Nine Months!

I must admit, I'm rather ashamed at how late you are receiving this post. I appreciate your patience, and I haven't received too much hate mail for my delay. I shall not make excuses, but I will make mention of the fact that my Dad is out of the country and has been since May 11 [the day after my 9 month birthday]. In our day and age, there is this little invention called Skype. It allows you to video chat with someone, no matter where they are, as long as they have an internet connection. This being said, Mom always is on the computer. Okay, maybe not always, but most of the time. [Are you catching my drift of why it's been hard for a guy to get a few quiet moments alone with the computer?]

But that's enough of that. Let's move on to what you're really here to read about. Mom better be glad I have an excellent memory...

I guess the biggest achievement of the month was that I left the army crawl behind. As manly as I felt, hands and knees have become much more efficient.


Now that this has happened, I am ALL OVER THE PLACE. Things are getting moved, doors are getting closed, and my parents are learning that the Pughplex wasn't as "babyproof" as they thought. I prefer the term, "Haddon proof," though. It makes me sound more legit.

I'm still barreling on behind that walker of mine. Unfortunately, I don't have an up to date video of the progress I've made, but for the sake of getting this post to the public, I'll impress you with my skills at another time.




As I predicted in my last post, my top two teeth have come through with full force [and quite a bit of space in between!]. The first one broke through on March 30th and the second followed exactly a week later on the 7th. I haven't been too cranky about them. I'm actually rather proud and smiley.

Rocking the bed head in this one!

These teeth have come in handy when my Mom decided to introduce some finger foods. Surprisingly I don't like any of the puffs or cheerios or anything. They're just too small... I prefer something I can take a chunk out of. Lately, my favorites are Baby Mum Mums and some Happy Munchies rice cakes. I'm trying the Mum Mums in the video below [I eat them much more assertively these days].



I also did lots of traveling in month 9 [I think that's going to be the theme of my summer]. We got to spend some time in Decatur and Florence to meet my new cousin— Baby Cohen!!!!!

Mom said that I used to be that small. Can you believe it? Being around him sure made me feel big.

The picture above is my favorite. I look like a giant!! Don't worry, I'm a friendly beast.

He looked like he needed some help with his seat belt. I showed him how it works.

I had to size him up.

He passed the Haddon test.

I also got to show him how to take a good nap in his car seat. He was a great pupil.

We also got to visit Big Papa [or "Poppy" as Cousin Emma calls him] at his new home.

Here we are! Cousin Emma was in Indianapolis, so I didn't get to play with her :(

His walker was so much cooler than mine!

We also got to spend some time in Tuscaloosa. Here are some of my Big Daddy bonding shots...

One of my favorite things about this past month was our vacation trip to Gatlinburg. It was supposed to be a Lakeview staff retreat for Dad, but that ended up getting cancelled. Thankfully, we still had rooms booked, so we went anyway! It was so good to have that family time before Dad headed off to the Middle East.

I experienced another first in Gatlinburg— the pool! I thought it was going to be awesome [Mom did too, since I love the bath so much]. Look how excited I was before we got in...

Well, then we got in...


Maybe it was the cold water, maybe it was how big and overwhelming it seemed, but something had me a little wigged out.  Don't worry, I'll try it again sometime. This was just not the day to have fun in the pool.

It didn't take much for Dad to cheer me up after the semi-traumatic experience.

Speaking of traumatic, I got quite the head injury during our vacation as well. We were at a restaurant and I decided to do a little acrobatics in my carrier seat that was balancing on top of a highchair [I will say the supervision on Mom's part was lacking a bit]. Before I knew it, I was flipping out on the floor. I'm not sure what hit my forehead, but something sure did.

Thankfully we had already finished up our meal, so the commotion caused was minimal. Poor Mom. She was so sad...

We've all recovered though and it's definitely the last thing I remember from our wonderful trip. Can you believe the next family vacay is going to be in Paris? I'll be turning 10 months over there, so my next blog post might be quite a doozy! Hopefully I'll be a little more punctual on that one— at least I'll have a 6 [or seven?] hour head start!

Thanks for wanting to know how I'm doing. I love my readers!

Grace to ya [Dad helped me come up with a new sign off],
Haddon

9 month check-up stats—

[5.14.13]
> 18 lbs. [25th percentile]
> 28 inches long [25th percentile]
> Head circumference of 18" [50th percentile]

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Yes, I went there. I let Shakespeare put into words what I experienced today. We sent this handsome man off today.

No, not Haddon :) I dropped Kam off in Atlanta today for his METS orientation. For those of you that don't know, Kam is going on a Middle East Travel seminar (hence, "METS") for three weeks. This is a trip that involves students from a handful of seminaries and our Kameron was selected to be one of those participants!

He's now in Stone Mountain, GA for a couple of days of orientation and then will fly out on Monday. This trip will include time in Jordan, Israel, and Greece. It really is the trip of a lifetime, but we'd be silly to think it won't be hard around here without him. Pray for our family! We do want to redeem the time and know the Lord has ordained these next three weeks, just as He has every day of our life. No pity parties allowed!

We were blessed to be able to have some vacation time in Gatlinburg this past week, so we were very thankful for a sweet family getaway before Kam headed out. [Shout out to the Speths for their timeshare hookup!]

Haddon and I will both miss snuggling with this guy, but at least we get to reconvene in Paris! For those of you that don't know, as a part of Kam's internship at Lakeview, we'll be spending 3 weeks in Paris. Haddon and I will fly over and meet Kam on June 3rd and we'll return on the 24th. So I can't complain too much ;)

When I googled the Shakespeare quote to make sure I had the wording right [so I wouldn't look like an idiot trying to sound romantic], dictionary.com provided me with this fabulous definition:

A line from the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare; Juliet is saying good night to Romeo. Their sorrowful parting is also “sweet” because it makes them think about the next time they will see each other.

Paris certainly will be sweet, Mr. Pugh! I'll leave you with another cheesy line...

P.S. I realize a certain someone's 9 month birthday has come and gone. There will be a post from that cute little guy, just not sure how timely it will be!