Busy, Busy, Busy

We have been busy over here lately, it seems like June has just zoomed by! Last week we looked after our friends' children in return for them watching James for us a few weeks ago. Oh my word, having three kids all together is loud!! I'm not going to lie, it was a little overwhelming, especially since James and their little boy Jaxton are only a month apart so it is like having twins plus an older sibling. But, we had a great time!! Our friends have an awesome playroom that I am totally jealous of and we had fun playing dress-up, play-doh, and hide and seek and James loved pushing around the different shopping carts they had. It was kind of funny to see the look on James' face whenever one of the other kids would come and sit in my lap. He would get this "Hey, that's my spot...what are you doing in my spot....?" look and then he would come over and try to wiggle in. So cute.

We took a picture of them all in the tub and it was adorable, but I'm only going to post the pictures we took of James since I'm not sure how their mom feels about bath pictures up on the internet :)

James has started to notice different body parts on himself and is starting to realize that other people have those body parts too. His favorite right now is his belly button. If you ask him where his belly button is, he will immediately lift his shirt up and look for it, almost as if he isn't sure it is still there! Then he looks over at me or Anthony and lunges towards us, grabbing at our shirts trying to lift it up so he can see our belly button. He thinks it is hilarious that we have one too!

A few weeks ago we went to a fund raiser event at a local horse rescue and James loved it! I really need to find a local farm or something that we can visit more often because he loves seeing all the animals and chasing all the chickens. He especially loved running around in the mud, much to my dismay! :) We got to feed and pet the horses, there were so many of them. They even had a baby miniature horse that was the size of a child's rocking horse. So cute!! James was not afraid of the horses at all. One of them was in a separate pen that was made up of a few horizontal bars and James tried to stick his head through and wiggle his body over to get inside multiple times. The horse would come up and sniff James to see if he had any food and he would just laugh!

With all the rain we've been having, a lot of the fun activities on my list of the summer have been put on hold and I've tried to think of things to do to get us out of the house. The mall is a good 30 minutes away from us so we don't go that often, but they do have an indoor playground so we've gone a few times. For some reason, don't ask me why, all of the decorations and play equipment are large scale breakfast items... It is kind of weird. But that doesn't stop the kids from having fun! Every time we have gone they are all running around going crazy and having fun. James likes climbing on the top of the eggs and standing there like king of the mountain. Then he slowly sits down and slides down backwards off of it very cautiously :) He also really likes the bacon slide (so odd!! who came up with piece of bacon for a slide?? Why??)

The rule at the playground is for everyone to take their shoes off, which isn't a problem except that James is in this phase where he loves to pick up people's shoes and bring them to them to put on. Loves it. Does it nonstop at home. So of course when he saw the tower of shoes in shoe rack he squealed and looked so excited! It was pretty difficult to keep him away from them for the rest of the time. He also has started saying "Shoe" a lot, one of the few words he will say. He talks and babbles all the time, but he doesn't say very many distingushable words. I think he knows how to say more than he does, because out of nowhere he will say something and Anthony and I will look at each other like, "Was that what we thought it was??" but he won't repeat it or do it consistently.

James has also started getting into EVERYTHING. Instead of just screaming and crying when he can't get at something he has started to get creative..

My phone camera is awful, but if you look closely you can see that he pulled his ride-on fire truck up to the couch so he can get at the side table that has remotes, candles, books: everything he isn't supposed to get :) The funniest part was that I was sitting right next to him by that blue pillow when he did it. I was reading a book and had no idea until I happened to glance over and he was level with my face. Attentive parenting in action :)

Anthony's work is going great, he still loves it and he renegotiated his contract for another year. He also has been really excited about his aquarium lately. A friend of his sold all of his corals, so Anthony made out like a bandit and now his tank is FULL of new stuff. He hasn't been fishing lately, but once the weather gets better we hopefully will get to go out in the boat again soon.

I haven't been doing anything too exciting. I really enjoy the one day a week I volunteer at the library. I usually just put my mp3 player on with podcasts I like to listen to and I zone out while I reselve books. It is relaxing :) I bought myself a Kindle Fire, I had been thinking about it for 6 months and I finally decided to do it. Anthony and I share an Ipad, so I thought it would be nice to have something for each of us. Of course, when Anthony is at work or doing something with his tank I use the Ipad because it is so much bigger so I've been feeling kind of guilty that I don't use the Kindle more. First world problems right? :)