Drum roll please....

Presenting....BUTTER BELLOT!! (circa 13.5 weeks, 4 weeks bigger now!)

Just a few more

1. Having my own little party with Ema and Lukey during mom's "surprise" birthday party

2. & 3. Hanging out on the hay ride on our class field trip to the pumpkin patch

A few fun ones here and there...

1. One of Sabi's favorite new spots...we got a bassinet 2ndhand for Butter and Sabi loves to clown around in it.

2. Napping on the couch with my toddler-cat buddy Blakmau

3. Eating edamame with chopsticks. Mom almost fell out of her chair at this one. Seriously, I was in GRAD SCHOOL before I figured out how to use chopsticks.

Visit to Dutch Wonderland

Phew! We finally finally found the camera charger...so we could charge the battery...so we could download our old pictures...and NOW we can use the camera (not my phone!) for pictures just in time for Thanksgiving. Here are some late-summer pics. On a lark one Saturday we decided to go to Strasburg, PA (aka heaven for little boy train lovers). Stopped for lunch on the way only to find out it was Day out with Thomas and that wee little town was mobbed. Aha! That's why the normally placid Lancaster traffic was clogged. Soooo, instead we paid a visit to the storied Dutch Wonderland. For those who have seen Shrek, it was a lot like Duloc, kind of a smaller, cheesier, Amish-ish Disneyworld. It was chock full of little guy rides and we had a great time! As you can plainly see in the last picture, our Sabiboy was by far the littlest man on the ride, but it really didn't seem to faze him. I must say the boy is not one to be intimidated by the big kids!

Too-pah-man Mommy!

This year my man just simply could not decide what he wanted to be for Halloween. Thus, we hopped on ebay and bought 2 very cheap costumes that he liked very much. It's always great when the shipping costs more than the item! Anyway, it was nice and warm on Sunday for Boo at the Zoo. I got stuck at a work function, but the boys swung by to see the "aminals". It was too cute to have my two "Supermen" pick me up from work afterward. The second picture is from this morning. You may have heard that the Philadelphia Phillies are in the World Series. In an effort to support Sabi's hometown, we sent him to school in a Phillies shirt, with a red mohawk. Not a great picture, but the best we could do in the morning. Hopefully they'll win tonight and we can do his whole head tomorrow. :)

Technical difficulties

We have some awful darn cute photos on the camera, but the camera battery is deader than dead and the charger is packed away...somewhere. I guess we'd better get that sorted out in time for Halloween this Friday. HOWEVER, Dario was thoughtful enough to buy me an iPhone for my birthday and it takes surprisingly good pictures. Here are some pictures from our trip to Memphis. The whole time we were there, we heard over and over about how we should go to the zoo. We rolled our eyes and wondered how great a zoo in Memphis could be. Well. It. Was. AWESOME. Sabi had an awesome time at the sea lion exhibit. He placed a keychain up to the window and the sea lion went CRAZY following his little hand around. They drew quite a crowd together! Sabi & Daddy also visited a pretty neat Fire Museum and of course we spent some quality time walking down Beale Street. My, that is a far different experience with a toddler than it is young and single!

Greeeeeen Machiiiiiiiiiiine!!

Oh, what a night!

We're still working out the kinks, if you will, of getting Sabi to settle himself and go to sleep in his room in less than...say, 3 hours. Tonight he went through the bedtime routine pretty quickly and without much pain. Hooray for us! I stayed in the office (next to his room) just to make sure he would calm down and sleep ok and he happily (LOUDLY) chatted and chatted and read to himself. After about 20 min., I decided to go downstairs to join Dario and peeked in to make sure he was ok. I spied him sitting next to his bed, reading books to himself. Ok, I thought, no problem, as long as he's safe he'll find a way to "wind down" eventually. Just as I'm thinking this, my little man turns to climb into his bed and I notice...no diaper, no pants, just a bare butt! Alas, I intervened, explained why it's important to wear pants to bed, settled him back into bed. The chatting got quieter. After about 10 minutes, D & I were almost ready to congratulate ourselves on a successful bedtime. D went to check in and, well, this is what he found...NO idea where the green marker came from!!!

More Michigan...

A few more from our trip. Note the last picture, in front of East Quad (wahoo! 407 EQ Cooley!!). The dear, darling husband is wearing a "Vamos Azul" shirt (Go Blue) and son wearing "Tigers fan". Yeah, we tried to dress the part.

Homecoming!

So we don't have a lot of pictures...most of those are on Tia Ali's camera, but we made a big drive to Michigan in mid-August to see Thomas the Train visiting Crossroads Village. As luck would have it, Jim, Kisandra, Gabe & Katelynn were visiting, too! So we saw lots of family and had lots of fun. The weather was unbelievably nice and Sabi was surprisingly tolerant of the loooong trip in the car.

Big boy room!

Someone's got a big boy room!

Thanks to Carrie, Jeff, Nico & Amy, Dario and I were able to put finishing touches on what used to be the office and is now Sabi's Big Boy room! (ahem, pictures of the office when it comes together in...oh, a year or so) We picked up a toddler bed on freecycle and Sabi picked out a color to paint it (Dragon Fire Orange!!). THen, we got a little crazy with the wall decals and...voila! Thanks, also, to Carrie for the door letters.

Just two more, I can't resist!

1. Sabiboy and his "wife" Lauren at school (shh...don't tell his girlfriends he's married)

2. Feeding his kitty friends. Given how much he likes to feed the cats, it's surprising they're not 50 lbs. each by now!

Horsin' around

1. Having fun at the Pennsylvania Folk Festival

2. Mr. Sage surprised us one day by climbing out of his crib after the nap and clomping downstairs in these boots. We've had them forever, he's suddenly interested in them! Note that they are on the wrong feet and his little compatriot, Blakmau, is posing with him for the picture. (FYI-the other 2 kitties found a home. We adopted Blakmau (named, of course, by Sabi). We tried calling him Noche, but Sage insisted on calling him Blakmau).

3 & 4. Practicing his cowboy moves.

At the zoo with Ollie

We had a fun morning a few weeks back at the zoo with our friend Ollie. Ollie has a super special membership to the zoo so Sabiboy got to ride a camel with his buddy for free!