13/14 Months Old

James keeps growing bigger and cuter every day. He had his one year check up when he was 13 months since that's how our schedule worked out, so here's how big he was at that appointment:

Weight: 25 lbs 13 oz

Height: 33.3 inches

He's always been in the 80s-90s for most everything, but this time he went off the chart for height (not too surprising since he seems to be as big as most the 2 year olds we meet). He can now walk and run - didn't take him long to run after he got walking down. As one of John's co-workers put it - he still has a lot more energy than sense - so we have lots of bumps and bruises, but it doesn't seem to bother him much. He is super sweet and smiley. He loves to smile at strangers and then get really shy. He still says mama and dada a lot, but now he also loves to walk around babbling all sorts of sounds in what we assume are full, coherent sentences to him, but Greek to everyone else (it sure sounds cute, though). My favorite thing is that he still loves to give hugs. You sit down anywhere on the floor and he is on top of you giving you a hug or sitting and cuddling in your lap.

Below is just a cute video of when James was just over a year old and liked pushing Tori around on this little toy car. This is before he could even walk by himself. Excuse the crazy colors/lines in the middle of the video - my camera is acting funny lately. They sure have a lot of fun playing with each other. James loves it when Tori chases him and he will follow her anywhere.

8 Months Old

8 Months Old:

I'm not sure how big he is exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's over 20 lbs and super long!

He is such a big fun smiley boy!! James is now fully mobile. He army crawls like crazy everywhere he wants to go. He is a lot happier now that he can get to any toy he wants (and many things that he is not suppose to play with). The cutest thing is that he'll even pretend to crawl away from me - he'll keep looking back and smile as he tries to crawl away fast until I come and get him and then he just giggles like crazy. He actually laughs the hardest when Tori tries to go and get him. The best thing about him crawling is the look he gives me when he discovers a new toy (like when he found the magnets on the frig that make animal noises) - he just turns and gives me the happiest look - I can just imagine him saying, "Mom! Did you know this was here?!"

These three pictures are what happens now when I try and take a picture of him. He basically won't hold still and just crawls towards me until he can reach the camera, which he thinks is pretty cool.

The above video is of Tori and James with Tori trying to get James to clap. James wasn't feeling too well, so he is a little mellow in the video. He starts to get really cute at the end, but of course the tape ran out on the video camera.

I just thought this was a good video of James doing his army crawl. So fun!

Our little Tinkerbell dancing

Here is more video of Tori dancing. This time in her Tinkerbell costume. She can dance a little better in this costume because the shoes are a little easier to dance in than the Cinderella costume.

Our little Cinderella Dancing

Above is a video of Tori dancing in her Cinderella dress (sorry it's quite a long video, but I didn't really know how to cut it more and of course I think it is all cute). Recently, anytime I put music on in the house Tori immediately wants me to dress her up in one of her princess outfits so she can dance to it. My favorite part is when the music gets slower she slows down her dancing and then speeds up again when the music picks back up. Tori loves to dance - we often go with John to the Stake Youth Dances and Tori has a blast dancing to every song (I don't know where she gets the energy).

Angels we have heard on high

Tori's absolutely favorite Christmas song is "Angels We Have Heard On High". Sort of an interesting choice for a two-year old, but I think we sang it in church once and she really liked the "gloria's" and from then on she was always asking me to sing it to her. This video is from Christmas morning when we asked her to sing it for us.

Dancing

So, one of Tori's absolute favorite things is dancing. The video above is her dancing to one of the songs from the musical, Mama Mia - "Honey, Honey" (a new favorite song). Unfortunately, she inherited my rhythm as you can tell. We've taken her to a couple of Stake youth dances at our church because of John's calling and she just loves them. She will dance non-stop for over an hour straight until we drag her home to bed while she yells, "More dance, more dance!" Personally, I can't get enough of watching her dance.