Shots, a haircut, and a visit with friends

It's been an eventful first week of Nathaniel's second year. It started with a well-baby checkup which was all a lot of fun until it came time for the doctor to administer three shots AND draw blood. Nathaniel made it clear that he would rather NOT experience that again any time soon.
We did get the latest reading on height and weight: 23 lbs (50th percentile) and 31 inches (90th percentile).

Much more fun was a vist from Nathaniel's future college roommate, Kenan Reichow, and his parents, Terrell and Brian. The little boys enjoyed bonding over glowing frog toys (a birthday gift from Kenan to Nathaniel) and tiny basketball, and the parents had a good time catching up, too.

At long last, Nathaniel had his first professional haircut this morning (his only prior hair cut being our attempt to shorten his bangs slightly while he was sleeping). The haircut experience went quite well - his patience held out almost as long as the haircut took.

As you can see from the before and after pictures, a good bit of hair had to go. We're not sure exactly how much this will affect the above-reported weight measurement, but we're guessing it could be significant :)

Favorite toy, favorite spot, favorite game:

If you look carefully you'll notice in many pictures that Nathaniel wields a white measuring cup. Turns out they make great toys - just the right size to hold, makes great noise when you bang it on things, and the handle is nice to chew on if teething is giving you trouble.

Nathaniel decided as soon as he could crawl that our brick hearth is the ideal spot to play. After resisting for a few weeks, we finally went along with him. He's learning to climb down feet-first instead of head-first, which at least reduces the number of falls. We have at least managed to keep him from opening the grate and entering the fireplace itself, which he would really like to do.

The hearth is a great place to play the newly-invented "uh-oh" game. Grandma Diana and GrandTeddy started this game a few days ago. The original idea was for Nathaniel to throw his hands up and say "uh-oh" every time he pushed something over the edge of the hearth onto the floor. But Nathaniel quickly trained the adults to say "uh-oh" - he just pushes something off, raises his hands and looks at you expectantly.

So with that long explanation, you can understand why he's having such a good time in the next couple of pictures:

A few last smiles...