Tot Lot Fun

Over the holiday break I took the kids a couple times to a fun tot lot (rec center gym filled with toys and bouncy castles). They had so much fun doing some much needed running around.

James loved climbing up and down this slide over and over again. I think he loves finally being able to do fun things all by himself.

Tori loved racing around in the big wheels as fast as she could and having me time her doing laps. James also wanted to join in the racing, though I usually had to push him in the car.

Tori, of course, loved the bouncy castles - despite the worried look on her face in the picture. I had a hard time getting pictures of them in the bouncy castles that weren't blurry - I'm still getting used to the new camera we got for Christmas. James was a little wary at first of going inside the bouncy castle, but once Tori went in with him he loosened up and had a ball.

Christmas

Above is what Christmas at 6am looks like. Our Christmas morning actually started with Tori climbing into bed with us at 5:30am, super excited and asking to open presents. At least we could reason with her a little bit and tell her she needed to sleep a little longer - however, once James was also up at 6am we gave up. We realized a few days later that James was teething and that's why he's been getting up so early lately.

Above is a very happy Tori with her presents from Santa and below is a groggy, but very happy James driving his car from Santa.

Tori and James were really sweet and had a lot of fun opening presents, stockings and playing with toys. They both had a blast and loved playing with each others' toys, too.

Below James is petting his pillow pet in his car (both Tori and James got pillow pets and were thrilled with them). Tori's reaction when she opened her unicorn pillow pet was priceless. She was so excited; unfortunately, it was right when we turned the video camera off.

More Dance Videos

Here are a couple of videos of Tori doing some dances that they practiced during Christmas time. She still loves to dance and it's fun to see her learning more and more actual dance moves.

Dance Christmas Party

Tori's dance studio had a Christmas party where they got to talk and dance with Santa. Tori loved this - especially the dancing part.

Above, Tori is coloring her Christmas picture while waiting to see Santa. It's interesting - lately, Tori has gotten very wary of strangers (a good thing in many ways). She was the little baby and toddler that loved sitting on Santa's lap, would talk to or smile at any stranger we passed by. She's a bit more reserved around strangers now and as you can see in the video below - she will hardly even look at Santa, even though she was really excited to get to see him. I guess this is what happens when you start getting older and more aware.

Museum Fun

Here are a few pictures of Tori and James having fun at the museum. We try and go on Tori's early out days since she loves it and doesn't get to go that often now that she's in school. James really loves it now, too - it's fun to see him grow up and actually play with all the stuff in the different rooms just like Tori did when she was little. Above they're playing doctor together in the hospital and below James is concentrating really hard on driving the ambulance (one of his favorites).

Above Tori has found Iowa on the map and below she is working hard on her rocket - she's gotten so great at doing all this stuff on her own.

What can I say, James loves anything that goes - planes, cars, trucks, trains.

18 Months Old

18 Months Old:

Weight: 30 lbs 8 oz (somewhere in the 90-something percentile)

Height: 36 inches (even further off the chart than last time :))

These measurements were technically done when he was closer to 19 months, but still, he's a big kid.

James is full of energy and loves running, climbing, balls, cars and anything that makes a loud noise. He keeps trying to say new words (most of which only a few people can understand) and still absolutely loves his big sister. He is great at figuring things out and can open all the doors, cabinets and anything with a cap that twists or flips open at our house (I have to watch him like a hawk).

James and Tori love to dance and run around the house together. Tori is a very sweet big sister and James loves it when she is home. On the way to and from dropping her off at school he usually says, "Tori, Tori, Tori" over and over.

It's a .....

GIRL!! We couldn't be happier! I had my ultrasound appointment the other day and everything looks great. Tori was very excited to be getting a baby sister (that's what she guessed it was going to be). I'm due on April 14th and actually feeling pretty good, so all around life is good.

