why is there a potato in the living room?

Oh yes, because this is Finny's favorite toy now! I've found that you can offer the most colorful, most exciting-looking toy to Finny and what does he go after? A potato. A couple of weeks ago, he found a bag of potatoes. I put the potatoes back and later found him in the kitchen again with the same potato in his hand as before. Fine. You can play with the potato. Well, it's been over 2 weeks and he is still playing with that same potato. It's so bruised now that each time I pick it up I think it's going to disintegrate in my hand, but it holds up to his abuse. I told him this morning that it's time to retire the poor potato and I threw it away. He chose a new one from the bag, but apparently it's not as good as the first one. Now, he has to empty the bag out and spread them all over the house. Who knows how many more were in the bag. I'll never know if I found all of them. Ask me in a couple of months when there's a strange smell coming from my living room.

where did you get that?

This is the most frequently asked question heard in this house now. Finny finds things and I have no clue where they came from. Take for instance tape. I don't know where, but he keeps finding pieces of tape. If he's been quiet for more than a few minutes, I get scared. When I find him, he more than likely has a piece of tape in his hand, and sometimes in his mouth (scary). I'll ask him where he found the tape and he just smiles or laughs. I still don't know where he's getting it all, but sooner or later, something will fall apart and then I'll say, "That's where all the tape came from"...and then I'll tape it back up. =)

daddy and finn

Finny laughing at funny faces daddy is making.


Finny loves wearing Matthew's hat!


He can't see half the time, but he never tries to take it off.


Sometimes he crawls sideways if he can only see out from under one side of the hat.

These are pictures taken last weekend. We had a warm day and a 4020 John Deere tractor to match daddy's big one. He loved riding on it...and looking at the cows that were all around him throughout the whole afternoon.

for mom and dad...who didn't believe me

ATTENTION ALL VIEWERS: DO NOT ADJUST YOUR COMPUTER SCREENS!

See the little white things in this picture? It's not your computer acting up. It's snow. I woke up this morning to snow swirling around our house. I thought to myself, "It won't stick. It's been way too warm"


"Why is this sticking?"


"Well, we might as well build a snowman."

happy little boy

Finny at lunch yesterday eating a grilled cheese sandwich.


Yesterday afternoon was really warm so we went outside to play. He walked across the yard holding onto one of my hands.


Which made for some very dirty feet.

Finny last weekend eating French toast.

Trevor spent last Saturday with Matthew at the farm. In the afternoon they came home and played with Finny. Trevor put his hat on Finny's head and then let Finny "tackle" him.

guess who has a tooth

Finny does! Last night we found it. I had been feeling around his bottom gums all day yesterday and finally felt it yesterday at about 6:00. I felt around in Finley's mouth this morning and didn't feel anything besides the one, but then before I put him down for his nap I felt the other tooth coming through. I'm so glad they came together so that he didn't have to go through all of this again. Now I can't wait until they come through a little more so I can try and get pictures. He's been sucking in his bottom lip and then blowing it out and sticking his tongue out so I know that he can feel these new, weird things in his mouth. It's so cute.

This is the last video from when Sarah was here. We were out to eat on Sunday and he was very talkative. The guy that he reaches for is Robert, a college student that goes to our church. Robert has said that he doesn't do well with babies and he's not comfortable with them, but by the end of the year, Robert would touch Finley and pat his head. I thought it was really neat.

We have a game we play with Cheerios. Finley stands on one side of the coffee table and I sit on the other side and flick Cheerios over to him. He loves it when they hit his hands. I flicked a couple too far though and they flew under the couch. I love making more work for myself. It really is worth it though to hear that laugh!

Another video of our Cheerios game.

fun at mattea's

This picture was taken out at the farm this past weekend. It was such a warm day out I just had to let him play in teh grass/weeds.


These next few pictures were taken on Tuesday. This is at Jeramy and Danae's house. They now own 6 or 7 kid goats and baby sheep. They're really cute and love the kids. Finny just loved to pet them and play with them. If you're wondering why he has a girl hat on, it's Mattea's. We forgot his at home and didn't think it would be that warm and sunny.


Finny smiling for the picture.


I thought this one was funny because of all the crooked things in it. He is sitting on a motorized 4-wheeler. It may look like he's flying through the yard because of how his sunglasses and hat are falling to the side, but I assure you, he could crawl faster than this toy goes. He pushed the button a few times to make it go, but he didn't get the idea of pressing it constantly. He seemed to like it though.

eese

Well, I finally found a way to get Kodak onto my computer. Here are a couple of videos from this morning of Finny saying please. He's getting pretty good at saying it and a couple of times he said it without prompting.

