Our Own Brand of Super Hero

Reece has been changing in crazy ways these last couple of weeks. He is almost crawling. He has been doing his army scoot for a couple weeks now (pulling himself with his arms and letting his little legs dangle behind; takes after his Grandpa Mel...for the army part, not the little legs part) and he even modified it so that he would turn in circles all across the floor. If he wanted something a foot in front of him, he'd turn in several 360 degree circles until he had scooted just far enough to reach it. Pretty funny kid. Well now he's starting to get the idea that he can also use his legs, so the crawling is imminent. This isn't the best video of him almost-crawling - he can make it pretty much all the way across a room - but he was tired this morning so we didn't want to push it too far. Please enjoy our little Reece-ster:



He also has two teeth. They are just coming in but they're hard to capture on film. I feel like he's getting super powers. He's got his super-bite now, enabling him to eat Cheerios and bananas more efficiently (who wouldn't consider that a super power?), and he's developing his super-crawl (a combo of arm pulling, sick 360s and cute mini leg scoots-see above video). And perhaps the most powerful of all, his super-charm. He will stare at women until they give him their attention, then just bask in his own cuteness. Reece's friend Nichelle (YMCA child care provider) said the other day, "He is adorable. I mean, all babies are cute, but he is adorable. Like, he should be in commercials." Reece has used his super power charms to win her over. Now he's the favorite baby at the Y and he gets people who don't even have kids stopping in just to woo him. Then two days ago we were at Wendy's and the manager brought us a FREE meal. He had been cooing over Reece and then BAM, free food. When does that ever happen at Wendy's? Thank you, Captain Charm.

If you're ever planning on visiting us you'd best be warned: Reece will have you wrapped around his little finger. And when he does, you'd better be careful: he bites.

Welcome to our Halloween-time

Every year that we lived in Los Angeles we would go to Disneyland at Halloween time. I even had my own song that I would sing for that special trip (see title of post). I really missed it this year, though I'm pretty sure Paul will never miss hearing that song, which only had the one line and which I would sing constantly for about a week. This year, though I really missed Disneyland, we did have Reece. And Reece is better than 1000 Disneylands.


Reece was a hot dog for Halloween (he requested it. I said "Don't you want to go as something more time-sensitive? Like dress up like Obama or Al Gore?" But again, he insisted on going as a little wiener). Paul and I dressed up as hot dog vendors, and we actually won his work costume competition. But with such a cute baby, it was kind of a shoe-in. We also had a little secret touch to our costumes, which was our custom logo that we ironed onto our hats and aprons:Please don't sue us, Wienerschnitzel. I promise nobody noticed, and my hard work of cutting and pasting in Paint was all for naught. Now for the real Weitzelschnitzel:


Paul also had his birthday this weekend (today, actually). He's now finally old enough to own a pair of feetsie pajamas (you know the baby pajamas with the little feet...yeah, those). He also got a hot dog cake to match our hot dog ensemble from yesterday. It didn't work out as pretty as I hoped, and we certainly can't eat it, as it's made of Twinkies and pound cake (we're trying to NOT die of pound cake overdose).



And finally just some cute pictures of Reece. I know that's what you really came for, but you get bonus points if you read this far...sucker.

Just Like Daddy

Despite my best efforts, Reece is taking after his dad. Sure, that's a good thing as far as ambitions and morals and being a great human being; but the video games, oh the video games! Fortunately, at least for right now, Reece is more interested in just chewing on the controller and cord rather than conquering beasts and perfecting a pix-elated character. But I fear that all too soon his Weitzel/Carr boy genes will take over and he will be lost forever.




(Side note: you can kinda see his mohawk in this second picture. It looks like a tuft of hair floating two inches above his head. It won't stay down even when we try, and it certainly gets a lot of attention from the ladies).

Go, Banana!

Just a cute video of Reece from today. I'll try to get more good pics of his radical mohawk. It's seriously two inches tall and totally natural. A lot of babies have to spend hours grooming to get that kind of killer hairdo. Not our baby. His hair just screams for attention, and oftentimes so does Reece. Usually, thank goodness, he is less likely to scream than to just stare people down until they fawn over him.




Here he is talking to Grandma Nancy on the phone. He always gets this look when he's on the phone, though he rarely makes a sound. You can also kinda see the mohawk here.



Reece loves loves loves Teddy Bear's Picnic (the original song, not the Internet Sensation version). It somehow ended up being his bedtime book/song. He gets so excited when we start to sing (Paul includes an opening fanfare each night so Reece starts flapping his arms and squealing when he hears the drumroll) and it is pretty much the only book that Reece doesn't try to eat as soon as he sees it. It's even worked as a calming ploy when we try to actually get him to sleep. He'll cuddle with his book. The book could be a bit more cuddly in return, but I'm sure with enough drool it'll end up nice and soft soon enough. For this video, I left Reece sitting in the middle of the bed, the book out of reach (I thought) and closed, and I came back to find him doing a little light reading.

Reece Today

Reece is 6 1/2 months old now and he just got a crib today. No more sleeping in a drawer for our little guy. He loves it so far, and I love that his bed no longer slopes toward the middle (play yards are fantastic, but his needed a bit of an upgrade). He also loves that his stuffed animals can all fit in his bed with him. So please do enjoy our little Reece-man.

Vacation Videos - Only 6 weeks late

So just a few videos from our trip. I know it's like a month later and it's kinda not relevant anymore. But it takes time to get to things, so here we go.

This first video is only representative of what happened with Reece everywhere we went. People LOVED him, especially the Italians. It was fun to watch, and we even (sometimes) got special perks because of it. Example: in Venice a couple gave us all-access passes to every museum because they thought Reece was cute. Unfortunately he cried in every one of them. Then in Florence's Uffizi, we got to go behind the little velvet ropes to get to the elevators and got to see the full 360 view of some famous sculptures (the actual thorn in the "Boy with the Thorn in his foot" or whatever it's called). We had tourists gawking at Reece instead of Michelangelo's David, and others pointing out Reece instead of admiring Galileo's actual finger (which we thought was pretty cool). This happened dozens of times a day, so when we left Italy Reece had been trained that if he looked at someone long enough, they would love up on him. He's still getting over that and will stare people down in the store. If they don't look back and smile, he yells at them. It's pretty funny and getting better.



This next video is from our drive through Switzerland. We were just amazed at how incredibly beautiful it was. Enjoy.




This video is halfway up Mount Pilatus in Lucerne, Switzerland. This was our favorite day of the trip.



And finally, just a little bit of French culture from our three hours we spent in Strasbourg. Sure Ryan and Liz actually live in France and can actually give you accurate accounts of the culture, food, people and music, but we aren't cool enough. So you get me singing Frere Jacques.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait...but other things, like this post, also come to those who wait

I finally uploaded all of our trip photos and a few photos from September onto our web albums. Take a look if you're interested (and have time and/or desire to see about 500 photos). We love you! (Note: If you doubt that we actually love you because we don't know you, then we probably don't and you shouldn't be viewing this blog. If you think "maybe they love me because we are good friends and/or acquaintances," then you can probably assume that we do love you. If you still need reassurance, post a comment or call us and I will let you know on a more personal basis whether or not there is love. Again, the answer is probably 'yes').