Animal Sounds

 

Buddies

James and I are lucky that so many of my friends have babies too, it gives James lots of built in friends! Here he is at Riley's 1st birthday party with Taylor, Riley, Audrina, and Isabella (Riley's cousin). I find it very impressive that 5 babies/toddlers were looking at the camera at the same time.

We got to babysit Anne's baby George last week, one of the most happy laid-back babies ever!
Last week we also got to visit Kara's new baby Maren.  Since she is not a blue eyed blondie, she did not get to be in the picture with James and his twin Addi.

18 month stats

James had his 18 month well baby visit yesterday.  He has grown so much!  It is no wonder since he is eating constantly.  He is on the charts for weight-finally! He is 21 lbs, which makes him the 3rd perentile.  He is 32 inches which is the 40th percentile.  And his head is something enormous like 20 inches-holding steady at 95th percentile.  Everything about him is right on track and he is doing great!  Here is one last Florida picture since I can't bring myself to have 2 posts in a row with no pictures.

11 years old

That is how old James will be when Tim has to take his next dental test. He found out today that he passed the test he took last month and is board certified-yay Tim!

One and a Half!

James is 18 months old today! How did that happen?! He is definitely no longer a baby, and most definitely a little boy. I have to say that I was so sad and nostalgic when James turned one, but I have enjoyed the past 6 months more than any other period of his life so far. It really does just keep getting better and a lot more fun to be James' mom. His personality has really started to develop and he is becoming such a little person.
James learning to walk, and now run, has been one of the biggest changes since he tuned one. I love every second of it. It makes life so much easier for both of us. He can go where he wants and explore what he wants on his own. He took off walking and never looked back to crawling. He is now working on running and jumping.

Another big change in the past 6 months is that James no longer nurses. He had cut down to morning and nights around 15 months, just morning around 16 months, and he was completely weaned around 17 months. Considering we had a fairly difficult start to nursing, I am thrilled that we were able to have such a successful and long nursing relationship. It was time to stop for both of us, and the plus side is that James has been sleeping through the night consistently every night since he stopped nursing.

James has continued to be enthusiastic about almost all food and enjoys eating pretty much constantly during waking hours. He will frantically point to his mouth anytime he is hungry, which is pretty much all the time. The only thing he does not enjoy is meat, with the exception of meatballs. When he sees someone eating something he wants to try, he will go, "Mmmmmm!" and then point to his mouth alternating with his sign for "more." He will put any type of food into his mouth, and if he does not like it he will shake his head no, remove the food and hand it to you. He also loves to share his food, and will hand bites of it to anyone around. He can use a fork and spoon to eat any type of food now, including yogurt and applesauce, but the results are sometimes rather messy.

James has started to talk a little bit, and has quite an explosion of words while down in Florida on this trip. Here is a list of words that he can say (almost) correctly and uses in the appropriate context and with meaning:

• Dada
• Mama
• Up
• No
• Uh oh!
• Papa (Dave)
• Mimi (Katie)
• Ball (although it is usually baa baa while signing it at the same time)
• Dog (more like daa while also signing it)
• More (Mo while also doing the sign)

He still signs and will make up his own signs for a lot of words and use them consistently. His latest signs that he now uses consistently are please and thank you. When you ask him to say a word that he can't say, he says, "No no no!" while shaking his head.

James can also tell you what sounds the following animals make:

• Sheep-"Baaaa!" (this is his favorite)
• Cow-"Muuuuhh"
• Dog-he pants with his tongue out
• Cat-"mooww" (he whispers this one)
• Monkey-"Ah ah ah!"
• Britney Spears-"Uh uh!" (He loves the song Womanizer and makes this sound at the appropriate time during the song and that is what he says when you ask him what Britney says) James is still shy and serious some of the time, but outgoing and bubbly some of the time too. He loves to wave like crazy to people that he sees, and then when they wave back he gets shy and will bury his head into me. In new situations, he likes to sit back and observe and take it all in while being very serious, but when he is comfortable he will run around like crazy. One of the cutest things he does is his fake laugh. If people around him are laughing about something, he will just crack up in the cheesiest fake laugh and then look pretty pleased with himself that he was in on the joke.

James still loves books, balls and dogs. He could read all day long. He chooses a new favorite book every couple of days or so and will ask you to read it over, and over, and over. He loves sitting in your lap to read, so he will grab a book, turn around and back himself into your lap. James goes nuts anytime he sees a ball, or anything resembling a ball. He will sign and say ball over and over until he gets the ball or you can distract him with something else. James loves dogs (and cats) and one of his favorite things to do is to go walking around our street looking for them. He still loves Jax most of all and Jax is the recipient of about 10,000 hugs a day from James.

