Bootheel

We went down to the bootheel in January to celebrate a very belated Christmas, and I took a few blurry pictures on my cell phone. I hereby promise to take the real camera and get it out next time!

Grandma Doris with baby Levi and Nana Jana with baby Leah:

James playing outside. Surprisingly, he didn't get too muddy. 

Checking Amelie's math homework: 

Okay, these are from Thanksgiving, I think, but I forgot to post them before (from Nana Lana!)

They look a teensy bit bigger, right? At least Levi has more hair! And there are those Mardi Gras beads again!

It's fun to hold both babies at once (once)! Ha!

My turn!

Tree

I took this fun picture of the big kids in a tree:

Sam! I said. Get me and Leah in the picture, too! I said.

No such luck:

Poor, Sick James

I alluded to the fact that we’d had some sick kiddos in the last post. It all started with Leah having a bad cold. She got sent home from school on Monday and then ended up staying home Tuesday, Wednesday with Nana Jana, and then Thursday. That Friday Leah went back to school, and Amelie came down with a stomach bug, and then by the following Monday morning, James had drunk after her (why??) and came down with the most terrible, awful stomach bug in the history of stomach bugs. He was out all week from school Monday through Friday! (That was 8 out of the last 10 weekdays with a kid out of school!)

From Monday:

By day 3 we were getting worried. Doesn’t he just look terrible? Here we are in the waiting room (shortly after this, he leaned over and fell asleep on the chair):

He was fairly dehydrated and mighty uncooperative at urgent care, so they ended up sending us on over to the hospital. After he spit his medicine out, the nurse (one of my former Columbia College students) went to get the doctor, and when she came back in the room, he was lying on the floor trying to nap.

The folks at Women's and Children's were wonderful, and with the help of some Zofran, he was able to play games on a tablet and drink an apple juice, an orange juice, and a gatorade, so they let us come home.

I was the one home with him on Friday, and he was still resting a lot:

He was feeling better by the weekend, but we missed church for the second week in a row. He went back to school on Monday, but by that time, Sam was sick and my back was out. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday. I'm hoping we'll finally all be well at the same time and can enjoy the weekend and the nice weather.

One Year

Leah turned one on Sunday! We had to re-schedule her party because Sam is sick and I hurt my back.

I picked her and James up from daycare this afternoon and took them to the doctor for Leah's one-year well-child check and James's kindergarten shots.

Since my back is not 100% and I had two squirrely kiddos, I didn't exactly manage to get one of Leah at the doctor's office, but this is her today after we got home. She doesn't look too traumatized. Great news: we didn't need to do a lead screening / blood draw! Whew!

She's showing off her two bottom teeth in this picture: 

Here are those vital statistics - 

Length: 2 feet, 4 inches (8th percentile)

Weight: 18.5 pounds (30th percentile)

Head Circumference: 45.5 centimeters (60th percentile) 

After much cajoling, I did get James to take this terrible one at the doctor's office!

Things Leah is doing now:

• Taking some steps! She can stand on her own and has taken a few steps several times (still not really walking much, though)
• Enjoys chewing on her banana baby toothbrush
• Bops and bounces around, like dancing
• Enjoys taking things out of containers (and sometimes putting them back in)
• Uses a pincer grasp to pick up small things (peas, blueberries) 
• Likes all kinds of table foods and feeding herself
• Drinks water from her sippy cup (I got her a new one for her birthday)
• Beginning to drop the morning nap
• Sleeping longer stretches at night - she's slept all night, but doesn't do it every night
• Imitates my facial expressions - she'll stick her tongue back out at me if I stick mine out at her first
• Gets so excited when Dada comes home
• Claps
• Waves 
• Climbs up on the end table (ours has a very convenient bottom shelf for climbing) and the couch (the couch thing has only happened once that I know of!)
• Giggles and laughs
• Points at things
• Passes things to someone else when asked (sometimes!)
• Keeps looking for things after I take them away/hide them

Here's a link to her 9 month doctor's visit for comparison. 

And here's James being goofy: 

James weighed 42 pounds about a month prior to being sick, and he weighed 40 pounds a week ago (a 2 pound loss is a big loss when you only weigh 42 pounds!) but he was back up to 41 pounds at the doctor today. He was true to form and an absolute champ and he got a banana split for dessert (in part because the nurse promised a sucker and then there was no sucker, but he was a good sport about that small disappointment, too.) 

Valentines

Grandma Doris got the kids a Valentines cookie decorating kit. It was a big hit

James looks so serious about it. 

I put together the craft for the preschool Valentines party. James made these stained-glass hearts. They make the front door even more entertaining for Leah. 

We also went to a Valentines Day dance at church. Leah was quite popular. 

When we got there, there was only one other kiddo. 

It livened up later.

Sibling Photo

Amelie was sitting with Leah on the couch and I just had to have a picture -- I'm not sure what James is going on about.

Then he hopped out of the photo. Ha!

Sledding

I took these photos back on January 15th. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day so we conveniently all had the day off. It's warmed up considerably since then!

We got the big kids all bundled up and Sam took them down to the neighborhood park to sled down the hill. Leah &I stayed home. He said they were the only folks there, but they were only there about 1/2 an hour, so we could have missed some of the other kids. 

It looks like James fell over: 

And now he won't turn around for the picture. 

Someone is excited about sledding! 

James Says (plus Leah & Amelie)

When discussing with Sam what types of jobs one can have as a grown up, "I just want to be a regular person." Meaning not have a job! Ha!

After losing the trinket he'd gotten earlier that day in a Kinder Egg, "This is the worst day of my life." 

He just walked up to me and said, "Beep. You have two million messages." Then he walked up to Leah and said, "Beep. You have one message."

"I'm putting my My Little Ponies in jail." (And then he proceeds to build a construction with a stool, a kid-sized chair, and some picture books to contain the My Little Ponies.)

James is big into jokes and insults in a way that Amelie was not. He called me a "Poop sandwich" this AM, which was the funniest thing ever.

He calls Leah his "precious baby" which is very sweet, until he gets mad and says that she's "a stupid baby" (almost always immediately followed by him changing his mind and saying that she's really "a sweet baby").

Leah's not really saying anything yet - maybe just "Hi" and "Dada." I think "Dada" definitely does mean Sam, but she also just babbles it a lot at other random times. We haven't signed with her the way we did with Amelie and James, though maybe we'll be more intentional about it now that she's almost a year!

Here's a typical exchange:

Me: Leah, say "mama"
Leah: Dada
Me: Mama
Leah: Dada!
Me: Mama
Leah: Dada!!!!

This led to Amelie saying that "Obviously, she likes Dada more than you." 

Amelie's been sick all weekend and moping about. She told our friend Kade, just completely deadpan, that the blue-gray paint in the living room "didn't go with the rest of the house." I let her know that when she was a grown-up, she could paint her house the colors that she liked. Ha!

We were saying that Amelie couldn't go to church because she was sick, and James yells from the other room, "DO I HAVE TO GO??" He's been doing this thing where he'll complain about whatever activity, even if he obviously is enjoying himself while we're there. In regard to a birthday party, "DO I HAVE TO GO? I'm not going to eat any cake. UNLESS YOU MAKE ME." 

Amelie Photo Shoot

Amelie has opinions about posing. 

And then James jumped in and photobombed her pictures.