What do you feed a boy with all 4 molars?

Meat & Potatoes

(well, in our case beef brisket & sweet potatoes:)

you will notice the tray is pretty full (though i did have to reload the meat & sweet potatoes 3 times, as soon as they cooled to my liking)

so focused. he would eat the brisket as soon as it touched his tray.

he cleared it the tray and then asked for "moh" (or more, if you don't speak patriot:) what a little ham!


don't be scared of the following attempts to capture the tooth on film:

On Friday 8/22/08, Patriot ended up with his last molar (from the one-year set) & his bottom right tooth (next to the bottom two) popping through.

he thought i was a riot for trying to take pix of the new tooth (didn't even attempt the molar!) for the grandparents. why do they always want proof of these things?

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okay, the following pic has nothing to do with teeth, it was just funny:

after much effort and debate, patriot has lobbied to take possession of Samson's baby blue dog collar (our puppy from before pst was born). yesterday, he crawled and cruised all over the house 'wearing' sam's collar as his bracelet. it was too funny! he LOVES to unload his diaperbag all over the kitchen floor in search of treasure: this time he found some juice snacks. he raised them up to me and asked "moh?" just as i snapped this pic. thankfully it was snack/milk time, so off we went to the living room--his pirated juice snacks in tow:)

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FIRST STEPS--Saturday August 23, 2008

Much to the dismay of the grandparents, we do not have any action shots yet, BUT Josh & I were both there to witness his first unassisted steps!

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It was a lazy saturday afternoon at our house (especially for me 'cause Josh let me take a nap after I fed pst this am:) and we were hangin' out in our living room watching the Olympics on TV when it happened.

As a side note: Patriot has been standing up from a seated position for a couple of weeks, usually holding a small toy or other object in his hand to keep his balance (a mental thing, i guess?) He had been pulling up forever, it seems, but this standing from a seated or sometimes tripod position is new, and seemed to be one step closer to walking. We have tried to get him to walk from one parent to the other, but he just laughs and sits down, if he can't reach out and touch your fingers. He loves to 'walk' holding onto our just our pointer fingers. He holds himself up and propels himself forward with seemingly little effort. Just not brave enough to try it alone, until today.

Back to this afternoon: so when he stood up in front of Josh today he reached out his arms and said, "Come here. Come to me, bubba!" Patriot's little face lit up and he took TWO steps forward and lunged into Josh's arms--Sooooo precious! We tried to get him to walk to me. Nothing. Back to Josh? No way. Just smiled at all of our futile attempts as he stood, then collapsed, laughing all the way to the floor.

Josh looked at me and said, "So is this official?" And I agreed. Yep, this milestone will forever be Patriot's first steps!

After 24 hours of craziness, milestones, and photoshoots, patriot hid behind the chair that is supposed to keep him out of the front hall and gave one last glimpse of that new pearly white.

my baby is quickly growing up...sniff...sniff...weakly smile...yea!