My Da-Doo

Happe Faders Day, Da-Doo.

I wuv yoo. -Reagan

PS. Mama helpd me wif dis.

She thenks yor grate too.

Summer Fun

My friend Dana has planned a fun activity for every Wednesday this summer. So each week a group of moms gets together to take our kids somewhere in Houston to enjoy the town. Last week we went to Nottingham Spray Park. The sun was out (as always), so we plastered on the sunblock and set our children loose. Reagan just stood by my side for about 10 minutes watching the bigger kids running around in the water. Then, he just waded on in and joined the chaos. I can't wait to see what is on schedule for next Wednesday.

Bike Ride to Remember

I went for a bike-ride with Reagan at Brazos Bend State Park this weekend. We have seen alligators there in the past, so I was hoping to see some sunning themselves on the bank of the island in the lake. To my surprise, they were not being laying 30 yards away, but just feet from the bike path. I stopped several times to take pictures and didn't even need to zoom in on the toothy lizards. I rode up on a 6 foot animal, and just before I got to him, he stood up, walked right across the path in front of me and slid into the mossy pond. It took a little while for me heart to slow down after that.

Do you see the monster?

Duathlon Dismount

Mark placed 2nd in a recent duathlon. At the end of his 48 mile cycle, I caught his bicycle dismount on video. He's coasting in for the last few meters with both legs on one side of the bike until he comes to the dismount spot where he can jump off and start running. And you'll see that by the time he comes rolling in that he already has his feet out of the shoes. I wish I could have recorded him as he continued to run towards transition where he shelved his bike, put on his running shoes and took off for the final 5 mile run.

He's Walking!

What does it take to motivate a child to walk? Well for Reagan, it was a neighbor kid who was watering his lawn with a hose. Reagan and Mark were in the driveway about a month ago when Reagan saw the spraying water. So he took about 20 steps across the driveway and walked onto the grass where our neighbor was. We hadn't seen Reagan take any steps unless we were pushing him back and forth between us, and even with the forced walking, we had only seen 2 or 3 steps at a time. So we were shocked to see him walking across different, uneven surfaces. But Reagan enjoyed his new skill only for that day and then returned to exclusive crawling for a week. The day before my parents came to visit, he turned on the steps again and walked with Grandma and Grandpa through the airport to welcome them to Houston.

Sorry that the video is sideways. I tried without success to correct it. Enjoy.

Reagan is into everything these days. He loves to pull out all of the tupperware from my kitchen cabinets, empty all of the DVDs onto the floor, pull out the toys from the toy box, unroll toiletpaper, scatter towels from the bathroom drawers and just make a mess in general. And he's begun to hide things. The other day I couldn't fine my violin tuner. Reagan loves to play with it because it clicks to different speeds. So I gave up looking for it and just waited for it to appear. Sure enough, a few days later I found it in the bathroom in a drawer with the spare toilet paper. Reagan also loves to stack things. Mark found him trying to stack his cheerios the other morning. So here's a photo of the tower of blocks that he built a few weeks ago.

Finding his Nebraska roots?

We're not in the midwest. It's the Houston livestock show and rodeo. We went with a bunch of friends to see the livestock. But Reagan was still oblivious to chickens, rabbits and goats. He just watched all the kids around his stroller the whole morning.