Weekend Getaway and Other Crazy Adventures with Boo

Grandma Dewey to the Rescue

Yes, your Honor. I understand that I am the lamest blogger in the history of blogging and that I am a serious letdown to my son's fans.

I started teaching again, just one class, but WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! Suddenly life is in fast forward! Boo's sleeping less and requiring more supervision when he's awake so every moment I have for myself is spent prepping for class.

But, once again, Sammie's mom saves the day with her superstar blogging skills. Here are some pictures she posted of Boo. Enjoy! More from me soon... I hope.

Boo and Food

Boo is feeding himself! This is his first self feeding and he's obviously VERY proud of himself! He's also made a huge mess of himself.

This is the 2nd feeding, later that day, with daddy supervising. Notice the change of clothes. Yep, we go through lots of outfits these days. And a bath every night.

I made the mistake of setting a bowl of something in front of Boo and thinking he would actually grab the spoon and feed himself. Hah! This is where the bowl ended up.

Boo tries to clean up my leftovers at Chipotle. We're teaching him early. In this family, he'll eat at Chipotle a lot!

I've wised up a little with feeding. He's really good at finger foods--cheerios, pieces of bread and fruit, etc. If I want to feed him mush, I keep the bowl WELL away from him and operate the spoon myself.

Boo LOVES fruit! Bananas, strawberries, peaches, apples, and watermelon, especially. In fact, he loves watermelon so much that he'll stuff it in his mouth faster than he can swallow it.

This day, he had so much watermelon stuffed in his mouth that it totally changed the shape of his face. And he stores the watermelon in those cheeks indefinitely. Often after I've cleaned him off and am bathing him or changing him, random pieces of watermelon will drop out of his mouth. He's very... very... silly.

Officially a Family

You Bradley fans have been very patient with my lack of posting and your patience is soon to be rewarded. We've had a busy month, but that means lots of blogging to show what we've been doing!

So here goes.

On Thur. July 29, we finalized the adoption and were sealed to Brad! In the morning we went to the Williamson County Courthouse in Georgetown, Texas. We ended up being the first case of the day. The judge sat down at the bench and said, "We're going to start this day off right with an adoption!" Sammie and I stood in front of him and gave testimony that everything thus far had been done legally and according to correct procedures. We also testified that we loved him and that we understand the adoption was forever and that we would always do our best to take care of him. Sammie was tearful during his testimony. I held up okay until I walked out of the courtroom, then I cried hard. The judge pronounced the adoption final and the baby's official name (they hadn't referred to him by name yet) as Bradley Samuel Markham. The whole courtroom cheered!

The judge, our amazingly wonderfully awesome lawyer, and the happy family!

In front of the courthouse with Mom and Jennie Boyer

We went home to put the now-officially-named-Brad to bed. Sammie realized on the way home that we wouldn't make it to San Antonio that evening on our tires so he went to Sears and got new tires. We dropped the "A" word ("we have be in San Antonio this evening because we Adopted our son today...") and got some pretty quick service.
Mom and Dad Markham, plus Sammie's brothers Dave and Jeff and sister-in-law Carolyn met us in San Antonio. My brother Joe was also there. He flew in with Mom and Jennie the day before, but wasn't at the courthouse. The sealing ceremony in the San Antonio temple went quickly. Boo was perfect--he even had the hiccups! I barely had time to soak it all in and focus on what was happening. Afterwards, we took some pictures outside.

Got It!

Video of Boo crawling. I had a stuffed monkey sitting right in front of me. That's what he's aiming for and grabbing.

More on the Retrieval Impaired

Sorry that this post isn't about Boo. Stay tuned for pics and videos of him crawling, sitting, and rolling!
Every so often I post about Sammie's retrieval impairment. Either he can't find something that is right in front of him, or he loses something then finds it in a weird place. I think I gained insight into what malfunctions in his mind to make this happen. Yesterday, I asked him where something was. He was sitting on the couch with his back to me and I was a few feet away in the kitchen. Literally, this is what he said, "It's over there... It's back... It's in the yellow... It's with... Do you see it?"

I'm not making this up!

