James Says...

"See ya next year!"

 

Last pic of 2006 and about to enter the second year of his life!

This pic is of Josh, James, and Josh's best friend Joey right before the Georgia bowl game last night (that they WON!!). It was a great game with a great comeback. James only stayed up for 30 minutes of it, but this was a cute picture opportunity that I had to take!

 

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2007!!

Photo Session with an 8 Month Old!

I tried to take pictures of James with his new blanket that my mom made for him for Christmas. I got so frustrated that I had finally had to laugh and give up! I thought I'd share these great pics with you!

Putting him on the floor lasted about 1 second...he crawled off.


"Ahh...Maybe if I put him in the chair, he'll sit still!" This is him bouncing his leg up and down as if doing leg lifts.

In the rest of these, I picked him up and set him on his bottom, and he got in these positions before I could even begin to snap a picture!




Here he's actually climbing up the chair! Didn't know he could do that before today!


Alas, we found a way! Letting him stand up, holding onto his table, with Daddy standing behind me. This finally looks like him in a picture to me! We'll have to try it again with the blanket another day!

Christmas Photos

Here are some pictures of James's 1st Christmas. We had a wonderful time with family and thoroughly enjoyed having Santa visit James for the first time! I tried and tried and TRIED to get James to sit still for a picture, but it was nearly impossible, so these are some of the best we got. Almost every picture I have of him is him lunging toward me, turning around to look at the tree, or getting into crawl position. At least his Santa Claus picture turned out OK! This is just a hard age for taking pictures, I guess!
Nana and Deedah with their 4 grandchildren 

With Uncle Michael and Aunt Jilinda Christmas Day, wearing the adorable bib they got him. 

 
 

 

With Daddy Christmas morning, after playing with his Santa presents.

We tried to take a cousin picture, but it just wasn't happenin'! Maybe next year!
 

 

At Auntie Beth's and Uncle Bryon's house on Christmas Eve night

"Dada" Won!

I forgot to mention that "Dada" won...James said it to Josh the other day! I was talking to Josh on the phone while he was in Denver and put the phone up to James's ear so he could hear Josh talk. Josh said, "Say Dada.", and he said "Dada!" That night and every day since he has said it a lot. I don't think he knows what dada means, but he knows it gets a BIG response out of us! It varies from "Dada" to "Dadadadada."

Home Sweet Home

I'm so happy to have my husband back from Colorado! Josh went skiing for 5 days with my brother, brother-in-law, and some of my brother's friends, and had a wonderful time! They left last Thursday, flew into Denver, drove to Steam Boat Springs, and then flew back Tuesday. I'm SOOO thankful they decided to come back Tuesday instead of Wednesday! You've probably heard that a huge blizzard came through Denver and people are stuck there...possibly through Christmas! It makes me sick to even think about Josh not being here for Christmas, and to think everyone there is having to go through that!

Josh had an appointment in Dallas on Wednesday, so Elizabeth and I drove up (with James, Mary Beth, and Matthew) to meet them on Tuesday, and then Josh and I spent the night with my brother and sis-in-law. I didn't want to broadcast on the internet that Josh was out of town, just to be safe, but I'm just so thankful that they're back safe and sound! I was a big girl and stayed at my house by myself for the first time, since it's so much easier now with James to just stay at home! I did get a little scared a couple of nights, but overall it wasn't too bad. I used that time to get a ton of things done and about never stopped moving the entire time he was gone. James did very well, too, which made it nice! Say a little prayer for everyone who's stuck in the Denver airport right now!

8 Months Old!

James turned 8 months yesterday. So much has changed in this past month, and this is SUCH a fun age!! I feel like James is starting the transition from baby to toddler (I don't know excactly when that starts...I'm guessing when they walk??), and is just a little person now more than ever! I never could have imagined how much love I'd have for my baby boy, but it just keeps growing and growing beyond measure! He's my little pal or attachment who goes with me wherever I go and brings indiscribable joy daily. Ok, enough gushing for now! I know every mother can relate, though! :)

**James has gotten very mobile in the past couple of weeks. He crawls from room to room fairly quickly. He's graduated from the lopsided, adorable beginner-crawl to the equally adorable army crawl. I think very soon he'll be doing the pro-crawl, because he's trying to do it and rocking back and forth on his hands and knees a lot. It's so much fun to watch him learn and get enjoyment out of exploring on his own!

**James kicks his feet quite frequently (to where he gets lots of attention when we're out shopping), and they start going really fast when he's excited. I can always tell when I'm holding him and his cousins sneak up behind me, because his arms and legs go crazy!

**He LOVES peek-a-boo and started doing it himself a few weeks ago. We were so excited and in awe that he has gone from a newborn to a person who plays peek-a-boo with people in 7 1/2 months!

