Once again I took an accidental hiatus from blogging and returning to the wonderful world of writing is daunting. (On a side note, I used a lot of big words in that sentence - good job me - and automatic spell check - ha!)
It's been a great month or so. We've been busy with yard work, friends, church, camping (read: camper prep, laundry, packing, cleaning, shopping, food prep, camper organizing....camping.....unpacking, laundry, cleaning camper, reorganizing camping bins, etc...), and whatever else fills up the days!
Lately James has been talking up a storm. When I come in to get him up in the morning and after his nap he generally has a phrase that he
very urgently wants to tell me - I usually have no idea what he's trying to say. After he gives up trying to play "Mad Gab" (that's seriously what it feels like!), he cycles through everyone's names wanting to know exactly where they are.
James really is a fun kid. I still am in shock when I ask him to do something using real sentences and he fully understands. He does so well in his play time with Nate in the morning. I can stick them both in there for however long and he plays until he gets hungry. Did I mention he eats like a horse? He loves reading books and pointing to pictures of things he knows. On the other side of the spectrum, he likes yelling "BOOM" and throwing himself or something on the floor. Most of all, he loves being in the shop hanging with Dad. He is 100% boy.
Nate is still a sweet little man. He's been sitting up on his own for a few weeks, but it still catches me off guard to turn around and see him sitting like a big kid. It still feels like I don't really
know his personality like I know James', but everyone I've talked to says that it's totally normal and will change soon. Nate is in the fun stage right now where he's totally interactive, but can't crawl anywhere (but he's really close to starting!). Natester is eating his baby food like a champ and never turns down an opportunity to partake. He's totally a go-with-the-flow kid and doesn't complain when he has to skip a morning nap so we can run errands.
Just this morning I sorted through the boys' clothes piles and closet again. Nate is solidly in 9 month and James, 18 months. It was a very strange feeling to put the lid on the NB-6 month box and not be sure if those clothes will ever be worn again... I'm ok with it, it's just a weird feeling!
As for John, he has been busy with work as usual. He recently outfitted his shop with
crazy tooling. I could list off all the new stuff, but really, it's not that interesting for this blog! (Sorry babe, I mean, it IS really interesting - ha ha!) Anyway, all that stuff makes it so he can design, manufacture and ship all his Benchmark parts in-house. He's pretty stoked about it all.
Then there's me...dun dun dun. Bible study, MOPS, and Night Club are out for the summer so I've been filling my days with the usual mom stuff (SO exciting, right!). I've gotten into (and out of, and mostly into again) couponing - We have a love-hate relationship! I've also discovered the fun of Craigslist. Just last night, I went and picked up 12 boxes of baby cereal and 34 jars of baby food for $10. Since
sugar-free March, I have kind of started to enjoy cooking too. I mostly leave it to dvr'd cooking shows and
Pioneer Woman for detailed step-by-step instructions though! Oh, I got an iphone. It's changed my life. I heart it and we are BFFs. Ha ha! :)
Well, I wasn't quite sure to tackle the last month plus, so here it is in pictures:
(I apologize in advance for the crazy amount of content here. Feel free to skip through it, I just like remembering what has been happening for myself!)
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| This picture covers both the mess of his spaghetti dinner AND his "close your eyes to pray" skills. (Don't be too fooled, he only closes them for a split-second!) |
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| Memorial Day camping at John's Aunt & Uncle's cabin. James got a kick out of sliding down the little hill next to John on his bum. |
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| We visited "hole in the rock" in Liberty while we were camping. James got to ride in the front for the quick drive. He kept on nodding his head the whole way there until I realized he had completely fallen asleep! |
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| John and James on top of "hole in the rock". |
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| John says this was his pep-talk with James before getting off the rock. For the sake of grandparents everywhere, I did not load pictures of how he got down. Those are on facebook if you're super curious. (DON'T look, Mom!) |
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| If you look closely, you can see James has a fist-full of Hugo's fur. Hugo was SUCH a great dog on that trip. His puppy-dog-please face even convinced me to let him sleep IN the camper with us! |
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| This is the last of a series of pictures showing James getting into Hugo's lap. He definitely knows Hugo is his pup. |
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| This toy is the best dollar I have ever spent. James absolutely loves his motorcycle ("bkebke"). He sleeps with it, takes it in the store with us, and grabs the handle bars and "rides" it. |
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| We also got James a big-guy potty recently. We went to Toys R Us with the intent of getting a low-profile-blend-in-neutral-colored-cheapy, but ended up with a bright red "Cars" potty that makes "vroom-vroom" noises when you "flush" it. Did I mention it was also twice what I wanted to pay for a stupid kid-pot. He LOVES it. I don't want to start training officially until after summer trips, but he's always excited to um.... sit? It also helps that he only gets juice in a straw cup when he's sitting on it. |
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| Sweet Natester in his jumper. (Please ignore the organized-chaos of the closet!) |
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| James likes to play "spin the baby". |
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| We try to play on the play set whenever it's nice out (that's a whole different subject!!). I scored that cute car swing from CL and it's perfect for little Nate. |
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| James kind of freaks me out when he climbs up the ladder. It's funny to me that he'll climb up there with no fear, but then waits for us to hold his hand while he comes down the slide! |