If a similar dialogue plays in his head every time he looks for something, no wonder he can never find anything!

I look like my t-shirt contest

Boo is the newest winner of the "I look like my t-shirt" contest. He wrested the title from his father, the former champion, who won with a "Yosemite Sam" t-shirt.

I love to go back through this blog and look at pictures of Boo. I'm always surprised, though, at how old he's gotten. When I see the pictures of him as a newborn, he hardly feels like a baby to me anymore. He's so much bigger! He's chattering quite a bit... "dadadadada" and "bababababa." I keep trying to teach him "mamamamamama." He's still not quite sitting up on his own (we're working on it) but rolls around all over the place. He especially likes to wedge himself in between the bookshelf and tv stand in our family room. He's also gotten quite a bit of hair, although he still has his "reverse bald spot." That's a clump of hair that grows especially thick and long on the left side of his head. It was also the first patch of scalp to get hair. He is very attached to his "luvy" diaper. I love to cuddle him before I put him in his crib. I look down and can see his little chubby hands playing with the luvy. He snuggles against me and all I can see of his face are long eyelashes, chubby cheeks, and a cute little nose. I know by his heavy breathing when he's fallen asleep. He hardly ever cries once he's woken up. We just hear him talking and laughing to himself on the baby monitor. When we go in his room, he's usually eating his toes or exploring the far corners of his crib. He's excited to see us and laughs as if to say, "Come join the party!"

Boo did a really funny thing a couple of weeks ago. Sammie didn't appreciate my laughing at it, but I couldn't help it. It was fast Sunday and Sammie came home from church with a monster headache. We knelt by the couch to say a prayer to break our fast before eating. (we always eat chocolate first. It's a rule.) Boo was sitting up on the couch in front of us, protected from falling off by us kneeling in front of him. He was squawking a little bit as I said the prayer, then I noticed Sammie shift a little bit and Boo fall silent. I opened my eyes to see Boo contendedly staring into space with two chubby fistfuls of Sammie's red hair. I giggled a little to myself then tried to get back into prayer mode. But then I realized that Sammie had a headache from fasting and Boo pulling on his hair (and he can pull hard!) surely didn't feel very good. And, in a great show of empathy, that made me laugh harder. THEN I realized that the only thing to help Sammie's head is for me to finish the prayer so he could extract himself from Boo's death grip and eat something, thereby diminishing his headache. But I couldn't finish the prayer cuz I was laughing too hard at him! I was laughing harder and harder as Boo continued to stare off in the distance, munching on his binky, his hands full of Sammie's hair. Sammie said I undid any blessings I might have gained by fasting. (IT WAS WORTH IT!)

World Cup and More Exersaucer

So you all know that Sammie loves soccer. The World Cup, which is held every four years, is a huge event for him. Four years ago, during the 2006 World Cup, we were living in a tiny condo in the DC area, couldn't afford cable tv, and were excited to start our family. Sammie was preparing for the GMAT so he could go to graduate school for his MBA. He would jokingly complain that he couldn't watch the world cup because he had to study. You know how he is about soccer... could he really give up the world cup for a good score on the GMAT? I would remind him that if he studied hard and did well, he could get into a good graduate program and then he could watch the next world cup on a big screen tv with Brad. Of course, we didn't realize that Brad would come into our home in a different way than we expected, but it was a happy day on Friday when Sammie sat down in front of his big screen tv, Brad in his lap, and watched the first two games of the world cup. I'm proud of him for working so hard!

Dreams really do come true! (That's an inside joke for Sammie.)

Maybe I can use the force to influence the game...

Mom, this is guy time.

Enjoy the video of Boo in his exersaucer. He's one happy little kid!

Movie of Boo

Some kids like to play with their food. Ours likes to play with his utensils. He now screams so much when we take the spoon from him that we have to give him a spoon to play with while we feed him and use a different one to try and sneak food into his mouth. This video was done a couple of days ago before his absence-of-spoon-screaming-fits. Enjoy... (warning... it's long, about 6 mins. We only really imagine that his grandmothers will want to watch the whole thing. And we know they'll watch it repeatedly. :) )

Boo at 6 mos

This is a short movie I created about Boo while playing around with movie makers. Some of the pictures I've already posted on this blog, but they're probably worth viewing again...