**As you saw on the last post, he's been making silly faces lately just CRACK me up! He LOVES to eat, so he mostly makes them when I'm feeding him cereal or one of his favorite fruits or veggies.

**He's actually done this for a long time, but I think it's so interesting how he knows what to expect in certain situations. I guess he's aware now more than ever. He doesn't like for me to leave him alone in the exercauser, because since I know he's safely playing in there, I'd use that as time to run around the house and get things done...which he doesn't like. If I put him in the carseat in the garage, though, and run back in the house to get my load, he's perfectly content, because he knows I'll be in there in a second and we'll be going somewhere.

**He's waving good-bye and has just started clapping. His clap does not actually make a sound, but he'll try it right after we do. This is a picture of him waving. His arm goes up and down like this.  

**He's a wiggle worm! He doesn't sit still anymore, unless we're standing up and moving around with plently for him to see. He lunges and arches his back a lot, too, which gets exhausting! Anything in sight has to go in his hand and then in his mouth. He's very quick and strong, too! He gets this funny, determined look on his face, and then you've got about 1 second to move it out of the way. He's keeping me on my toes, but it's all fun!

BTW, James's Mothers Day Out teachers made these for him for Christmas, and I actually got choked up when I saw them. I had no idea they were doing anything for the babies, and they went above and beyond. I have the first one framed on my mantle, and the second is a reindeer made out of this hands and footprint on a canvas. I will treasure them, and they'll be up in the house every Christmas.

Highlights from the past few weeks

The weeks since Thanksgiving have been fun and exciting for the most part. I'm trying to relax and take in every moment of this Christmas season, because it is our first one as parents! It's been a little harder than usual for it to feel like Christmas, since it's been 75 degrees lately, but nothing will crush my spirits! We have done a little driving around looking at Christmas lights, lots of listening to Christmas music, Christmas shopping. Yup...it's the hap, happiest season of all!!!

I'm still absolutely loving teaching at Mother's Day Out. Mainly because of the social outlet for me, socialization for James, change of pace in the week, the oppurtunity to follow one of my passions, to teach, and most of all, I LOVE my little group of kids!! They say the funniest things and are still at the adorable, pinchably cute age. We have had so many fun projects going on with Christmas coming up, so I have kept busy lately cutting, pasting, painting, hot glueing, etc. My hands have burns on them, my clothes have glitter on them, and my living room floor is a mess, but it's SO much fun!

Here are some pictures of us.  
   James has been doing this hilarious face lately that I can't get enough of. I was so happy to catch it on camera. BTW, while I was taking these pictures, I was unknowingly kneeling in an antbed (a HUGE phopia of mine).
I freaked out (hopefully the neighbors weren't near their windows at that moment), slapping my legs about a hundred times and taking my shoes and socks off as quickly as humanly possible, and when I was back inside looking at pictures, I laughed at this one. Apparently I snapped one on my way down!

I love my Christmas decorations!!

I decided to dedicate a blog post to all of my favorite Christmas decorations, and let you know what they mean to me. Most of my Christmas decorations have a lot of sentimental value to me, and they just make me so happy looking at them!
This is our Snow Village.

Each piece has a special meaning to it. It started with my parents giving me the Town Hall (in the center) before we got married. The Christmas after we got married, they gave us the Chapel (far left) with a bride and groom. Josh decided to take over the tradition and each year since has gone and picked out one that has had something to do with something that happened that year. The first one he gave me was the School House (second from right), since I had my first full-time teaching job that year. The next year, he gave me the house (far right), because we moved into the house we're in now. Last year, he gave me the Midtown Shops (second from left), because we had just gotten back from our trip to New York City. I love seeing it grow!

This picture is of the incredible painting that Amanda made for me that I LOVE!!! Isn't she so talented?!!
On the table next to it, I have a glass present my mom made and my Scottish Clothtique Santa. We collect them, and I'm up to 4.



This picture is self-expanatory...the tree and mantle.
I have two more Clothtique Santa's up there and my favorite thing of all, our stockings! My grammy (my mom's mom) started the tradition of making everyone's stocking by hand, but she died when my sister was 11 months old, so my Aunt Carolyn (my mom's sister) took over and made everyone's from that point on. When Josh came into the family and she sent his, it was hard to express the how special the stockings were, but he definitely gets it now. Josh and I got choked up putting James's stocking up this year. It's so neat to have 3!!

James Crawling!

This won't be exciting to most, but I finally got James to crawl again for the camera! I wish I could get Saturday's footage from our video camera on here, because it was much better (he's also sick)! This was taken this morning with my camera.

James Laughing

This is not the crawling video, but I was testing this out and took video of James laughing. Thought I'd share! He was tired tonight, so I will try to get him crawling later.

Back from a long trip!

