Dr. Jamie

Jamison is quickly approaching toddlerhood. 

My baby is growing up too fast!

One of his favorite toys is the stethoscope from a doctor's kit that we have.  He likes to hang it over his neck, which I think is quite advanced for a baby to do, and crawl around with it on.

Of course, when I try to get pictures of this, he just wants to ham it up for the camera.

Maybe we'll have an MD in our future, or a comedian...

Pinewood Derby

Today our newly formed Cub Scout Pack had it's first Pinewood Derby!

Derek is the Cubmaster and therefore does the lion's share of the work, and it is A LOT of work.  Luckily many of the other dads helped out today and overall it was a great first event.  Our pack borrowed the track from another pack since they are expensive (think 2-3 thousand dollars!).  Granddaddy Bob helped Brighton, who is an unofficial scout, make a car so he could join in the fun.

Here are all the race cars lined up ready to go.  In all, eleven cub scouts made cars, so it was a good turnout.  Chandler and I had talked about how to be a good sport and congratulate all the scouts for a job well done.  We tried to emphasize that not everybody can win a trophy and that's okay.

Chandler, ready to race!

Here's the pack with the leaders:

A boy that Chandler has known since preschool just joined our pack.  He is in Kindergarten, but just turned 7, so he was able to join in January.  His car won fastest overall.  I did not witness this, but was told by several people that Chandler gave him a pat on the back and told him, "Good job!"

That makes me proud to see that hopefully good sportsmanship is sinking in.

Chandler won 2nd place for originality (his race car looked like an army tank).  Hopefully next year we can improve the aerodynamics and get an award for speed.  We can always try!

Happy Valentines' Day!

I know that my Valentine's Day isn't "Pinterest" worthy, but I do try to do fun things for my kids when I can.  For breakfast, I cut biscuits to look like hearts and topped them with cinnamon/sugar and red sugar crystals.  Each of the boys got a DVD of their favorite cartoons currently:

Chuggington

Power Rangers

Scooby Doo

This little cutie didn't need any sweets.  He is sweet enough :)

Our Valentine's Plans got messed up and I didn't even know it.  Derek planned to take me
out to The Melting Pot (hadn't been there in YEARS!) but with all the ice/snow etc... we decided 

to reschedule for next week.  My consolation prize was a bouquet of flowers that I put in 

my favorite vase.

For dinner I made a crockpot meal that I had arranged for one of my mom's groups to make for Valentines' Day.  Unfortunately, the meeting had to be rescheduled due to the ice/snow, but I figured I could go ahead and try it out.  It was a chicken/tomato/artichoke dish served over rice.  Everybody ate it, but it wasn't as "wow" as I'd hoped for.

That was our Valentines' Day.  Hope you had a good one!

More Snow?!?

We sure are getting our fair share of snow this year!

It started about lunchtime, on the 12th.  School was already cancelled for the day.  I actually went in to work for a few hours that morning.  I got home before the first flakes started falling.  

I turned on the news.  They were saying how quickly it was coming and once it fell, the roads were covered in 20-30 minutes.  I texted Derek to come home.

He joked it was no big deal (kidding) and packed up to leave shortly after 1 p.m. (along with the rest of Raleigh).  Needless to say, after 3 + hours in the car, he finally made it home.  

I tried to stifle my "I told you so's"  I was just glad he made it home and didn't have to abandon the car or walk.  We stayed inside the rest of the day and then began "playing" the next morning.

Here's Chandler posing:

There must have been 3-4" of snow before the ice came down.  It was very hard to walk in and slushy in place.  Really not the best for doing much in.  The sledding was okay, but not what we had hoped for.  The bottom of our driveway was a puddle of ice/slush.

We tried the Radio Flyer sled, but it just sank.

The boys had fun throwing snow at each other and cleaning off the cars.  

Then round # 2 of snow started up again.  

This is the kind of NC snow I'm used to.  Big, fat, fluffy flakes.  It was so pretty.  

Especially from inside.  

