Trip to L.A.

This past weekend we decided to make use of our free airline tickets through Jon's work and take a family trip to L.A.! We flew out Friday afternoon and stayed in a motel that night. In the morning we loaded up our rental car and let Jonah do the driving...

But since he couldn't reach the pedals we thought he might enjoy the trip more from the backseat (notice the palm trees in the background).
We drove up Pacific Coast Highway 1 to Malibu Beach. On the way we stopped to watch some surfers. I couldn't believe how close they were to each other - collisions must happen all the time.
We found a fantastic campground up on a hill overlooking the beach.
Yes, that's right. We camped! This was very minimalist camping as we only had room in our luggage for a tent, sleeping bags and a lantern. No other camp gear whatsoever. I was a little jealous as we passed our fellow campers who were fully prepared with camp stoves, coolers, chairs, etc. But we had a great time despite our lack of camping "stuff". Good missionary training, right?
This is the view out our tent door. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the ocean is in the background.
Jonah enjoyed crawling around the tent.
The one thing we did have was the Pack n' Play for Jonah. He spent a lot of time chewing on the side of the crib and now in retrospect I realize why: Monday morning as we were packing up to leave I discovered (while trying to fish a piece of grass out of his mouth) that he had cut his first tooth!
It was an extremely hot weekend (in the 100's) and we had many sweaty moments. We found a state park and thought we might take a little hike so we loaded Jonah into the backpack and headed out. After about 50 yards we realized this was a bad idea and hastily made our way back to the air conditioned car. (Note the completely miserable look on Jonah's face.)


I was concerned that he was getting dehydrated with all the heat and sweating so I wanted to give him something to drink when we got back in the car. All I had was some sugary orange drink left in my cup from McDonald's. This video hardly does justice to how excited he was to have that juice!

Jonah's first trip to the Pacific.
He got a little too close to the water and had to lose his shorts as a result.

Of course we had to check out Hollywood and get our picture taken with Rambo.
As we were packing up to leave we saw the biggest, most disgusting bug we've ever seen. We were just glad we hadn't seen it earlier or we would have been totally paranoid about it getting in the tent. Any ideas what this might be?

Jonah did really great on the plane both ways. We were able to have an empty seat between us so he had a little extra room to play. (Southwest has a first-come first-served seating policy... apparently no one wanted to pick a seat next to an active 9-month-old.)

Crawling!

Jonah started to crawl the day before his 9-month birthday. This video shows his first tentative movements forward.

Within a few days he was a pro and could crawl at the speed of light! (Well, maybe not quite that fast.)

Swimming

A scream of delight!

This is an old video that I meant to put up a long time ago of Jonah swimming. He loves it!

A New Milestone!

Today Jonah pulled himself up to standing in his playpen! I was sitting there and suddenly noticed that he had gotten up on his knees and a few moments later he was standing! I couln't believe it! Later in the afternoon he pulled himself up on the coffee table. Jon went in right away and lowered his crib mattress (we still had it raised in the infant position). Now I'm sure that real crawling is not far behind. He can scooch forward a few inches at a time when he's really motivated to get something, but he still doesn't get the concept of moving arms and legs together to accomplish forward movement.

His other fun tricks as of late are copying tongue clicks, sniffing, and blowing raspberries. Jon and I are in a mad race to see if he will say "Mama" or "Dada" first. We both drill him on it constantly, but of course I have the advantage because I'm with him more. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good videos of these tricks before he moves on to bigger and better things!

Luau Party

Our apartment complex had a Luau party at the pool on Saturday. I found Jonah the perfect Hawaiian outfit in our box of hand-me-downs (thanks again, Susie!) and he won second place for best dressed! We also won a gift certificate to a local pizza place in the raffle, so we'll have to plan a date night soon.

Friends

I got to watch Jonah's little friend, Heidi, one afternoon last week. She is only one month older than Jonah, but she's much more advanced in her mobility. He was very jelous watching her crawl all over the place, pull herself up and cruise around the furniture... In fact since the day I watched her she has become a full-fledged walker. She also has a full mouth of teeth compared to Jonah's bare gums. It just goes to show that all babies are different, right? I make excuses for Jonah because he has a lot more weight to haul around - 10 pounds to be exact. Anyways, I tried to get a lot of cute pictures of them together because Heidi's parents also went to Wheaton College and we like to dream that Jonah and Heidi will be classmates at Wheaton someday and they'll fall in love and get married and we'll have the perfect pictures for their rehearsal dinner slide show!

Distracting

Sometimes it can be very fun to watch a movie with Jonah and he is content and interested in what is happening on the screen. Here Jon and Jonah are having some male bonding time watching the documentary of the White Sox World Series Championship in 2005.

Other times he can be really distracting during a movie.