First update of 2010 only took a month, and it’s not even that meaningful. Except, oh yeah, we’re pregnant again! Grayson’s little brother or sister will be making their appearance in the first week of August 2010. Expect plenty of “do you know how hot it is?” summer updates from a very pregnant Blair!

Also, follow @areed, if you are Twitter inclined.

Thank you all for helping us celebrate Grayson’s first birthday this weekend! We’re so blessed to have such a great community of friends and family. We’ll have pictures up from the party soon, but first… Grayson had a little present for us yesterday!

Right after this video was shot, Grayson walked across the entire room (from the patio door to our bedroom)! I think he has been capable of walking for a while but this was the first time he decided on his own to stand up and go. We’re so proud of him!

Blair was feeding Grayson in his high chair while I was getting ready for work this morning, and I kept hearing him giggle from the other end of the house. He’s a happy kiddo so giggling is nothing new, but this was definitely a bit more enthusiastic than usual. A few minutes later, Blair called me in to see his “new trick”.

Indy, our West Highland terrier is an opportunistic dog, as most are I suppose. While we’ve never fed him from the table, that doesn’t stop him from planting himself at our feet during dinner and doing all of his tricks to see if he can catch a scrap. This morning, he was camped underneath Grayson’s high chair.

Grayson figured out that if he dropped one of his baby puffs treats off of his tray, that Indy would scramble to quickly find it and scarf it down. Indy scrambling is one of Grayson’s favorite things to giggle at, so you can probably guess how this ends:

Grayson sacrificed most of his breakfast puffs treats because he prefers giggling to eating, and Indy got a much bigger breakfast than usual.

A… long time ago, Grayson had his first beach vacation! He went swimming, got some sun, ate some sand — the usual beach activities! Blair and I were so proud of him because he wasn’t scared of the ocean, or the pool, or the seagulls or anything else.

Grayson also got to spend some great quality time with his Papa and Mama-C (Blair’s parents), and his awesome uncle Rane who was generous enough to take these wonderful pictures. This is only about half of what Rane shot, but there are just too many good ones to post them all!

Note: There are 3 pages with links at the bottom of the gallery.

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We had two milestones in one day! Grayson has been army crawling really well this week, and posturing for a traditional crawl but not really going anywhere. Today he surprised us both by crawling full out!

He showed Blair and Meghan this morning in Houston, and then when they got back into town he showed off for me, too. Strangely enough, when I tried to take a little video of him crawling, he showed me this instead:

Tomorrow I’m going to teach him how to shave.

Blair and Grayson have been in Houston this week and I can’t wait for them to get home! The house has been strangely quiet, and while it’s been rough, it was good that work was so busy this week.

While most parents talk about dreading hearing the baby crying at night and having to get out of bed, my favorite thing when I wake up is going into the nursery and getting Grayson out of bed. He’s a much better alarm clock than the one on my night stand, and he brightens every groggy morning with his smile. I think that’s what I’ve missed the most this week.

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Grayson’s always enjoyed being tickled, but he’s recently developed a new reaction to it. First there’s the standard giggle, which is awesome. Now, there’s this second bit that I can’t really describe. I’ll let the video do the talking:

A lot of our friends are already huge fans of Aaron Ivey, so I’ve been selfishly enjoying his new album and neglecting everyone else who reads this blog that might not know him. Check out Between the Beauty and Chaos:

So, I’m eating at Chuy’s last night with a good friend of mine, and while I suppose we could have ordered “fajitas for two”, we’re men, so we both ordered “fajitas for one” instead. You all probably know I don’t like my foods to touch each other let alone to touch other people’s foods… even if they are the same.

We place our order and not more than 4 minutes later, our waiter serves us our food. We were impressed. I jokingly asked him if someone had just sent back two orders of chicken fajitas, which of course was followed by a few seconds of awkward silence. Apparently my smile was not enough to convince him that I was not, in fact, being serious.

He eventually replied, “Nope. These are fresh. You only have to let the skillet heat up for fajitas so as long as you’re not ordering anything else, it comes fast.”

Not satisfied with the previous awkward silence, I commented, “So you’re saying my wife is the reason I have to wait to eat dinner?” 1…2…3…10 seconds of awkwardness. Much better.

So the moral of the story is, if you want to feed a family of 8 in under 10 minutes start to finish, do whatever you can to convince them that fajitas are the only way to go.

It’s Grayson’s first summer, so we wanted to take advantage of the great weather and get him some outdoor play time. He used to only cool off in the bath (see pictures), but Blair and I picked up a big inflatable pool for him to try out in the back yard!

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Along with his first time ’swimming’, he’s learning new things everyday. He loves following Mommy, Daddy and Indy (our Westie) around the house in his walker. If he’s not following us, he’s probably heading straight for the kitchen cabinets which he loves to open. Luckily the walker keeps him from opening them too far.

He’s being quite a bit more vocal now, and while he hasn’t said “mama” or “dada” yet, he will scream at the top of his lungs and then laugh pretty hard. His top front teeth are starting to come in, too. With all of this excitement, we decided to go ahead and lower the mattress in his crib just to make sure he doesn’t add climbing to his list of activities… . Out little boy is growing up fast!

Update: Media Overload! Here are some videos to show a few of Grayson’s favorite (and not so favorite) things!