Whoville

Saturday we went to our ward's Christmas party. The theme was Whoville Christmas and our costumes turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself :)

Almost everything was found at Goodwill!

Our little reindeer who :)

We were so impressed, he kept his reindeer antlers on for the entire party!

 He didn't really like Santa....so that makes about 2 people so far that he has been scared of.

Merry Christmas!!!



Christmas Activities

I am definitely getting into the Christmas spirit!! I found a Christmas music radio station and have been playing it when I am in the car. Anthony can't stand it :) He absolutely hates old timey crooning type of music. He thinks it is ear torture. So, I usually just play it when it is me and James in the car and I instantly start thinking of Christmas. Holidays are so much more fun now that we have a kid. It is like you get to relive the holidays through a child's eyes and reexperience the magic. Usually Christmas is pretty ho-hum for us, but this year it is so much more exciting because we've been planning out what traditions we want to start for James.

Things we are starting this year:

• Presents of Christmas pajamas that we open on Christmas eve. Ours are gators of course!
• Picking out a new Christmas ornament every year that represents something about the past year and a new ornament for James. I got this idea from my friend Leah, she gets each of her kids an ornament each year that is theirs to put up on the tree and then when they move away from home they get to take all of their ornaments with them. Cool right! We are going to Hallmark tomorrow for family home evening to pick them out
• Having a letter in each person's stocking from Santa telling them how they were good that year. Anthony and I will write letters to each other, and I can't wait for my stocking to see what he writes!

Here are our Christmas decorations with all of our presents under the tree. (I am all finished with my Christmas shopping, horray!)

You got to love pinterest, it gave me an idea for decorating our front room with snowflakes and Leah gave me the idea for the snow.

I've been looking for Christmas events for us to go to around here and last night we tried to go to a live nativity. I heard that it was really good and was looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be something where you just walked through, see some animals and the nativity scene and be done in 10 minutes. Aparantly it was much more involved than that, and as a result there was a long wait. We waiting in line outside for 45 minutes to an hour, thinking that it was the line for the nativity. Wrong. Once we got to the front we found out it was the line to get tickets to go in at least an hour and half later! By that time it was past James' bedtime and he was getting fussy, so we decided to go home. It wasn't a total waste though. We got to see a donkey, a lamb, a roman soldier on a horse, and a camel while we were waiting in line!

Here is James and me with the camel. We couldn't get James to look at the camera because he wanted to see the camel! He loves animals so much, it is so cute to see :)

Next week is our ward christmas party and the entire family is dressing up like Who's from Whoville. Stay tuned for pictures!!

10 Months Old

James is 10 months old today!! At this point it feels like he does something new and exciting almost every day! He is now the proud owner of 4 teeth (the front two top and bottom) and he has started saying mama and dada pretty regularly and purposefully. He has started to give kisses when we ask him to and pucker up, although his version of kisses is a wide open mouth with a little bit of tongue!

As you can see from the video, he has also started doing this fast breathing, scrunched up nose laugh and it is hilarious!! We love to watch him do it and sometimes we can get him to do it if we just imitate him.

He is still mostly army crawling, although he has started to pull up and climb on anything he can get his hands on. He loves to climb all over people sitting on the floor and he will ignore a wide open space around you and decide that he needs to crawl over you to get to something.

He loves to walk around with someone holding on to his hands for balance, so we went out and got him a walker from a nearby consignment store. So far, he hasn't been too interested in it but I am sure that will change as soon as he figures it out.

He ended up with another ear infection a few weeks ago (we think it came from the teething), so the last time we weighed him, he was a whopping 19 pounds! He loves all things electronic and gets so excited when he gets a hold of remotes, controllers, or cell phones. He loves cell phones so much, we decided to give him one of our  old ones to play with! He loves that thing!!! He has also decided that it is his job to go around to all the rooms in the house and remove the springy door stops from the wall. It takes him 2 seconds to twist them off the wall and then he is on to the next room. I find them around the house all the time and I have to search from room to room to see which one is missing one.

He has also started to do peek-a-boo randomly throughout the day. If he gets a hold of a blanket or his pants when I am changing his diaper, he takes it with both hands, lifts it up to his face and then quickly pulls it down and looks at us, waiting. We always say "peek-a-boo" and he grins. Then he does it again. And again. And again :) He has also discovered that he loves the game of dropping things on the floor and waiting for us to pick it up and give it back to him. One day Anthony was holding him and James dropped his pacifier. Anthony swooped James down to the ground to let him pick it up himself and James thought it was so funny, he couldn't drop it again fast enough!

Our little boy is growing so fast, it is so much fun to see him learn new things and see how happy he is. Everyone who meets him always comments on what a happy baby he is and we are so glad that he is. He is so curious about the world and can be so determined when he wants to get at something or figure it out. It really is amazing to see his personality emerging and to get a glimpse at the person that he is growing up to be!