Catching you up on...oh, not a whole lot

Yeah, this last week or so hasn’t been too terribly exciting. I am enjoying a new bookshelf from IKEA (we needed more baby-can’t-reach-YET shelves), and we raked the leaves from our yard, which was much needed. But our time lately has just been full of feeding, changing, and chasing our little rascal of a baby. Man, can he eat! And he’s using a sippy cup part of the time now, with watered-down apple juice. Frank and I are really going to have to start sitting at the dining table to eat, because when we are on the couch Zach comes and tries to steal our food, no matter what it is. Oh, and he is starting to stand for a few seconds on his own, usually when his attention shifts and he doesn’t realize he’s let go. With that, and him essentially walking while pushing the highchair and kitchen chairs, real walking can’t be far off. Though if it happens in the next six weeks we may keep it a secret from some of you ;)

I took this photo a few weeks ago and just decided to make it my desktop. He’s really adorable when he’s just gotten up from a nap.

And in case any of you were worried about our sanity, we've been able to get caught up on just about all of our favorite American television shows. Oh, yeah!

What does a monkey say?

Happy Halloween, everybody!
(or possibly, "Mama, get me out of this!)

Officially less than a month...

...until our little Zachary turns 1! We haven't weighed him lately, so I'll have to get back to you on that one, but he is getting into everything now. Cabinets, bookshelves, the trash, behind the tv, and he even went into the downstairs bathroom this morning and turned on the heater. Ahhhhh! You know what I want for Christmas? The ability to sit and drink a cup of coffee before it gets cold!

There's definitely a reason they are so darn cute...

A short baby update

Tooth #2 is coming in right next to #1.

A belated happy anniversary to us

We are feeling so proud that we actually got out and did something to celebrate our wedding anniversary (8!), instead of using the time to sleep or veg on the couch. Frank took off work last Friday, and we took Zach to daycare so we could have a few hours to ourselves. We hopped on the metro and visited the famed Brussels Atomium (yeah, we hadn't heard of it either), which turned out to be kinda cool. It was constructed for the World Fair in 1958 and was designed by Andre Waterkeyn to represent an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. You can go up inside of it.

It was something to do, and an excuse to play around with the camera, although the metro ride there and back took longer than anything else. We did stop off downtown for some lunch...at a Chi Chi's. We couldn't resist the call of Tex Mex and were okay with it because we weren't expecting much. Just a nice day out for the two of us.

Have I mentioned that I'm taking a photography class?

Oh, what a sweet face!

This photo was taken while practicing for an online beginner photography class I'm taking at Jessica Sprague's website. In the past month I have learned about shutter speed, aperture, manual mode, metering, lighting, white balance, ISO, focus, and I've gotten so much advice about equipment, etc. I've really gotten to know my camera--I know what almost all the buttons do now!

The only editing I did on this photo was to adjust the white balance in Photoshop. The light in the kitchen was perfect, and I'm loving the 50 mm f/1.8 lens. Can you see his little tooth?

Time for another tour

Well, I said I was going to find time for this today, no matter what it took, and because it is getting late there won't be a lot of detailed descriptions. But that's the beauty of photos, isn't it? So to those of you who have been dying to see our place with all our stuff in it--here it is! And someday when I look back at this blog entry I will be glad I documented the place where we live.

Let's start upstairs...
This is our bedroom.

The bathroom is right across from our room.

I finally cleaned the guest bedroom, which is also where some of our clothes and stuff reside.


Zach's room is just the right size...

Now we go downstairs...
The kitchen. If you notice the tigger (a placemat) near the bottom, that is Zach's shelf of toys, which are cookie tins and silicone cake pans :) Anything to try to keep him out of the trash and recycling.

I don't think you could consider this a man"cave" since there is an abundance of light. But it's a pretty sweet office. And there is a bathroom too. I'm sure there are times when Frank wishes he was down in the basement though.

Now the living room/playroom/dining room/Beth's creative space...

Well, hope you enjoyed the tour. Goodnight!