By the way, our "little" Boo had his 6 mos. check up yesterday. He's 20 pounds 4 oz (90th percentile) and 28 1/4 inches long (95th percentile). These discoveries clear up a couple of mysteries: 1. why he is quickly growing out of his clothes 2. why Sammie and I both have sore backs! He's as good-natured and adorable as ever. He was pretty sad when we came home from the doctor's (those dreaded 6 mos shots...) but still managed to smile and goo at me when I put him down. I'm soooooooooooooo madly in love with the little guy! (And the big guy, Sammie, too.)

Laughing, Drooling, and a New Throne!

I know my camera breaking is not a good excuse for failing to post pictures of Boo, especially when Sammie's a "retired" photographer and we have tons of photography gear around the house. But I finally got a new "point and shoot" and so taking pictures of Boo is a lot more convenient. Without further ado...

Extreme Close Up! (admit it, this picture totally makes you want to cuddle with him, doesn't it?!?)

Sammie had Boo cracking up the other night.

The back of Boo's head is a little flat so we're trying to keep him off his back. I bought him this new chair and he loves it! It looks like a throne and he rules over... well... the carpet. It's the only thing shorter than he is.

The new camera has a "kids and pets" setting for active subjects. I tried it out cuz Boo waves his arms and legs so much and so fast. Apparently, it's also good for photographing drool.

And finally... now that Boo can grab things and hold onto them, he loves stuffed animals! This is his favorite... Zack the Duck.

Fancy Fotography

This is one of my favorite movies that I've ever taken. The content is pretty good. It's Phoebe discovering and playing with her toy squirrel that my mom sent her. But my favorite part is that halfway through the film, I realize that Phoebe is jumping up and down and so I should turn the camera to portrait view rather than landscape. The result is, well... just lay your left ear on your shoulder and you should be able to view it just fine.

Lots of fun... In the meantime, here's handsome Boo in his easter outfit. I was supposed to be in Relief Society, but I was too fascinated taking pictures of him. How can one worship when one's baby is so adorable?

Eating Cereal!

In Boo's honor, we now refer to all food at our house as "formula." Mommy and Daddy have yummy formula that's a lot different from Boo's. When he's older, he'll eat Mommy and Daddy's formula. The furry blue monster on his diaper is "formula" monster. (Okay, that's because they changed him to "veggie monster" to get kids to eat more healthy foods and I think that's really stupid. Even stupider than formula monster.)
Anyway, Boo has a new formula! He likes oatmeal more than he likes rice. We haven't really tried anything else...

The first day I fed him, he ate VORACIOUSLY! As soon as he saw the spoon coming out of the bowl, he would open his mouth and flap his arms (baby bird-like). By the time the spoon got to his mouth, he couldn't stand it any more and would clamp down just milliseconds too early. The spoon would hit his mouth and send mush splattering all over his face. (And I thought he generated a lot of laundry before...)

Boo Out Loud

So... I know I'm always blogging about Boo's burps. But they really are incredible. And he totally outdid himself today. In fast and testimony meeting... Yes, all you Mormons know what's coming. A sister was bearing a very sweet, spiritual, and emotional testimony. I put Boo on my shoulder and ... WOW! No. I mean...

WOW!!!

A friend of mine was sitting across the aisle and she said when she heard it, she thought, "Who in the world?" And then, of course, looked over to see Boo. Sammie later said it wasn't so much that Boo burped loudly that was embarassing, it was how long and uncontrollably I laughed about it. The best is that he maintains his innocent face, with his big round eyes and his little puckered mouth. And when I started laughing, he looked so startled. "Everyone does that in church, don't they Mom?"

Sorry I didn't capture the moment on camera. I have some other random pictures of him, though. Hope you enjoy!

So much cheek for Mommy to kiss!

Cool exersaucer from Granny Boyer

He's almost outgrown his swing! (and his 6 months clothes at age 4 1/2 months)

With his buddies from the ward

The wallpaper on my new phone.

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