On the move!

We have been on the move this last month, visiting friends and family all along the East Coast. Nicholas has been a trooper, my little traveling champ! He delighted everyone with his friendliness and excitement for life. What a blessing this little man has been to me, especially as his daddy has been out at sea.

Memorial day weekend we headed down to Jacksonville, FL to stay with our good friends Amy and Chris and meet Andy when his ship pulled into port. Nicholas loved watching Connor, who is a few months older, crawl and cruise about his home, chattering to everyone. Nicholas started babbling more in response and immediately wanted to stand and hold onto the table just like Connnor!

We made our first visit to the pool, where Nicholas wasn't sure about the water at first, but soon began to love splashing and bobbing in the water.

Our time with Andy in Jacksonville was precious, but it was over too quickly. Andy's last night with us was wonderful, we ate a delicious meal at Barbara Jeans, and then walked around St. Johns' Town Center, a beautiful outdoor mall. We tried to stretch the evening out as long as possible before saying a sad goodbye to daddy.

We headed up to visit our family in Atlanta, GA and Greenville, SC, and had a wonderful time catching up with the cousins who are growing like weeds! We were blessed with wonderful hospitality from our family, and it was so much fun to see Nicholas interact with his great Aunts and Uncles.

We came home for a few days and then we were off again visiting friends in Alexandria. We had a wonderful time catching up with old friends, and again, Nicholas was such a trooper and traveled so well! He loved visiting Christine and Jon and playing with their cats and dogs. He laughs out loud when he sees a dog, so of course Andy and I want to get him one now!

I feel like I have a completely new baby boy now--all personality and on the move!

All of the traveling really drew out Nicholas' joyful personality. He seems to have grown so much more aware of his surroundings and other people, and he loves exploring everything! As soon as we got home, Nicholas started crawling too! It started as a slow, Army crawl drag, and now, if I turn around for a second, Nicholas is across the room! He's already mastered the two stairs from the living room into the kitchen, and I caught him working on the big set of stairs this afternoon as we were headed out the door. Time to child proof! I hadn't discovered that Nicholas could climb and pull himself up until he climbed out of his crib and fell onto the floor :(. I heard a loud THUMP upstairs followed by a long wail. My heart stopped and for a minute I couldn't fathom that Nicholas had caused that loud noise, it was inconceivable to me that he wasn't perfectly safe in his crib. Praise God that he was unhurt; his crying turned to laughter as soon as he saw the kitty cat. Needless to say we immediately lowered the crib to it's lowest setting, something we'd been talking about doing all the previous week!

We had wonderful father's day, thankfully Andy was back home long enough to celebrate with us. Nicholas LOVES his daddy--everything daddy does is so much fun.

Can you tell we love this boy?