We went to an art museum on Saturday with your friend Brinley. You really enjoyed some of the paintings, but you liked going outside to the fountain more.

Afterward we went to play outside because Brinley was getting fussy. You guy ran around in the grass and explored. At one point Brinley fell down and you tried a couple of times to pick her up. You weren't successful, but it was very thoughtful of you. The next day we went to Church and met an older couple that live nearby that invited us over for lunch. You got to play with some cars they keep around for their grandsons. You took them all out and handed them to me one at a time, then took them back one by one and pu\t them back in their container. The same thing happened with the crayons. I don't know if you're organizing or just exploring volumes, but you do like to clean up.

You discovered the piano today. We were waiting for everyone else to come in to Church and I was letting you wander around. You came up to the piano and put your little hand on the keys. It gave a beautiful note and you were hooked. After a few more handfuls of keys, you insisted on climbing on the bench and pounding on the keys until I had to drag you away.

After church concluded I let you climb back on the stool and called your Grandma and Grandpa T so they could hear you play. I warned your grandfather that you may want a piano before you want the pony he promised. There's a few months before now and Christmas, if your interest keeps up I may look into getting you a keyboard. You've always seemed to like the piano, I can't remember if I wrote about it, but there were a couple of times I sat you in my lap and played classical music because I was curious to see what you would think of it compared to other music I liked. You seemed to really like the piano and violin made you fussy.

On Monday we took you to get your first haircut. We took you to one that specialized in kids, because your mother and I didn't want you to look a mess after our first attempt, but thought a kids place would be easier on you. You loved the hair cutting place - they had a little train on a big track you could play with - but were really disturbed by the blue hair catcher gown the lady put around your neck. You started crying and there was no consoling you. Her cutting the hair in front of your face was just as bad and you made sure she knew about it. You held my hand and bawled while she cut your bangs, but after the scissors were out of your face it was a little less scary. When she finished, she put your hair in a ponytail on top of your head (I didn't like it much), we paid and left. You spent the rest of the day looking at me and pointing at your head. It was either, "Is that thing still on top of my head?" or "What did she do to my hair?". I'm not sure which.

We also have a new game, it's similar to the small pink bouncy ball, but it uses the big pink ball. You throw it and I pick you up and chase after it with you making sure to swing you in all sorts of erratic directions before dropping you like a giant claw in a crane game over the ball. You grab the ball and then almost immediately throw it again so we can go chasing after it, giggling all the way.

You have four teeth now. The two lower front and two rear teeth, one on each side. I think they're on top, but I'm not sure; Anytime your Mom tries to make you show them to me, you clam up. It's ok, I'll see them eventually. You're also getting more ticklish or at least finding people poking your ribs to be more funny.

After we got out of church, you were a little fussy so we brought you back to the apartment for a quick nap and lunch before we headed out of the aquarium. Your mother put you down on my bed and you went right out. I closed the door to a crack and I was curious to see what you would do when you woke up. Your Mom only wanted you to sleep for an hour so that we would have time for the aquarium, so I hoped you would wake up before then.

You did. Because of your reaction to my bed a couple of weeks ago I had been wondering if it would soon be time to get you a bed instead of a crib. When you woke up you came out into the hallway before starting to cry because you could hear us, but couldn't see us. It was fine, we were just around the corner. I think if we were very careful to close the gate and the master bedroom door it would be OK to give you a big girl's bed, but I'll leave that up to your Mom she knows you better and it might be a problem if you got into your diaper bag and made a mess. It might also be a problem to keep you in bed at night when you don't want to go to bed yet. As long as you stay out of the kitty litter box though (you're very curious about it), you can sleep in my bed when you stay with me.

I also wanted to mention that you have a baby doll now. You're very nice to her. You try to share your juice with her (if you sometimes you stick the bottle in her eye) and give her your pacifier sometimes. When your Mom was trying to stretch your foot yesterday, I worked your Dolly's foot. You weren't very happy with that, you took her from me, and gave her a hug. I'm sorry it hurts to stretch your foot, but we don't want you to have to have surgery. It means you'll have to be in a cast for a month and we know how much you like to walk and explore.

The good news is you're in a good company, there are a number of famous sports stars that were born with clubfeet; Kristi Yamaguchi: 1992 Olympic Figure Skating (both feet), Troy Aikman: Quarterback Dallas Cowboys, and Mia Hamm (member of women's soccer team 1996 Olympic) to name a few. It's my hope that you'll be able to do whatever you decide you want to do, be it dance, gymnastics, any sport, or even sub-gravity water polo (Hey, it could happen).

