Family, Friends, and Girlfriend

Gus attended his first birthday party on Saturday. Mike, Rachel, and Ava were in town and Kristie and Skunny threw Ava a one year birthday party. Gus was pumped up to see Ava again -- it's been a long time since he's seen her.

Here's Gus checking out the birthday girl.


Playing with the blocks.


Ava enjoyed the cake.


Here' s Ava opening up her birthday presents. Thankfully Gus is still a little too young to get jealous.

Neither kid is sure what to make of Skunny wearing a birthday hat.


Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kyle were in town this weekend too. We had a great time with them. Gus was so excited to show off all his latest moves.

Gus and Uncle Kyle.


He's starting to really play rough. Kyle's lucky to still have his lips attached.


Playing with Grandpa Dave.

More playing -- this time with Grandma Vickie. Gus had so much fun this weekend.


He's in the crawling position in this one with Grandma and Grandpa. It won't be long before Gus will have the crawling thing mastered.


After the family left, Gus was pretty wiped out. He crashed for an hour and a half. Now he has to just be content to hang out with his Mom and Dad the rest of the week. Boring.

Later.

Bigger and better things

Gus is moments away from crawling. He shoots right up from his tummy to all fours with no problem, it's just the part after that that's still kind of confusing.

Here he is showing off his 1 leg only move.

In addition to new physical challenges, we decided to give him a shot at some new snacks. Ross crumbled up some cheese and cheerios and as you can see, he was into it. He was concentrating so hard and managed to pick up a couple little pieces, pass then back and forth from hand to hand, and even get them close to his mouth.

This cheerio made it to his lip and got stuck.

In the end, Ross helped him get this bite in the mouth but Gus was not impressed with how it felt. He wriggled and made some nutty faces but I'm sure after a couple more rounds of this, he'll learn to love snack time.

The photo shoot and other fun Minneapolis events

Gus officially earned his first paycheck on Friday. The shoot with Target went pretty quick but in the end, it was just too much noise, people, activity, and all-around craziness for him to be his usual smiley self. We were extremely proud of him even though he didn't smile for every shot. After this experience all 3 of us agree, he is not cut out to be in the modeling industry. This one shoot was good enough. We had fun and have some good memories. Thanks again, Brett, for sending us the opportunity.

Here he is with his legs up, relaxing, on the way into the studio.

I didn't take very many photos but I managed to quickly snap one of his studio scene on our way out. He thought the high char was uncomfortable even though it is fairly hip.

He felt like himself again within seconds of Ross taking him out of the chair and back to the changing room.

After the shoot we all headed up to Ross's office and and said hello to his Mpls co-workers. Ross stayed at work and Gus & I headed back to Chaska for an afternoon nap. He wasn't in the mood to sleep. He wanted to check out his old house!


We spent the evening at our good friends' Mike & Michelle's house, grilling and catching up with everyone. Holly, Paul and Jaime were all there, too. It felt so normal we both forgot that we moved.

Gus loves their dog, Mollie.


It was time for a diaper change and Mollie wanted in on the action.


He loved hanging out on the floor watching Mollie prance by.

After breakfast on Saturday, we headed into Costco to stock up on baby supplies and other items we haven't purchased since making the move to Fargo.

Gus was pumped.


We slept, read, ate, and played hide-the-baby-under-the-blanket on the way home.

I almost forgot to mention another big event that occurred this week - he got his first tooth! If you open this pic up, you can see his little white tooth poking through.

Mpls was great but we are still pleased with our decision to call Fargo our new home. 3 hours in the car isn't bad so anytime we miss our friends and the Mpls life, we'll just hop in the car.

Load up the car!

We're headed back to Mpls! But not for good, just for a couple days.

We got a call today from Target and Gus made the cut! They asked if he could report to the studio this Friday morning for his selected shot - the mod high chair. How very Target of them to select something so cool. They would do his wardrobe and makeup when he arrived. Seriously, this was my conversation with her and I was just chuckling under my breath the whole time. Makeup and wardrobe? Interesting and I can't wait to see how this whole thing shakes out.

Needless to say we are just a little proud of Gus. Maybe he'll show up on target.com in the next couple of months just like the cute little babes in the pic below, and even if he doesn't, it will be worth it just to see how this whole photo shoot thing works. We are excited. Thanks again to his agent, cousin Brett, who is his Target connection. We wouldn't be having all this fun without you sending us the original casting call! You are great.

He's not in this shot below and we have no idea who these kids are but it's the closest thing I could find to Target high chair.


This will be fun!

Happy Father's Day

Ross is the best dad. I love to watch him and Gus play and interact because they constantly crack each other up which makes me laugh, too. Ross and Ross Jr., pictured below:

Hiding under the blanket...Gus loves waiting for me to whip the blanket off and then pretend like I had no idea they were under there. Gus has a good chance at really hiding but it's somewhat hard to miss the 6'7" body sticking out from under the blankie so Ross is always busted - but plays along.

Getting the scoop from his dad via the super secret whisper dad-to-son delivery method. Kids love that.

In honor of the loving father Ross is, I brought back some of the greatest and favorite photos from the past 7 months.

1 day old

5 days old

2 weeks old

8 weeks old


12 weeks old


And today. Happy First Father's Day!


Happy Father's Day to Grandpa Steve, Grandpa Dave, and Great-Grandpa Marv, too. Happy Father's Day to all the Dads we know. Your kids love you.

Weekends

We both look forward to the weekend more than ever now that we are both working full time. Here's some highlights.

Ross cutting the grass (or mowing the lawn, everyone says something different).

Gus chomping on a diaper. He's working on his 2 bottom teeth and they are so close so everything goes into the mouth.

Look closely and you can see his 2 pre-teeth, ready to pop through any day now.

Hmmm, this sock looks like something I'd like to chew on.



He rolls all over the living room and has even tried scooting under the couch. Here's the view from under the backside of the couch.

We went to our friends, Kristie & Skunny's house for dinner on Saturday night. Thank you for a delicous meal! Gus and their pup, Martini, were buddies.

And to add to the excitement of the evening, a tornado warning was issued right as we were heading home from Kristie and Skunny's house. The sirens began blaring about 2 minutes after we got home so down to the basement we went. Everything in Fargo ended up fine, no tornado(s) touched down but it's always better to be safe than sorry so we had no complaints about spending some time in our unfinished basement.

This is the view of the dreaded wall cloud from our driveway. Amazing!


Sunday we enjoyed a special Father's Day lunch at Ross' favorite restaurant, Happy Joe's. Josh and Christy joined us for the buffet feast and paid .50 to make the train go 'round and 'round. Gus liked it! You can see the tail end of it in the upper left corner of this pic.

No pizza for Gus yet but he tried a taste of pizza sauce and he liked it!

Sunday in the park

We met Josh, Christy and Hunter at Island Park this afternoon for a little exercise and decompression in preparation for the work week. It was a perfect day today, 74 degrees and no wind. For Fargo that is amazing.

Gus chilled in his stroller but kept his eye on Hunter most of the time.

He tried out swinging for the first time and as you can tell, he was a fan.


Feel the wind in the toes.


This is one of the only shots we have of him standing. He wanted to sit and play in the grass the whole time.

Aunt Christy, Uncle Josh and Hunter.

He agreed to pose for like 1 second for this family pic but as you can see, he was already pretty much crawling out of our hands so he could get to the ground and play.

If he's this impressed with grass imagine how excited he will be when he gets a sandbox someday!

It took about 3 mins and all 4 of us yelling to finally get him to look up from the grass and at the camera.