What's up Mason?

• Mason is about 13 months.  (At what point do you stop saying months?  Many times I just say "he's 1" because I'm too lazy to be exactly accurate, and really, noone but family cares about the accuracy. :)

• He weighs nearly 23 pounds.  Forgot how long he is.  He wears 9 month, 12 month, and 18 month clothing....depending on the brand and style of clothing...and what I decide to squeeze him into so I feel his clothing gets adequate wear for what we pay for it!

• He loves to open our dishwasher and play with silverware (um, not safe) and close the dishwasher and START IT (um, it was only half full son!  And there's no soap in there!)  We need to get a babyproofing latch for our dishwasher or something.  I got the idea to do a ghetto/cheap fix and tape a paper cup over the twisty-knob thingy that starts it, but of course he promptly tore it off and is now chewing the cup to bits.

• It took him relatively long to learn to crawl in the tradition manner, but he learned to walk fairly quickly at about 11 months.  His teeth were relatively slow coming in, but then a whole bunch came in at once (that was a fun couple of weeks).  

• He likes to play "fetch."  And can shake your hand.  And cries at the door when he wants to go out.  Add in the fact that he still chews up everything in sight, and he now has all the skills of a golden retriever!

• He can say "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba..." and "da-da-da-da-da..." and "ga-ga-ga-ga-ga..." and may as well be able to say "NO!" because he vehemently shakes his head "no" whenever he doesn't want something.  Which I don't know where he learned that....because Marcos and I haven't modeled that.

• Likes trying new foods (sometimes) and especially LOVES yogurt.  Like, I get him to eat tons of veggies by coating them in yogurt.  (Ever tried carrot yogurt?  Mmmm....)  He also loves bread.  That's my carb-lovin' boy!  I put a piece of whole wheat bread in a plastic bag and carry it around as a snack for him.  I'm all for it!  What a cheap/easy/healthy snack.

• He is so curious and mischievious!  And whenever he gets into something he shouldn't and I sternly say "No no Mason!" he thinks it's the funniest thing in the world and does it even more.  LoL.  Troublemaker, dude!

• We leave our shoes by the front door to try to save our carpet, and every single day ALL day Mason picks up all our shoes and carries them around everywhere sucking on the bottoms.  Yeah, gross, I know.  I'm kind of over it.  The other day I needed to find his shoes so we could go out, and after thorough searching, I found one by my bed and the other in the pots and pans drawer under our oven.  And when taking out our last load of laundry from the drier we found one of his shoes with our whites.  Well, at least he's got one clean shoe!

• He loves books.  He loves playdates.  He loves being outside.  

• You will nearly always see him with his left sock on and right sock off.  Don't know what he has against a sock on his right foot, but he always pulls it off!

• He is usually constantly moving and squirming around, but if you whisper in his ear, he freezes and listens intently and thinks it's funny.  Don't know why!

Duck Pond

One of the things we did for Labor Day this year was go to the nearby, beautiful, relaxing duck pond.  Mason really likes to observe the ducks and geese, and valiantly struggles to break free from my grasp so he can walk straight into the water to play with them.  I kindly try to explain to him that the water is "yucky," which I'm pretty sure he interprets as "fantastically fun and forbidden."

Mason's 1st Birthday!

 I can't believe my baby is 1 already!  It's one of those things where it feels like just yesterday and like forever ago at the same time.  We were so happy to have so much family present at Mason's party...including both sets of Grandparents!  It was so fun to have a little family party...thank you to all who were able to attend!

"Mason" opening presents.

 

He got lots of really fun gifts that he loves and plays with all the time!

 

 

Then came the cake and the Happy Birthday song....

...and the poor little guy didn't know how to handle all the attention.

 (Don't worry Mason, it's hard for all of us!)

 While Mason recovered from being celebrated, Tracy took the liberty of blowing out the candle (way to go Trace).

 He got a lot happier when we gave him some cheesecake.  He's not one to dive right into new things, so he decided the best tactic would be to poke around a bit to test it out.

