Ut Oh - "No"

James is about to turn 18 months this week and he is growing so fast! Hopefully later this week after this doctors appointment I will talk about his 18 month stats and new habits, but I wanted to talk about one now- the "No" word!

James likes to babble (not as much as girls his age, but he does talk) but usually only Matt and I understand him. Case in point:

"Bu" ("u" sounds like umbrella) = book
"Be" ("e" sounds like elephant) = Bear
"Ba" ("a" sounds like animal) = Blanket
"Ma" ("a" sounds like awesome) = Mom
"Mu" ("u" sounds like utter) = milk
"ball" = ball
"ca" ("a" sounds like awesome) = car
"foo" = food
"wa" = water
"puh" = please
"e" ("e" sounds like elephant) = yes
"chee" = cheese
"gudge" = George (for Curious George)

and before this week:
"uh" = no

BUT as of Saturday:
"no" = no

I know this is silly, but he says "no" SO clearly and it is so fun to see this little milestone. He hasn't started the phase of "no" for everything, but if he doesn't want a certain food when we offer it to him, he casually now says, "no".

Oh the simple things that make a mom smile!

Sledding with friends!

Today we went sledding with James’ friends, Creed and Claire. It was so fun! We were out there for a little over an hour, and James could have stayed a whole lot longer. It was fun to get together with my old roommates and their hubbies and kids. Here are some pictures of the fun!

Matt and James got going pretty fast down the hill and James loved every second of it! It was so cute to hear his laugh while coming down the hill!

Here are Claire and Creed ( I think Claire is 6 months older than James and Creed is 4 months older)

Matt borrowed Claire’s little sled and was taking James up the hill, but he wasn’t able to find traction and fell down

 

Creed and Kade losing control while going down the hill

Our cute little people :)

After being pulled for a little while, they all went from sitting up to laying down… poor Creed- he is squished!

We love our friends!

Summit Utah

For President’s Day weekend, we took a trip down to Summit to visit ‘Grandma-great and Grandpa-great’.

James wanted to play peek-a-boo a lot on the 3 hour ride down

We started listening to my music and when Destiny’s Child came on, James put his fingers in his ears…. he was protesting! I don’t know who taught him that, but he sure did make us laugh!

James enjoyed playing with his grandma-great and grandpa-great!

And of course all of the cousins played Phase 10

One night everyone played “Just Dance” (except for the photographer :) ) It was so fun to watch everyone! I have TONS of pictures from that night, but here are just a few that I liked :)

Family Fun!

Matt is graduated and currently unemployed (we are hoping that changes sooner rather than later), and I am only taking one class, so we have had a lot of time to spend together. It has been wonderful having Matt around more, and James especially loves it. Now in the morning when James wakes up, rather than saying, “Ma, ma, ma” he now says, “Da, da, da” (something I don’t mind a bit). He also LOVES playing soccer with his dad, and wrestling around on the ground with his dad.

We decided to buy a “Pass of All Passes” for this year. With the pass we have unlimited access to:

- Seven Peaks water park for the entire year

- Unlimited admission to two different fun parks that have bumper cars, mini golf, batting cages, slick track, laser tag, kiddie area for James, Pirate ship, train and airplane for James

- unlimited Owlz games (minor league baseball team)

- unlimited Utah Flash games (professional basketball team)

I personally am so excited for the Seven Peaks- James and I are going to live there this summer. I haven’t had a good tan in years…. silly, but I really want a tan!

We went to one of the fun parks and here are some pictures from it:

Here are some other random pictures of the family hanging out:

James and Claire

I know there have been pictures in past posts with Claire, James’ friend, but here are a few more. James loves to play with Claire, and we typically have Claire over about twice a week. We love her so much! She is a good example for James, and James loves chasing after her. Her are just a couple pictures of some of the fun things they LOVE doing together:

One of our laundry baskets is this mesh bag, and literally EVERY time I do the laundry, James dumps the laundry out of this basket, puts the basket over his head and runs around the house with this basket over his body… he LOVES this and ALWAYS laughs when he gets to wear it. Recently, Claire has also wanted to play with the basket, and here she is sitting on the couch with it. Random, but funny

Its hard to tell in this picture, but Claire and James are popping bubbles- they love to play bubbles, and Claire is really good at popping them. James likes to point at them and watch them fall.

James loves his Claire!

Reading Time

James still loves reading- we have books in practically every room and he always says, “Boo, boo” for books. Here are some pictures of James and his books.

Here we are reading books in James’ bedroom with Claire.

I don’t know why James liked the book “Pingo” so much, but he always picked that one for us to read.

On a different day, Claire and James sat together on their own and read a book. I was making my bed in a different room, and they were quiet so I knew they were up to something. When I found them on the couch like this, my heart melted!