Ten Months

It’s that time again. Belle turned ten months yesterday. Before I know it, she’ll be turning one, starting kindergarten, and going to prom. Okay, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but this is all just going to fast {most of it anyway- the sick days, those seem to go soooooooo slooooooow, but you allow me to cuddle you, so I won’t complain.}

Dear Baby Girl,

You are such a sweetie—you’re a smiley, happy, energetic little thing. As always, you catch the attention of strangers every time we go out. When we do go out, it often has to be a quick trip through the store, as you are like Houdini squirming out of the seatbelt strap in the cart. Your personality is totally shining through in everything that you do! You’re so expressive and since you’re happy most of the time, you are just so fun to be around! You’re determined and you work to get your hands on whatever is catching your eye and the times when you’re having trouble figuring something out or can’t quite reach something—you definitely let us know. You’re a social little person and prefer to “play” only when someone is right there with you.

This spot in the kitchen has become “your” spot! You love any sort of box/drawer/bucket you can take things out of and put back in!

You had your first Thanksgiving, your first vacation/roadtrip too, this month. Probably you’re last roadtrip for quite awhile too. On your behalf, you were sick. But, you hardly slept. At all. And you just weren’t your happy little self so I took you to the doctor as soon as we got back, but as I expected, it was just a little bug. You got over it after another day or two and finally went back to your normal 11 hour night, and 3ish hours of naps during the day.

You’re still sporting around two teeth. We expected you to have a few more by now—you have been gnawing on things for weeks. But unfortunately, they are taking a while to break through. Even without many teeth, you still like to chomp your food as if you had teeth and it’s pretty cute to watch.

Gnawing on anything/everything. Right now it’s the strainer. But a few minutes from this pic, I found you chewing on the wooden drawer itself.

Speaking of food, you’re still adamant about feeding yourself. I have a cabinet full of unused baby food because you just won’t eat anything I try to feed you. You are eating all of the food we eat plus a four or five bottles a day. You love to find Jackson’s sippy cups and try to drink from them, so I have purchased ones for you. But you’re not very interested. You’re getting a different kind for Christmas, so hopefully you’ll give them a try!

You’re still wearing size 3 diapers and your clothes are anywhere from 6-12 month is size. You’re wearing a size 3 shoe and you look like such a big girl with them on!

You have become a more confident all-fours crawler. And you are fast. Especially when you hear Daddy coming in the door after work. No matter where you are in the house, you will make your way to him within seconds. You love it when Jackson plays crawling games with you—at home or even at the doctor’s office. You have been pulling yourself up for several weeks now and you’ve recently started cruising around the furniture. You can actually stand by yourself for a few seconds… until you realize you are standing by yourself and then you plop right down on the floor. When we try to get you to take a few steps, you often get heavy-bottom-syndrome as you would just rather sit down and then crawl to your destination.

As with most babies your age, you’ve begun experiencing separation anxiety this month. It hit practically overnight when just one day out of the blue you woke up screaming bloody murder, several times back to back. It took about three days to realize that it was simply your awareness that you were alone and that you weren’t dying. You really had me worried—boy can you scream! After a few {short} cry-it-out sessions, you were back to your normal sleeping/waking up routine. However, you often like to play the I’m-perfectly-happy-in-your-arms-but-I-will-scream-once-my-feet-touch-the-ground game, which goes along with the I-want-you-to-hold-me-but-I-cannot-hold-still-so-you-will-just-be-my-playground game. That is truly exhausting, but you’re slowly starting to chill out a little about me not holding you.

You mimic lots of our sounds. You can say Mama, Dada {also, hi dad}, and uh oh. You like to click your tongue and give kisses. Ohmigoodness, I just love me some of your kisses. There are a few different ones. First, there is the leaning of your forehead to my lips—you want me to kiss you. Second, you will make the muah sound while leaning in to kiss my cheek. And lastly, and this started just the other day and it is SO cute—you pucker up your little lips when I say, “can I have some kisses”. Sometimes you’re close and will lean in, but if you’re playing, you just look at me and give me a long-distance-kiss and then go back to your toys. Even just seeing this picture on my computer makes me want to lean in and give her a kiss!! I just can’t get enough.

{every time she does this, I think of the kid, Duck-Face, from Full House!}

You are just loved to  bits and pieces baby girl!!! Every single day is just so much fun with your smiles and giggles! Love Mommy and Daddy!

To Infinity and Beyond

So, I was able to get a video of Jackson as Buzz Lightyear. He was distracted by the camera and didn’t jump fly as much as normal, but it captures how much he really gets into the role… and how much this kid talks!!

So in case you didn’t follow along… this is how the casting goes.

First, Derek is Jessie. But then Jackson changes his mind and I become Jessie.

Then Derek becomes “not anything”, but Jackson decides Derek is the big dinosaur.

Belle is the pig {she’s normally the dinosaur, so this is new!}

And then I get switched to being “tato-head”

Being short on people, Jackson casts the chair as Woody.

And of course, Jackson is Buzz. He’s always Buzz through out most of every day.
{all images are from http://pixar.wikia.com}

He insists that his blanket be tied around his neck and he jumps from couch to ottoman to other couch and so forth for many, many times through out the day. One day Jackson is going to realize and be pretty disappointed that Buzz doesn’t actually have a cape. Oh, and Buzz never wears a shirt. Just the camp.