One of my favorite things about James right now is how affectionate he is. He loves to cuddle, and to give hugs and kisses. He will come up to you say, "Up!" and then wrap his arms around you and give you a big hug, take your face between his hands, kiss you on the lips with a big smack and then want to put down again. I can not get enough of it. If a bunch of people are around, he will often want to repeat that cycle with every person, especially the kisses. As much as James has changed in the past 6 months, I can't wait to see what the next 6 have in store for us! Happy 18 month birthday James, we love you more and more every day!

Awesome.

Here are some pictures of James in his baby aviators for all the dental girls that read the blog because I know they love it. Especially the popped collar one :-)

They didn't even try to coordinate their outfits.

Fun at the Beach and Pool

OK, so I realized that I never actually order any pictures or put any in albums or anything, so all I really have is this blog. So that is my excuse for posting so many pictures all of the time. That, and that James is super cute. So here are even more pictures from Florida. We are having a lot of fun and James is in absolute heaven down here. He loves the boat, loves the beach, and loves the pool. Here are pictures of him enjoying the beach and pool this week, and I took even more today but haven't uploaded them yet, so check back later for even more!

Fun on the Boat

Yesterday we took the boat to Naples for lunch, one of my favorite things to do in Florida. It is a nice boat ride, and James loved being on the boat. We saw some dolphins, which he loved, and he kept signing for more anytime we went fast.
Hanging out on the boat with Kenzie and Polly while enjoying one of his first ever juice boxes.

The boat did an even better job of lulling James to sleep than the car.

He slept right through our entire trip to Naples, including lunch.

And between the humidity, sunscreen, and sweating while he slept, James woke up with an awesome hair style.

After we got home, we went to The Chocolate Strawberry-our favorite-and James got to taste some chocolate ice cream for the first time. We get pretty crazy on vacation.

Easter

Today the weather was perfect and we had a perfect day. We went to church this morning, then to brunch at the country club with the whole Conroy gang that is down here. After brunch James took a nice long nap and Tim stayed with him while the rest of us took the boat to Stan's. After James woke up, we went to Tim and Polly's new house. The weather could not be any more perfect, and I am hoping it stays like this the rest of the week!

James in his adorable beachy Easter outfit. Incase you are not getting the full effect of the level of cuteness, his shirt is pink. He was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Giving Papa Dave an Easter kiss. He was hugging and kissing everyone today.

Giving the creepy Easter Bunny the evil eye. Stragely enough, he kept signing, "More rabbit," after his initial encounter and he and Kenzie kept going to find him and then when James would see him he would take off running in the other direction. I think James was just keeping tabs on the bunny to make sure he didn't get too close to us again.

With James' #1 fan, Mackenzie

Almost all of the Nichols/Conroy's after brunch. Betsy and Kenzie were too busy stealing candy from the buffet.

Earning his keep at Great Uncle Tim's by sweeping the pool deck.

Fishing

James is a fan of Florida already, and I think we are going to be hard pressed to get him inside at all on this vacation. He spent all afternoon after we got here playing by the pool or in the pool. Dave likes to make sure his grandbabies are comfortable, so the water was a nice 95 degrees or so when we got here. We told him he could turn down the heater a little bit :-) Here he is checking out his new fishing pole from Papa Dave.

Unlike Zephyr, James much prefers the pool via an inflatable raft where his eyes and ears are safely out of reach from the water.

Field Trips

I added a few more pictures that Holland just e-mailed me from her camera, I thought they were cute :-)

James has gotten to go on a couple of fun field trips the past couple of weeks.  Today we went to the aquarium with Micki, Holland and Riley which was a lot of fun.  It was perfect for James because he could walk everywhere and see into all of the tanks.  At first he wasn't so sure about everything being so close until he realized that there was glass between him and all of the animals.

Looking grouchy (I swear he is not this grouchy in real life) with Holland and Riley.

Doing his impression of the big fish he had just seen with an under bite who kept opening and closing its mouth. 
Getting a view from underneath one of the tanks with Micki.
We got a great view of the tigers!

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Butterfly Pavillion with Lacey and Audrina and Holland and Riley.  This is what James looked like the whole time; walking around looking up and pointing to all of the butterflies.

Crawling through the honeycomb at the Butterfly Pavillion.