Yo Quiero Tace Bell Chipotle

Everyone within a 100 mile radius of Billy, knows how much he loved Chipotle. We had always avoided eating there, however, when we had Merrick with us. Their menu isn't necessarily *very small* kid friendly. Merrick's no too picky, but I'm sure you can imagine my hesitation to have our whole family covered in pinto beans and rice. The last few times we've gone there, though...Merrick really seemed to enjoy it. Here is a video we took of him Thursday:

Tirzah spent most of her time in Chipotle like this...I guess she'll learn to appreciate it eventually. :)

Spidey Sense

Merrick is finally starting to outgrow his hand-me-down shoes that he's been wearing for what seems like forever. Merrick has never been accused of being a big guy, and his feet are no exception. His 22 month old self still wears lots of his 12 month clothes...and I'm wondering if he'll be 22 before he grows out of them. Up to this point, we've never really needed to buy him new shoes, other than his summer sandals that made his feet smell awful, and were retired early. ;) The hand-me-downs someone gave us have fit him for a long time. We decided to get him some fancy-shmancy light up Spiderman shoes...he was fascinated with his cousin Avery's light up shoes at the beach this year.

He did a great job of breaking them in, stomping all over the house to make them blink, until we finally had to pry them off his feet and put him in the bed. ;)

Dancing Queen King

Since he was able to sit up...Merrick has been breakin it down. This is a picture of him dancing in the car at about 13 months:

His dancing kind of goes through phases. He's done the swaying side-to-side thing, the head bob thing, the wave your hands in the air thing, even the booty-shakin thing. ;) The thing that always surprises me though, is that most of the time, his assorted dance moves are right on target with the beat of whatever he's listening to. :) I've even seen him dance in his carseat when I am pretty sure he was out cold.

Now that he's talking more, he's actually asking for me to put on music so he can dance. This morning, while I was cleaning/cooking, etc blogging *haha* he took a break from playing to put my high-tech computer speaker *cough* up on the desk, and then said "dance"...around his mouthful of paci of course. *Yes, we only have one speaker...the second one bit the dust earlier this year :)*

So I turned on iTunes for him, and he worked on perfecting his dance skills for So You Think You Can Dance 2023. ;)

AMEN!

Usually when we say the blessing before dinner, anyone who "peeks" will find Merrick, uncharacteristically quiet, with a goofy grin on his face looking around the table. He seems to think we are playing some kind of joke on him. *Why does everyone have their eyes closed? Is this a pre-dinner game of Peek-a-boo?* Lately though *after the uncharacteristically quiet part ;)* when the person praying says, "amen", Merrick has started doing this:

He cheers and claps, and yells "Amen" himself. We hope he is always this enthusiastic about praying! :)

Blue Eyed Babies

This week at...

...the theme is "Before and After"

It made me think about how easy my photo shoots of Merrick used to be. You know, back before he was climbing the siding on our house. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I took this picture of my Wildman, at about 3 months old:

At the time, I wouldn't have imagined having another "prop the wobbly kiddo up on the pillows" photo shoot 18 months later, with another hooligan in the picture. Merrick was so happy he got to hold Tirzah...he kept laughing instead of his usual *run and hide, mom has the camera out* routine. I'm so glad to have such "willing" subjects as I work on my photography obsession hobby. Hopefully in the last 18 months I've gotten a little better at it, and not just turned into my kids' own personal paparazzi. ;)