zoo today." Laney replied, "I liked it when the daddy lion got on the mommy lions back and went for a ride." Oh yes...we got the above photo right before that.

Well the ride bracelets again were a saving grace. However, cousin Kate had a hard time waiting to ride the train. She is very smart, and at one point, I think she had had enough of us telling her it would just be a few more minutes (that or a whole day with her cousins was more than she could handle :) )

A few weeks later we returned to the zoo with grandma jojo and cousins kevin, bradley and aunt michelle. Again, we had a blast and saw a ton of animals. We learned lots of facts, like elephants have only 4 teeth, but loose them 6 times in their lifetime. The kids wondered how much the tooth fairy brought the elephants? We also learned that baby tiger cubs spend lots of time sleeping, more time than they do playing! But when we went to see the new baby tiger cubs the kids asked if when they play if they were going to jump on each other's backs too, like the lions did last time. I didn't know how to tell them that is how those baby tigers got here!