I am super glad I already picked up a Buzz costume that Jackson will get as a Christmas present. Something tells me that it will get a lot of use! I hope my couches and upholstered-coffee-table-turned-ottoman can survive the countless Buzz Lightyear flying attempts.

Jackson dug out this old motorcycle helmet we have lying around {which is up for grabs if anyone wants it!} and insisted on wearing it around. He loves the helmet and it surprisingly, well not too surprisingly—he has a big head, it fits him rather snug. He loves to flip the shield up and down. But one thing is for sure… it’s not very conducive to picking your nose.

And I of course had to take a picture before I told him to stop. Priorities!

Welcome home camera

I finally have my camera back after having it sent off to be fixed {thanks to accident protection plan from Best Buy}. Anyway, in honor of this celebration {because I've been incomplete without it this past month!} you get a peek into what we did tonight! So glad we actually did something other than grocery shop or clean.

We played hide and seek- Jackson gets all of the good places because he's small. But he's an incredibly bad hider as he likes to say where he is hiding the moment some says "ready or not, here I come!"

Jackson and Belle played with the nativity set.

Well, Belle was more concerned with eating the camel, really.

We put ornaments up on the tree!

I tried to get Belle to wear the Santa hat, but she wasn't having it.

We went out side for the unveiling of the Chistmas lights that Derek and Forrest put up this weekend...

...only to have some of them work!!! So Derek spent several minutes on the roof trying to figure out the problem.

I don't have a picture of Jackson being Buzz Lightyear {that was before I remembered where my battery and SD card were}. I will have to document that because it's quite humorous. Daddy was Woody, me Jessie, and Belle was the dinosaur {all at Jackson's request}.

Eventually I won't be so enthusiastic about having my camera back, but until I do, expect lots of posts!

Family Pictures

I have been meaning to do family pictures ever since Belle joined our family in February.... so it only makes sense that we just got some taken at the end of November, right!? Oh well, it's perfect timing for Christmas cards! I contacted one of Julie's friends from Delleguardia Photography and we went over to main street to take a few pictures. Take a peek: 

{this photo was actually Jackson's idea-- "Get on the tire, Mom!", "Get on the other tire, Dad!"}

I love these shots of Derek and the kids!

Our rambunctous & energetic, sweet & cuddly little guy!

Our precious little girl!

 {Yes, this is the only face he would make for the camera at this point... thanks kid!}

I really wanted to get a decent picture of both of the kids together with the Christmas lights, but after an hour of photos {during naptime} wasn't really condusive towards that idea. Oh well. These are still cute individually!

This is our family-- November 2011!

Our Texas Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we traveled down to Texas to visit some friends who moved down south this summer. We drove down with Brad and HanNah after the guys got off work on Wednesday and drove until the wee hours of the morning. 

We finally entered TX around 1am. 

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel. Eating out on Thanksgiving was a first for me. It wasn't bad, but I'd much prefer to eat home cooked turkey next year {as long as I'm not the one cooking it!}. But most importantly, it was fun to be with our friends and what a treat that no one had to cook or clean up!

We skipped Black Friday shopping this year and visited some places around Fort Worth instead. We had breakfast at some cool pancake place. Delicious! And then we headed over to the stock yards {where the real cowboys come out to play}.

Jackson enjoyed looking at the long-horn steers, but he wasn't so thrilled about me taking a step back to take his picture.

Jackson was so thrilled to be hanging out with his BFF, Carter. He was attached to him practically the entire weekend.

Texas is clearly the Dr. Pepper mecca {and we've even been to the Dr. Pepper museum in Waco}. Derek has had the jelly beans before, but Dr. Pepper jerky-- GAG!

I love me some boys in cowboy hats!!!!

And check out our cute little cowgirl! She's waving for the camera.

We went to this awesome ice cream place. You pick out a flavor of ice cream and two cookies and they smash it together to make your custom ice cream sandwich! Ah.may.zing.

We don't have many {or any pictures} from Friday afternoon on-- mainly because, well, sickness invaded our living space. We had nine people in a cozy two bedroom apartment, three who got sick at exactly the same moment. It was way weird. Lots of vomit. All night long. Lots of sleeping and recovering filled the following days. Thankfully, our family dodged that bullet. I did get the naseau bug on Saturday night, but fortunately, I was able to hold down my meal, but I was thought I was dying for a couple of hours for sure. 

And then, Derek and I were stuck with a little baby that WOULD NOT SLEEP! Oh my goodness. We had to drive Belle around at every moment we needed her to nap-- morning, afternoon, and bedtime! She had a high fever and was so cranky. She hardly ate anything and my word was she difficult! Did I mention how much time we spent in the car just to get her to sleep? We drove all the way to Texas so we could drive around and sit in the McDonalds parking lot so we could use their wi-fi because some little cranky-pants would wake up the moment the car engine went off. She has already been told that all the gas money we spent getting her to sleep will be deducted from her college fund.

It's really kind of comical to look back upon. Pathetic really. We were so careful to plan to make sure that our Texas trip wouldn't turn into a disaster {after our last trip ended up costing nearly $1,000 more than planned} and this bug just came and invaded our plan. I can't help but chuckle at how the whole thing panned out. But, we wouldn't have traded our visit for anything. I really miss Brooke {and Trey and Carter too} and it was just super great to hang out with her again. 

I'm sure we'll go visit again, but Derek has already made it clear that the kids will be kenneled the next time we venture out of our city. Yes, kenneled-- his words.