Declan wants to show mommy how excited he is (face to face)!

Soothing little booboos away with a couple of goldfish - yum yum.

I can feed myself! I'm usually 5 for 10 with my veggie puffs and 10 for 10 with the baby goldfish! The more he wants it, the better his aim gets!
The high chair - a gift to all moms! And he loves being able to pick up his own food. It is probably time to retire the trusty old bumbo. :(

I can get my own toys out of the toy box now too! I'm just not as good at helping mommy clean up the toys after I'm done... If I wasn't so fast at everything, mommy would be able to take a picture of me standing without holding on to anything. I'm able to do this for a few seconds before I latch back on but I'm beginning to trust my balance more. Soon enough I'm going to be cruising all over the house without holding on to anything. But no need to rush in to anything right now!

Declan is learning these things so fast, I am having a hard time keeping up with him. I had to go out and buy another gate for the kitchen last week because he discovered how much fun it was to fast crawl into the kitchen and play with the dog food. I would catch him heading that way and call his name. He would look back, give me a sneaky look and a smile and then speed crawl his way into the kitchen. From the video, you can see that now he can only go visit with the puppies and taunt them from the other side of the gate! Watch how fast he comes up to stand with ease - that's only after a week of trying. Now he stand up and sits back down about a hundred times a day.

First Steps!

Here's Declan taking some of his first steps all by himself! He knew how to walk with someone holding on to his hands before he knew how to crawl. Now he has gotten strong enough to push his walker all around the room. He gets so excited and the walker is heavy enough that he actually has to step one of his feet back and dig into the carpet sometimes just to get it to go forward.

Roadtrip to MD

Now that Declan is getting a little older (here he was 9 months), he is finding it more difficult to sit in his carseat for 6 hours while I am driving. We typically take 2-3 breaks along the way and this time he was very cute. I had unbuckled him and while I was getting his snack ready in the front seat I turned around and there was his big beautiful smile staring straight at me. I couldn't help myself but take a few pics. And on top of it all the carseat was making his hair stand up from the static so if you look close you can see his hair standing straight up!

The ice cream pics are from a little mini excursion we took while at Aunt Christina and Uncle Joe's house. He needed a nap and so I took him for a walk in his new umbrella stroller up to the boardwalk. He slept as I walked around the little shops up there and just as we were going to go back he woke up. We decided to stop at one of mommy and daddy's favorite ice cream shops before heading back. He had his first taste of mint chocolate chip and from the looks of it, he liked it just fine! :) He definitely loves his dairy!

Well, this video is a couple of weeks old, but this is Declan just learning to stand up on his own. It only took a few tries and a couple of days to get his pattern down. He had the advantage of seeing all the other kids in his class doing the same thing. I think he was tired of seeing them be able to reach all the cool toys on the top shelf when he had to stick to the bottom shelf toys. At first he had a hard time understanding how to get one of his feet underneath him so he could pull up to a stand from that one foot.

This was a very fun bath. Declan always loves bath time but this time he had quite an audience (Kate, Megan, Nate and Mommy). Before we took him out, I put him on his belly and he instantly went into a frog kick! He did a fantastic job of keeping his head above the water and using his hands and legs to move around the tub. However, his bottom is like a floaty and would lift his whole bottom half of his body and it would float in the water. Future Michael Phelps!

Rub-a-dub-dub - Declan loves the tub!

Are you talking to me?!

Bottoms up! :)

Mommy, you're going to embarrass me with these pictures later, aren't you?
Why, of course, Declan, that's what mommies do!

Splits!

Misc Zoo Pics

Enjoying his stroller ride

Declan was actually more interested in his bottle than this hedgehog but I was able to get him to touch it once.

Bouncy, bouncy...Declan doesn't need a carousel to have a good time. He was bouncing his bottom the whole time he was on this lion statue! so cute :)

Hello birdie! Declan is so strong now that I barely have to hold on to him.

Grrrrrr! Scary lion.