Adding to the Easter outfit

As the writer of this blog that I recently found so eloquently put it...I grew up with a mom who made special Easter dresses for us each year (I have two sisters). This makes me kind of nostalgic about making a special Easter outfit. However, I have a little boy and making him an Easter dress didn't seem quite right! I didn't know what I could do for a little boy so I was a little disappointed until I found this pattern and just knew I had to add a little excitement to James' Easter outfit (and Daddy's too). I was so excited to have my boys dressed with a special homemade Easter tie.

Happy Easter!

Update

James crawled across the living room floor tonight. It was slow and laborious. However, I remember 2 days before he started running across the living room with his dinosaur his walking was slow and laborious. We will soon need a cage for this wild animal!

Projects

I have spent some of my spring break browsing people's blogs and have come across some great blogs with lots of great ideas for making cute stuff for boys...and mommies too. I have been very excited to try out some of these ideas so be sure to expect to see some great pictures of James sporting some awesome new stuff soon.

I started out by making these cute and comfy sweats from an old t-shirt of mine.

I grew up in a little town called Elkland. Every year, for several years at least, they had a 10K and fun run that my dad helped do the stats for or something. Our family would go and we always got free t-shirts. The date on the inside of the leg of these pants says April 27, 1984!! My sisters and I have always really loved these t-shirts and my roommates in college were always tired of seeing them. I decided I needed to pass down the tradition to my son. I was excited with how well they turned out. I don't make clothes very often so I was skeptical that they would fit.

Stay tuned for my homemade addition to James' Easter outfit!

Spring Break-Boy Gone Wild!

No, I don't mean that in the way you may be thinking. I have been reading books about animals to James and I have been telling him the animal sounds hoping that he will learn to mimic those sounds. So far, he mostly just laughs at me when I make the sounds. It's not that he thinks his mommy is crazy it's just that animal sounds are funny (right?). So, anyway, I decided that for Spring Break it would be fun to go see some animals and hopefully hear them do their sounds. First, we went to a park to look for some ducklings. I saw some but they were too far away to direct James' attention to.

We did see this duck.

...and lots of beautiful flowers.

Then we decided to go to the Science Center to see if the animals there would be easier to spot.

The tigers made themselves known. (James was more interested in looking at the people...some of them were pretty wild)

This turkey apparently thought "Bob" (our stroller) was his mommy and followed us everywhere for quite awhile.

James' favorites were the Meerkats.

James also has a new love for books you can feel so I thought the petting zoo would be fun.

James petted this goat.

This sheep was too fast for us to get near enough to pet.

10 Months

It is getting harder and harder to write about the new things James is doing each month...it is hard to remember what he has been doing for a long time and what he just started doing this month...but here goes!

James now likes to wave bye-bye to people. He can also do the sign for "all done" but I'm pretty sure he doesn't really understand what that means. One night at dinner he did "all done" through the whole dinner as he just kept on eating. Another night when I got to the bottom of the bowl I asked him if he was all done, and he did the sign, or if he wanted more. He continued to do the "all done" sign as I got up but he started screaming and I was pretty sure he wanted more anyway so I got him more and he ate it right up. We're still working on that one.

I think all our crawling work has really paid off because he is getting up on all fours when he wants to go to something and then he rocks. He has also moved his hands and knees some but he hasn't moved very far yet. He has also started cruising around furniture a little bit.

Crawling Boot Camp

As I mentioned in my last post, James doesn't know how to crawl. He doesn't even seem to be making progress towards that goal...or pulling up for that matter. I have visions of a 5 year old who wakes up in the morning and says "mommy come stand me up I'm ready to walk around for the day!" Ok-so maybe it really isn't that bad but I do feel like James isn't really working on some leg and arm muscles that he should be for gross motor skills. As I have mentioned here, James seems to like to lounge and let life come to him. I don't really think it is a big issue but I figure doing different activities and exercises to help those muscles can't hurt so we started a crawling boot camp for the weekend. He has been wearing disposable diapers because I thought maybe the bulky cloth diapers were holding him back.

We have been practicing pulling up in his bed because that is the only place he seems to be able to figure it out (that is if I sit him up facing the crib rail-no danger of him crawling out yet!)

We have been practicing pushing things around the house.

We have practiced reaching up the stairs and eventually pulling up on the stairs.

James has been walking on his knees...

He has been trying to go from his knees to standing and from standing down to his knees...

We even got the remote out to entice him to crawl.

As we are doing this I keep saying " I don't want him to be crawling up the stairs, or pulling up in his bed, or playing with the remote, and I'm not really sure I want him to crawl!" But, I do think I am seeing progress in how he is using his muscles and in the mobility he has and that is probably good because I guess he has to grow up sometime...even though I would like to keep him my baby forever!

All this hard work has tired him out and been rough on his knees!

A Mind of His Own

He can't crawl...

He doesn't pull up....

...But he can walk!

It isn't pretty. It is very labored and very slow. But he can take that dinosaur for a walk across our living room and he LOVES it!