 
Josh, James, and I are back from a long trip to Atlanta! We had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed spending so much time with family!! James got COMPLETELY spoiled and enjoyed every second of all the attention he got from his 50+ relatives who live there. We left last Friday and got back around 2:30 a.m. last night. Thankfully, James slept 10 out of the 12 hours on the road yesterday, woke up to eat and get changed at 2:30, and then went right back to sleep until 7:30. I think he REALLY missed his bed! Aunt Jo Anna said at the beginning of the week that he would be crawling before he left Atlanta, and sure enough he did!! He crawled yesterday before we left!! We were so proud and excited to see his uneven, hilarious crawl! It's funny because he takes breaks to rest his head half of the time, and then gets back up to do another crawl, and one leg goes up so high sometimes that he rolls onto his back. He knows he's doing something exciting to us (probably the cheering and squeeling gives it away), and he gets excited, too, putting his head down to the floor and squeeling along with us.

Josh and I were wired last night when we got in, so Josh put on the DVR'd Georgia vs. Georgia Tech game and I got caught up on blogs and emails. The game was such a good one that we both got into it, and we ended up watching the whole game. We didn't get to bed until4:50! That was not very smart of us, since James won't exactly let us get caught up, but thankfully Georgia WON!! We are going to decorate our house today for Christmas, which I have been looking forward to since about this summer! I was James's age my first Christmas, and my mom said that I loved the lights and presents, so I can't wait to see James's reaction!! I took tons of pictures of our trip, so check back for some later.



 

7 Months Old!

James is turning 7 months tomorrow! Since tomorrow will be completely crazy-busy, I'm going to blog today. Life is just getting more and more fun with a 7 month old! In the past week, James' personality has exploded. Even his Mother's Day Out teachers have noticed it. He's just started doing this funny thing where he smiles as big as he possibly can and then stops quickly. It makes us laugh so hard! He is IN LOVE with the remote (plunges for it if it's in site), and the other day I caught him doing that huge smile at the remote, like he was SO happy to see it. He started really babbling on Sunday. For a while he's been saying "Gaga" or "Ga" a lot, but now he's saying "Bababbaba" nonstop. He talks the most when he's in his carseat for some reason. He must have an invisible friend back there! Another way he makes me laugh a lot is when he'll sometimes get impatient when he's hungry, doing the whiney fuss, and as soon as I get the food out, he immediately starts laughing excitedly. It cracks me up everytime! James pulled himself up from sitting to standing the other day, but not much else new physically. Just getting stronger and more active every day. When I go get him from naps or in the morning, he's pulled and messed with the bedding and stuffed animals from every side of the crib. I don't know when he does this, but apparently he's having a lot of fun in there! Did I mention how ACTIVE he is now? We can no longer go out to eat by ourselves, because there is no point in standing up in a restaurant taking turns eating. We try to put him in the highchair, but you have to have absolutely nothing in arms reach. His toys go immediately to the ground, and then he wants us. Elizabeth and Bryon watched James for us Saturday night so we could go out to a restaurant with friends, and it was SOOOO nice. I missed James as soon as we dropped him off, but I got over it pretty quickly as we got to enjoy quiet, peaceful dining! James is back to sleeping well again. It took about a week for him to get used to the time change and going out of town. Never have I hated the time change as much as I did this one! James seems to be heading in the direction of crawling. He moves every which direction on the floor but forward, so maybe next month I'll be posting that he got it down! Oh, I almost forgot to mention that he has all 4 of his top teeth now!! He has 6 TEETH TOTAL!! He's going to look so different when they come all the way out! He is starting to imitate us more, and when we wave at him saying "Hi!", he'll wave back once or twice. To wrap this up, when I think of my 7 month old, he's just my happy baby. He's so quick to smile, flirt, laugh, coo, etc., and I just can't imagine life without him!

Did anyone see the Oprah on baby language? I wish I had seen that 7 months ago!! Any of you soon to be mothers out there should go to the Oprah website and find out info on that book. It looks so interesting!

If I were President

A couple of months ago, I was looking through my box of memories from Junior High, and I came across my journal from school. I got the biggest kick out of myself and really enjoyed remembering "7th grade me". I seemed to be passionate and a bit dramatic! In honor of election day, I thought I'd type my journal entry on everything I'd change about the world "If I were President". This might be boring to everyone (if so, you don't have to read), but I got a kick out of it! :) (BTW, I'm typing it exactly as I wrote it.)

