Rabbit teeth

These pearly white are just coming in one right after the other! Cannon's two bottom teeth came in when he was four months old, both in the same weekend. Then there was a break and now all the top teeth are coming in.

Starting mid-November C's top two middle teeth both broke through, then the tooth just to his left of the middle and now the tooth just right of the middle is starting to peek through. And our lil man is such a trooper when it comes to teething! The only way we know he's gettin more teeth is because he actually sleeps BETTER at night (10-12 hours straight) and he chews on stuff a lot...well, and we see them. :) funny boy has a cute toothy grin now. I do miss the gummy smile, but how can I not love this new "big boy" grin!

Thanksgiving 2012

We decided to keep thanksgiving inexpensive and low-key this year, so we stuck around Rexburg. Macie and Dan invited us to join their family for Thanksgiving dinner at Christina and Scott's house. We were very grateful to be part of their family that day.

Here's lil Cannon bug all dressed up for the holiday. It took some crazy last minute efforts to make his onesie, but was totally worth it.

The food was delicious and it was awesome to not have to spendthr while day cooking and doing dishes. This little turkey enjoyed sweet potatoes and green beans.

Getting ready for Christmas

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone we are ready to bring on Christmas! Anthony is a real stickler for not Turing up anything Christmas until Thanksgiving has had it's moment. No skipping holidays in this house. :)

Since its Cannon's first Christmas I really want to make sure we make it festive and memorable...even if its just us parents that remember it. I've calendared out some activities to get us in the holiday mood. You better believe that this year we will be doing pictures with Santa, Angel trees, concerts, sledding and of course visiting family. In fact, we will be heading down to Utah next weekend to meet the newest member of our family, Andrew & Brittany's little girl that was just born on 11/27/12, Hadlee Mae Armstrong.

And despite having another ear ache this season, Cannon is still happy as ever. The only way we know this boy is sick is from the stuffy nose and pulling at his ear. He's such a trooper he smiles through it all. Must have a high pain tolerance...or just a cheery disposition that can't be brought down by illness.

Cannon has been thinking about what he wants to ask Santa for.

And here he is dressed and ready to go get his picture taken with jolly Ol' St. Nick.

7 Months

7 Months!

Our happy little guy still gives HUGE smiles and giggles even just when someone glances his way. He is also becoming very chatty and loves to sing! All morning long, while we get ready for the day, he babbles and squeals. He makes noises that sound like he's saying "hey" and "yeah." He also says "ba-ba-ba" and his newest sound (and official first word) is "da-da"! Anthony, of course, is thrilled. I was skeptical at first and thought Cannon's babbles only resembled the word but he wasn't really saying it. I was quickly corrected one night when we were all in te kitchen having dinner and Cannon stopped eating, looked right at Anthony and said "da-da." No denying it, this boy knows his daddy. We are still diligently working on "ma-ma." :)

new game: milk jug

Halloween 2012

In our household Halloween is a holiday that apparently only I get excited about. alyhough i dont like the gore or demonic side of halloween, i do love dressing up in costumes and decorating the house. Since this year Halloween fell on a weekday, we actually spent several days celebrating and little Cannon bug got to dress up several different times!


Carving pumpkins becomes a more difficult feat once there are kiddos involved. Cannon's short attention span and early bedtime challenges us to get pumpkins carved quickly.

We attempted the cute idea of carving leg holes in a pumpkin for Cannon to sit in....he was not a fan. This usually happy baby was in tears after sitting for just a few seconds to take a picture. He was more content to play with his own "cannonball pumpkin" (appropriately chosen for him) and to chew on the discarded scrapes of carved pumpkin.

The day before Halloween the company i work for, Melaleuca, puts on a big trick-or-treat path for employees to bring their families to. My department was a traditiinal halloween theme so i was a witch for the day (the guys i work with tease me that Im a witch every day). :) our family costume, however, was for Anthony and I to be Mac Geniuses and Cannon was an ipad. unfortunatley, we didnt get a picture of all of us in our coordinating costumes, but here you can see Anthony and Cannon supporting dad's affinity for Apple. :)

On Halloween day Cannon dressed up twice more. For daycare Cannon wore his cute cowboy onside and boots from Aunt Liz and Uncle Mike, as well as his coonskin hat that Grandpa John gave him. He was very happy in his wild frontier western wear. :)

To go trick-or-treating Cannon was a superhero (in training). We didnt actually trick-or-treat, rather we just enjoyed walking through the neighborhood seeing everyone's decorations and costumes.
 

There is one house down the street from us that goes all out for the holidays. They put out life size decorations and have a music and light show synchronized with their decor. I told Anthony that some day I want to be "that house." The house that brings each holiday to life. For now though, I did my best to decorate our cute little townhome to show our festive spirit.

6 Months Old on 10/11/12!

6 Months Old!! 
17lbs (29th percentile)

27.5" long (73rd percentile)

     I was looking at Cannon this morning and realizing how much he's changed. He is growing out of his baby features so quickly and looks more and more like a little boy instead of my newborn. He may be getting bigger, but he's still as happy and snugly as he was those first weeks having him home.

