That boy!

He is such a boy.

February is a month of many celebrations for the Wall family.
Valentine's Day; Matt's Birthday; Claire's Birthday.

So ....  Monday night was a sleep over (we slept part of the night) for James at Mimi & Papa/ Gigi & Grandpa's house.
That boy remembers when he comes to Mimi's house that she has blueberry muffins on the counter.  So, what does she do?  She makes sure when he is coming that she has some!
He does enjoy them!  [picture 2]

That boy also likes Mimi's cats.  Of course Mister is the only one that tolerates children.  But James was patient and waited for a few opportune moments when he could sit near him.  He doesn't even touch him every time.  He just wants to be next to the cat.

Grandpa was working in the carport on some Shabby Chic projects, so we would go out to check on him.  The first time we went out after Mom and Dad left, he wandered about and found Mimi's Goose family in the yard.  I told him they were ducks and they say, "Quack, quack, quack."  He thought this quite humorous.  So, we sat near the 'ducks' and talked about them and looked at them.  Later on he was laying on my bed and saw Grandpa's humongous rubber duck on the top of the chest.  I took it down for him and said, "This is Grandpa's Duck.  It says, 'quack, quack, quack.'"  He said, "Kack, Kack, Kack."  Well, everyone knows that ducks waddle.  When I get him to say 'kack, kack, kack' for his mother, he wobbles back and forth.  Um, I guess when I was teaching him that, I waddled like a duck?  Funny Gigi.

That boy is not in to trying new foods.  Mimi gave him a couple of blueberries.  He mashed one, then picked the other up and squeezed til he broke the skin and he tried it!  He eventually got it into his mouth and sucked all the juice out.  Not a bad trial!  [picture 1]

Poor Claire.  When it was time to go home, that boy would reach for Daddy from Gigi.  But he wouldn't have anything to do with his Mama.  Why do children punish their Moms for abandonment?  Ask Amy, Claire, when we took Lauren home after keeping her a few days for them, she went to her Dad.  Not her Mom.

But they get over it after Mom returns.

A night with Gigi and Grandpa

Rick and I babysat James last night.  We kept him at his house and he seemed to have a great time. 

Gigi brought dinner, which he loved.
Fish sticks and tater tots.

Of course, it was his house, so he was 'well versed' and kept us informed of how things should be. 
'There's a curtain rod in the big chair, and it shouldn't be there!'  (Grandpa removed it.)
'I like those DVD cases but I can't play with them (shaking his head 'no').'
'Do you see the picture of Mama, Daddy and Me up there?'
[If you haven't heard him talk, you really should see one of the videos on Picasa of James playing Wii or with his birthday cake.]

Let's play!

He brought out all of his balls and threw them and played 'hit the ball with the stick' with a paper towel roll.
We read Baby Kangaroo at least a dozen times.
He showed me how to put his books on the shelf with Mama's books.
He jumped on his lion and wrestled him several times.  James won every time!
We played peek-a-boo with his Cookie Monster towel.
He stood up in his green chair and drank his milk.
We played with his John Deere tractor, of course,
And the Playskool Busy Gears.  (Did you know that the gears from Playskool Push-Pull Activity Gears also fit?  So fun! and educational for Gigi.)
He finally sat down with me to read Daniel in the Lion's Den, to the end.

When I asked if he was ready for his Night-Night Lamb, he ran to his room and showed me it was in his bed.
We got his lamb, sat in the rocking chair with Is Your Mama a Llama?, which was the wrong book....
... so he showed me the Two-Minute Stories book; we read about a doll, who I think he knows!
We cuddled with his lamb and the blue blankie.
I turned on his music, put him in his bed and he talked to his lamb for about 20 minutes, then was OUT!

Looks like a success.  Hope the next one turns out as well.  It's a sleep over!

dangit

I missed another month of pictures.  oops.  I'm posting pictures from January and some more holiday pics as I type.  Also check the holidays 2010 folder for Texas snow!!  I know it's not really from the holidays, but I didn't have anywhere else to put it.  Matt and I also got a new camera for our birthdays, so if you pay attention to the camera information on each picture, you'll notice a difference. 

https://picasaweb.google.com/matt.claire.wall

Catching up

We had a beautiful wonderful white Christmas in Virginia.  We were gone for a full two weeks and only spent 3 days in the car.  Other than driving to DC for a night.  It was hard being away from all of my family for the holidays, but wonderful to see all of the Wall family.  We did see all of them except one who is out of the country.  For more on all of that, see Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/matt.claire.wall/VirginiaChristmas2010#

