Again, a crazy busy weekend!

Well, like I've said time and time again, weekends go by too fast. Austin has changed dramatically in the last week.....and so has our house! Austin has been great these past few days....entertaining himself very well, feeding himself, and being in a great mood. Jared and I had a long exhausting week and weekend doing household chores. We ended up sealing the driveway, painting the front door, the shutters, and the light fixtures all in the last few days. It's been exhausting, especially when trying to keep up with Austin. It's true when people say, babies change everything! It's not as easy as just working things for a day. We would paint during his naps, play with him, feed him, put him down for a nap, paint more, and repeat. Imagine that for about 48 hours straight....talk about exhausting!

Like I've said, he's changed a ton. He's finally starting to eat mostly table foods (his favorite, of course, are still cantaloupe and watermelon), but he'll eat just about anything off of our table. Tonight he had green beans, carrots, ground turkey, cheese, watermelon, baked french fries....yesterday he even tried an M&M (I know, not the smartest thing, but it was only one Mini one!). He's officially had about 3 days worth of solid, non-pureed foods. It's great! It's been many months of struggling, but he's finally getting there I think. He still struggles with feeding himself new textures, but he's getting there. The only foods that he will pick up on his own are watermelon, cheese, cantaloupe, and cereals (Cheerios, Gerber Puffs, and his new favorite, Kix). Food aside, just in the last few days, he's started to point at objects, and then at himself (we're still working on what that one means), and mimic us. We tell him what things are, who he is, and so on. He's just starting to put things together, which is really neat to watch. Tonight, Jared would clap his hands, and shake his head "no" then Austin would follow and do the same. It was too cute! He's very very curious, but very sweet. He's started to lye his head down on my lap at times, almost as if he's tired. He follows either of us when we leave a room....it's too sweet. I think right now his favorite toys are probably books. He loves to flip through the pages, point at things, and right them with his hands along the carpet. I'm going to have to go buy him new ones here pretty soon. Even I'm getting sick of reading him the others :) Ahhh, he's growing up too fast.

Like I said, we painted the shutters and the door. Here are some before and after pictures. The door turned out a little brighter than I thought it would (the color was Arizona Sunset...which looked more red on the sample but ended up sorta a nice orange color). It's starting to grow on me. We painted our light fixtures also (they were starting to rust a bit, and we wanted to nip that in the butt before it got worse), painted the trim a few weeks ago, mulched a few areas that were bare, and can't decide on a color to paint he rocking chairs. If anyone has suggestions, let me know. We are debating, Navy Blue, the green that is the color of the shutters, or leave them white. I don't want our house to look like an Easter egg, but at the same time, it's all so green and white! We also got a new door handle and lock set (not a big deal to most, but it's not brass!) that Jared picked up at the employee sale. It's much nicer, and makes our house more us. It's amazing how those small touches add so much!