Yesterday, after church, we went to the Dallas World Aquarium. We brought you in your stroller, but as soon as we got inside you were straining to get out. We spent ten minutes in the same spot walking back and forth as you pointed at all the things you wanted to check out. There were black birds with bright yellow tails, another less colorful bird who almost let you touch it, a bright pink bird with a bill that looked like it ended in a plate, and all sorts of plants you had never seen before! Busy, pointing baby!

Through out the visit you pushed against me to get closer to all the things you were checking out. So adventurous! There were a couple of times I thought you would squirm out of my arms and fall into one of the aquariums we were over looking into. That would have involved you (and me immediately after) tumbling into the crocodile pit, the manatees, the stingrays, and the sharks in that order. You mean more to me than life itself and I'd have fought all of them to save you. Especially the Manatees! Not to worry though, I had a good grip on you and kept you away from the fence as best I could. You probably would have liked for me to put you down, but the sidewalks were narrow and I didn't want you getting underfoot.

I couldn't identify what you liked best, because you seemed to stare the same amount of time at everything, but you seemed to enjoy it and fell asleep almost immediately after we got you back in the car.

I haven't seen you much this week because I am stage managing a show called "God's Favorite" and I had a friend in the town to baptize me over the weekend. You did come to Church and witness me baptized though. Your mother tells me you grinned big like you were proud of me. You also have a friend in Church, his name is Tanner and he is the missionaries' leader's son. He likes to share his cars with you. You two seem to play well together. It can sometimes be a trial to have you in Church, You never want to sit still, but it's also a pleasure. You are my wold and a wonder. I miss you a lot when I'm away, but your mother and I are getting along better so I should see you more often in the future.

You're still uncomfortable with people you don't really know holding you which I can't really blame you. We went to a family home evening with some new friends from the church. You really enjoyed watching them and exploring their home, but when it came to picking you up or us handing you over, you were not OK with that and made that clear it was the one time you cried that night.

You were otherwise very quiet, even though you fell down a lot due to some short stairs that were hard to maneuver over.

Which reminds me, you really liked playing with my bed on the floor at my apartment. You climbed on and off multiple times and bounced up and down on the edge of it with a big grin on your face. While you were also at the apartment you stole both of Mandy's toy mice and while you were willing to throw her one, I had to trade you the other one with a new mouse to get you to give the old, chewed on one up. You then carried that new one all the way to the get together we went to. I warned the hostess that you had it just in case you dropped it somewhere in the house later on and she discovered it thinking it was a real.

I forgot to mention until now, You aren't using any real words yet. So you continue to point which works fairly well, but we don't always get what you want right away. When we do grab what you want you do a little dance in our chair. Your Mom tells me you're enjoying the gymnastics in the Olympics. You apparently indicated you wanted to be a Olympic star.

We have a ritual when I fetch you from your crib; First you hand me your pacifier and then you stretch out your arms to be picked up. Once you're in my you'll point me to your purple butterfly windchime hanging in your window. You like to play with it for a few minutes first exploring the holes in the wings and then moving down to the beads and then chimes. When you're done with that you'll point at your door and push it open. It has to be all the way open. If you don't get it in the first push, you'll point again, and we'll push it all the way to the wall.

Then we go out into the hall where you like to point at the pictures before we go downstairs. Right now you like to point at the picture of me in my tuxedo from your mother and my wedding and say something. I think it may be "Daddy", but it sounds like a question.

This is from a previously written paper entry, so I'm not quite sure when this happened.

We went swimming for the first time yesterday, I was really impressed! You really went underwater and held your breath and opened your eyes. You didn't like it much but I think that's because you haven't been swimming since your classes two weeks ago. You are otherwise very comfortable with the water. I tried to swim with fins with you so we could 'go fast', but I didn't bring my boots and it turned out I needed them so we'll try that next time.

I also showed you how I could swim under water. I'm not sure if you were impressed or confused.

You also admired someone's foam noodles, but I wouldn't let you touch them because we didn't know who they belonged to. Grandma (Thomason) had some so we'll see what you think of those.

I haven't visited your journal in quite some time and I'm very sorry. You've done many, many amazing things between then and now. Very many of which I meant to write you about, but I got caught up in life and didn't. Again, I'm sorry, I'll try to do better in the future.

For the last three months (8mo - now) you've enjoyed crawling around my office and tearing up paper. It all started with tissues. You were sitting in my lap and I handed you one to see what you'd think of it. You immediately tore it apart. And you loved it. So when you got tired of watching the computer or listening to music, I'd put you on the floor and let you explore with the office door closed. When you came over to me, I'd give you a piece of tissue to destroy and you were a happy baby! For a couple of weeks I had to watch you closely because you would tear up the tissue and then see if it tasted any good. It didn't, but you kept trying. I had to watch you, because I didn't want you trying to much at once.

