Andrea and Shawn's 10 year anniversary!

Ten years ago today, Shawn and Andrea met in Springfield, MO. We met the second week of college, and we've been together ever since. Shawn was roommates with one of Andrea's high school friends, and on September 3rd 1998 we all went out to a club to party up. Shawn didn't pay much attention to Andrea at first until Andrea took the initiative and pinched his butt a few times! Thankfully Shawn took the hint and married that pretty girl!

Here are a couple pictures we took shortly after we met in Andrea's dorm room:



Connor's glad that Mommy pinched Daddy's butt 10 years ago! Yay Mommy!

Connor is 18 months old!

Connor turns 18 months old on September 2nd! He's been growing up fast recently. His level of language understanding constantly surprises us, however he's still not interested in using words to communicate back with us. He speaks in full sentences, typically he utters 4-6 syllables when he communicates, but they don't really seem to be words we're familiar with. Maybe Chloe knows what he's saying, but we don't yet.



He's also gotten pretty good with a spoon. This morning he fed himself an entire cup of yogurt all by himself. It was pretty darn impressive. We got a couple pictures and even this little video:



Mommy also taught Connor a little bit of sassiness. He loves exchanging dirty looks with her. He'll drop his chin, pout his lips and will scowl. It's pretty hilarious. He does it in this video, but it's not the sassiest look we've seen. He's a natural at it, it must run in the genes he got from Mommy.



Yesterday we had Andrea's family over, and Connor really enjoyed playing in the kiddie pool that Aunt Amanda got him. It's the shape of a shark and it squirts water. Very fun stuff. Thanks Auntie!



Connor also chowed down on marshmallows. Uncle Nathan was shooting them with a slingshot, and although Chloe ended up eating the most, Connor liked them too.

(There's actually a marshmallow at the very top of this picture!)


Nathan was trying to catch them in his mouth, and I think he managed to catch one all day... it was windy, so he had a little bit of an excuse, but he still let everyone down and ruined the entire day. Thanks for nothing Uncle Nate!

Stickers!

Connor had fun today playing with stickers. He played with a whole sheet of them until they all ran out of stickiness.

He's also been having fun riding his car around the house. We moved almost everything up from the downstairs living room to the room on the main floor of our house. It's much handier since the kitchen's on the same level and there are a lot less stairs to go up and down. We even stored away our big red rug that's usually under the kitchen table so there would be more area for him to ride around on his car. We moved rooms a few weeks ago and we've really enjoyed the change so far.

Fun at the neighborhood playground

Connor really loves playing at our neighborhood's playground. He's gotten pretty good at going up and down the stairs, going down the slide, and doing almost all of it on his own.

Happy birthday Nate and Amanda

We visited Grandpa and Grandma Anders today to celebrate Uncle Nathan's and Aunt Amanda's birthdays. Connor had an awesome time in the kiddie pool again and ate an entire cupcake by himself.

You'll notice a scrape on Connor's head in these pictures. Connor had been playing in the driveway this last week in his Little Tikes car. (Picture of Connor in the car ) Well, he'd fallen through the area where his feet should be (if he'd been playing with it properly) and was stuck. He started telling us about it "Na-Na-Na-Na-Na", and Mommy told Daddy to help him since I was closest. I am of the opinion that if he gets himself into a situation, he should actively work to get himself out of it. Stubbornly, I sat down in the driveway and told Connor to work on it himself. A few seconds later, Andrea jumped up and said: "It's tipping over!". We both went to save him, but it was too late. Connor had gotten sprawled over the edge of the car trying to free himself, and in (what seemed like) slow motion, the car and Connor toppled over headfirst onto the concrete. I think Daddy was the one who learned his lesson with this one. And that lesson is: Be sure Mommy's watching the baby more closely.


Pool party:


Cupcake!


Yummmm....


A side note, since it was so disgusting it was hard to believe. Chloe was playing in the yard unsupervised and came trotting over to Shawn a little while later. We were appalled to notice that she had managed to cover almost her entire body in feces. She'd found a huge pile of it (probably the neighbor dog's) and rolled in it until it was stuck in her hair from her thighs, to her back, to her collar, to her head. Unbelievable. She's starting to become more of a pain to supervise than Connor. She ended up getting a hose-down, then a double cleaning outside from head to toe.

We snapped a quick picture of her before the cleaning, it's hard to see all of the poop on her, mostly you can see a big clump of it on her hind leg in this picture. It's really all over her. Horrid...

St. Louis Visit

This post is a bit late, but wanted to mention that we went to see Grandma and Grandpa last week in St. Louis. We had a good time visiting with the Grandparents as well as the Great Grandparents. We watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics and mostly just had a pretty relaxing weekend. Only took a few pictures the whole time, so not much to share picture-wise.

Connor is 17 months old!

Connor turned 17 months old this weekend. Not a whole lot of interesting news aside from that.

Mommy decided that sitting on the couch and eating cookies was a good idea, and Connor was pretty happy with that. Since he's a pro at drinking through a straw, we got him a new straw style cup this week: