Cousin time & Rett's Birthday Party

My sister and her family drove down from Ohio for our family vacation and we had a blast together! James loved playing with both of his cousins. He ran around a lot with Savino and he loves his rainbow bracelet that my niece Haley made for him. Of course, my sister also got to experience the squishableness of Rett for the very first time :) Since everyone was in town, we decided to have Rett's 1 year birthday party a week early and we had a houseful of people ready to celebrate! He was a little overwhelmed at first and unsure about what was happening and why so many people were watching him (and taking pictures).

After a few cautious taste tests, he got down to business!

We were enjoying watching him take his time with the cake, so we hadn't cut pieces for anyone else yet. James couldn't wait any longer and decided to "help" Rett with his. When we tried to get him to stop and back away from the cake, he would insist, "But we're shaaaaring!"

After about 10 minutes everyone sort of drifted away to do other things, but I couldn't stop watching him eat his cake. Why is it so fun to feed this baby?? I guess because he eats everything with such joy and gusto!

 Giving me frosting kisses:

 Me and my baby :) Where did the time go??

Anthony keeps accidentally catching seahorses in his crab trap and when he does, he brings them home to put them in the aquarium (we still have two small aquariums). Right now we have four seahorses in one tank! It takes a lot of work to feed them, Anthony has to go down to a dock to net sea grass and then has to pick out tiny little shrimp for them to eat. We have two males, one female, and one that is too small to tell, so it is possible that we could eventually have baby seahorses! The last time we had seahorses years ago we couldn't keep them alive, so Anthony is really excited that they are doing so well. They are definitely fun to watch!

My sister and her family spent half of the week at my mom's house and then on Wednesday everyone came over to our house for the rest of the week. James and Rett took a bath Tuesday night and didn't take another one until Saturday night. That is a sure sign that we were having lots of fun everyday and staying up late every night :)

Thursday afternoon we met up with everyone at the beach and it was the best time I've had at the beach in a looooong time. Rett was taking a nap, so he stayed home with my mom and Anthony and I took James. It was so relaxing having both of us there to watch James and he is old enough now that he just plays and we don't have to chase him or wrangle him. We spent a full 3 hours there and we could have stayed longer if we didn't have anywhere to be. James played in the waves, dug for snails, chased birds, and dug sandpits with his bulldozer.

Anthony's parents were driving back from their trip in their RV and stopped in New Smyrna to celebrate Rett's birthday and to visit. Friday morning everyone else was sleeping in, so I took the boys to visit Mimi & Papa and play at the RV park playground. It was the coolest place! They had all these custom wooden play structures, like a huge tractor with an actual gas pedal you can push, a two story play castle, a two level pirate ship with a fireman's pole to slide down to the bottom level, and a play cabin. James ran around with Anthony's dad the entire time, yelling, "Papa! Come on!". Then he got to help Papa unhook the RV and get it ready for driving. He is the most dedicated and willing helper when it comes to doing tasks like that. Rett was a little fussy and I couldn't figure out why until we got home and I realized I forgot to feed him breakfast in the rush to get out of the house. This little one cannot skip a meal. This is an angry face, fyi. We don't see it that often.

We tried to get a picture with the grandparents and these two were the best of the bunch. I was laughing looking through all the outtakes because in every single one James had his "camera face" on. When I first told him we were going to take pictures he immediate did his camera face, before we even got ready or got the phone out. He is definitely a Lagana!

 Friday afternoon after Anthony got home, we drove up to Daytona to my sister's hotel and explored the shops and attractions there. We had fun playing the games in a dated arcade and laughing at the weirdness. We played one called the "stinky feet" game where you sit on a fake toilet and shoot water from a faucet onto targets on the feet of a person in a bubble bath. So strange! James won a few tickets, but then a sweet little girl came over and gave James all of hers, so he was able to some cool toys with it. He was definitely excited about that! For dinner we decided to check out the nearby Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant and we realized it was the first time taking both kids to a sit down restaurant since Anthony's birthday almost a year ago! Luckily, they both did surprisingly well. James was uncharacteristically patient and Rett was happy as a clam, as usual.

Of course, this kid is always happy when there is food involved :) He ate two packages of applesauce, a small tupperware of raisins, pieces of my garlic bread, and half a ziplock bag of goldfish.

Saturday morning we relaxed and visited at our house and then decided to check out the park nearby that usually has lots of dolphins and manatees that swim by. Anthony and I took the boys fishing there earlier in the week and had so much fun! We caught a lot of little fish and James reeled in this whiting that we used as bait for the crab trap.

 Rett stayed in the stroller and enjoyed a granola bar. Thoroughly.

On the way home we stopped and baited the crab trap with the fish and put it in the water. Anthony always sees so much wildlife in the water by the dock and this time he got close enough to a manatee that he could have touched it!

We are so grateful for our wonderful family that make our life so richly blessed! The only thing that could make it better is if we could spend time together like this every day!

Soccer, Baby Bellies, and The Plague

James' fall soccer season has officially started! He had his first practice last Tuesday and he had fun with his coach from spring. There were a few familiar faces on his team, but a lot of new kids too.

 Standing to the side and observing. He definitely likes to hang back when he is getting used to a new environment or group of people.

 They practiced stopping the ball and putting their foot on top of it. James refused to do this last season, but he gave it a try this time. He has a really hard time keeping his balance, so he resorted to just sitting on it last time. This time he didn't do that once! Progress!

 Trying to put his foot on the ball:

 He finally got it on there and kept his balance! His coach is putting his foot on his imaginary ball :)

While watching him practice we realized that he gets so distracted that he doesn't listen to his coach unless his coach says, "James" before giving an instruction. His poor coach is going to be repeating himself a lot over the next few months.

Unfortunately, after coming home from practice and getting ready for bed, he came down with a high fever. A day or so later he developed a rash and we realized he had hand, foot, mouth disease (Rett had it first, but we didn't make the connection until James caught it). He missed his Thursday practice because we have been quarantined in the house since then. Definitely don't want to pass this thing around!

Rett loves to lounge around right before bed and cuddle with us after drinking his bottle. He usually has his baby belly hanging out of his shirt because nothing can contain it! :)

He has definitely found his voice! He babbles and laughs and coos all day long! He says "Dada" and "Mama" pretty frequently now and if you smile at him, he ducks his head and grins like he is happy and shy at the same time. I swear this is the happiest baby ever made. He is working on his third tooth, one of the front top ones and chews on everything in sight. He has also started pulling up to standing and then letting go for a few seconds! He is on the brink of walking, but I'm not sure I want to encourage that kind of mobility :)

James is still the boy of 1 million questions. He has started asking us questions about the songs on the radio, like "Why they say that word Mommy?, or "Why they say_____(he repeats the phrase he heard)". The funniest one yet was when the song, "All about that bass" came on. The lyrics go, "I'm all about that bass, no treble." James piped up from the back seat and asked, "Why they say "All about the best, no juggle? Why they don't juggle mommy?" Anthony and I died laughing! We had to make up a story about how they aren't good at juggling just to satisfy him (otherwise the questions wouldn't stop). Now he gets all excited when the "juggling" song comes on the radio.

Another night I was snuggling with James in his bed and he was petting my hair and checking it for hair ties (don't ask me why, but he likes to check). My hair was on top of his teddy bear and he started to feel his fur. He looked shocked and asked, "Mommy! Is that your brains???". So I had a 10 minute discussion with him about what brains are, how they work, and how they are inside our skulls. Then he told me that he wanted to look in the "hole in my eye" so that he can see my brains. I got him to compromise and agree to looking at pictures of brains in the morning. He didn't forget! The next morning he asked to look on the computer to see what brains look like.

I'm not sure which kid did this. It could have been either one of them, but for some reason James' rain boots became the new home to Captain hook and a broken compass.

I saw the movie "Mom's Night Out" recently and I loved it! All the parts about being a stay at home mom and what it feels like were sooooo true. Plus, it was really funny! In the beginning of the movie she had a really rough day and her husband found her hiding in a closet after the kids were in bed, eating chocolate and watching something on the computer. She said she was hiding from how messy the house was. I paused the movie and looked around. I had had a really trying day, I was eating candy and watching a movie while my house looked like this. Can we say deja vu?

We did a clean out of all the old primary boxes and closets at church and I found an old Gospel Art Kit that nobody wanted, so I got to take it home! I have been looking for one ever since James was little but the church doesn't make them any more. It has been great for our family home evenings and scripture reading and James loves flipping through the pictures and talking about them. For family home evening we talked about the story of the 10 lepers and being thankful. Since James has a gross rash, I think he was able to relate to the story of the men with leprosy a little more :)

 After we talked about the story, we played a thankful game where we laid out a bunch of pictures of things we are thankful for. Then we took turns closing our eyes while James took one away. Then we opened our eyes and tried to remember which one was missing. James loved this game! (We played it for sharing time, so I just reuse my materials). Although James did insist that we didn't need to be thankful for houses because "the house is brown and our house is not brown". He also really liked the picture of food and tried to lick the picture.

 Then we acted out the story and used scarfs as bandages for our sores and "booboos" on our skin. James did not want to participate when I said we were doing this and he ran to the opposite side of the room and said he would just watch. I pretended I didn't know how to wrap Anthony up and I needed his help. After showing him how horrible I was at it, James sighed dramatically and said, "Ooooohhh kay Mommy. I guess I will help you." :)

Wrapping Daddy's arm:

 Anthony with his face, neck, and arm bandaged.

 James thought it was funny, but it was also kind of creepy...

 Once Anthony was healed, we asked James what he should do. James turned around and said, "He should say thank you to Jesus!"

My turn to get wrapped up:

These boys sure do make our life interesting!