August Roundup

A few days late, as always!  This is our monthly roundup.  Paul is 17 months now and picking up new words all the time!  This month, especially after some help from his cousins, he mastered "juice", " mine" and "no'.  But by far the best one has been "Mama".  I guess that is my official name now.  I seem to always refer to myself as "Mommy" but I prefer "Mama" so I am so glad that is what he stuck with!  It just melts my heart when I hear him calling for me.  You can tell I'm a big softie.

August was a fun month because Michael had a week off between semesters.  We look forward to those breaks for months!  I will definitely miss them once we move on into the real world.  We spent the week in Pensacola before going to Lake Weiss in Alabama with the Richardson clan (most of them) for Labor Day weekend (blog posts to come!).

Our future also became a little clearer as we found out where we'll spend our last year of optometry school.  The fourth and final year is broken up into three semesters, each one four months.  One of those must be spent at SCO in the Eye Center, for the other two, Michael was able to request locations all over the country.  We decided to check out the rest of Tennessee, so we can say we conquered the whole state.  ;)  So our schedule now:  Memphis until August '14, then Nashville until December '14, finally Knoxville until May '15, which is graduation!  After that, we'll see where we decide to go.

Alright, on to the pictures!

Poor guy managed to pinch his cheek falling somehow.  He had that little bruise for a while.

He thought he was pretty cool eating his snack sitting on top of the table.

His biggest new skill: climbing.  Heights include (but are not limited to): boxes in closet, beds, dining room tables, chairs, couches.

Feeding dad.

Sweet hugs.

Saturday morning cartoons: Curious George.

Typical view throughout the day.  "Why aren't you holding me every second, Mama?!"

If one drawer is open, Sophie will jump in and climb down into a shut drawer to curl up for a peaceful nap.  Sometimes I forget and we discover her a few hours later.  (Don't worry, she loves it!)

Excited to have found Sophie girl!

Table top climbing (we now have the chairs laying down unless we're using them so he can't climb up).

"EH!"  (Translation:  "I got up here but I don't know how to get down so help me now please!")

So one day this happened.  Not sure what he wanted from this.

More climbing.  This was a rough week!

I let him play in the dirt so I could have some peaceful time to chat with Julie.

He was covered in dirt, so obviously we had to get the hose out.

We have the trash can and kitty litter set up in a safe no-Paul zone.  Until now.

He loves hats.

Silly boy.

Newest favorite thing: ICE.  He loves ice and will get a bowl or cup and bring it to the fridge saying, "Ice, ice!"

I think Phoebe is pretty cute, too.  She covered herself in this blanket.

Paul's first car!  Cool car that Grammy got for him.

Washing dishes with Mimi = heaven.

Beach day!

Lake house view.