Merry Christmas!

We'll get some pictures up later (we still haven't opened presents, after church James took a nap then we ate our Christmas dinner). We are back in our place, which was de-leaded last week. It was quite a process, and we are so thankful to be home! Last night after James went to bed we put up our Christmas decorations and brought out the presents from family and St. Nicholas (we are keeping presents from Santa/us limited to 3, in honor of the Magi. It makes us think harder about what to get, and will hopefully keep the spirit of the season where it should be) James exclaimed "WOW" when he saw everything this morning! He was really excited! In other news, he is taking the odd step here and there now. He doesn't really see the advantage to walking yet, but I'm happy he is at least making an attempt!

Belated Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving was over a week ago but we are just now getting around to posting a few pictures. My mom came up for Thanksgiving weekend, and we had a very nice time visiting with her. James hadn't seen her in a year but seemed to warm up to her pretty quickly.

Here are a few photographs. The first is a Thanksgiving craft project James created with the nanny during the week. She said he had a lot of fun. The second picture is a shot of James wearing his sunglasses during our Thanksgiving dinner. We had a very nice meal at a local restaurant and James was very cooperative (during most of the meal), even though his nap schedule was thrown way off by all the excitement of the weekend. The last picture is James and my mother playing a very fun game of "horsey".

(Sorry the quality on these shots isn't as good as normal. We didn't want to lug the camera around all weekend, so we just took the much smaller video recorder and grabbed a few still frames for these pictures.)

joe has been dethroned

I noticed that all of the pictures I have taken this week have been of James sitting (or getting onto) Joe's chair. I think it is safe to say it isn't Joe's chair anymore! I love his face in the first picture. Could his expression be any blanker? The last is of him today in his gorgeous new Kiwipie diaper cover. Maria does such a beautiful job with every new thing she makes for James. What a treasure! If you can't tell, it's a koi fish embroidered on the front. James made fish faces (which are really just kisses in reference to fish) and pointed to the fish the entire time it was on. I guess he approves!

I bearly got these pictures

He was being a bit rambunctious! The sweatshirt is a super cute gift from James' buddy Owen (thanks Cheryl!), he was pretty excited about how big the hood is (playing peek-a-boo in the last picture). If you couldn't tell, he is singing opera (falsetto) in the second picture :p

stop growing already!

James has been having some serious growth spurts recently! He looks like such a little boy now instead of a baby. He outgrew all of his summer clothes just in time for fall! His 7th tooth finally broke through the gums yesterday, so he slept quite well last night. It's great to feel like a human instead of a zombie today. the shadow on the right of the pictures is me lol.

Halloween!

Today for Halloween James dressed up as a dinosaur. He was adorable. He wore his costume all day long because he went to a Halloween event at the Children's museum with Sandy today. Here are a few pictures from our day. In the first, he is showing off the pumpkin that he painted for Halloween. The second is a good shot of the back of his costume, taken while he was romping around. In the third picture, he is telling us how much he hates his costume (he wanted to be a dragon instead). But later in the day he decided his costume was okay after all. The last two pictures are from when we went out trick-or-treating this evening. We didn't get any candy, but just went for a walk around the neighborhood. There were tons of kids out. James had a good time and enjoyed seeing all the costumes.

gorgeous autumn day

Though the trees haven't changed color yet, which is strange. James loves the weather, and as usual had a fun romp in the grass. He is officially a toddler now, though not technically 'toddling' yet. He did stand up on his own from sitting this past weekend, it kind of took Joe and I by surprise. I bet he'll be walking by Christmas. He has started the infamous tantruming, which I probably shouldn't find so adorable, but I do. They likely won't be so funny in a few years, but hey, what can I say.