Thursday, June 20, 2013

James's 3rd Birthday Videos

They finally finished uploading! Enjoy!

James is 3 years old!!

My sweet baby James is 3 years old today!! Time has flown by, and he is getting so big.
Here are his 3-year-old stats:
Favorite toy- Cars (He calls them "cows" and has to sleep with at least two every night).
Favorite treat- Cake or ice cream, preferably chocolate.
Favorite color- Blue or red.
Favorite activity- Playing in his new playhouse in the yard, building a house with "wegos," running non-stop! Favorite food- "Mac & weeze!"
Favorite show- "Ho Hos" (Jake and the Neverland Pirates)
Favorite movie- Monsters Inc. Favorite things to say- "That's silly!" counting 1-10 (sometimes forgetting #5), "I get the cows (cars)!," "I want me!" (when he wants to do stuff himself), "I want to go pay! (play)".
 Favorite outdoor activity: Eating blueberries off the bush, even the green ones!

 I'll have his weight/height stats after his doctor's checkup mid-July.

 His birthday party was yesterday, and we all had a blast! It was Jake and the Neverland Pirates themed, which is James's favorite show (a Disney Jr. kid's show written about the characters from Peter Pan but made educational and fun for preschoolers). He and his cousins had fun dressing up as pirates, going on a treasure hunt in the backyard, and doing a "hook toss" ring toss (all the boys got a prize, but James was funny in that he took all three rings, walked up to the board, and put them all on a hook at once!).

The adults also competed in a ring toss competition, of which Nathan was the winner. Other activities included sailing the high seas in a Bucky cardboard boat, and selecting your pirate name (you can see those in some of the pictures). James had a great time running around stealing crackers off the table and having sword fights with his cousins. He was, for the first time, eager to open his presents, and he loved getting a million Matchbox cars, which he promptly spilled into his new wheelbarrow and took off!

 His big gift this year was a new playhouse (since he loves houses so much after watching the movie "Up"). This particular one has a fence you can build, a grill, a phone, a flower box, and nails you can hammer down. It also has a mailbox missing the back which Uncle Nathan turned into a fun surprise for the kids by putting his hand inside and having the kids "check the mail". :-)

Ellie chilled through it all, though she was a bit freaked out by all the people and noise. She did pretty good "swimming" in the "ocean" for most of the afternoon.

I made James a Pirates cake with the ocean and sand, and it was apple swirl flavored with cream cheese frosting. He liked it for the most part. I think I'll do chocolate next year...

Today, for his actual birthday day, we opened more presents (he got a camera, some books, a car, and a toy wood airplane), played with his new toys, and went to Red Robin for dinner where he had his first ever milkshake. He had a great time telling us all the shapes of the lamps above us and what color they were (he correctly identified and said triangle and circle!), and he got a kick out of the big carousel horse on top of the booths.

 We love our little man with such a loving, sweet personality. He always says to me, "I give you wots and wots of hugs!" while hugging me, and he often will hug his sister, give her a toy, or kiss her. He's excited about EVERYTHING, and never, ever stops moving even when he's exhausted. He's a tinkerer, and will figure things out easily after just watching how they are done. James is my sweet little boy, and I'll never forget the moment I welcomed him into the world. What a blessing God has given us in this child.

 Here is a link to the photo album from the party... it took me 2.5 hours to assemble this, and still the pictures are sideways for who knows what reason (I did turn them, but they turned back). So, oh well...
James 3rd Birthday favorites
I am uploading some videos from the party but they are taking forever and I need to get to bed. So I'll do them in another post. I also have Father's Day and Ellie's first plane trip to blog about, but it will have to wait another couple days. For now it's enough that James is 3... Happy birthday, my bean/noodle/pumpkin!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Sibling love

I put the kids in a shopping cart at Costco today, their first time sitting together. They thought it was a hoot! James kept hugging Ellie and she kept touching his hoodie and stealing his toys. :-)




Saturday, June 1, 2013

Getting ready to fly!

Pretty soon we will be packing up the kids and going on a trip to a family wedding, which means it will be Ellie's first trip on a plane EVER and James's first trip on a plane that he will actually know what's going on.

Honestly, the idea of flying with both of them terrifies me.  I've been stressed out about it for months. Mainly because our last flight with James included a 3am wake-up time, a connection with a delay and gate change, food poisoning, screaming (from James) and overall not a pleasant experience. 

This time I'm doing things a bit differently. For our sanity, I picked a non-stop flight in the middle of the day, got a CARES harness instead of lugging the carseat down the aisle (we will be gate-checking them), and am packing light as possible.

So in my attempt to dissolve my fears of keeping them fed/healthy/entertained for hours on end in a cramped airplane aisle, I decided to design my own airplane tray cover for each kid (I had some inspiration from some other sewing blogs, but in the end the overall design is my own). When the tray is up, we have room to store books, snacks, etc in the pockets. When it is down, the kids can play with the toys and store their crayons/snacks/cars/sippy cups in the pockets on the sides. We can also clip Ellie's toys on the ribbon loops on the side to avoid the inevitable toy-fell-on-the-gross-floor-and-now-found-it's-way-into-my-baby's-mouth scenario. 
All of this is in the hopes that I can have a few minutes of sanity on our 4hr fight. Maybe work a crossword or flip through one magazine. Maybe? We'll see!

Anyway, here are the pics of the end result of my first attempt ever at designing a project from scratch.


Oh, and Ellie is enjoying her new carseat now! She's pretty much outgrown her old one.