Alex's First Hair Cut

Dan thought the baby curls were cute. However, he doesn't hang out with Alex all day and have people ask how Will likes his baby sister. He didn't go trick-or-treating with Alex and have the neighbors ask "Does she want a treat too?" And, when Will says, "Alex", it usually sounds like "Alice." Plus, Alex can be both a boy's name and a girl's name.

So we took Alex for his first haircut last night. Will didn't have quite as much hair as Alex and managed to wait until 13 months to get a hair cut. Alex was more than ready at 10 1/2 months. He remained calm throughout the entire procedure.

During

After

Other random Alex developmental facts:
I put Alex in real shoes today, not just those soft soled leather ones. He did ok, wandering around the playground and not falling over too much.

Alex has six teeth with 4-6 more coming in. His sever teething pain gave us a long, loud weekend of refusing to nurse. He feels better now.

Alex's favorite word is "down." Yes, most babies learn words for objects around them. Alex decided to go with the action concept. He drops things off his high chair and says, "down." He listens when I tell him to sit "down" in the bathtub. He holds things up, then throws them down and says, "down." Can he say other words, yes. He does ma-ma, dad, banana, melon, hi, bye, apple, more, duckie, ball, and blanket (sort of). But really, the best one is "down."

Dressing up Boys

I have 2 boys. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. One particular disadvantage is that I don't get to shop for ruffled, cute, sequined outfits to dress the kids up in a cute way (or was this an advantage?). That's really the primary reason we "celebrate" Halloween. It is my chance to dress up the super cute kids in super cute outfits.

But then there is a problem... I'm not terribly creative. Yeah, sure, I could browse the internet looking for cute costumes to buy that complement each other, or I could depend on Robin, the more creative one, to figure it out for me.

When Will was 6 months old, Robin made him a cute little ninja costume. A year later, we re-did ninja, but he wouldn't wear the ninja hood. This year, he was a crocodile (if you ask him) or an alligator (if you ask Robin), or a lizard, dinosaur, Godzilla (if you ask the neighbors). And what does a crocodile need for a companion? A little bird. It seems Robin had a very nice multi-colored feather boa, complements of Shawnee's wedding, that wasn't being used on a regular basis. As Robin doesn't have a child of her own, she provided it for Alex's consumption.

Crocodile ready to go Trick-Or-Treating

Little Bird realizes there is an entire bowl of candy already at our house

For some better pictures, check out the ones we had taken at Sears.

Fortunately, the alligator and bird costumes arrived on October 30th. Unfortunately, there were 2 dress-up events prior to that. One was at the kids' school and one was at the YMCA. They went as tourists.

The costume parade at school
(primarily for the benefit of the parents, not the kids)

Tourists