My little Angels

Baby Joe, courtesy of our friend Adriana Baby Joe is now 13 months old and is making great progress with his motor and language skills.  In the last week he has learned how to take a ball and give it back to us and just last night started putting objects in a bag when Rachael asked him to.  He's also a lot more attentive with things like buttons and switches on his toys and knows that pushing certain buttons will activate music or lights on his toys and even anticipates it.  He also dances quite often when music plays from his toys and usually wants Rachael or I to join in the fun.  He has also had his first interaction with chocolate, brie cheese, and a dab of wine and seems to love both - the start of what I'm sure will be the life of a connoisseur of fine foods if he's anything like mom and dad. Baby and Rachael left today to visit his cousin Marissa for the first time and will be there for 3 weeks - I'm very anxious and interested to see what many changes he w

Baby Joe enjoying the Ath Winter Carnival parade Our little Belgian town had a parade to end their winter carnival, which we took the baby out to see before we had cake to celebrate his first birthday with a cake and a Google Hangout with the family.  He enjoyed being outside with the bands going by and was pretty indifferent about his opportunity to get messy with his birthday cake.  He managed to get blue icing all over his face and our laptop but it wasn't the all-out food fight that I had imagined when we planned it. He got a lot of new toys from the family, including his new favorite thing in the world- a little sit and push motorcycle that my mother gave him.  So far he can only go backwards on the thing, but it plays music and he enjoys scooting around the living room and bouncing to the music.  He has also learned to stand on his own and unsupported and has done it for up to about 2 minutes at a time, but still hasn't made the move to start walking just yet. Bab