Ten Months Old!

Dear Ethan,

You are ten months old!  And getting a photo of you this month proved to be quite a challenge.  You are still smiley as ever, but you never sit still!

I had to snap very quickly and take what I could get.

One word to describe you at this stage of your life... busy!  You have just started crawling on your knees, but still favor the army crawl in order to get places faster.  No matter where I put you down you don't stay there for long.  You absolutely love to play with doors and cords, which means I can't take my eyes off of you for a second.  The other day you pulled the lamp in our family room off the table for the third time and this time you broke the lightbulb over your head.  Some days you make me feel a bit like I want to pull my hair out, but you are so stinkin smiley and happy all the time that I can't help but just love you and want to kiss those big chubby cheeks!

You love your brothers and if one of them is in the room your eyes are fixed on them.  You love to play with James and think that he is absolutely hilarious.  You are quick to join the fun no matter what he is playing, however he is not quite as excited to have you crawl over and start swatting at his neatly aligned rows of cars.  Don't mess with James and his cars!

You are so curious about the world around you and you just want to be a part of it all.  We love your passion for life.  If I am holding you and I start to eat something you absolutely have to try a bite.  You are eating more table foods, but still really prefer purees.  You still nap twice a day... once in the morning from about 9-10 or 10:30 and from 2-3 or 3:30.  You go to bed at seven and sleep all night... bliss:)  You are wearing 12-18 month clothes for the most part, but still wear some 6-12 month things.

One of my favorite times of the day is when you are getting ready for naps or bedtimes.  You are so snuggly and warm and you just curl into my neck and we have some cozy time while I sing or read to you.  It is precious time that I don't want to end.  

Our days are in a very nice rhythm, which I'm sure means we are due for change soon!  We are looking forward to the next few months as you continue to grow and do new things.  

Ethan, you are so sweet and we just love having you in our lives!

Happy ten months!!

Lovely Day

March is not the most exciting time of year to have a birthday.  The weather is almost always cold and dreary, but even despite that I had a really fun and special day.  I am so blessed to have these sweet little guys in my life!

My mom and sister took me out to brunch at The Grand Concourse, where we we stuffed ourselves with every good thing imaginable to eat!  It was so nice to get to spend some quality time with them without the interruption of any little ones.  We have made this a new tradition for each of our birthdays and I really look forward to this a couple of times a year.  It is such a treat!

Paul took me to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants on Saturday, which was also so nice just to get to spend some time alone outside of our home.  Sunday evening we did cake and presents.  

I am so thankful for my family and friends who love me and wanted to make my birthday special.  It was truly a lovely day.

Very typical James.  Love him!

This is the day the LORD has made.  We will rejoice and be glad in it.

~Psalm 118:24

Big Machines Tot Week

Last week we did a Big Machines theme for Tot School.  James loves trucks of course, so it was a big hit.  I loaded up his book basket in the playroom with some books from the library and a few from our own shelf.

These were some of the ones we borrowed from the library.  He especially loved the Tonka trucks book and I Drive a Bulldozer.

On Monday we spent about 45 minutes to an hour doing Tot School.  Most of this time was spent doing playdoh:)  Our first tray was counting big machines with pom pom magnets.  He loved the magnets!  He was pretty good with the counting at first, but lost interest pretty quickly and just wanted to play with the magnets.

Our next tray we colored bulldozers.  This was interesting!  James really has no idea how to hold a pen and more than once he tried to put it in his mouth.  I guess we need to work on this skill.  He is getting better with colors.  Every time I think he knows them though, he calls them all by the wrong name.  This was challenging because the bulldozers were so small and it was hard for him to hold the paper still and color.  As you can see there is marker all over the tray!

After coloring I had him try to match the colored pom pom to the colored bulldozer.  He did pretty good with this and only missed a few of them.

Our last tray we worked on name recognition.

Then we finished up the morning with playdoh.  I found this cute construction themed playdoh at Walmart and it was a big hit!  He loved loading the dirt into the dumptruck and dumping it.  He could have played with this for much longer, but little brother woke up and we had to go get him.

On Tuesday we spent about thirty minutes doing Tot School and we worked through his counting and coloring trays again.  Then I got out his toy drill.  This was a new toy that I bought a while ago and was saving it for a "rainy day".  I thought it would be good to introduce this week with our theme.  He had played with this at a friends house and loved it!  He thought it was just like daddy's.  

It was good motor skill practice changing the drill bits and working the screws into the holes.

The rest of the day he was busy fixing things and drilling everything!

Wednesday we didn't end up doing much.  We got a lot of snow during the night and woke up to about six inches.  School was cancelled and we decided to go out and shovel and play in the snow while Ethan was sleeping.  

I did get out a new puzzle with different latches and doors to open.  James was able to get most of them without help.  The chain was probably the most difficult and frustrating for him, but he kept working at it.  I was surprised how easily he got most of them.

Thursday was our last day of Tot School for the week.   I had planned to do a sensory bin and a fun "nuts and bolts" snack mix, but I ran out of time and energy.  This is the challenging part for me.  I am finding that you have to be super organized and prepared early in the week or else I just run out of steam.  It's definitely a lot of work for a short period of activity.  However, I think it's good for James. Since we are probably not going to do any formal preschool I feel like it's important to expose him to some of these early learning skills while he enjoys them and is able to easily grasp them.  Hopefully over time I will get better at the planning and organization skills.

The last day we did his Big Machines "mini book".  He looked at them and named each one.

Last we did counting with dot paint.

He loved this!  He loves the dot paints and they are easy for him to manipulate.  He put a dot on each one while I counted them.

I also had him pick out each number from a line to see which ones he readily recognized.  He did good with numbers 1-6 and then he started to lose interest.  Very short attention spans with 2 year olds!

All in all I thought the week went well and it was really fun!  We are taking a break this week and next week I am planning to do a spring theme.

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.

~Proverbs 16:3