Soup night is officially over!

Our annual tradition of making 2 pots of soup each Saturday night in January / opening our home to friends and neighbors has come to a close. We enjoyed the good company over these past four weekends, but admittedly, it was harder to do all of the cooking & cleaning this year than in the past. Todd and I would have to take turns hanging out with Mercer so Todd could clean and I could cook. Mercer did pretty well each night - as he's definitely a social baby. Although it was tougher - we still feel it valuable to show him the warmth of sharing a bowl of soup with those that we care about.

There have been some changes we've noticed in the past week or so. Mercer has become more clingy... we can see separation anxiety. He's starting to grind his top teeth against his bottom teeth (yikes)... he's exploring a new noise that he can make (I hope it stops soon as it's sort of like the fingernails on a chalkboard noise!). He's becoming more daring as he's on the verge of walking... he's testing his limits - and - unfortunately sometimes learns about gravity.

He's begun to say "no no no no." He doesn't know what it means, but we say it sometimes... so does he. He's becoming quite the parrot - we really have to watch what we say! I think I blogged already that he's pretty much holding his own bottle now. Here's a shot of him and his daddy watching their first Superbowl together.

I bought the birth mother's airline ticket this past week (we promised her 11 months ago that we would fly her out for his first birthday & she still wanted to do it). I have officially started to make preparations for his 1st birthday party. 1 year. wow. a year?! crazy how that time slips away - but what a fantastic year it's been for us!

Have a good week,

Candice