Visit from Grandpa Mitchell

A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother, Scott!! Love you, bro!

My dad came to visit us last weekend since Gayle was out of town with a girlfriend of hers. We had all kinds of fun with Grandpa! A birthday dinner for my brother at Buca d'Beppo, working on the deck with John, a family dinner with Grandpa Durso on Saturday and a British car show on Sunday (my dad has restored a few Austin Healeys in his time). On top of all that, Johnny had a lot of fun showing Grandpa all of his new tricks.

Johnny with Lindsay, Dylan's girlfriend

Grandpa Mitchell with Johnny

Lindsay and my brothers, Dylan and Scott

Talking about cars

Johnny was excited about this particular Austin Healey

This was the one that won 1st place for the Austin Healeys probably because it has triple carburetors...

Still moving

Remember when Johnny started moving? He's finally graduated to real, live crawling... except when he wants something that he knows he shouldn't have (like the cable modem) then he scrambles because it's still faster.

Snooping

Now that Johnny is mobile he has started getting into things... like cabinets and drawers. In our bathrooms he opens up each cabinet and pulls out extra toothpaste, toilet paper, etc, and boy is that fun!

 He could sit there for hours pulling out the contents of each cabinet. Which means I had to remove all of the potentially toxic things in the lower cabinets and put them all on our bathroom counter, which makes the whole counter rather cluttered. I'm thinking that having all of that stuff in the way will motivate me to install the cabinet clips I bought a week ago...

The Pincer Grasp

Johnny has finally managed what is called the "pincer grasp," where he can grab something between his thumb and index finger. He's been trying to pick up Cheerios (and yogurt melts and bits of my foods) for awhile and up until now has only managed to pull them into his palm and hold them there. Now he can pick them up and put them in his mouth. Oh! And he waves now, too! Just not on command and only to certain people... like the pretty girl who bags our groceries at Sprouts... flirt.

Goggies!

Johnny has a fascination with dogs. Every time he comes into contact with a dog, we try really hard to teach him to be gentle by saying "gennnntle... gennnntle..." and moving his open hand slowly and delicately. Then right after we let go, he lunges for the poor dog and grabs a handful of skin and fur... we're working on it.

Last weekend, Aunt Leslie came over with her two little dogs, Pepe and Carson. Johnny was pretty excited about being around them and they handled it pretty well, though Pepe was more tolerant of Johnny than Carson was.