The Art of the High-Five

Clearly, every little kid needs to know how to high-five, and as Titus' Dad, I feel a particular burden to help him learn this crucial social skill at an early age. How about less than 10 months? Not bad, Baby T!! Daddy

New furniture... or toys??

We had two major deliveries yesterday that we've been planning to purchase for over a year now...





Graham and I are excited for the look and the chance to finally play a piano again! Titus thinks we got him some HUGE toys!! He loves to play the piano and to hear it be played and he loves to pull himself up on the chairs and bang away like they're drums. Pretty cute. He is loving them almost as much (or more?) than we are. Furniture purchases for the house are hopefully complete now... now we just have to finish decorating the last couple of rooms :)

Gardening

One of the most exciting things about buying a house for me was knowing that one day we could have a garden. We moved in a bit too late to start one last year, but we got on the ball this year... If you've been following the Dreschers' blog, you've seen James detail out the steps. Basically, we decided to go with the Square Foot Gardening method and so far are happy (but it's a little early to tell what the harvest will be like ;))

The hardest part was probably getting the supplies and then building and filling the boxes. My big, strong handsome man did most of this work for us - here are some pics of the beginning stages:

The box:


Mixing the soil and filling the boxes:




After several weeks of planting (spacing them out for a longer harvest), here are the boxes now:




And our herbs (and some flowers):


And the newly mulched back yard - thanks to my dad:

Celebrations

We had the chance to go to Clifton Forge this past weekend for many celebrations. The original intent was to surprise Graham's brother, Chris, for his birthday (at the end of May), but since we decided on this weekend, we realized we could also celebrate his dad's birthday, Mother's Day AND Ben's (our newest nephew) dedication. It was a lot of partying in 24 hours :) We had a great time. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Brothers and sons:


Titus' tree (Jerry has named a tree on their property after each kid, spouse and grandkid - they have that many trees!):


Titus and Grandma:


The Taj Garage (this is the newest addition to the Clark home - it gets its name because the garage alone is probably bigger than most of the homes on the block :)):


And some family shots by the mountains:

Nine Months

On April 29 (Karin's Birthday), Titus turned 9 months old! I can't believe he's already nine months old. This is my favorite stage yet - I love chasing him around and seeing him discover so many new things... even just little things like drawers, cabinets, windows, mirrors, etc. What a joy. And the best part is his little giggle every time he finds something or pulls himself up on something or learns how to squirt something or make something make noise (especially music) - his giggling starts when he wakes up and continues until his next nap - it's such a wonderful background noise :) I honestly can't imagine something else I'd rather listen to so often.

Here are his nine month pics:

First Haircut

Titus had his first haircut a couple of weeks ago... the toupee had just gotten to me and I had to take care of it. I have to say, I expected it to be much harder to cut a baby's hair than it was. With Graham to hold him and using the same settings I use for Graham, I was able to do it quickly and easily. Here is a before and after shot:

Before:


After: