Silly Soren!

Back on The Hill!
We headed down to Northfield for St. Olaf's homecoming and Isaac's reunion weekend. It was a gorgeous fall day, perfect for a little football, and of course seeing friends and family. The new science center is spectacular!

These coat cubbies were perfectly Soren-sized! Hmmm....not so sure about being posed on the pumpkin.
Soren is still endlessly amused by a good game of peek-a-boo!

Romping in the leaves!

One last post and I think I'm caught up!

Soren is working on learning to feed himself with utensils. It's a messy endeavor! Here he is diving into some prunes.

Going for the dunk....
whoops! wrong end...
Wondering what he's clutching? It's a balloon from Trader Joe's, he spots them from the parking lot now and starts screeching!Screw the spoon, this is much easier!
Ahhhh, tasty!!

For about four days I decided that maybe Isaac's job isn't so bad after all. That's because I got to tag along with him to a work retreat at a resort in Scottsdale, AZ. Soren stayed home with a rotation of aunts and uncles. It was nice to relax sans kiddo, but I also missed Soren terribly!! Here's a random smattering of pics, a lot of our pics were on our smaller camera, which encountered an unfortunate incident while we were kayaking. We got to go on a "city slickers cattle drive" where I discovered I was not cut out for life as a cowgirl. It was 105 and we were riding horses through the desert in the middle of the afternoon. People got heatstroke. But an experience never to be forgotten!

Thanks a million to Beth, Mary, Eli and Vanessa who watched our little man, we're so lucky to have such great help! Special shout out to Mary who put up with an ungodly early morning and no nap on Saturday!

An Update on What Soren's Doing!
Soren has had a little burst of language development recently! Now some may argue (ahem, gramps) that this is just a bunch of jibber jabber and can't be counted as actual words, but I say if I can tell what he's trying to communicate and he's making the same sound consistently, it's a word! Here's what we've got, first the actual word, then Sorenese....

cat -"at"
dog -"dah"
meow -"maw"
woof -either "woo" or "oof"
tweet -"cawww"
that -"dat"
hi -"haaa"
bye -"haaa"
airplane -"dat"
milk -"maw"
dada -"dada"
mama -"mama"
balloon -"bah"
num-num -"num-num"
done -"dah"

Some of Soren's current favorite things include...

-talking on the phone (both real and pretend)
-pointing and saying "dat" (works for both "what's that?" and "gimme that!")
-balloons
-brushing his teeth (seriously, he would walk around with a toothbrush in his mouth all day if I let him!)
-water
-balls
-dancing
-givings hugs/kisses/head butts (the latter being the highest compliment)

A sure sign that your child isn't getting enough sleep.... Lately between teething, tummy issues, and the transition to one nap Soren hasn't been getting nearly enough sleep. Neither has mommy!

Every year as hawks migrate south for the winter from northern MN and Canada they avoid flying over the Great Lakes, so they fly down and around the tip of Lake Superior, and right over Duluth. On a good day in late September you can see thousands of birds migrating from Hawks Ridge overlooking Duluth. Being the geeks that we are, the entire Albright clan, plus better halves, gathered for a weekend of bird watching. Here's Scott, Beth, Neal, and Mary looking very serious about the whole thing... Soren did not give one hoot about the birds. He would much rather spend his time relaxing with grams and gramps. Here he's driving his car and dancing...
Contemplating whether he can get up this really big slide...
Using a cake container to pretend he's an astronaut...
Trying to climb up the ladder to the slide...
And helping "fetch" the ladder golf balls.My sisters, Soren's aunts Mary and Beth, aren't they purty???

My sister Beth recently started a new nannying job, caring for a 10 month old girl named Sofia. One day we were both bored so we met up at a playground near their house.
Soren really liked Sofia and kept hugging her!
He also liked playing in the sand, picking it up and running it through his fingers. And wouldn't you know, quick as can be, one of those handfuls of sand went right in his mouth. Not so fun.

Soren was fascinated with Sofia's hair. He did a good job of being gentle with her!
The infamous Soren head-butt. He does this to kids and small animals.
One more squeeze? No?

"Hello? What's that? A sale at BabyGap? I'll be right there!"

Fifteen Months!! (note: I'm aware that this is two weeks overdue, but I'm playing catch-up here)