Beans are good!

Sunday night we had black beans and pasta for dinner and James had a blast with it! He loves him some beans :) When I got to the table this is what I found:

Somehow he made it to his highchair and got his food while holding toy car and without a bib.....two guesses how that happened :)

Yesterday I went through all of James' clothes and put away his 12 month sizes and brought out his 18 month old clothes. His shorts were starting to look like short shorts and his shirts were turning into belly shirts! We are having a difficult time with hitting lately. James has started hitting when he gets angry or frustrated. He will look straight at you and hit you in the face purposefully and then when you tell him "no, we don't do that" in any variation he cries even harder. We keep going back and forth between wanting to address it every time he does it and trying not to make a big deal out of it so that he doesn't start doing it for the reactions. Fun :) He has been talking more and more, but he also seems to be crying and whining more. It seems like he wants to communicate but can't so he just whines. He never really picked up much sign language, but I've been thinking of focusing on it again. Maybe it will help with the crying and the tantrums?

I've been meaning to take more videos of James, it seems like it's been forever since we videoed him. The problem is that when he does something cute, by the time we get the camera all he is interested in is what WE are doing. This is just a few minutes of him playing this morning, nothing special. You can hear him say "car" while he pushes his favorite fire truck, he laughs at the ceiling fan, and then he gets the xbox remote, turns it on and hands it to me while babbling. I'm pretty sure he is requesting his favorite show Yo Gabba Gabba. Ummm, I am thinking we watch a little too much tv :)

Right now James says: mommy, daddy, car, ball, bubble, bye (sounds like buh, buh), uh oh, bapple (for apple), and doggie. It is funny, to him anything with wheels is a car, so he says car anytime he sees strollers, grocery carts, walkers, buses, trains, etc.. He also likes to point at his ears when you ask him where his ears are and he sticks his finger up his nose when you ask him where his nose is. Then he laughs hysterically. He is such a ham!





Eat Mor Chikin!

Last Friday we went to our very first Cow Appreciation day at Chick-fil-a! I think I first found out about it a few years ago and thought it looked like fun, but we never put an effort into actually doing it. It is funny what having kids will do to your idea of a fun night out! There is no way we would have done this if we didn't have James, mainly because Anthony was sooooooo not into dressing up :) However, I realized that I had a cow costume for James in the closet that I bought as after-Halloween clearance last year so it felt like it was meant to be!

After getting zipped up in his costume:

 Trying to get him to stay still so we can take a picture of the cuteness!!

 I put together the adult costumes for Anthony, my brother Daniel, and me earlier in the afternoon: I got the sign, spots, and ears from the Chick-fil-a website and I got the idea for using a blown up latex glove as udders from a picture of some of the previous years' costumes. Anthony was....not looking forward to being seen in public. I told him as long as we all do it together, he shouldn't feel too embarrassed. Strength in numbers!

 Oh yeah, I am ready for some free food!!

 Here is our picture with the big cow. James loved the big cow! I was worried he would be scared of it, but he just laughed and laughed whenever he saw it. Too cute!

This was James' first trip to a fast food restaurant and it was so good and surprisingly healthy! He had grilled chicken nuggets, fruit, and milk. He ate half of the nuggets and almost all of the fruit and he loved drinking his milk through a straw (instead of a plain old sippy cup). It really was fun to go up to the register, order any meal from the menu and have the total ring up as free!! The other cool part was to see all the other costumes people came up with. We saw a grown woman in cow footie pajamas and a group of teenagers who wore all black with a white trash bag over them that had holes all over it. That way, it looked like a white cow with black spots. So simple! We saw a lot of little kids there, including a few we recognized from the library's story time but James was definitely the cutest!! (In my unbiased opinion of course) We will definitely be back next year!

4th of July 2012

We had a great 4th of July this year! Anthony had the day off of work, so he got to sleep in for the first time in a looooong time. Since he works Monday through Saturday and we have church on Sundays, he never gets to sleep in. Ever since having James, my body just doesn't let me sleep in, I always have to get up so I was happy to let him sleep :)

We planned to go to the big farmer's market that they have every Wednesday at the fairgrounds in Deland and I was so excited to show Anthony since he has never been. I wondered if it would be open since it was a holiday, but I checked the online calendar for the fairgrounds and it was listed...I should never have trusted that thing! I bet someone put it on automatic repeat for every Wednesday and didn't think about holidays. Anyways, when we got there, the fairgrounds were closed up and only a few people had set up tables in the parking lot. So at least we got to walk around a little bit, but it was a tenth of the size it usually is. I had been talking it up all week to Anthony so I was sad that I didn't get to show him everything. We did end up get 13 green peppers for $3, so that was good!

In the afternoon we set up some of the new outside toys that Anthony's sister Robin gave us last Sunday and let him run around in the backyard with them. He loves them!!! He seriously wants to be in the backyard all the time now. I have to be careful if I am letting the dogs out, because he will try to run out too and will cry if I bring him back inside. He gets so dirty when he goes outside that I try to make it so he plays outside right before bath time. I had this great idea to put the new slide we got so that it goes straight into our inflatable pool. James sort of liked it. For the most part, he just wanted us to leave him alone so that he could go back to pulling his wagon around the yard. He loves that wagon!!! He tries to put anything and everything in the wagon so he can pull it all around with him.

Towards the end of the day Anthony and I both ended up feeling worn out and James kept having meltdowns, so we decided not to go to the city's fireworks. They didn't start until 9pm and it felt like we all needed a good bedtime that night! I talked to a friend who went and she said it was a good decision, the mosquitos were horrible and I know I wouldn't have thought to bring bug spray!! Maybe next year :)