Matthew end of Sept. - Nov.

Matthew (and Jay) on Halloween at our Elementary School Carnival. He was a giraffe this year, but he hated the hood, so we never did get a picture of him happy or smiling in his costume except when he feel asleep in his stroller while we were trick or treating down town and his giraffe head was next to his face. He also loves to take his socks off, so we are always missing at least one. I think he might be eating his toes in this one.

Mom and Matthew outside our front door. Spencer is loving taking pictures these days. Every time I turn around he has taken the camera and is snapping pictures of something. The funniest is when he puts the movie feature on and does the commentary as he shows you around the house. Spencer actually took this picture (one of the few that we kept)...what did we ever do before digital cameras...oh yeah, we would pay to develop the roll and find out that all the pictures were of the floor, out the window, some you couldn't even figure out what they were and waste a whole roll of film.

This was the day of Matthew's first haircut (before and after). I have never had to cut any of my kids hair before their 1st birthday, but I just couldn't stand it any more. He was really tired, but we took a couple of inches off around his ears and evened it up everywhere else. He is actually ready for his second haircut any day now.

I love this picture! We had a barbeque when Jay got back from his trips in late Sept. and this was Matthew playing on a blanket while dinner was cooking.

Matthew is now 11 1/2 months! Where has the time gone? We are busy trying to keep up with him these days as he is into everything and crawling all over. He cut two teeth this week making a total of 5, three on the top, two on the bottom. He absolutely loves balls and "passing" them back and forth to you. We think he may want to be a drummer because he loves beating everything in time, which is great until we go to church and he is pounding on the doors and chairs in Sunday school;) He has also found the piercing, shrill scream that so many little ones are so fond of. He's pretty proud of it...it's driving the rest of us sort of nuts! Needless to say, we are spending most of our hours at church in the hall or mother's room. It is going to be a long 6 months until he can go to nursery.

He says dada for sure and knows exactly who that is...he adores Jay and lights up every time he comes in the room. He's quite stingy on saying mom and reserves that to once a week or so when he knows that nobody else around will meet his needs as quickly and accurately as he needs them to. He also says tickle, uh-oh, peek-boo, Jesus, and a lot of other things we don't always understand. He started clapping recently, too. He is trying to walk around the furniture and we've only had a few mishaps with falling and hitting his head on the vast expanse of tile floor in our house. We can't believe he will be one in a few weeks! We'll post some more then.