Searching for Conner ... Oh wait, there he is!

Did you know that Conner is 317 days old today. Not that 317 days is a significant number ... it's just one day closer to his first birthday! I thought Christina would enjoy being reminded of that.

So, on to the point of this post ... Conner has been playing peek-a-boo for quite some time now, but we've never really captured it on video. But the other day -- in the newly discovered play area that is the door to our back deck -- Christina was able to finally capture Conner hiding behind a curtain ... and then appearing ... then hiding ... then appearing ...

A weekend at the beach

The great thing about me running races at Virginia Beach is how it gives us an excuse to go on a mini-vacation. While I enjoyed yet another race at the beach, my highlights were watching Conner explore in the sand, opening and shutting doors in the hotel room, sleeping on the couch and listening to him "talk" to other people on the Boardwalk. Here are some photo highlights:

The double-digit little man

10 months? Really? Conner has had a big month in many different ways. He has seen all his grandparents in three straight weeks, which included his third trip to Ohio. As we posted earlier, he learned to crawl, and it didn't take long for him to perfect that. Now he's quite the speed demon. In the past week he has drastically improved pulling himself up too. He now greets us every morning standing in his bed waiting for us. It wouldn't surprise us if he's walking in the next month or so.
The next month isn't looking nearly as busy, which we're looking forward to. There's been a lot of go-go-go lately, so we're looking forward to easing into fall and planning that first birthday party! Tomorrow we're headed to Virginia Beach - his second visit there, but first in which he'll get to play in the sand. Of course we'll have photos to share!

Weird laughs, a touchdown and lots of crawling!

Another road trip!

For the third time in his short life, we ventured to Ohio this past weekend. The trip up, though, was the first one during the day. In January, we traveled about halfway and then stayed the night, which worked out great with his then-sleeping pattern. At Easter we traveled through the night, which was OK, although all of our sleeping schedules got a little thrown off. So this time around, we decided to do a "normal" trip up there.

All in all, it worked out OK, but with road construction and having to stop to feed Conner for lunch, the trip took almost 8.5 hours - it's usually a little more than 7. Coming back today wasn't quite as bad, but the poor little guy had some diaper issues that we really didn't notice initially, which accounted for some fussiness. He also got a little hungry in the last hour of the trip, so that made things seem a little longer than usual.

Anyway, the two full days in the Buckeye State went well. Conner's crawling improved dramatically, and now he's on a mission every time we put him down. At some point over the weekend he also developed a very crazy-sounding laugh, if that's what you want to call it.It pretty much only happened when he was feeding and other people were around. He continued it tonight when we got home. And, of course, he stops it as soon as a camera comes out so there's no audio proof of it just yet.
Conner got to play with some of Christina's cousin's kids and he met Colin, Kristina's 10-week-old son. (For those who don't know who Kristina is, that is Christina's best friend.) It was a lot of fun to see him interact so well with kids both younger and older than he is.

Conner also ate a lot this weekend ... he ate and ate and ate some more. Since he's in the 75th percentile already for both height and weight, it's probably just part of the never-ending growth spurt.

Another big highlight of the weekend was Conner venturing into the pool. After he got over the initial shock of the coolness of the water, he absolutely had a ball in the pool.

Duke REALLY wanted to get in and play too!

Coming home!

The Little Showoff

Here's a slideshow of some photos of Conner from last weekend:

Conner Crawls!

To him it was painful and exciting all at the same time, but Conner finally put it all together today to crawl a little bit.