This picture doesn't do it justice.  It snowed very hard for a few hours.  It was really coming down!

The birds were going crazy at the feeder in the front yard all morning and afternoon long.  It was so cool to watch.  At one point there were easily 20 birds hanging out on the feeder, in the tree, or underneath.  Can you see the two male cardinals in the tree?

The birds had gone through almost the entire feeder, so I got some more food and trekked out there to refill it for them.  Did I mention my boots bit the dust?  I had some waterproof boots that I use for such occasions since I was in college.  Well after wondering why my feet were wet, I looked down to discover that not one, but both of my boots had cracked on the sides.  Those went in the trash, so now I have no snow shoes.  I guess I'll need another pair.  We aren't a snow-skiing family, so my outerwear for this type of weather is quite limited.  I wore two pairs of pants and at least I have a decent jacket.  Thankfully we have most things we need for our boys to keep them from getting soggy and cold.  

Who's ready for spring???  I AM!!

Baby Breakfast!

Today our church hosted it's annual baby breakfast/lunch for all the families that have had a baby in the past year.  This is our third one (didn't know about it with Chandler) and it was so nice.  I really wish it could still be a breakfast, so there would be more time for socializing afterwards, but our church is running out of room (which is a good thing, I guess)

Managing all four kiddos, eating lunch, playing a short trivia game and then it was over :(

I went to the kitchen to wash up a few highchair trays and by the time I was done it seemed all the families had left.  So, not many pictures left to show for it.  I didn't even get to speak to several of the families.  Oh well...naptime hour had approached and I too know how it goes.  We packed up our crew and headed home with leftovers to boot!  What a blessing!

While Daddy's Away...

Derek is traveling again this week.  

I do my best to find that happy medium of keeping busy, but not too busy!

Here's a cute picture of Jamison in his favorite spot.  He loves climbing through this table, like his own personal jungle gym!

We had a friend (Davis) come over to play.  What a fun treat for Maverick.  Davis is about 6 weeks older than Maverick and his older sister (Avery) is just 3 days younger than Brighton.  So our kids are the same age (except that I have one older and one younger too, Ha!)

The Pinewood Derby is coming up and Granddaddy Bob has been hard at work on his Brighton's car. Although Brighton is not an official scout, he will race his car just for fun.  Granddaddy Bob learned the hard way that the glueing is best left to the adults.  Don't worry....the car seems to be fine after a minor gluing of the tire to the axel (oops!)

Jamison and I also went to Duke for another research study.  Normally I wouldn't have gone during this week, but I had rescheduled from the previous week due to snow....so I decided to still go.  It was a quick in-and-out trip, but we didn't get gas money this time, bummer!

We will sure be ready for Daddy to get home!

Ten Months!

Jamison is Ten Months!  Wow!

He is almost impossible to get his "month-shot" now.

I did get this slightly blurry one.

Then there's this one where he's mad that I'm holding his foot still.

He'd much rather be climbing on top of something:

Or flipping over and squirming away from me!

Jamison is quickly becoming a toddler and less of a baby.  Sometime between 9-10 months he has gone to regular crawling.  He hardly ever does his "funny crawl" or army crawl anymore.  He pulls himself up on anything and everything he can find.  He cruises.  He babbles.  He said his first word "Bye" to Mimi 1/25.  He does his own sign for "Hi" (he pretends to hold a phone to his ear)  He is still doing baby-led weaning and still loves meat and grains.

His night-time sleep is still so unpredictable.  He could sleep from 7:30 pm till 7 am.  He could wake up 3-4 times during the night.  He could settle down easily.  He could not settle down until he nurses. Oh, and as for nursing...he is still nursing....exclusively on one side.  I gave up my pumping efforts, and I think we are all happier about that.  There was no tricking him into taking the other side, and I guess I'm okay with that.  It has worked out.

I haven't gotten a chance to get "stats" on him, but I hope to do that this week!

Edited to Add Stats:

Weight: 20 lbs, 8 oz

Height: 28.5"

*Also, I forgot to mention Jamie has started clapping