this NEVER happens!

Usually the little prince has to be in his crib to sleep but he was EXHAUSTED and passed out after his last bottle of the day...........if you look closely you can see a little dribble of milk ;)

How cute is he - seriously. You know you want to kiss those big cheeks!!!

Declan's first (and LAST) bong

haha OOPS!!! I ordered this toy off the internet and when it came Paul was like, "Alli whaaaaat on earth have you done" - haha. Oh my word - hilarious. These people who made this toy must think they're hilarious.............Declan loves it so that's all that matters but SERIOUSLY!

Freak

And here's the sequence: we were at dinner the other night and were trying to hold off as long as possible on the sippy cup but the MINUTE he saw it, it was over. Check it out.

Just hangin.

UNTIL WE SEE THIS............

Do NOT take away my sippy cup

 look at me I'm such a big boy!

Declan's menu yesterday:

5 bottles PLUS:

For breakfast he had a little apple mixture I concocted - apples and raisins were cooked down and blended up with some cinnamon and oatmeal. easy to freeze, easy to warm back up, which we did this morning and mixed in a half of a mashed up banana. This was AFTER his bottle mind you........

For lunch we had a prune mixture that had a little apple and rice cereal...mmmmmmm - waiting for the poop on that one!

A little snack, he had the other half of his banana cut up into little pieces that he could feed himself

For dinner, woahhhh dinner - Nana had made this delicious pasta e fagiole (sp?????) so we were eating it and i was feeding him some of mine - he had carrots, celery, lots of noodles and lots of kidney beans.
THEN he had some homemade carrots mixed with cooked down spinach, peas and green beans - and ate it all.

The kid is a bottomless pit. He is one active (maybe hyper active????? paul......) kid though so we need all sorts of fuel to keep him going! PHEW - what on earth are we going to do when he's 14?????

Standing fool

One hand - really dude???? STOP GROWING SO QUICKLY!

now how can I get down......that is the question

Bubble blower

My little dreamer.....

Must have seen daddy.

Butt's up!

Every time Declan gets on a different surface he all of a sudden sticks his butt up in the air and does the bear crawl. Like so:

Gonna help Nana do the laundry??!! Thanks fella!

NANA'S HERE!

Carol, her son, and her son's mini-me :) Such a little Hogan!!!!!

Cool dude

Just chillin' - he's a bigtimer. Fast forward 20 years and this is going to be him college, sub out a Bud Light. YIKES!!!!!

Who hold theirs bottle with one hand??? Weirdo!

How can you not love this kid?????

those happy pretty blues and his smile get me everytime :) full of life, this kid.

Phenomenal video.

I am SO glad we have this on tape as this is something we'll watch forever.....................I am so in love with my little babies (Paul, yes you ;) ) that I can't even say. Oh my word. Awesome.

Deco and Daddy playing

MORE trouble

Just when I think we're getting settled back into normal life after Declan's mastered his latest trick, he comes up with another one. We were getting used to blocking off plugs, outlets, sharp objects etc etc etc because he's gotten to be quite the expert crawler, and all of a sudden he's decided its a good idea to start pulling up and standing to get to more fun, non-Declan items.
   We had gotten fairly comfortable with letting him roam because we knew the downstairs was (mostly) safe for little buddy and I didn't feel like I had to keep my eye on him every second of the day. PSH - he figured he was letting me off too easily so we're back to eyeing him down on a moment by moment basis. Our only solace is the pack-n-play but yesterday he figured out how to pull up (which is literally a pull up because the the top of that is pretty high for a crawling/sitting down little baby) on that so now I'm just waiting for him to jump out and say "Hi Mommy, look what I can do!!!" There is nothing stopping him. He is the most focused, determined human being I have ever seen....................when he wants to do something, its only hours before he figures it out. God help us all.

Oh heyyyyy.......I want in on the action!

Paul's little mini-me

Tell me these two don't look alike...........oh Lord have mercy :) Paul's mom had sent some cute pics of Paul as a baby awhile back and this one in the bath looked JUST LIKE DECLAN to me, so I tried to reenact a few nights ago. Didn't get the exact shot but close enough. Check 'em out:

little baby Paul

little baby Deco

***working on getting these side by side because they really are carbon copies of each other, these two.......

aaaaand we're pulling up

what on earth?!?! I'm not sure who told you, Declan, that it was cool to grow up so fast but you need to slow your roll fella................you need to stay our baby for just a little bit longer please! You just turned 7 months TODAY for pete's sake!!!

Fun little video Paul put together of the pull-up:)

Cheesy mommy

But I swear, Declan's eyes have a light in them that just melts my heart..................there is so much life in this kid, it surprises (and exhausts) me on a daily basis. Love him to bits. We are so lucky.

I don't think we could have a happier baby. LOVE YOU LITTLE DB!!!!!

SHOCKING

Constantly amazed at how much of a mess this kid can make but how can something this small:

Make THIS big of a "disgusting, harden on contact thus very difficult for mommy to clean up" mess?!

******click on the photo to get the full jist :)

**side note, Declan does loooooove these teething biscuits, as do I because they tide him over when he's being fussy but not ready for his bottle yet. Glad they dissolve easily so he can't choke but seriously.......

Swingin' buddy!

Declan's still a little small for this big boy swing but we gave it a go last weekend and he had a blast. A little difficult to take pics of a moving object with my camera but let me tell you, I gave it my best shot ;) DUH!

Barely caught him :)

I promised you I would do it....

This post is dedicated to my beautiful fellow Ally/Allie's :) From your favorite ALLI! Declan would like for you to come play asap so get on it!!!!!! How could you resist this cute little chunker????

Interesting..................

Really dude? Is that a comfortable position to eat????? He's a little nuts these days buuuut we love him :)

BUDDIES

This is Abby, our next door neighbor and Declan's BFF :) She is 11 days older than little baby Deco and its hilarious to watch them going thru some of the same stages together. Take, for example, below. EVERRRYTHING TO THE MOUTH:

Abby wanted to play, Declan just wanted to look at her

Hey babies!!

Had another one of those moments.......

Last night I was rocking Declan before he went to sleep and I was trying to pretend like I didn't see him nor wanted to play with him because allllllll he wanted to do was play. Time for night night boog, not time to play! In any case, I was turning my head away and every time I would turn to look at him and see if his eyes were shutting at all, he'd just smile at me. Too sweet. He was just staring up at me for what must have been 5 minutes straight and every time I'd look, he would smile his absolutely gorgeous, take your breath away smile. So I finally gave in (what a wuss) and started smiling back. I put my forehead to his and he just stayed there for a couple minutes and we smiled and every once in awhile he would give his cute little belly laugh.
   We used to lay heart to heart when he was a newborn, now we sit head to head and smile at each other. Both are pretty sweet.

TIME TO BABY PROOF???

uhhh yes - I think so!

ps - bro, where'd you get those thunder thighs?????????????

Who's the big boy playing with his toys?!?!?!

Check him out! These are the pictures that absolutely warm my heart but at the same time break it - reminding me that Declan is not our little baby anymore...............turning into such a little boy! Good gracious where is this time going.