Christmas Pictures

A local picture place was having a deal on photos, so I took the kids in to get some pictures in their Christmas outfits. Tori loved an excuse to wear her Christmas dress and spent the whole time dancing around the photo place while we waited. It went pretty well, except that James really did not want me to put him down and was pretty upset at the beginning. At the end he finally warmed up a bit and I love his and Tori's smiles in their individual pictures.

Above is my attempt to get a picture of the kids in their Halloween shirts before we went to pick out our pumpkins. On the way we had to stop by the store to pick up some snacks for a youth activity that John had to go to later that day. I had to take a picture since Tori and James were having so much fun sitting next to each other in the car-cart, it was really cute and fun.

Here are Tori and James enjoying their pizza in the car on the way to the pumpkin patch. James was having fun, but wasn't quite able to finish his pizza before he fell asleep.

Below John, Tori and James at the pumpkin patch. We tried to get some more pictures of the pumpkins, but our camera stopped working so this was the last picture it would take that day.

These are pictures of Tori at her class Halloween party. They also had a parade in their costumes in the gym that we got to watch. I tried to video tape it, but I must have pushed the wrong button or something because it didn't record what I wanted. (I don't sound that technologically smart in this post, do I? Usually, I'm not this unlucky.) Tori had a ton of fun and loved wearing her costume and the funny teeth and eyes she got from one of the kids in her class.

And this is it for Halloween pictures. These are of John and the kids on Halloween. Tori, as always, loved carving her pumpkin and had been asking me to do it since we bought them. She was actually able to do most of the carving herself this year, which was very fun for her. She even helped with James' tiny pumpkin you can see sitting on top of John's. It was a really nice Halloween and we were lucky that the weather was pretty pleasant, also.

Halloween Dance Class

Tori's dance class did a tap and ballet routine for Halloween in their costumes and parents got to come in and watch. Below is the video - she just loves to dance, especially in a big fancy costume.

Halloween Party

Medical Partners (the medical spouse organization) has a fun Halloween party at the hospital that we love to go to every year. Tori decided to be Belle this year (it's the one princess dress-up she has that she hasn't gone trick or treating in, yet). It's a good thing Disney keeps making movies since we're running out of princesses ;). James didn't really have a choice - he got to be a chicken (what Tori was a few years ago).

I think one of James' favorite parts of the party was that I gave him a whole slice of pizza to eat all by himself instead of cutting it up for him. He also loved dancing to the music playing while covered in his pizza sauce. I tried to capture some of it in the video below, but of course he stops dancing once I start taping - I got him to do a little, though. Sorry about the end of the video, our camera is pretty much almost dead.

Here is our beautiful Belle doing many poses for the camera. Tori loved running around with her friends, coloring, and eating the fun candy and sugar cookies.

James loved running all over the room trying to grab anything he could.

I finally gave up and let him have his first sucker. He loved it! However, on the way home I had a very sticky chicken.

Pumpkin Patches

We decided to visit a new pumpkin patch this year that we heard was really fun. The kids loved it, but we didn't last too long because the day we could go just happened to be a 90 degree day in the middle of October. You can tell the heat is starting to get to them in the picture below.

This place a ton of fun things especially for kids Tori's age. They had two very large corn mazes (one smaller for kids, which is the one we did), they had a barrel train pulled by a tractor, peddle go-karts, a large jumping pillow and a bunch of pumpkins all pictured below. We also watched pig races, played in a corn sand box, climbed on a tire playground, and went through a haunted house. We didn't realize it was a haunted house - it was just called the curtain house and Tori really wanted go in, so we tried it out. We went through some dark rooms and a maze of curtains and all was fine until we turned a corner and there were gross heads hanging from the ceiling. Tori screamed bloody-murder. She calmed down really quickly when I told her to look down and that it was all pretend, but we made sure to get out of there fast. I guess it wasn't too horrible because later she asked to go in again (we didn't). We also decided not to get pumpkins since it was pretty early in the month, so we did that another day. Overall, it was a very fun, though a little tiring, day.