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| Totally digging the leg-rolls. |
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| A few Sundays ago, we took a trip over to the great Isle of Whidbey to visit Sheri's parents. Auntie Becca was home from college for a few days (but now she's in London... HI BECCA!!!) and got to hang out with the boys a little bit. |
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| The Johnson/Carruthers/Duysing gang. |
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| That same Sunday night, we went to a goodbye shindig for our really good friends, Will & Devon. |
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| Will & Devon were/are the couple that we could go get muddy in jeeps with, go to a super nice dinner with, or just hang out and have taco & movie night at home with. We will truly miss them for 2 years, but they have promised to move back to WA after Will is done with PA school in Florida. |
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| Oh! Reed has a new girlfriend. I shouldn't say it like that. Oh well... Meet Katie. She is the most sincerely sweet and beautiful girl ever. |
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| This was April & my first walk together with Asher as an outside baby. They were all very enthusiastic about the walk..... (ha!) |
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| Nate and James during playtime. |
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| Thanks for the toys, Aunt Kim! |
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| I shouldn't admit this, but this picture was an attempt to get James to watch tv. It only worked for about 4 minutes. |
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| My handsomes |
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| A little too much love? |
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| James and Kenley playing at Grandma & Grandpa's |
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| This was the hilarious baby shower for Carin & Ethan. She went into labor early that morning so she wasn't able to make it to her own shower. We got together anyway and spent time praying for her and baby Ethan. Well, 2/3 of the ladies got to pray, the other ones are behind the camera taking care of noisy kiddos! |
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| This picture didn't turn out great, but I wanted to make sure Father's Day was noticed. Happy Father's Day DADS!! Brian, Keri, Kenley, Claire, Dad, Mom, John, James, Nate, and I went to Scuttlebutt for lunch. Brian and John wanted to be sure to get a "selected beverage" in the picture next to Mom. And on a Sunday (gasp!)! :-) |
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| Getting ready for bed... typically the loudest and most funny (as in, if I don't laugh, I will pull my hair out) time of the day! |
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| The boys both had Dr appointments recently to update their shots. I'm not as into going in every month like I was with James. I love our doctor, but I don't need him to tell me that the boys are growing! ;-) Anyway, at almost 8 months, Nate came in at a strong 18 lbs (20th %). And at 21 months, James is 25.5 lbs (35th %) |
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| James got a kick out of clapping his hands and flinging cottage cheese everywhere..... ONE time. It's hard to tell in the picture, but I was finding little white specs everywhere that day! |
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| Nate "playing with"(?) Hugo |
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| Just this last Saturday we went to a boy from church's birthday party. It was at Remlinger Farms past Carnation... SUCH a fun place! They have so many rides to go on, a petting zoo, a real steam engine mini-train to ride on, pony rides, etc... It's definitely a place we'll go back to! |
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| James had a fun time playing with Caitlin and Lillian - their parents are in our Night Club group (and they're also 13 months apart "by accident"!) |
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| Riding on the train |
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| James was beyond excited! |
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| Checking out the bunnies. |
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| This was also a toy-score from our MOPS garage sale last week. The train is completely broken and missing pieces, but James doesn't care one bit! |
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| James wants to be just like Nate - which means playing in his walker. He climbs in during almost every play time now. This morning I snuck a peek in his room and he played happily in the walker for about 20 minutes before he started getting mad that he couldn't climb out! |
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| Great mom that I am, I snapped pictures before I helped the poor boy. :-/ |
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| One of Nate's 8 month pictures |
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| He loves rocking back and forth on all fours now. Maybe he'll completely skip the "army crawl" phase.... please?? |
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| Ok, Ok, maybe not! |
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| Playing at the park with cousins |
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| Nate got to ride in James' car seat when we ran down to Tom Thumb the other day. It is SO weird to me that he's getting big enough to fit in this car seat! |
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| This was our MOPS garage sale I helped with... ok, I wasn't a lot of help, but we had fun and the church was packed with donated stuff.... this was just the clothing alone! |
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| I turned around from changing Nate the other day and realized that James had taken "dowwnn dowwnn dowwnn" into his own hands. He didn't make it all the way over, but I guess it's something to look out for now! |
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| "BOOM!!!" |
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| Playing "peek-a-boo" with Nate |
Ugh. Sorry, that was A LOT of pictures! But now, we can resume blogging at TODAY!