I'll have a lot of pictures and videos to put up from the last couple of weeks pretty soon, so keep watching for them.

our game and "eese"

This is our game. He loves "sneaking up on people" when he thinks they aren't looking. When I pause in the video and jump that means that the person we are sneaking up on looked our way and we have to stop sneaking. He could play this game all day long. We now play it with Zodie. She isn't a very good sport though. =)

"Eese" means please and he will say it some of the time when prompted and many other times when he's just crawling through the house. I don't think he's figured out when it's appropriate to use the word, but it's still cute.

I did something tonight on the way home that I said I wouldn't ever do. I gave Finny a cracker to chew on while we drove home. I never wanted to start that because I didn't want to have to feed him every time we go somewhere and I didn't want to clean up the mess that was left behind. He fell asleep halfway through a Ritz cracker. That means there were crumbs all over him and mushed and half sucked on Ritz smeared on his seat. Guess that's going to have to be washed tomorrow.

Finny's 2 bottom teeth are just under the surface of his gums. You can see the white of them, but there isn't anything poking through yet...thankfully!

more videos

When we got home from Fargo, Sarah tried to get Finny to walk with her, but he was so tired that he kept falling to the side. By the time she left, she had him running with her!

Ever since I heard Sarah was coming to visit, I had been trying to teach Finny to say Deah. Sometimes he would say a longer Da, but it was hard to tell he was saying Dada or Deah. He says it once in this video, but still can't tell which one it was. He had such a good time with his Aunt Deah.

surprise, surprise!

I finally got a video on the computer from a CD! I'm so happy that I can start blogging again. It took so long to put this one up though that there will probably only be 1 video per day, but at least you can see what's going on. I'll start by catching everyone up on what happened when Sarah (Aunt Deah) was here a couple of weeks ago.

This video was taken right after she got into Fargo. We went to Denny's and had breakfast. Finny had his second lemon while we were there. He didn't give quite the same reaction that he did the first time he had one (when mom was here), but it was still pretty good.

our not-so-clean child

I was talking to my mom today on the phone when she told me about a friend whose granddaughter's parents never let her get dirty. We started talking about how Matthew and I are not that way at all with Finny and then I thought about all the dirty things that he has already done in his life. Here are a few. He was licked by a horse when he was about 3 weeks old...he was not impressed. He has been licked by many cows...doesn't seem to mind that at all. He's been licked by our cat, Aunt Kristen's dog, and a lamb earlier this week. (He loved the baby lamb!) He's played in the dirt and mud out at the farm...and the mud and dirt have a little more in it at the farm. =) He had a biter biscuit...what a horrible mess that was. He's had banana all over him, his chair, the floor, and me. And his favorite things to play with are shoes...especially Matthew's work boots. For those of you who need to be reminded, Matthew works on a farm with cows. You can only imagine what is on his boots.

We've had several highlights of this week with Finny. The first was Finny standing up on his own twice. I'm amazed that his legs are strong enough to pull his whole body up. The second was earlier in the week when Finny started falling asleep only in his crib. He has been teething for the past week now and earlier on in the week, I was just going to rock him and hold him since he wasn't feeling well. I rocked and walked and sang to him and talked to him, but he wouldn't stay still. Finally, in frustration I put him in his crib. Not a whimper or a cry and he was out. It was a nice moment...since this is ultimately what I've been working toward...but also a sad moment to think that he won't fall asleep in my arms now unless I nurse him to sleep at night. The third highlight was Thursday night when he climbed up a full flight of stairs on his own. I stayed behind him the whole way, but he didn't once look back for support or fall. The fourth highlight is the most fun of all. Finny discovered "running" when Aunt Deah was here and now he can't get enough of it. Thanks to Sarah, Matthew and I now have chronically sore and cramped backs. It's not easy running around...bent over...holding up an almost 20-pound baby. Tonight we tried a new game with Matthew sitting in the living room and Finny and I in the bedroom. I was holding onto Finny's hands while he was standing when Matthew called his name. He took off so fast I had to jump to keep up with him. He ran out of the bedroom and then saw Matthew sitting on the floor calling his name and holding his arms out to him. He laughed and giggled trying to get to Matthew faster each time we did it. We switched and I got to sit on the floor and call for Finny. What a hilarious moment it was when he saw me and started laughing as he was running toward me. We got a few videos of it tonight that I'll try to put up when I catch up with my pictures and videos from the last week and a half.

I'm working on getting another computer going so that I can post pictures and videos. For some reason, my employer doesn't think that posting pictures and videos of my son on Blogger is work related, therefore, they have removed any and all memory from my "new" work computer.