biking

so boden went on his first bike ride a couple weeks ago. i know, we are pathetic. this boy should have experienced this before september of his first full summer of life. well, it took our friends brett and sara and their darling little boy evan, who by the way was born just 5 days after our sweet boden.

after daddy figured out how to attach the bike cart to his bike and took it for a spin, he soon realized that the tube in one of his tires had blown. good thing he had gotten a tire repair kit for the macatawa triathlon that he was in last june (before boden was born) and it was still on his bike. so, mommy says 'sure i can pull boden' and off we went with brett, sara, and cute little evan while eric fixed his bike.

eric soon caught up to us, offered to pull boden, but i said i was fine. well, i was soon to find out that either brett and eric were speed demons on wheels, i was terribly slow and out of shape, or it was a lot harder to pull boden in the cart than i thought. :) now, either way, i tip my hat to brett because he was pulling evan in a cart the whole time and still made it seems absolutely effortless. we stayed together as a group for a while, but i was just too slow for the boys and they steadily crept ahead. sweet sara stayed by my side the entire time as i pumped along. now, to eric's credit he did ask several times if he could pull boden (eric has a major complex when ever we are out that he has to be the one pushing the cart) and i said no, i thought i could handle it. at that point i wasn't too tired and it didn't ever occur to me until the very end that maybe the reason it was so hard for me was because i was pulling boden in a big pushcart. that is at least what i have decided to think. i will not be able to prove otherwise unless the six of us go biking again and i don't have to haul boden. :) which i totally would do again, because other than my burning thighs, we had a great time!

now, boden and evan were fabulous little boys and evan looked so cute in his old navy hooded sweatshirt. evan is really interactive and kept pointing to everything. he was also very nice and shared some graham cracker bears with boden. below are some pictures of our fun ride.





then, we went to steak and shake, where the boys enjoyed making eyes at the girls in the diner :) and the adults beamed at the boys. at one point i just had to laugh. the four of us are so whipped by these tiny little creatures. i'm sure anyone looking on thought it funny that grown adults could act so crazy :)

the high chairs had wheels and boden liked pushing himself and evan around.


both boys know how to 'give five.' we tried to get the boys to 'give five' to each other, but boden just left evan hangin'.


at steak and shake, they give the kids hats. we had a hard time getting them bought into keeping them on for more than two seconds, and certainly, never at the same time....

cutie pie evan with mama sara.

our main man, boden.

addendum

after further analysis, 'car' is much more a north-eastern accent than southern.

"car"

or should i say "ca(r)"? because the 'r' is very faint. almost sounds like he has a little southern accent.

now that boden is realizing that he can say real words, he repeats them almost constantly. all day long, he keeps saying 'hi' to me, 'hi' to strangers in the store, 'hi' to the kitty cat in the book....

boden first started saying 'car' earlier this week. the first time i noticed it was after an afternoon nap. whenever we get boden up from sleeping, we go to the window and say "hello outside," "good morning outside" and so on. well, this time as we were standing looking out the window, boden started going "ca(r), ca(r), ca(r)." at first i thought that he was just making a sound and so i started repeating after him. very soon i realized his attention was keenly focused on the cars going past our house. he would look and when he'd see a car/van/suv go past he would say "ca(r)." it has been steadily ramping up all week. sometimes he would hear a loud car going past and he would look up and say "ca(r)" and go look out the window. well, today it has really kicked in. we were out looking for some shoes (again). which by the way, the sales people measured his feet and he indeed has a size 6 shoe. is it me, or does that seem big for a 14 month old? anyway, driving around in the 'car', seeing cars going past on the road, and loads of them lined up in rows in the parking lot he was going 'car' crazy - "car, car, car, car." he would then start trying to say 'hi' to them as well - "hi," "car," "car," "hi," "hi," "car"..... like my mother said, leave it to a boy to have 'car' be one of his very first words. eric and i haven't put any sort of conscience emphasis on it either. :)

ps- of course, we had to pick up a couple tonka cars for him today at target....

escape

so, boden has outwitted the gate making professionals. we had some foreshadowing a few weeks ago when he discovered that the cloth on the gate was velcroed on (which really, what were they thinking? i know it would be nice if i ever want to take it off to wash it, but come on). anyway, this week i was doing the laundry on one side of the gate and boden was on the other side. i heard some ripping of velcro and when i looked over, he was crawling thru! hmmmm guess we are going to have to get a better plan......

brushin' bode

i am not exactly sure what good it does to brush bode's teeth, but it is fun nonetheless (see the photo below).

boden also enjoyed going to the park tonight. the park itself didn't do a ton for him, but the people there sure were fun for him to watch. he is definitely nosy about other people's business.

sleepin' bode

usually, the high chair is reserved only for gorging himself, but not this time...

making friends

our computer went on the fritz and so we had to make an emergency run to best buy last night. of course boden wanted down to walk around, and not being used to remembering to put his shoes on when we go someplace, i walked boden all around best buy in his bare feet (we were planning on giving him a bath anyway when we got back). the kid acted like he had been let free in a fantasy land. he pulled me up and down the isles, eyes wide with wonder, gaping, smiling mouth from ear to ear, talking at a loud level that exhibits his full lung power. at one point he started calling very loudly for "dada"! so, we went to look for him. when we found him he grabbed eric's hand and the three of us started making our way to the checkout. while waiting in line a little boy (maybe 3-4years old) came along with his dad. boden got all excited and started walking toward him. "hi", "hi", "hi", boden kept saying to him in his high airy voice. the boy seemed a little startled and shied away by his dad. it was just so sweet!