Feb. 17, 1993
If I became president of the U.S., I would change a lot of things. First of all I would make cars w/ no air pollution coming out. I would put recycling trash cans in every neighborhood or alley. I would not allow any more trees to be cut down. For fire logs in the winter you would buy immitation wood such as duroflame logs. I would forbid smoking, drinking, and drugs. I would also forbid violence. I would put alarm systems where you step on the button on the floor in not just banks, but everywhere else. I would (underlined)lower the taxes. For money I would tell the places that make money to make more & then I would give all the towns in the U.S. money every month. I would make (underlined)everything less expensive. I would make teachers, policemen, and firemen get paid (underlined)alot more. Without teachers a lot of people wouldn't have an education. Without policemen there would be (double underlined) a whole lot more violence. The rate would go (underlined)way up. Mabey even triple. Policemen are majorly needed! Without firemen there would be a lot more houses burning down because it would spread & spread. Those 3 jobs are extremely important! Where would we be without them? I would tell everyone about God hoping they would go to church, but I cannot make them. That's not what God wants. I would make more playgrounds, amusement parks, etc. I would give all the homeless people food, homes, and jobs. I would not make war w/ anyone, but I would talk it out and make peace. I would make the world a lot more fun to be in so people won't commit suicide.

I seemed to have an answer for everything! LOL! On some things (OK-maybe 1 or 2) I was ahead of my time, some were BAD ideas, and others were just hilarious to me. Just thought I'd share if you were bored and wanted something to laugh at!

"Multitasking"

Did you know that it is actually impossible to multitask? I learned in a brain seminar a few years back that your brain can only concentrate on one thing at a time. You may think you are multitasking, by going back and forth quickly doing two different things, but it's not possible. I thought that was interesting! I say that to say, while trying to multitask this morning, I was getting ready for Mother's Day Out and talking on the phone at the same time. I decided to make a peanut butter sandwich, so I got out a sack, the peanut butter, jelly, and loaf of bread. After I got off the phone, I realized I'd simply put the whole loaf of bread in my sack instead of making a sandwich. Isn't it scary that I did that totally unconsiously?! One can only laugh at oneself in that situation!

HU Homecoming, Halloween, and James

   Last weekend, we made our first trip to Harding as a family of three! We left on Thursday and had an absolute blast. Josh and I had so much fun going to Chapel, walking around the beautiful campus (with half of the trees already changing), seeing the new additions they have done recently, talking to some of our favorite professors, seeing his family, and visiting with old friends! There is nothing like Arkansas in the fall, and being there, smelling the fall air, brought back so many wonderful memories. It was SO strange and surreal to us being there, because it feels like we just left, but we don't know any of the students (except for a few family members)! I am getting spoiled, because I got to see some of my best friends from college again, one of them being Amanda, who I hadn't seen in a year, and her adorable boy, Thomas, and Kim, Adalie, Amanda W, and Kia in Little Rock! At HU, we girls had a strict curfew (they were not nearly as strict on the boys), but we wouldn't have had it any other way, because those were some of my best memories, coming into the dorm with all of your friends at one time, meeting in someone's room, and having a ball until 1:00 most nights. That made for such a tight, sisterly bond between all of us. Back to homecoming, James was very good in the car, but didn't sleep well in the hotel, and has not slept great since! He was giving us 11-12 hours a night, but is now waking up every few hours! GRRR!!

 This week has been filled with pumpkin patch pictures, carving pumpkins, and Halloween festivities. Last night James also did his first trick or treating around his Auntie Beth and Uncle Bryon's neighborhood. It was freezing cold, and I got a few pieces of candy out of it (I was not going to ask, but a few offered!), but I enjoyed watching the Matthew, Thomas, and Mary Beth. We got in the car to trick or treat at my parents, and James fell asleep within a minute. He was one tired baby lion!   Yesterday at Mother's Day Out, I dressed up as Cinderella, wearing one of my bridesmaid dresses, and the girls loved it! One of the moms told me that she had asked her daughter if I dressed up, though, and the girl said no! We laughed at how she didn't notice that I was wearing a formal dress, instead of my usual jeans and t-shirt!

   James is cutting two more teeth right now. It's his top, I think 2nd from the middle. He has been fussy some days, but OK. I wish God would make it easier for babies to get their teeth in. There are so many of them! At least we have infant Tylenol to help them through the pain. James has been getting much more attached to me in the past few days. I don't know if it's because he's so tired from the trip, or because I'm just so much fun to be around (jk!), but it's been slightly exhausting. I'm thankful that he's happily playing in the exercauser right now without me in there, so I can finish this blog that I started during his nap! He's okay if I'm gone, but if he sees me, he wants me. I'm really not complaining, because how can you complain that your sweet, precious child wants you to hold him, but I'll just be glad when he gets back to being his normal self. James is holding out his hands a lot now to reach for people. I love seeing him communicate to us in more ways! He's also communicating which foods he doesn't want by keeping his mouth shut and moving his head. He has loved all vegetables so far, except green beans. James has started standing up for a while now, holding onto something, and he's really trying to make us smile lately by making funny noises (hard to explain, but the sucking in noise you make when you're shocked), and he gets so excited when we do it back. We've noticed him starting to imitate us a little, and he's in the beginning stages of babbling. The other day he accidentally said Georgia, pronounced "Gorja". Still workin' on mama and dada!