Ten Months

Yesterday Elizabeth turned 10 months old and celebrated with her very first pony tail.  There isn't much hair to put up yet, but there is one long piece that always tries to fall into her face.  It is funny to look at the stickers I use to mark her monthly birthdays.  The 1, 2, and 3 month ones are pretty pristine and undamaged, but as the months progress and Elizabeth got more mobil the stickers and her clothes got more wear.  The 10 month photo shoot was quite a battle.  It was a beautiful day outside so I decided to take the kids outside to do the photos.  I imagined that Jason would blow bubbles (his latest love) and I would capture a few beautiful pictures of Elizabeth and we would all have a great afternoon.  You know that isn't the way it worked.  Elizabeth was way more interested in trying to get the bubble solution than being a model and while I was trying to prevent that Jason decided to go play in some sand.  Except it wasn't just sand it was an ant hill...a red ant hill.  The poor boy has bites all over one hand and a couple on his body.  Now he goes around the house saying "ants...ouchy"

Finally a good one!

sweet siblings

I'm sorry I have to keep this short, but there is an attack baby who wants to nibble on my laptop.  Recently I have had a few friends who have shared concerns about having two babies close together.  Although ours aren't as close as others (Karen, you're my hero) 25 months between the two can make life a battle at times.  I just had to share this supper cute story from this morning.

I was cleaning the kitchen, which desperately needed it.  I had Elizabeth in with me, but Jason was playing trains in his room.  He came in and the next thing I know I find him crawling around the island.  He is playing chase and entertaining his sister.  They are both giggling away and I wish I had gotten a video.  He can be so sweet to her sometimes and I love to see them hug on each other.  Also Jason has started this habit of when Elizabeth wakes up and cries out he wants to be the first one in her room to rescue her. 

I knew when we had a second child that Jason would teach her things, but I had no clue that she would be teaching him things.  Elizabeth, like most babies, likes to put everything into her mouth.  Jason never really got into this so I am treading through uncharted territory.  I should say that he never got into it until he saw Elizabeth doing it.  I have wondered if him exploring the world with his mouth lead to his recent speech development.  Now I just hope he will copy sister's love of veggies!

"hehe ya right Mommy!"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We hope you all had a very blessed Christmas and rang in the New Year in celebration!  We have returned home from San Antonio, found homes for most of our new stuff, and taken down our Christmas decorations.  For Jason, this was the year of the train.  He got tons of Thomas the Train stuff and loves it all!  I got a new lens for my camera and a Cricut Imagine that both prints and cuts for scrapbooking, among other wonderful things.  Jeff is ready to be decked out as a true Texas Cowboy and Elizabeth got tons of girly clothes.

We did experiance our own little Christmas miracle.  Jason started talking to us.  After saying tortilla he figured out how excited his parents were that he was speaking.  He has said so many things I can't even count them.  Lots of more animal sounds, yes and no reliably, choo choo train, two,and he repeats any word he chooses.  I will have to be sure to get a video of him when he is in a chatty mood.  True to two year old fashion when you ask him to say something he will give you a sweet little "no."  He also has his own little way of saying "Elizabeth" and "Christmas Eve", which he insisted on saying from Christmas Eve all the way through New Years Day.  We are so happy he is making leaps and bounds towards speaking!

Togetherness

As a brief side note, we are in the single digits on our Christmas countdown!  I can't believe it is so close!  It took me a little while to get into the spirit this year, but now that the cookies are baked and packaged and the presents are all wrapped up I am starting to get pretty excited.  Speaking of Christmas here is my handsome boy in his suit:


So since Elizabeth has become more mobile she gets to go where she wants and more often than not it is wherever her big brother is.  It has been such a joy to see them play together.  There are many battles for toys.  She wants his, he wants hers, but there is the rare moment when you get to hear them giggling together.

Chasing each other while showing off a train Christmas card

Cuddling with Mommy after/during naptime

The train is always a huge battle, but this particular day Jason was willing to share.

Making a gingerbread house together.  Jason ate half of the candy, but I think everyone had fun.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

So now our house is all decked out and cleaned up for Christmas...well it was all clean when these pictures were taken 2 days ago.  Now I am looking at trains on the TV table and baby toys on the ground, but we can a pretend a little bit.  I also realized that I never did an after post since we moved into our house so you can count this as the after to this before. 

On another very postive note Jason, our little boy who doesn't speak, said tortilla this morning!  I am trying not to get my hopes up that he is going to burst into speach, but what a Christmas miracle that would be!

Going, going, gone!

Elizabeth really started moving since she learned to crawl.  She still loves to go after Jason's toys and some days it seems like they trade toys.  As I type Jason is chewing on a baby toy and Elizabeth is attacking his train.  Thankfully Jason hasn't noticed yet, or the screaming would begin.  We try to enforce that the toys are both of theirs and you can't take away something that your sibling is playing with.  We have had to tell both kids no they can't play with a toy because the other one is playing with it.  Sometimes they can play very nicely together though.  For example Jason loves to run his train around the living room and Elizabet will crawl or use her walker to follow him.

We celebrated Thanksgiving last week with Jeff's family from San Antonio.  I cooked tons and haven't yet heard about any cases of food poisoning so that is a plus!  We all piled into their very large SUV and headed up to Dallas for some black Friday shopping.  I feel pretty good that we got quite a bit of our list knocked out.  After the family left on Saturday we put up our Christmas decorations.  I love that it is beginning to look like Christmas, it is my favorite time of the year!  Just yesterday I tried to take some Christmas photos of the kids and only one would cooperate (probably because she isn't fast enough to get away yet.)  So you will just have to trust me that Jason was adorable in his Christmas get up. 

Camping and crawling!

Last Thursday Jeff asked me if I was interested in going camping so we pulled everything together and got packed up.  Saturday morning we left for the local lake that has some great camping areas.  When we first got there we were both a little concerned because it was pretty windy and we were worried that it might be too cool for us as the sun went down.  Thankfully as we went for a walk after Jason's nap the sun came out and the wind died down.  Jason really enjoyed the playground and went down the slides quite a bit after watching some of the big boys do it.  When we finished our walk we started up our campfire to cook dinner and some s'mores. 

While we were hanging out we had Elizabeth down on a mat.  She was loving being outside in nature and even decided to eat a little bit of the nature.  As she was trying to get another leaf to try to eat she got up on all fours and crawled a bit.  Later on in the camper while I was getting Jason ready for bed, Elizabeth tried to go after one of his trains.  She has been improving little by little since then and her favorite thing to go after is Jason's toys.