     It is so fun to watch him grow and discover new things. And I love that he still has some of his old, funny quirks along with some new ones.

-When he's excited or being funny he will gasp then let out a sigh. This used to scare us because we thought he couldn't breathe...then we figured out he does it to get a reaction from us. Funny boy!

-Kicking, kicking, kicking! We have one active kiddo on our hands. My favorite kicks are when he kicks both his legs out straight and stiffens his whole body and squishes his face into a double chin.

-Sticking his thumb on his face (or on anything else) and waving his open hand back and forth (we call this the "flipper-flapper."

-Cannon loves playing with all kinds of things that arent his toys (isn't that just how it goes). :) When we hold him Cannon really loves playing with Mom's jewelry she wearing, or any drawstrings on our clothes.

- Lil man rolls over easily and is all over the floor. He hasn't showed much interest in crawling yet. He seems pretty happy with his mobility in rolling from one end of the room to the other.

- He can sit up unassisted for short time periods of time. We have to put up "bumpers" around him because he gets so busy playing he doesn't realize he's falling over until he hits the ground.

Bouncing Baby Boy

Cannon has learned a few new tricks! He has been bouncing himself in his bouncer seat (sometimes hard enough I'm worried he's going to launch out! :(



He's also holding his own bottle now (with some occasional help when he needs it tipped up to get the last of the milk out.) He gets so excited when he sees any kind of bottle shaped like his "ba-ba" thinking its time to eat agin. We have to be careful about using water bottles and mouthwash in front of him because he gets jealous and thinks we're not sharing a ba-ba with him. Ha ha!

5 Months!

5 Months Old

Labor Day Wknd in Washington

Labor Day Weekend in Washington

For Labor Day weekend we decided to brave it and try taking Cannon on his first real roadtrip. Because it's such a long drive from Rexburg to Pateros (about 11 hours) we decided to break it up into 2 days there and 2 days back with an overnight stay in Missoula, Montana. And a good thing too! Cannon did pretty well being in his carseat, but Dad and Mom really needed the break.

On the drive up we stopped at the Cabelas in Cour d'Alene (Anthony's new favorite store). This will probably be a new pre-planned stop for us from now on when we drive to WA.  Cannon really enjoyed trying out the camp chairs in the store, especially this "moon chair." and after putting him in the darling little kid sized camp chair we just couldn't resist getting it for him. And with cousin Madison's birthday coming up soon we thought it would be fun for them to have matching chairs. It was so adorable watching them sit side-by-side in their chairs holding hands (Madison insisted :) ).

This was a trip of many firsts for Cannon. There were lots of new animals for Cannon to see. He was mostly impressed with the goldfish and the bunnies. Anytime he got fussy we sat him in front of the fish tank and he perked up and would talk or sing to the fish.

Here he is with the bunnies. It startled him when they hopped, then he would laugh.

On Sunday we enjoyed going to the Brewster Branch. And a Sunday wouldn't be complete without a big family dinner with the Grandparents, missionaries, and Uncle Ron, Aunt Susie and Nick. It was a lot of fun having everyone together.

The orchard was beautiful this time of year. There were tons of raspberries ripe for the picking.

Aunt Alyssa and I took Cannon on a four-wheeler ride through the orchard. He was very good about sitting still and loved watching everything as we drove by. In spite of the challenge of the bright, high sun and the heat we found some good spots in the orchard to take pictures. Sadly though, Cannon was not his normal happy self by the time we got around to snapping shots. We got a few cute ones, but no smiles.

The day we had to leave we tried to take some cousin pictures with Cannon and Madi. We also ha quite a bit of difficulty when trying to take cousin pictures with Madi and Cannon. I sympathize now for parents with multiple children trying to take a nice family portrait..with everyone sitting still and smiling. Ha ha!

Madi was so sweet to share her ice cream cone with Cannon. And as we were getting all packed up Cannon decided to serenade Pappy. 

Just before we left we were able to get a four-generation photo of the Armstrong boys. Great Grandpa Larry Armstrong (C was born on his birthday), "Pappy" Marc Armstrong, Anthony Marc (the first Armstrong grandson), and Cannon Marc (the first Armstrong great-grandson).

It was such a fun long weekend with the family! We are so happy that we were able to go. And with as good as Cannon handled the drive we are looking forward to more trips with Lil Man.

Haircut & Fruit Ninja

Baby's First Haircut

All that thick, dark baby hair has fallen out....waaaahhhh! It wouldn't have been so bad if his hair would have all fallen out evenly, but instead he was left with a bald spot in the back and a long, stringy island of bangs. It was getting so long Cannon was looking very homely.

Now Cannon has a nice "swoop" bang kind of thing going on. :) And we kept his first lock of baby hair in a silver box that Oma gave him.

 Fruit Ninja

And here are the "fruits" of Daddy's teaching labors. Cannon loves playing Fruit Ninja on the iPad. And he's actually pretty good at it...until he decides he wants to eat the iPad instead of swipe at it.