Happy Fourth of July

This is a picture of Eddie in his pajamas witnessing his first fireworks at Brevard College. He kept saying "Wow wow wow!" and "Yay!"

Eddie loves to get wet, sling mud, and throw rocks. We took him wading on his official 18-month birthday.

We had to get the axel replaced on our jogging stroller, and we went to REI in Asheville on the 4th of July to pick it up (we also drove home on the Blue Ridge Parkway and went out to eat Chinese food.) I've never had so much fun in REI. Eddie was into everything. He found himself a pair of polarized sunglasses that we just had to get for him. He wore them all over the store. Climbed into tents and kayaks, rode the bicycles, and climbed into the jogging strollers. What a hoot.

We went wading in the Davidson River. Goodness it's cold! Kyle jumped right in, but I had to ease myself in inch by inch.

We have a bug zapper to kill the mosquitoes on our deck and it attracts all kinds of things. Thank goodness beauties like this can't get through the slats.

This was just sweet.

Eddie insists on feeding himself. He refuses to eat if anyone is holding the spoon for him. What a mess.

He's also developing a fun vocabulary. If you slowly sing the ABC's, he correctly inserts letters here and there. He knows "B, C," "G," "P," "T," "W" ("dubba yoo") and "Z." He also knows "2, 3" ("too, tree"), "6," "9," and "10." He can correctly tell you the sounds for a goat ("maaa"), kitty ("miiiaa"), doggy ("pant-pant"), chick ("peep peep"), rooster ("cock koooo"), cow ("mooo") donkey (you'd just have to hear that one for yourself!), duck ("kaak"), and Oso Bear ("ROOOOAAARRR").

My (Almost) Eighteen Month Portraits

Our super-sweet next door neighbor, Ansley, is a photography student at Appalachian State University, and she agreed to take Eddie's eighteen month portraits for us. I love how they turned out. We went to one of Eddie's favorite places, the Kid's Bike Loop, in DuPont State Forest. We spent several hours just letting Eddie have a good time. He got dirty, had a snack, had his clothes changed, and kept on playing. When we finished, he played behind the wheel of the Range Rover, and she captured that, too. I love how these pictures turned out! These are the smaller JPEG's, but I have them all as large TIFF's, too. I'm planning to print them all, but the first one is going to be printed as an 11 x 14 and framed for our wall!