Daniel's Favorite Songs

I end up singing a lot of songs to Daniel to keep him smiling and happy! I thought I would highlight some of his favorites right now:

- Snuggle Puppy (obviously)
- Cee Cee My Playmate (oldie but goodie)
- BINGO
- Itsy Bitsy Spider
- The Gambler
- You Are My Sunshine
- If Your Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands (call out to Gram)
- Riding on a Donkey (I stole this song from Michael and his dad - apparently I sing it incorrectly, but Daniel still seems to love it)
- Rock-a-bye Baby

And Daniel's favorite book right now is "My Monkey book" which makes monkey sounds and lets him grab the monkey's arms and tail.

Daniel has learned how to make raspberries by blowing bubbles and I give him raspberries on his stomach when I am changing him into his PJs. He is also reaching for everything and loves to reach for your face. This morning he actually grabbed my nose!

Daniel's First Real Food!!

Daniel had his first real food today - Gerber's rice cereal. We took a movie of this momentous event for posterity. He did not seem to be too thrilled with the cereal and we are not positive that he actually swallowed some, but this is to be expected according to our pediatrician. (Babies need to get used to the idea of eating something other than formula and at first they are just going to play with it and spit it out.) First we need to conquer the rice cereal and then we can move on to fruit (which Michael is really excited about feeding Daniel as you can imagine!)

Daniel and his Doggy

Daniel was having a great time playing with his stuffed Wired-Hair Fox Terrier doggy from Gram and Pop-pop! He is the perfect size to play and pet the doggy now. Plus Daniel is wearing his cute outfit from Uncle Scott and Aunt Erica and he gave everyone smiles at church today on Epiphany Sunday.

Political Commentary by Daniel

My brother has asked me to include some political commentary on this blog to make it more interesting (clearly he does not have kids yet)!! So we decided to ask Daniel his opinions on all the candidates and here are his thoughts. (Michael has hopes that Daniel will be the next Tim Russert if he does not make Quarterback!)

- Hillary Clinton: small grunt, stuck out his tongue a bit, small hand gesture

- Barack Obama: long grunting moan

- John Edwards: two grunts and a look of almost interest

- Mike Huckabee: at first a disinterested look and then a broad smile

- Mitt Romney: half grin with extended conversation

- John McCain: extended conversation and half grimace, seemed agitated

- Fred Thompson: shook head no... twice!

- Rudy Gulliani: half smile that evaporated

We therefore interpreted Daniel's thoughts to mean the following:

Out of the Democrats Edwards prompted the closest thing to interest. From this we deduced that Daniel thinks that Edwards will win the nomination.

From the Republicans we can see that Daniel's acumen seems quite astute. Daniel knows that Thompson and Gulliani are not fated to win the race. Daniel sees that Huckabee went from "Who the heck is he?" to winning Iowa. And evidently he has profound opinions on Romney and McCain. As to what this means we have no idea except that it will come down to Huckabee, Romney or McCain according to Daniel.

Since Daniel was more talkative about the Republicans, we asked him if he had any last thoughts on the Democrats and he gave us a huge smile. We interpret this to mean that Daniel is very smart and knows that he should align with Mommy, and that he thinks that the Democrats will win in November. Given the state of the Republican Party, Daniel may well be right.

(Daddy did ask him what he would think if we could clone Ronald Reagan and run him in November. Daniel immediately arched his back to full extension, made a distressed grunt, and then started a long, slightly-agitated conversation. We leave the interpretation to the reader.)

Our Future Quarterback

As you can see, Daniel is already throwing the football. I think the Future Quarterback PJs are really having an impact on him - OR maybe it is Daddy since we have 24/7 coverage of football at our house????????? You know the playoffs start today and the Raven's coach was fired so football is not over for the season yet.

However, Daniel might have to go play for Penn State b/c at least they won their Bowl Game - unlike VA Tech (after all Pop-pop made his first purchase over the internet which was a Penn State shirt for Daniel).

20 Weeks Old Today

As you can see Daniel loves playing with his tongue right now!

Happy New Year - 2008

Well needless to say, our 2007 was the best year ever! Daniel has been such a blessing in our lives and in the lives of our family and friends. He has touched our hearts more than we could have ever imagined. Every day we marvel at how blessed we are with Daniel in our lives.

Everyone tells us that 2008 will only get better and more fun with Daniel. Our only New Year's Resolution for 2008 is to love Daniel as much as possible every single day :)

We took a few pictures on New Year's Eve with Daniel in his Panda outfit from our god-daughter, Nicole! He took a buggy ride at daycare around the facility and all the teachers gave him lots of attention which he loved. Then we went to Jen and Bennett's to play with Robyn and BJ. Jen made lobster tails for dinner which were amazing - of course Daniel got a little upset he was only getting a bottle. He did eventually fall asleep on Mommy!

This morning we were just enjoying playing with Daniel in his dinosaur PJs. Later today we are off to PA to so Daniel can meet his great-grandmother (Holly's maternal grandmother). He rolled the whole way across our bedroom floor this morning and surprised us!

Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog. Thank you so much for welcoming Daniel into your lives with open arms. You will never know how much we value your friendship, love and support.