new shoes

so, per one of our previous posts, you know that boden had nearly nothing to wear for this cold weather season. he had been wearing the same two outfits for nearly the whole week, when saturday he peed out of his diaper while taking a nap at grammy's while daddy helped grammy plant another tree. wouldn't be the end of the world, but well, it was the last 'clean' warm outfit to his name and we were already running late to meet brett, sara, and evan for a bike ride (again, more about that later :)). so, we stripped him down, put him in his coat, whisked him out to the truck, put his pants and shirt over the air vent and turned it up high. buy the time we got to the trail head, they were nearly dry, so we put them back on and off we went. am i a horrible mother or what? feeling convicted, i decided to go shopping come rain or shine sunday afternoon to clothe my child. of course, since then there has been only one day cold enough to wear the warm clothes that i bought him and even that was pushing it, but i just wanted him to wear the warm clothes i had finally gotten him:)

ok, what does this have to do with shoes? well, like you know, boden has been getting better and better at being mobile on two feet. though he still only takes about two or three steps at a time, it seems his world has begun to open to him that he does not need to be on all fours nor does he want mom and dad to carry him around constantly. it seems that this occurs to him almost every time we are outside or in a place that i really don't want to set him down. thus, his small white socks are being destroyed (yes, i got new socks too :) ). we thought, this boy needs some shoes! so, i held his monster foot up to my hand to get a rough measure (from the base of my palm to the tip of my pinky) and off i went. found some super cute camo sandals at gap outlet, but the smallest size was a 6. thought they might be too big for him, but they were cheap and i thought, maybe he could wear them next year. i stood for a long time at target looking at four of the cutest little pair of shoes ever made and willing myself to not buy all four. they were 13 bucks apiece and we had been thinking of getting stride right shoes for him, but needed something right away, so i was only supposed to get one pair. sometimes i feel like i need to get him everything cute i find in the store. what am i going to do if we ever have a girl :) anyway, i was good, and only took home one pair of very cute size 3's. when i got home and showed the boys all my finds, we realized that the 3's looked way too small and tried the size 6 sandals on him. fit great!

at first boden was all fussy and didn't like having them attached to his feet. we showed him that mommy and daddy had on shoes too and got him up to walk on them. it must have connected, because he got super excited and squealy and started going to town walking around (holding our hands of course). we walked a little bit inside, then took him outside to try them out. he was in heaven. i'll attach a couple photos to this post, but check out the side bar and we'll put a link to all the pictures in this adventure. notice that he started out with a letter toy in his hands but soon discarded it for sticks he would find on our walk and would stop every so often to pick up another stick or sort out the ones he already had.

"hi"

if you have ever been around boden, you know he loves to jabber on. he looks at you and uses inflections as though he was really communicating something very important. sometimes even stopping to laugh, seemly at something he said. for quite some time now we have been thinking we hear real words coming out of his precious lips, but have not been able to call it with 100% certainty. of course, we are certain that he says dada, as he is always chattering on about him. squealing when he comes into the room - "dada". i ask, who it is, "dada", and so on. i claim mama, as he will say "mama" sometimes when he wants me to pick him up. other words that we sometimes think, did he just say that, have been 'outside' (which we have heard it separately and together, but only once at a time and can't quite decide if it is for real. if it is, then that was his first real word.), 'orange monkey' (just once and it was right after we had said it), and 'hi'. we had been thinking that he was saying it for a few days but weren't totally sure. i always thought that when kids started saying words they would say it distinctly and with such clarity that it would be unmistakable. if you asked them to say it again, they would. maybe for some children/parents it is. either we are a little slower on the draw to actually admit that he has said something than others are, or it is a little bit more of a process. anyway, we have been like: i thought i heard him say 'hi' today, the other: i thought i heard him say it the other day too.... well, it has been getting more and more frequent and now we have two other parties that have heard it too and are backing us up. the one is my mother. i was talking to her on friday and put boden on the phone and he said 'hi' a couple times. she told me we should count it. then this saturday we went bike riding with brett and sara (more fun on that later) and they heard boden said it and told us we should count it, and they are nurses. today and yesterday he has started saying 'hi' while waving. so........... all that to say! we are counting 'hi' as his first real word (besides dada and mama). over on the right, you will see that we have started a new list of boden's words. we plan to have them go in order with the most recent at the top. so, his first word was dada and his last word that we're counting is 'hi'.

long sleeves

boden has grown a wee bit since the last long sleeve season. it was cooler today, so we brought out bode's warmer clothes only to realize he has not remained the same size. time to go shopping.

boden likes dogs

here is a video of boden destroying a hotdog in about 70 seconds. this is real time, and it contains all but one or two bites.

breaking news

boden took some steps today! of course the camera missed the best episodes. we did get a few steps captured. although, at this point he was getting a bit tired of the whole deal. the video we took of us trying to get him to walk is about as entertaining as the actual walking, but we will save that for another day.

diggin' bode

bode had fun helping grammy plant a tree!

grand opening

welcome to boden john's own blog. we have been wanting to start one for a while, but well.... our hope is that this brings everyone who loves boden together to one place. hopefully this will let you see what he has been up to on a more regular basis for both those that live near and those that live farther away.

if you want to subscribe to 'the bode', at the bottom of this page there is a posts link that you can click on to add it to your igoogle homepage or similar application. it will let you know whenever we post something new about boden.

to start us out we have posted a video that is a few months old, but is absolutely a must see....