Long time, no blog...sorry for the delay! Let's see...alot has happened in the last month. (warning - long blog post follows!) First of all, there was Halloween. As you saw in the last posting, Matty went as Yoda. We didn't end up going out trick or treating since Matty is too young to eat most of the candy, and Juan and I sure don't need it! Instead, we took pictures with pumpkins and took Matty to the park.

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

As you probably guessed, if you click on the "Halloween and Thanksgiving" link below any of the pictures, you'll go to our Picasa album that has more pictures than what I posted here.

And, here's a video of Yoda in action...




Not too much happened in the first part of November, but the week before Thanksgiving, I had to go to Seattle for work for 3 nights. This was my first time ever spending a night away from Matty. On one hand, I was REALLY looking forward to THREE nights in a row with no baby monitor! But I knew I would miss the little guy (which I did of course). I had a good trip and knew Matty was in good hands - Juan's mom came to visit for the week to help out. So, Matty got to stay home from "school" for the week and enjoy 1x1 attention from his grandma. What could be better than that?

After I got back and before Juan's mom had to go back to El Paso, we all went to the zoo. Juan got some really good pictures of the animals - check them out!

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

Next, we were off to El Paso for Thanksgiving. Juan's sister Darcy and his mom cooked up a strom and put on a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. We enjoyed seeing all of the family and eating to our heart's content. Matty had a GREAT time playing with Darcy's daughter Jasmine who is only 6 weeks older than he is. It was super cute to watch them running around after each other.

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

From Halloween and Thanksgiving

And, we owe a big thank you to Juan's brother David and soon-to-be sister-in-law Isabel for hosting us for the weekend. I don't know how they managed to get any sleep after 6:30am when Matty woke up every day. His "inside voice" is not exactly quiet.

Now, we're getting ready for Christmas! For the first time in several years, we actually put up a tree. Check out Matty and the tree below. He's actually been pretty good about leaving it alone. It only took a couple of times saying "no touch!" before he got the message. But, we'll see how long that lasts...there's still alot of time before Christmas.



And, of course, Matty is doing all kinds of new things. He can show us where his nose, ears and belly button are, he can imitate a gorilla, and tell us what the owl says. He says a few words now. We think "duck" was the first word that he actually used pretty consistently toward the correct object. Other than duck, he also says "Dadda", "Momma", "shoes", and "uh oh". He really likes to say "uh oh". Especially when he drops anything from his highchair - accidental or not.

And, as always...a few vidoes.

Falling asleep while drinking his milk...


Crazy baby!


Playing laundry basket boat with Aunt Darcy and cousin Jasmine