Nursery

More Big News For James:

I have been hesitant to blog about this in case it might jinx us but I finally decided it was time.

James has had a good report in the nursery for the last 4 WEEKS!!! We started putting James in the nursery when he was 3 or 4 months old and he has always cried and been a general pain the whole time he was in there. The first few weeks they called us to come get him then they realized that was just how he was going to be so they would keep him and walk the halls with him and push him in a stroller and many other things to try to help him out. Needless to say, ALL the nursery workers knew James' name. I don't really know what changed but all of a sudden he is going into the nursery (he cries for a few minutes when we hand him over) and playing with the toys and not crying. It is so exciting for Mommy and Daddy.

This week when the man handed James to me at the end he said "James was such a pleasure. He is so easy!" I thanked him and said "sir, you have no idea how exciting it is for me to hear you say that. It has not always been that way." I'm glad the people in the nursery are finally getting to see how sweet our boy can be.

Naps

About a month ago James started struggling a little bit with his two naps so I thought maybe it was time to drop the morning nap. We started by only letting him sleep 30-45 minutes in the morning to help him make it to the afternoon nap time but not be so well rested he couldn't sleep in the afternoon. Eventually he got to a point where he would just sit and play in his crib the whole time and not sleep. We had several days of this so I decided maybe it was time to do away with that nap altogether. The problem is no matter what I did...morning nap or not...he would only sleep 1 hour in the afternoon. James likes/needs his sleep so I was pretty sure this wasn't enough but didn't know how to help him sleep longer. I tried putting him down earlier for the afternoon nap thinking maybe he was over-tired but that just meant we had a longer time between nap and bedtime because he would still only sleep an hour. Very frustrating!! Most days he seemed to cope pretty well on very little nap time. He still slept great at night and was definitely very tired when it was time for sleep but not falling apart too much. This past week we finally started making some progress. He went to 1 hour 15 minutes for several days and then moved to 1 hour 30 minutes for a few days.

THE BIG NEWS!!!

Today he slept for 2 hours for his afternoon nap. I am trying not to get too excited and start thinking that naps will be 2+ hours from now on but I had to blog about it quick while it was still exciting (before tomorrow rolls around and he decides to only sleep 45 minutes-we've had several days like that thrown in). Hopefully, even if he doesn't make this an everyday occurrence immediately, it will mean that he is moving towards better naps in the not too distant future. I'm ready for the long afternoon naps we are supposed to be having!

16 Months

It is amazing all the new things James is learning these days. And, he learns things so quickly. When I want him to learn a new sign I only have to teach him once and he seems to pick it right up. Right now he is signing, please, thank you, eat, drink, and more. He loves to fold his hands to pray before bed or meals. We often have to pray several times throughout a meal. I guess he is very thankful for his food.

He calls his monkey "Bobo". I think this comes from baby. One of my Cabbage Patch Kids is in his playroom and he will give it hugs every now and then. I have been trying to get him to say baby. He started saying bobo and will call pictures of babies and any stuffed animal bobo. I think anything cute and cuddleable is "Bobo". He also says "there it is" when we are putting on his clothes. When his hand or foot appear out the sleeve or pant leg he says "there it is!" He can also say "football" but only if he is holding his foot!

James went to his first FSU game and did the tomahawk chop with the crowd. He has a little football that plays the fight song that we practiced with before the game. He can also give a fist bump.

He has really started playing with Corbin. They often hold hands when we are riding along in the double stroller or give each other high fives or fist bumps. They also randomly give each other hugs. We have started sharing hugs as a way of saying sorry when they upset each other.

The Pumpkin Patch

So, it's a Saturday morning in the middle of October. We decide to go to one of those church yard "pumpkin patches"-it's what we have time for this year. We start at the church we have gone to every year since we got married....they are unloading pumpkins and setting up. At 10am on Saturday in the middle of October? Oh well, we know of another church that has a pumpkin yard so we head there. They are all set up and there is only one other car there! We are excited that we won't have to try to crop out other shoppers from our pumpkin patch pictures. Then we realize that the other car is also someone wanting to buy pumpkins and the person who is running this patch is nowhere to be found. We take lots of pictures with James then decide to go to the Farmer's Market to buy our pumpkin because apparently the churches don't want our business. It was crazy. I would have thought that everyone would be bringing out their kids on a Saturday morning and I felt like we were late getting our pumpkin. Well, we finally did get our pumpkins and had a great day finding one!

First Haircut

James had his first haircut last night. Lee cut his hair. We sat him up on our stool in the kitchen and turned on Scooby Doo. I sat next to James and tried to keep him from climbing off the stool. Lee wanted to cut his hair with the clippers but James wasn't sure about the buzzing sound coming up behind him so we resorted to scissors. It turned out really cute. Lee did a great job!

before

after

FSU

On Saturday we went to the Wake v. FSU football game. Florida State played horribly (we are Florida State fans) so the game wasn't that great but James did great. He enjoyed cheering and eating and playing with people's empty water bottles. I made him some awesome fan gear. We did not get awesome pictures of it but here is the best we got!

you can almost see the FS on his shirt I made

cute fall hat I made to keep the sun and wind off his head