What we've been up to

Life has been pretty busy around here lately. It seems like our to-do list is always a mile long and with my crazy nesting urges, I can't stop myself from adding more things to the list! A lot of times I can't stand to wait for Anthony to get home to get things done so I have been venturing out of my comfort zone. I took apart and fixed (!) one of James' favorite toys all by myself and I even pulled out the manual of my car and checked the oil and transmission fluid when the car started acting funny. I've also been doing a lot of online shopping since throughout the day, I will remember I need something and I want to go ahead and get it off the list. One of the perks of online shopping? Big boxes for James to play with! This is still one of his favorite toys:

Anthony has a lot of things on his own to-do list too, mostly aquarium related. Remember when he said he was paring down the aquariums? Yeah, he has slowly worked his way back up to three different aquariums. At least these are small ones :) A few weeks ago Anthony came home from work and showed me a picture of some coral an aquarium guy had posted on his facebook page. The guy was having a contest, whoever could come up with the best name for the coral would win it! Anthony had a few ideas, but he liked my idea the best (I suggested "Arctic Chill" since they were icy blue) so he submitted it. He ended up winning! A few days later we took James to go pick it up and Anthony ended up buying a few other things too. James loved seeing the fish in the tank :)

James is just growing and growing and has been amazing us every day with the things he says and understands. I really need to get better about writing down the funny things he says so I can remember them for later. Yesterday I officially put away all of his size 18 month clothes and put all of his 2T size clothes in his drawers. His shorts were getting pretty short and I noticed last week that his t-shirts barely covered the top of his diaper. Today he got to wear some of his "new" (since a lot are hand-me-downs) clothes and he insisted on wearing the "white" shorts. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I told him to show me. He went to his drawer and pulled out a pair of cream colored khaki shorts from the very bottom. He must have remembered seeing me put them in there yesterday!! His memory is too good!!!

I usually run out of energy by mid-afternoon, so it has been a bit of a struggle figuring out what to do with James everyday. It seems like the more tired I get, the more energy he gets! Last Wednesday we went to story time at the library in the morning, but I was at a loss of what to do after that. I realized we needed gas in the car and the cheapest gas station is right next to a Burger King that has an awesome indoor, air-conditioned play place. I was already tired from story-time, so the thought of sitting indoors and just letting him run around sounded too good to pass up. I am so glad we went, we had such a great time!! James was so happy and I felt like we were on a little date :)

Eating his kid's meal:

I asked him to "say cheese":

We spent a good hour/hour and a half there. James would come eat some food, and then go back to running around and exploring everything. The slides are really high and twisty, so he would come and get me and say "Mommy slide!" until I got up and went down with him. He liked the "hat" they gave him, but he wanted to wear it around his neck. It was so funny watching him try to figure out how to eat his food with the crown in front of his mouth!

This is what he came up with:

James loves playing with Anthony's tools and going through his toolbox in the garage. If he gets out there, he actually spends more time with the tools than looking at the boat which is shocking considering how obsessed with the boat he used to be. I got him his own play tool set and he loves them! Every morning he immediately goes to look for his tools and picks out a few to take around with him. He almost died of excitement when I hung a few pictures up and started hammering the hooks into the wall. He went and got his play hammer and started hitting the wall with it right underneath me. Hours later when Anthony got home, he got his hammer and started showing and telling Anthony how he "helped". He loves to tell stories about things we have done or seen during the day to Anthony. You usually can only understand a few of the main words, but you can tell he thinks he is telling you this detailed story. We really need to get a video of it!

One of Anthony's coworkers quit recently, so there is a possibility that Anthony's hours might change soon. I am a little nervous about it, but I am hoping our schedule won't be too disrupted. It is really hard to get a hold of Anthony while he is at work. He keeps his phone on vibrate in his pocket, but he never feels the phone vibrate, so he never checks his phone. I don't expect him to answer if he is in with a patient, but I can't even count on him getting a text or phone message from me until he basically walks into the door of the house and remembers that his phone is in his pocket. Yesterday I wanted to ask him a question and I knew that he was done seeing patients for the day, so I called him. Of course, he didn't answer! I looked at James and said, "This is so annoying!" James repeated, "annoying!" Then this morning I needed to ask him a question right after he walked out the door. He was in his car, probably only a few blocks down our street when I tried to call him. Of course, no answer. I didn't say a thing, but once the voice mail message came on, James looked up from his toys and said, "annoying!". That's right kid! I couldn't have said it better myself :)