He is sooooo close to crawling, this kid.

Look at how hard he works:

Joe’s friend Doc is in the hospital for a little while, so Joe and I dropped by for a play date.

As far as Joe is concerned, the hospital is the Happiest Place on Earth:

Here he is with the giraffe he fell in love with — and ended up taking home:

Note to Nana: No, Doc isn’t in there for swine flu. Relax!

How about a little laughter to start your day:

Patrick had the day off for Columbus Day yesterday. Not sure why that’s still a holiday, but we’ll take it!

The three of us went to Ashland Berry Farm to enjoy the hayride and pick out some pumpkins. It was so cool and breezy outside — perfect fall weather!

We are taking our sweet time trying to decide what Joe will be for Halloween this year. Last year’s “Bee Ennui” will be hard to beat! Maybe a skunk, or a lion, or a chicken. Stay tuned!

Joe’s Grandma and Grandpa Tremblay are celebrating their anniversary today!

They’re coming to visit in a few weeks, but in the meantime, Joe is saying hello to their pictures:

We forgot to send a card, so here is a photo of their favorite boys!

A woman on one of my parenting discussion boards asked for all of us to share what our first pregnancy symptoms were. I guess she was trying to decide whether the time was right to buy a pregnancy test and see what it said.

So I opened up my pregnancy journal and discovered that it was Sept. 12, 2007, when my fatigue, faint nausea and intense road rage prompted me to get a test and see what was up.

Amazing how much has happened in two short years!

Sometimes I like to search through our Flickr account by date and see what Joe looked like exactly a year ago.

Here he is on Sept. 9 of last year, a day before turning 3 months old:

I remember being so excited when he grew into that robot onesie he has on.

Now, it looks so ridiculously tiny that I can’t believe he ever fit into it!

Joe has been getting on all fours and rocking, which we assumed meant crawling was right around the corner.

But instead, he pulled his feet up farther, and pushed harder with his arms, until he was almost sitting.

Here, you can see how well that went:

Here are the monthly shots of Joe, sitting next to Ted-Ted in each shot. What a big boy!

My months-long quest to get a “Mama” out of Joe has made a breakthrough!

Here we are last night:

Little stinker.

But here we are this morning:

Success!

Eventually he will figure out how much I love hearing it, and how he can use it to boss me around!