 It seemed safe enough, so then he daintily poked some pieces until they stuck to his finger and finally ate some.

 He took his cake eating quite seriously while relishing in the new, rich flavor.

 "Oh man....this is SO GOOD.  Why have I not eaten this before?!"

Happy Birthday little man.  We love you so much!

My Alter Ego

So.....

I've recently started a completely separate blog that just discusses what it's like to be the wife of a medical student.  Call it a therapeutic avenue.

So, this will be my family/baby blog, and the other has a little more "me-ness" where I can share my feelings and experiences relating to our life situation right now.

So.....if you would like to live through medical school vicariously via my other blog, add it to your list.  Read it, comment on it, follow it.....

.....is it silly that I'm kinda reluctant to share it?  It's a lot more personal than this blog....but it would also be nice to post to actual friends I know instead of posting to the unknown internet--

--which by the way, I made my other blog open to everyone and searchable, so that other medschool wives or anyone interested can find it and hopefully gain something from it.  Hence, I've used nicknames for myself and my family.  It kinda makes me laugh, actually.

Let's see what her new blog looks like

Napa: Week 1

Well, we live in Napa now, and so far we really like it (despite the major con of being too far from family!).  But it is so beautiful here....so lush and green with trees everywhere.  And the weather is heavenly and reminds me of San Diego weather.  It's nice, because there are grape vineyards reminiscent of Marcos' hometown of Fresno, and rolling hills that remind me of my hometown of San Marcos.

Today we visited Napa's premuim outlet mall, which is a lovely outdoor mall with lots of high-end shopping outlets....not that I shop at any of these places regularly, but it was really fun to walk around the nice mall.  I did like the Gap outlet, though, and if I had money I'd take advantage of their awesome deals.  We even saw tour buses that take loads of tourists to this outlet mall.  It was a lovely place to window shop and walk Mason in his stroller, and it's less than 10 minutes away from us.

 Our apartment complex has a really nice little playground we take Mason to, and he loves it!  He really likes this wall of rolling wheels.

And this spinning knob thing that barely qualifies as a toy but that kept him entertained for about 15 minutes.

Sliding with Mommy!

Peek-a-boo!

Sliding with Aunt Tracy!

Sliding with Daddy!

Monkeying around on the monkey bars.  Such a fun playground...and it's so nice that it takes us like 2 minutes to walk there.  Looking forward to many fun times here!

4th of July 2010

To celebrate the 4th this year, we drove up on the 3rd to Shaver Lake to watch fireworks with Marcos' family.  How cute are we with our matching 4th of July shirts?!

Marcos' family hands out glow sticks to all the kids right before it gets dark, which is super fun for them and I think a smart way to keep track of kids in the dark.  Mason liked playing with one for a while.

But I soon replaced it with another toy, cuz he would totally chew right through that glow stick.  Bad news.  I like his "duck lips" while studying his toy.

Then came the fireworks!  It was really cool to watch the fireworks with the reflections off of the lake.  What was even more impressive was the resounding BOOM that echoed and rumbled through the mountains with each display. 

It was so much fun, and Mason wasn't even afraid of the fireworks like he is with other loud things (i.e. the blender, vacuum, etc).  He sat and watched intently the whole time.  I was so happy and had a great time!

Update

So, I guess I should post an update on here for those who didn't get the annoucement on Facebook......Marcos recently got accepted to medical school at Touro University in Vallejo, CA.  We're moving next Saturday, the 24th to a lovely apartment in Napa....not too far from Marcos' school.  Napa is beautiful and smells like the ocean and is a nicer area than most of Vallejo.  It'll only be like a 30 minute commute for Marcos....not too bad.

We are really excited and so grateful he got into medical school, because we were absolutely dreading the thought of having to apply again if this first time didn't work out.  It is an exhausting, grueling, expensive process!  So we are so grateful for this tremendous blessing and opportunity.  We are sad to leave all our Fresno family and friends, but we're not too far away. 

P.S.  How weird is it that I did a post with no baby pictures?!?!  wow.