Whee!

Cael has always been a baby on the move.  Whether touring the neighborhood in his wagon, cruising on his scooter, crawling all over the place or just bouncing in someone's arms, he is happiest being in motion.  Along those same lines, Cael has never met a swing he didn't like.

Our little guy settled into his swing during week one and went on to spend many happy hours napping and relaxing in that little nest.

As he grew, he began to discover other great things about his time in the swing such as the exciting opportunity to get to know his feet.

Cael had his last ride in the "baby swing" a few months ago since he found more joy in trying to climb out of it than he did in kicking back and taking in the living room scenery. 

Christmas rolled around and our little man received a "big boy" swing.  The swing didn't get much attention as Zac and I spent a couple weeks negotiating all of the details that go into big boy swing-hanging such as tree selection and rope choices. 

We reached an agreement, albeit a temporary one, on all key points and the swing made its debut last weekend.  The weather was too beautiful to let differing opinions of rope-knotting keep our little guy from his swing.

Cael LOVED the swing.  Note the crossed feet ... always a sign of his true contentment.

Zac and I couldn't get enough of watching our little guy fall in love with his newest activity.

Interestingly enough, the big boy-swinging started to resemble the baby-swinging as Cael began to doze from the comforting motion.

Napping or awake, the swing is definitely on the shortlist of Cael's favorite activities.

Just a little off the sides, please ...

It's only fitting that we kick off this blog with some headline-worthy news ... Cael had his first haircut this week!  After 11 months we finally decided that our little long-locked kiddo needed a trim.  In many ways it's amazing that we made it this long without an "official" haircut in that he arrived looking like this:

But his sweet little head of hair continued to grow nicely and only needed the occasional nip to offset a few "mullet moments."  I managed to handle these small fixes without bloodshed (for either of us) or hacking off any large chunks of hair.

Cael survived my not-so-professional trims, courtesy of his baby fingernail scissors (they actually worked very well) but we finally reached a point where I was admittedly out of my league.  I hoped to make it to his birthday before going in for the haircut but we figured that 11 months was close enough.

We headed to a little kids' cuts place that had tons of toys (note that green ball that he held onto through most of our visit and that I ended up purchasing as a result), fun cars to sit in, TVs for distraction and a very patient lady named Starr who took great care of Cael.

So Cael settled into the red car (with his long hair and his new ball) ...

... skeptically sat through the spraying and combing ...

... begrudgingly gave in to various distractions ...

... melted down for a few minutes ...

... but recovered nicely once he realized the hard work was done ...

... and once he had a purple balloon in hand.

We love his little haircut and it was a very special "first" for him!  Below are a few of his 11 month pictures that were taken later that day ...

It's hard to belive that our guy is almost one year old but we're just trying to enjoy (and, in some cases, survive) each day as it comes!