Shortly after you developed your first tooth (and really the front two came in at almost the same time) you stopped tasting things and tissue lost its attraction as well. You moved on to envelopes and anything else that made a lot of noise when it was crushed. These days my office floor is strewn with paper for you to wander over and tear up. This last week, you've been more interested in my computer (and throwing the objects in front of the screen off my desk).

Also occurring in the last week or so (for me at least, I always miss the good stuff, because I'm at work) you like to pull up on hands and then walk. It's kind of a drunken walk, you haven't quite got the balance yet, but you're doing very well. You appear to love to do it too . And when you see the cat you let out a giggle and drunk walk in whatever direction she's in. She, being a cat, does her best not to show terror but she certainly doesn't stick around when she hears that laugh.

You used to love anything we fed you, but the last couple of days you've been getting increasingly picky. We had pizza last night and you absolutely refused everything offered to you, because it wasn't Mommy's pizza which she wasn't sharing. I tried to give you some, and you turned your head from the spoon and pointed directly at Mommy's pizza. I tired it several times and got the same result every time. Nuh-uh. *pursed lips* Point.It was too funny and I had to laugh, but I shouldn't have encouraged you. Mommy got very angry with me. After we put the pizza away, you were a bit more accepting of the avocados (which Mommy tells me you normally love) but not much. We will probably need to make a point in the future of feeding you first and then giving you samples of what is on our plates afterward (you INSIST on samples, except when it's very spicy things on Daddy's plate).

The other thing, which will stick with me for quite some time was last night you were crawling around while I was doing some work on my laptop in the living room. You came up, stood between me, and the computer and started typing away! Fortunately I had just saved the document I was working on, because you somehow closed it. I could only see the back of your head, but Mommy said you had a huge grin on your face as you typed away. She took a couple of pictures.

I'm looking forward to your birthday, because I want to see your reaction to chocolate. Mommy is apparently making a small butterfly cake just for you.

Your Mom was due to be induced on the twelfth, because that was when her gynecologist was going to be on call and the next time she would be on call was a month later which was far too late. We were glad that it would be scheduled, no rushed driving, no panic, and that sort of thing; I had told her that I was going to drive the mini into the front doors and give her door-to-door service to the delivery room.

At 3am that morning she started having labor pains and we were pleased that perhaps she wouldn't have to be induced after all. At 5am we were getting ready to leave and Emily's contractions were getting closer together when the phone rang. It was the hospital, they told us not to come that they had no beds available, and would call us when they had room available. Your Mom informed them that she would be coming in soon, because she was in labor so they needed to make room. We left for my Mom's (Grandma Crazylady's) house to wait.

By 10a the contractions were three minutes apart and we called the hospital, since they hadn't called us, and let them know bed or not, we were coming. They admitted us and took us directly to her room, 2325, a number of the other rooms we passed were empty and we wondered. 232 has a significance within my side of the family so we took it as a good sign that you were going to be born there.

You were born at 5:23a (The nurses weren't really paying attention that's why your birth certificate says 5:25), without the assistance of drugs (I greatly admire your mother for that, I don't think I would have done that) that afternoon and you opened your eyes almost immediately which was a lot like me when I was born and we also noticed you looked a lot like me as well. We hadn't expected that.

I felt like crying when I first saw you, but I held it back because I didn't want to cry in front of every one. I can't explain why I wanted to cry, but it wasn't happiness, I think it was because I was just so happy to see you finally.

Your club foot worried me a little also, but the doctors assured me that it wasn't serious and could be fixed easily. I didn't want you to have anything that could limit your mobility, but we're going to make an appointment with the doctor and get your foot taken care of. I'm really looking forward to taking you home.

Things have really changed with technology since I was born and it just seems to be accelerating. So I wanted to share some of the things that have either developed or come into existence since I was born. These are things you'll likely take for granted, but may not have even existed until recently.

Phones: Rotary Dial Corded Phones > Push Dial Corded Phones > Cordless Phones > Cell Phones

Television: Black and White Television > Color Television > Television Remote (you used to have to get up to change the channel) > Projection Television (kind of like a movie theater in your house) > Flat Screen Television (better picture!) > Big Flat Screen (took up a lot less room than the project television) > Plasma Screen (Big flat you can hang on the wall!)

