My little Prince

James found this headband in my bathroom (that is his favorite new game, puling things from the cabinet and the drawers) and put it on his head - and would then cry if I took it off.  I told him it was his crown. So we left it on, then before bath time, I put him on the counter for a minute and he crawled into the sink - with the crown on.

And we kept our crown on all through bath. 

Cookies!

I decided to try and be a good neighbor and make cookies.  Now mind you they were pretty much pre-made, but I did cut them out, bake and frost them.  Andy and I even put little faces on the gingerbread men.  

Andy did these.

Chillin'

We had the car seat out of the car for some reason or another and it was sitting in the living room.  James would not stay out of it, he would run around it and then sit down, stand in it, and then he would watch Sesame Street and Yogi Bear with his feet propped up.

Such a good mimic

James has this singing Elmo thing that he loves and there is a microphone on it that he usually ignores, but Andy started making noise into it - so James had to follow. 



Children's Museum

Grandma and Grandpa Hogan came to visit adn we spent the afternoon at the Children's Museum with James.  He wasn't feeling great in the morning, but he ended up having a lot of fun.  The kid has no idea that he is not capable of climbing up the obstacles they put in there.  He must have fallen a hundred times, but he just kept going.  It was a great time.



future soccer player??

James figured out the other day that he can kick a ball around and it is apparently super funny.  I started to kick it to him and then he started running around the room after the ball - it was quite funny. 



Pregnancy Update

If you have not heard the news, James is going to get a sibling.  I am 12 weeks today and I think that it is going to be fun to track my pregnancy and the interaction between James and my growing belly.  To keep you updated on all that is happening in this pregnancy, I am going to steal an idea from my friend Bev (hope you don't mind Bev) and do a weekly update with the same preggers questions every week and post a picture.  I don' t have a picture this week, but here are the answers to the weekly questions.  Enjoy.

Pregnancy Play-by-play

How Far Along: 12 Weeks today

Size of baby: Baby Garrison or Lou Lu (still don't know girl/boy) is as big as a plum.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Thus far I think that I have gained about 5 pounds, but we will get the official number on Tuesday.

Maternity Clothes: I started wearing my elastic waistband pants again about two weeks after I found out I was pregnant.  For those who know me well, my elastic pants didn't really get much of a break from the last pregnancy to this one, anytime I was feeling bloated or ate a big meal those puppy were on my big behind.  Therefore I have to go TODAY and get new jeans, because my thighs are getting closer and closer to full on lovemaking without any pesky fabric keeping them apart.  I did pop very early though so by 9 weeks I had a definite "bump"
Gender: We will not find this out until the last week of January, first week of Feb, so until then we are in the non-gender phase.  I do find myself using "her" or "she" though.  Wishful thinking I guess.

Movement: I haven't felt anything yet which is not surprising - although I hear you feel things sooner on #2, I didn't feel anything with James until month 6 or 7 so a couple more months before I start feeling the right hooks to my bladder.

Sleep: This is a wierd thing about this pregnancy, things that happened to me at the end last time are happening to me very early this time.  Sleep is one of them, my back is killing me and it is really hard to get comfortable in bed, and I wake up at random hours and sometimes cannot get back to sleep.  Thursday night I was wide awake at 2am and looking for some food.

Cravings: Speaking of food, I am far more nauseated this time, so lots more carbs (which I am not supposed to eat) and chicken sometimes grosses me out.  Also I like chocolate a lot more. 
Symptoms: As I said before I have been having a lot of the "end" symptoms now - for me this means, my sciatic nerve is shooting fire down my leg, I am very achey and having sleep problems.  I have felt more dizzy and "sick" then I did last time to.

Best Moment this week: My best moment will be on Tuesday when I have my appointment and can hear the baby's heartbeat again.  It has been 6 weeks since we saw the doctor last and I always get nervous that something will go wrong in that time.  Although I feel so crappy that something has to be going on in there, right?

Kissing Bandit

The first part of our story is that our good friends Ashley and Ryan, have a 7 month old daughter Brooklyn (Miss. B.) who we sometimes get to babysit.  She came over last night and while James is usually very jealous and gets cranky, when she is around - he was much more curious about her this time.  Keep in mind he still needed to be held if she was being held, but he wasn't so cranky about it. 

Secondly you should know that James is a kissing fool!  He is constantly trying to give everyone kisses.  A they are not cute little kisses, they are big open mouth toothy, drool laden kisses - which I ADORE, but are pretty funny when he gives them to others.

So last night, Andy had Miss B and so James wanted to be held too.  Then he decided that he was going to show off a little and give out some of his famous kisses to Dad.  Dad asked him if he would like to give Miss B a kiss and he looked at Andy and then looked at Miss B and laid one on her.  It was hysterical!  And we had him do it several times until I finally got a picture.  Thanks for being such a sport Miss B.

Andy:  James give Brooky a kiss.  James: I don't know Dad...

Andy: Come on...  James: Okay!

Miss B - stunned from her lip lock :) 

James' Fascination with his own face...

James, as I am sure other kids are-hopefully, is fascinated with his own picture or his face in the mirror.  He sits there and laughs at himself and sometimes will have a whole conversation with his 2D self.  Lately he has figured out that the camera will also show him a picture of himself - which he LOVES.  Yesterday, I was trying to take his picture by the tree and he grabbed the camera, pushed the button, took the picture, and then immediately turned it over to see his picture.  I don't know if I should be amazed that he has mastered the workings of a camera or horrified at his vanity?  I think I will just revel in how smart he is!  Below are his works of photographic genius. :)

He has promise - no?

