On the weekends, after James and I have breakfast (and John is still sleeping) we go into the family room and 9 times out of 10 all the cats are in there just hanging out. For those of you who don't know, we have 4 cats - so when all the cats are in one room, it looks a little crazy. We have pocket doors that I can shut to trap all 4 cats in the room. And then once they are trapped, I let James down and let him chase them. He can't catch them - but the little man sure can move fast when he wants to! 

While James is chasing them, he is yelling - loudly. It is almost like an amazon call (a little George of the Jungle actually). I think he thinks that will make them come and play since that's all he has to do for the dogs to come running... it has not worked yet - they still go running in the opposite direction.



For the rest of the day, Ace usually gives me the stink eye for allowing this to happen...



Ahhhh

James seems to think that the throw pillows for our couch make the best landing pad (I will say that they are super soft and cuddly). He tosses them all of the floor, jumps on them and says "ahhhh". Over and over and over again. Until he misses the pillows and ends up with a big welt on his head. We try to stop him before that happens but its so hard to stop him - its just hilarious. He is always entertaining, but he is especially entertaining when he finds the simplest things so much fun.

Being a mom has taught me a lot, and being James' mom has taught me even more. Every day I learn something from him - whether it be rearranging my priorities or enjoying every day life. I can't wait to see what he teaches me next.

Happy Easter

It was a cruddy weather in Cleveland yesterday (no real surprise) so our family Easter plans had to be very flexible... when we wanted to take a walk, play games outside and use our grill for the first time this year - we were forced to stay inside all day. Living in this kind of weather has made of learn to change our plans without much of a fuss, its just part of life here. But on Easter it was more of a bummer than usual. But being stuck inside with my boys still turned out to be a pretty awesome day.

Well I guess any day that you can eat more than your weight in chocolate without getting criticized is always a good day! 

Helping hand

We have started putting together a list of house improvements we want to get done this Spring/Summer - we do this every year and when we get more than half of them done its cause for a celebration. For some reason we always never learn our lesson and always end up biting off more than we can chew... like the bathroom that was supposed to be only a long weekend project that took over 9 months to complete. This weekend we started with something easy, just changing out the outlets so they all match throughout our house. Started out simple, until James wanted to get involved. He tried to get a hold of every tool he saw and tried to get as close to the outlet as he could (yes Dad, we were safe - John turned the circuits off). I finally gave up trying to distract him with toys and let him "help".

And yes, we were all still on our PJs... it was a Sunday afterall!

The weather finally got warm enough for us to take a walk to the park. We loaded everyone up and it was fantastic.

This is the coolest park ever - it has 8 slides, a dozen swings and tons of things to climb on. I have a feeling that we will be taking weekly walks here this summer. Or I did...

Until we had animal control called on us while we were at the park. Because for some reason our big black dogs look menacing and like pit bulls (that are illegal to be in our town). Long story short, we were there for about 5 minutes before an officer came up to me telling me that I had to take the dogs away or he would. Because someone reported us and felt unsafe with our dogs there or something or other. I will say that the officer was really nice and I could tell that he felt silly asking me to leave the park for no real reason other than he had to. But still, come on. So now I kinda want to boycott that park and its dumb people who have animal control on speed dial just in case there are two happy, big, goofy labs around.

But that park is just so cool!! Ill have to think about it. Maybe we will go back but give stink eyes to everyone who does not look like dog people. It was just such a buzz kill to what was supposed to be an awesome time. Bronx needed consoling all night because he felt like he did something wrong... it is a good thing James is always up for cuddling with his dogs.
 

Change

For the past 6 months, our pediatrician has been telling us to get James prepared for when he turns a year because at a year, he is supposed to be off the bottle and formula and completely on sippy cups and milk. Well he is a year and we are having a hard time making the switch. For the past week, he has refused to drink milk, use a sippy cup (even when its filled with juice *cough cough*) or even go back to his bottle. He's just simply refusing anything. His poor babysitter is besides herself because she has never had such a stubborn kid go a whole week without drinking. When we picked him up today, she told me that she caved and spoon fed him his milk. I'm not kidding. She spoon fed him milk.

He had his one year check up yesterday and during the entire appointment James walked around the room babbling and pointing and demanding the doctor pay attention to him. When the doctor would turn towards me and talk, James would point to him and then start babbling at an even louder voice (which his normal voice is already louder than the acceptable indoor voice so this was borderline yelling) just to get the attention back on him. The doctor just laughed and called James adventurous and said that he had a great personality. When I told him how hard of a time James was having with getting rid of his bottle and the issues it was causing, he said he was not surprised at all given his courageous personality (at this time James was alternating between trying to rip the blinds off the windows and unrolling the table paper). I think I would call him more headstrong, but I guess the doctor was trying to be nice. Anyways, he said that hes a big boy and will learn to accept the change and that he will be ok. Its good to teach them how to adjust now and introduce them to new things at an early age... Which is all fine and dandy but the kid still needs to drink something now and then.

And then I remembered it was bath night. And he always drinks half of his bath water.

So maybe we will just start filling his bath with milk - might be better than spoon feeding him! Just kidding... kinda

Yes change is good, but some things I never want to change. Do not tell me that next thing you know he will be ignoring my calls and make fun of my crazy jewelry behind my back with his friends. I know it's coming like a derailed freight train. Because when I get frustrated with him now, I'm juggling that feeling plus the guilt of that feeling plus the knowledge that one day I will long to feel that frustration just one more time.

Cabin Fever

We are getting a little restless waiting for the warmer weather. A few weeks ago the temperature got almost to 60 and we all buddled up and went for a walk - and it was exhilerating! Even the dogs were prancing. But since then, the weather seems to be getting worse... and so is our cabin fever. So we are doing the next best thing - taking walks around the house! It is not nearly as fun but it keeps us hoping that tomorrow we might be able to go outside.

And thanks Nana for the wagon - its perfect!

Thanks for flying JS Airlines

This weekend was James' birthday party, and of course it was a plane theme. It turned out better than John or I could have imagined. And I really hope that everyone who came had a wonderful time too. We completely believe in the proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" and we are amazingly lucky to have such a supportive loving village.

Waiting for his guests to arrive!

We had a "Check In" area where we asked all of our guests to personalized a piece of fabric so we can then make it into a quilt for James. Since he won't remember this party, we wanted something that he could have down the road. I think it is  going to turn out great!

Entertaining his guests

This dogs had a great time as well, they have a talent for begging!

Blow out the candle!

I wanted a family picture... this is take 1

Take 2

Take 3... well its better than our Christmas family picture!





Hanging out with his dogs

There are a ton of pictures, sorry - but I just couldn't narrow them down anymore! Thanks again for everyone who came, we love you all.