Music Media: Records > 8-Tracks > Tapes > CDs > MP3s

Music Media Players: Boombox (Basically a portable stereo, played tapes) > Walkman (pocket sized boombox) > CD Player (walkman, but cds) > MP3 Player (The iPod was not the FIRST Mp3 player, but currently is by far the most popular.)

Personal Computer: First one we got was an Apple IIe (which was the third generation apple computer) I often played games on it until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. It 16 kilobytes of ram, not Mb. KiloBytes. Gb were unimaginable. 1mhz processor. No hard drive (no such thing), it used 5 1/4" floppy disks to put data into the memory on the computer and the game ran from the memory. The screen was green and showed four shades of green.

Greg got the first real PC in the house, it was built by a friend of his and had a 40Mb Hard drive (which was pretty good back then), 256 kilobytes of Ram, and a 16mhz processor. It ran DOS which was a text based command interface, there was such thing as Windows. And the screen came in 16 colors.

The first hard drive I bought to build my computer was 1 Gb. I got it for the incredible price of 300$, they were usually twice that. The computer also had 1Mb of ram.

My current computer is 2Ghz, 1 Gb of Ram, 750Gb HD, and shows 16 millon colors. That's fairly slow by today's standards.

Game Stations: Pong > Atari > Atari 2600 (and computers started to develop into game stations) > Nintendo (HUGE hit) > Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo/Turbografx 16 ( first one I bought with my own money)/Saturn > Nintendo 64/Sony Playstation > Sony Playstation 2/Nintendo Game Cube > Microsoft Xbox > Wii/Xbox 360/Playstation 3 (currently)

The first game station was the Pong. It was basically electronic ping pong and people would play it for HOURS. I had your great grandmother Gregory's for a year before my mother, your Grandmother Thomason, bought an Atari. It had cartridges that you could put in (like floppy disks) to play different games! One of the first games was Pac-man. My Dad, My brother Greg, and I used play to beat each other's score.

The Internet: I first got on the internet when it first started becoming commercially available in 1993 through my Dad's Compuserve account. Before the internet, we dialed into other people's computer. Some people had dozens of phone lines in their house so multiple people could be on their computer at the same time.

BTW, some day, ask me how we did research before the internet.

We've been very busy working on things around the house to prepare for your imminent arrival. So here's the latest:

- Your room is almost done. Your Mom just has to finish touching up the paint where the nails were put in for the crown molding (she's much better at seeing those little details) and then we'll start assembling and moving in your furniture. The plan for that is this weekend. Your room should be ready for you by Sunday. No rush though, stay where you are for now.

- I finished your blanket on Saturday night. I still have to sign it, but it's been washed. It's odd to walk in the living room and not see it on the couch. I'm still trying to decide on what to work on next.

- We got your stroller. It's apparently the SUV of strollers, we're a little worried it won't fit in my car so we may have to get a simpler one for when you go traveling with me until I get a new car. Which may be a while, I love my mini.

- Your Aunts Kelley and Ashley made up some clothes for you; The one I like best is the one that says "Input" on the front and "Output" on the back. However, the one that says "I'm Sexy" or something to that effect is going to mean I break out the pictures of Kelley's current boyfriend in a dress at their wedding. We're also going to have to have a chat about the pink bikini.

- My nighttime routine has for the last couple of weeks, lying with your Mom and resting my hand on her stomach so I can feel you moving around. You're very active!

We got your room painted over the weekend, it didn't take terribly long and I think we did a very good job of it. Hopefully, with your Grandpa Lee's help we can get the crown molding and chair rail added. Your mother is anxious to get the room finished and in order.

You were again uncooperative; kicking your mother while we sat in the waiting room, but motionless and difficult to see when we finally got into the sonogram room. The technician again had your mother roll over on one side and then the other and when both of those didn't work, to get on her hands and knees again. This didn't work either, you refused to give us a profile so we could get a full, unrestricted frontal picture of you. At one point we got a picture of you with what looked like you with your middle finger extended in the center of the picture. When I tell the story, after the nurse has had your mother roll over one way, then the other, then on hands and knees that picture was the result, but it's not exactly how it happened.

In the end, I grabbed the light from the side of the table and shined it on your mother's stomach around where they thought your head was. THAT got a reaction, and we eventually worked into a position where we could take some pictures. While they were never complete, we did get some good ones. It was really neat to see you, but I can't wait until you're actually here.

I got to feel you kick for the first time today. You've been kicking your mother for some time, but every time she would tell me or put my hand on her stomach you would stop. So her first birthday present from you was you letting me get to feel you kick once. It was a strong kick too. Your mother hopes you'll be a ballerina or at least get you interested in dance. I've joked with her that perhaps we'll get you into martial arts with a kick like that!