Jude Loving Camping!

We took the kids camping a few weekends and they LOVED it. Especially Jude who is at his happiest in the great outdoors.

 

JUDE walks!

Jude took his first solo steps - 10 in a row, in fact, last week while the girls were away with their grandparents. Then he decided not to try it again (despite our encouragement, he would just pounce on the floor and giggle) until this week at the beach, when he realized that he could stand on his own and then start walking. He has been practicing his walking daily at the beach and getting more confident each day!

 

Third tooth

Josie lost her third tooth tonight at the pool thanks to her sister Ada. Josie and Ada were splashing each other and Ada accidentally bopped Josie on her mouth in her attempt to splash, knocking J's tooth out of her mouth, sending it flying into the pool. Josie was done with swimming at that point, so thankfully some friends searched the bottom of the pool and found her tooth! Ironically this is the second (yes, that makes two out of three teeth) that Ada has "helped" Josie loose!

 

 

catch up with cakes

I've (as usual) been "a long time gone" posting on this blog. Here's a quick recap in cakes...Josie turned 6 in February and had a dinosaur themed party, we celebrated Easter with a lamb cake, Jude turned ONE in May (he loves Curious George), we went strawberry picking three times (and to use up some of those strawberries, Ben made a strawberry cake), and Christopher graduated high school! More pics and updates to come!

Jude is 11 months!

Jude is (as of yesterday) 11 months old! He is growing, growing, growing! And changing so much each day. He has started to pull up, to get into a sitting position on his own, and do a little normal crawling (although he still prefers the army crawl). He is loving eating less baby purees and more foods that he can feed himself. He pretty much eats anything (except on the few occasions where he is bored with something and decides to just start throwing his food out of his bowl and on the floor instead!). He still enjoys watching the girls and trying to get into their toys (or pull their hair, or basically whatever he can get his hands and mouth onto). One of his favorite things (and mine!) this month has been to point at things that interest him. He is particularly interested in smoke detectors, light fixtures, fans, trees, birds, etc....basically anything on the ceiling or in the sky. He cut a few more teeth this month, so he now has two on the bottom and four up top. He is starting to drop down to one nap per day, but I'm not ready for that yet so I'm trying to hang onto two naps, despite his protests! He also is really loving his daddy this month and wants his daddy to hold him whenever he sees him.

See below for some pics of our sweet boy - we love him so! (The last picture in this series shows what I think might be some curly hair coming!).

 

 

 

 

Homemade Graham Crackers are Yummy

 

Christmas in January!

Poor Nana was really sick over the holidays, so we just finally caught up with them to exchange our Christmas gifts. The kids were delighted to see Nana and Grampy and delighted at the chance to open some more presents!!!

 

 

 

 

little bit of snow

Virginia has been missing out on all the big snows, but we did have a bit of snow in January - enough for little snowman making, snow tasting and a bit of sledding.

 

 

 

 

This is how we do it

A few weeks ago, I took both the girls (separately!) ice skating for the first time! With Ada, i learned pretty quickly that just three is not a good age for ice skating (she was slipping all over the place)...so I was quite thankful when they brought out the buckets for inexperienced skaters. And so was Ada - especially when she discovered how fun it was to ride sitting balanced on top of the bucket while I pushed her around the rink! Josie had a better experience and progressed from bucket to side of the rink to skating hand and hand with me.

 

 

 

 

One out, Three In

Christmas day was a big day for teeth! Josie's tooth had been wiggly since October and since her adult tooth was almost already in, we had made an appointment with the dentist for the week after Christmas to get it checked out. Josie was so worried about having to have her tooth pulled by the dentist ("will he at least ask me if it is okay to pull it out, before he does it?") that Ben overheard her praying to God that her tooth would fall out on Christmas day. Her prayers were answered and sure enough that tooth was ready to come out on Christmas day. Although it was completely flopping over, it was no easy task to get the tooth out (since her adult tooth had come in behind the baby tooth it hadn't completely eroded the roots)...all that to say, it took some tears and at the end (after avoiding the task by fasting and not talking!) some super bravery to pull that tooth out. It was rough going, but finally amidst much drama, she did it!

The tiny little tooth was put safely into a little monogrammed silver tooth box (given to her by a family friend) and placed under her pillow for the tooth fairy to take. After I had said goodnight to the girls, I rushed back upstairs when I heard Josie sobbing..."Mom, I don’t want the tooth fairy to take my tooth. I want to keep it as a reminder of my childhood. To show my kids. That is if it doesn’t get moldy. Then I’ll have to throw it away." So, we wrote a note to the tooth fairy, who thankfully was very accommodating and left the tooth and a golden dollar!

With much less drama and heartache, Jude cut his first two teeth on Christmas day!

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We celebrated a sweet Christmas at home with just the five of us. It was pretty magical to wake up to softly falling snow (and good morning greetings from my faovrite 5-year old girl)!

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving

I have a hard time even thinking about posting these pictures...when 48 hours later pretty much the entire family came down with the stomach bug. "yyyUCK" as Ada says. We did enjoy thanksgiving, however, oblivious to the impending days, and Jude especially loved being snuggled by his great-grandma and cousin Anita.

 

 

 

 

cats and animals

these two are more often than not pretending to be some type of four-legged creature. Here their kitty-cat hats inspire them to be little kitties. Most of the time they are some sort of dinosaur and the constant "ROARs" around this house are even training Jude to give out an occasional ROAR!!!