Making the house a little cozier...

We hosted the Garrison thanksgiving this year, so we decided to spruce up the house a little and put up our tree.  For a long time, I wanted to have a picture wall, and I finally got one, Andy and I spent two days going through pictures, getting frames, and searching for cheap shelves.  Here is the result - it looks really good and makes the living room far cozier. 

The coffee table isn't usually there, but it worked as a nice seating bench during Thanksgiving.

We also put up our tree.  We went back to the fake one this year because we were kind of concerned that James would be ripping off the needles or something.  To my surprise, neither he or the dog have paid much attention to the tree at all.  We still didn't put any breakable ornaments on the bottom branches.

Looks pretty good huh?

Thanksgiving 2010

So I have already failed at the promise that I made last week to update the blog each week.  Sorry!  For even worse news, I couldn't find the camera over Thanksgiving, so I couldn't take any pictures!! We did have a great time.  Andy's family came over to our house this year, and we all celebrate the day today.  It was wonderful. Andy, James, and I are truly blessed to have so many people love us and we are thankful that we could get everyone together.  James was in a wonderful mood and had everyone cracking up.  All in all it was a great day. 

We are back!

So I realize that it has been a couple of months since I have updated the blog, I am sorry - I have been very busy, mostly running after James!  So I am going to put the last two months into this one blog and then set myself a goal to update this once a week.  So we left off in early September and here is what has been happening since...

I don't even know when this was, but I think that is such a cute picture of my sleepy boys.  The only thing missing is the dog, but I am sure he is just out of the picture a bit.

And then just like that, they are awake and kooky again...

These next pictures show James' obsession with Gus' things and his ever increasing mobility and dexterity

We went home for the Notre Dame/Michigan State game (AMAZING GAME!!!!) and James' got to go to his first tailgate.  He was a total trooper although I will tell you that during the day he had on his Notre Dame gear and it rained and he was kind of tired and mopey.  As soon as it got a little colder and we put his Michigan State sweatshirt on, the sun came out and he turned happy...I am just putting that out there. I mean look at theat smile.

When were home for the game, we also went to the cider mill down the road from my parents and took James around to see some of the animals.  The only thing that James really paid any attention to was the donuts and cider...the boy is his dad's son.

Here he is housing a donut.

The weekend after the big game, I went to Chicago and so James went and spent the weekend with his aunt Kate.  They finally had a good weekend together where James was not pissy because he was sick or teething.   We were very glad they had fun with him.

 

Cats are fun.

Finally it was James' birthday!  Our little man finally turned one!!  His birthday was on Thursday and then we went to my parents for his birthday party that weekend. 

 

The happy one year old bright and early!

Dad made the birthday boy blueberry pancakes!  Yum!

Then we get into the actual party!

Here is James' cake that Aunt Colleen made - it was awesome!  She even made a baby cake just for James.

 

Presents - Yeah!!!

Where did my clothes go?

Maybe Murphy wants to play with me?

TIme for cake...

Yeah! Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie

 

Nope - I don't want it ...take it away, no really I am going to cry!

Successful birthday and birthday party behind us, James and I went to the zoo with our fellow baby jammers (the baby group we belong to) Bev and Case went to the zoo.  James is finally getting to the point where he likes looking at the animals and finds them interesting - which makes me very happy because I LOVE the zoo.

James and Case waiting to ride the train.

There is a section in the petting zoo where they have these goats that the kids can go in and pet.  James and Case ran around the whole area, James calling the goats dogs and Case wagging his finger at them as if they had done something wrong, it was pretty funny.

This is James looking at another goat inside the barn, but right next door to this goat was a HUGE potbelly pig and James rattled on the door of his cage and he turned and snorted at James who thought it was the funniest thing he has ever seen.

The kids paid no attention to this llama but Bev and I thought his teeth were really funny. 

James birthday is only a couple weeks before Halloween, so we were pretty excited to get him a pumpkin and a costume, etc.  AS USUAL, the things that we think he is going to really like, he has no interest in AT ALL.  This was certainly the case with the pumpkin patch. 

He is standing here for this shot, and was then immediately whining to picked up and taken away from the scary pumpkins.

Hi!

Handsome Boys!

We did much better with costume!  It was like a big sweatsuit and he didn't mind wearing it at all - even the hood!

He is a bat if you can't tell

Look at my wings!

And although he couldn't eat the candy, he was more than happy to help pass it out.

The weekend after Halloween Andy and I had to go to Philly for a wedding, so James stayed with both grandparents from Wed. to Sunday.

Big Smiles all around

So that is it.  You are caught up, James is walking, practically running and climbing on everything! We are excited to see you at the upcoming holidays and I will try to be better with the updating.

James version of dancing

This just makes me laugh everytime I watch it.

Baby Steps.

This was a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got around to putting it up. Although he can stand pretty good by himself, walking is still a wonder to James. He has the idea, but not quite enough balance yet...check it out.

Baseball Night

Last week we met the baby group out for a night of baseball.  The Indianapolis Indians are the farm team here and Indy and they have a great ballpark downtown.  We took James down in his wagon and hung out in the law area.  James didn't actually show much interest in the game, but it was fun to hang out with the Baby Jam gang and enjoy the awesome weather!