It's a rainy, rainy day, and Joseph and Tim are feeling a bit under the weather themselves. It's a good day for us all to just stay inside and get a little rest. Joseph is very interested in all those raindrops, though, trickling down the door!

This is just a fun shot of Tim tossing Joseph up in the air before bed tonight. He's such a happy little guy!

At nine months, Joseph is now capable of turning the pages of his board books all by himself! Books are now among his favorite toys. He just loves seeing all the different pictures as he flips the pages back and forth!

Here he is trying to get his favorite book back from Tim!

On the other hand, getting good shots of just Joseph is a much easier prospect, especially with both me and Tim dancing around behind the camera!

It was a little bit of a challenge to get his attention while he had this leaf, though. He's just so curious about everything! I wonder what the next nine months will bring!

In celebration of Joseph turning nine months old, we decided to try to take a few pictures of all three of us, but that turned out to be a much more difficult task than I had anticipated! Mosquitoes, gnats, the bright sun, and a camera timer way too long for distractable Joseph were all obstacles to the perfect shot. This was by far the best of the bunch. It's not terrible, but maybe we'll have to find someone else to take our family shots from now on!

Who can resist those cute little baby buns?

Joseph turned nine months old yesterday! Since he was born a couple weeks early, he has now officially spent more time outside of me than in. It's amazing how much he's changed in such a short time! For example, he's now eating all kinds of foods, and developing a real preference for certain ones. You can tell how he feels about what he's eating by observing the distance he opens his mouth to receive the next mouthful. This shot shows just how much he likes yogurt, the most recent addition to his diet. He just can't seem to get enough!

I got my hair cut really short again this afternoon. Apparently, Joseph can really see the difference and he thinks it's pretty amusing!

This afternoon, Professor Joseph is performing scientific experiments on the mysterious orange blobs he discovered on his highchair tray.

Apparently, butternut squash is fit for human consumption. One blob down, three to go!

How we love our sweet little Joseph!

Today is the Day of the Many Nose Scrunchings, featuring our own little nose-scruncher, Joseph, as star performer!





I'm starting to think he really does know what the camera is for. He just keeps smiling his hammy, nose-scrunchy smile every time the shutter clicks! What a funny little guy!

Here are a couple cute shots of Josephus playing around in the kitchen at lunchtime today. He's such a handsome and happy little guy!

Joseph is starting to pull up! Of course, he needs to be be duly motivated, like today when he thought standing up would get him to those interesting books on the bookshelf. He's just growing like a little zucchini!

We're on our way back to VA! Today was our second day on the road, and considering how much Joseph loves to roll and crawl around, he's doing amazingly well being stuck in that little car seat all day. We do try to time things so that he's ready for a nap about the time we get going in the morning, and then we take a pretty long break after he wakes up and gets restless. Usually, then, he's about ready for his second nap, and by the time he wakes up again, we're nearing our stop for the day. It's fairly slow going, but we're making progress! Our little hot pepper is obviously happy to be out of the car now, though!

Tonight we're in Little Rock, AR, which, from what we can see at least, is a pretty charming city. Tim had heard this little diner called "The Purple Cow" was a great place to eat, so we're giving it a try!

Boy, is it ever a great place to eat! My fries were so good, we had to order a second basket! The diner was also really cute, with purple cow paraphernalia all over the place. Joseph had a great time eating his Cheerios and watching all the hustle and bustle, but now we're headed back to the hotel to get a little sleep!

It's the perfect day to fly a kite here in Albuquerque! We found a kite at the Bentleys' and Tim found this ideal kite-flying park on his way home from work. We've just been waiting for a windy day to put it all together!



I'm not really sure I've ever flown a kite before, or else it's been a long, long time. It's not really too hard, I guess, especially when the wind is blowing the way it is today!

Just look at it go! I'm having a lot of fun, but there's not much I can do besides hold it! Tim tells me there are kites with more than one string that you can actually control, and that sounds intriguing!

Before we head home, Tim and Joseph are taking a turn! What a lovely afternoon it's been!

What a cutie our little hot pepper is crawling around in just his diaper!

This is Joseph's newest look, produced by scrunching up his nose and smiling to let us know he's amused. Tim and I keep wondering where he learns to do all this cute stuff! In this shot, Joseph is also having fun sitting with only the help of this handy laundry basket, and chomping on it now and again, of course!

Peekaboo! Joseph has added another peekaboo variant to his repertoire! Instead of relying on us to get the game going, he uses this plastic book to hide and reveal his own face, usually with a big grin and lots of gleeful kicking! What a fun little guy!