Sean posted photos of the tornado that went through South Minneapolis on his Facebook page. The tornado touched down on our block and headed north into downtown! Check out the photos!
If you aren’t already friends with Sean on Facebook, go ahead and ask to be his friend so you can see the photos!
When Sebastian plays peek-a-boo, it’s not with a blanket—it’s a full contact sport.
Although he is running already, he does still get so excited that he can knock himself over. Also, we have misguided him into thinking that “yay!”=“clap.” So whenever someone says “yay!” or a syllable that sounds like “yay,” he claps, even if he’s not in the mood.
There is a new photo update (photo album) on Sean’s Facebook page! It covers the last three and a half months. Sean limited it to 43 photos, choosing from the 1,025 photos that we took during those months.
If you want to see the photos and aren’t yet Sean’s friend on Facebook, just ask to be his friend!
Even though our digital camera is old, only has 3x zoom, and uses Compact Flash memory, it does have a feature which Sean loves to use. He can take a series of several photos and "stitch" them together to make one panoramic photo. The photo we use at the top of this 'blog is an example of this feature. (The photo is of Lake Harriet in the winter at dusk. It is two photos "stitched" together.)
The photo below is another photo that Sean took. This time it is four photos stitched together. Even though it is easier to do than you may think, it does take some planning and maybe even a bit of skill to pull off without seeing the breaks between adjoining photos and keeping the perspective the same:
We took this photo during our 4th anniversary date last week. We ate at The Melting Pot and then walked around the Walker Art Museum and Sculpture Gardens for a bit. Ahhh, wonderful Minnesota.
Even though we have a gigantic birthday bash planned for Sebastian's first birthday in a few days, we wanted to do something party-like for him on his actual birthday last week, on July 22nd.
Instead of writing everything out, the 2-minute video below says it all:
We apologize for our lack of posts lately, but we have been so busy that we simply haven't had time to write up anything for this 'blog. It's too late now to go back and write up posts about everything, so look for a Facebook photo update coming soon!
What have we been up to, though? Well, aside from Sebastian's birthday last week, we had our 4-year wedding anniversary celebration on July 23rd. We have been cycling with Sebastian in the trailer, including an all-day ride a few weekends ago. Mostly, though, we have been getting out of the house with the baby, which took us 11 months to do! We have also moved our nanny to evenings so that we can have two date nights each week for a good portion of the summer.
All-in-all, we have been busy doing something different each and every night, as Ruth isn't teaching for a few weeks so we have the time and energy. (Of course these activities are free options such as biking or walking around the lakes.) This being said, we are looking forward to upcoming evenings and weekends being event-free. We are really good about enjoying spur-of-the-moment activities, which is how everything has been going the past several weeks, but when our days are planned in advance, they feel busy and can be overwhelming.
In other news, Sebastian isn't speaking words yet, but he can say "yay!" intentionally and recognizably, so we aren't sure if that counts as a "first-word" or not; but it's still very distinct. Also, he mimics our laughs when we laugh. It's a forced "Ha! Ha! Ha!" but it's also obvious and adorable. He's been such a happy baby lately that he walks/runs around with his mouth hanging open and smiling all the time. Yes, we did say that he runs already.
Check back for more updates coming soon! We should have time to post regularly again now! (And that Facebook photo update will be posted here, too, once it's been done.)
Last week we took Sebastian strawberry picking for the first time! It was also the first time strawberry picking for Sean, and the first time for Ruth since childhood.
We didn’t know what to expect, so we figured that if Sebs lasted 10 minutes, then we would be happy!
Well, Sebsters actually lasted almost an hour and a half! In fact, he lasted longer than mommy did!!
Sebi had great fun making a huge mess out of himself, and he only tried to eat the strawberries twice.
It was a great time overall, and we picked 23 pounds of strawberries! Here is a 2-minute video (reduced from 15 minutes) of the event!
Even though this video is barely four days old, it is already out of date in that he can walk across entire rooms already. It's like he quadruples his progress each day!
Sebastian took his first unassisted step yesterday!
He has been standing on his own and walking while holding our hands for quite some time now, but yesterday he actually took a step on his own, without thinking about it, and without falling over!
What was the secret ingredient? Motivation!
We were on a walk to the metal bunny statue down the road from our house. Sebastian is always so thrilled about the bunny that he can’t contain himself.
So, we took him out of his stroller, stood him up on the ground, and he was so darn excited that he took a step towards the bunny without thinking twice about it! Then he realized what he did and got startled, so he continued to stand in place but he started dancing instead. A few moments later, we helped him over to the bunny to see it, and he pounded on it with all his might (because it’s hollow and makes lots of noise).
He hasn’t taken another step since as he hasn’t had that kind of motivation since yesterday afternoon, and he will not only be stepping but rather running around way too soon as it is. We don’t want to rush anything, but it was an exciting moment!
And we were both there to see it! No video or photos of it, though. But that is okay; we have 32 other photos of our walk to the bunny yesterday as it is.