We are still having issues with James and food.  I'm starting to think this will be an ongoing struggle.  He is eating baby food and cereal wonderfully plus milk (no formula) and some finger foods.  He refuses to try most of what I cook.  He will eat bread, dry cereal, and banana all day if I let him.  He has also eaten some fish sticks Matt brought home from camp and some venison taco meat.  I figured out I can smash some scrambled egg into a small piece of bread and he will eat it, but not the eggs by themselves.  He likes trying to use his spoon, but mostly dumps it on his tray and then licks the spoon.  He'll feed himself his cereal from a spoon pretty well because it sticks to the spoon.  And he likes for me to dip his spoon in my mac and cheese and give it to him.  I packed away the bottles this week.  He's doing really well with his sippy cups.  I realized he didn't like the other ones he has because the milk or whatever comes out too fast.  We had to buy more non-spill cups that he has to suck on.  patience and persistence.  oi. 

He finally had his 1 year appointment last week.  He still hasn't had his vaccines because he has an ear infection.  We started fighting this thing sometime around the beginning of December.  3 rounds of oral antibiotics and an antibiotic shot later and it's still there.  We're going to see an ENT next week and he has another oral antibiotic to keep the infection from getting worse before we get to the doctor.  The Pediatrician says he will probably have to get tubes put in soon.  We'll see if the ENT has any other ideas to try before we do that.  Having an infection for this long can be very damaging to the ears. 

At his appointment he was about 20.5 lbs and 27" tall I think.  I can't find where she wrote that down.  His weight is still tenth percentile and his height is under the fifth percentile.  But he is showing a good rate of growth.  She said there is nothing to worry about unless he hasn't caught up at all by the time he reaches 2.  I have no idea where he gets all these short genes from.  :)

word of the day:  daaad-dy!

oops

So, dad told me my blog is boring.  It's not that my son is boring.  Quite the opposite.  But I probably spend the least amount of time online of my family members.  A solution has been provided for this problem which is that I allow my mom to send in Gigi posts.  They are moving closer to us again and she could be spending quite a bit of time with my little monster.  So, if you notice a post written by someone other than me, don't be surprised.  Just a warning:  giving my mom permission to post to my blog means my dad may as well.  This could be fun. 

Virginia Christmas Day 1

We are spending Christmas in Virginia this year!  We got in the car Sunday night at 8pm and arrived at the house in Virginia at 8pm last night (Monday).  1462 miles in 23 hours with several stops.  James actually did very well.  He slept all night.  He woke up at 5am for 30 minutes, but other than that he slept from 8:30pm-6:30am.  He took a couple naps during the day and we played and blew bubbles and read books while he was awake.  The whole thing was much easier than I thought it was going to be, but I only had to drive 4 hours.  Matt slept til noon on Sunday so he could drive all night.  He woke me up at 3:30 to keep him awake then I took over at 5 for a couple hours.  I was really worried about this trip, but it worked out quite well.  Dad called and asked me if we had seen any snow.  We saw a little bit in North Carolina and then a bunch in Virginia.  Well, it looked like a lot to me, but I'm a Texas girl.  By the time we got to Virginia it was pretty dark and the moon was out in a clear sky.  Snow by moonlight is a beautiful sight.  There were a few whole fields covered in snow.  There's some in the yard here, but it's pretty solid.  I tried making a snowball to throw at Matt but it didn't work very well.  The forecast says we may have snow for Christmas and again right before New Year.  It has been a very long time since I have had a white Christmas.  This is going to be a very full house this week.  We are the first ones here.  Deb and her family with 4 kids are coming in this afternoon.  Bec and her 5 will be staying here too I think.  Not sure how we'll all fit.  It will be fun. 

James' Birthday

was awesome!  Trey and Rachel brought their families and some friends from our church came.  Matt grilled for lunch and I made the cake.  James wasn't all that interested in opening presents.  He just watched me open them and then played with them.  He got some new shoes that he wore all day yesterday without crying about it.  He also got a couple bath toys that he is fascinated by because they swim around the tub.  He loves the John Deere tractors and we already used the travel place-mat.  He did enjoy the cake.  I made two small round ones so we put a whole one on his tray.  It took a while for him to taste it, but once he got some in his mouth he really dug in.  I had a couple games to play.  The two older kids did a scavenger hunt around the house.  For the adults I had a photo album with pictures of James' milestones that they had to guess the date.  Amy won because she used her calendar for several.  I also had a guess the number of cheerios jar.  Emma won that one with a guess of 900.  There were 1014 cheerios in there and I counted every one of them.  Trey got the next closest bid with 587 or something like that.  It was a fun day.  I can't believe that boy is already one.