For comparison, he bested his sister by three months & 5 days

He’s a very mobile dude now and has pretty much given up on crawling.  Even though he first walked around 9 or 10 months he kept to crawling for another month or so for primary locomotion.  He’ll be running any time now since he always watches his sister.  Sara is in a constant state of run.  We challenged her to only walk while we were in the store the other day and it was obvious that she was having to exercise some self control.

Joshua’s 1 year checkup was pretty uneventful.  Basic stuff – development, height, weight, etc.  He’s is now 21 lbs and 30 inches – quite a change in a year.  Unfortunately, his last round of inoculations have left him a bit sick, but only low grade fever…so – expected stuff.  At least he’s cuddly when he’s not feeling well as opposed to his normal constant state of motion.

Also, today was a beautiful day in Dallas, and we took the opportunity to go to the Dallas Zoo. It was a lot of fun, and we even got five minutes into the park before there was a minor meltdown. Then then meltdown child’s sunglasses ended up in the lemur enclosure (thankfully that didn’t really phase her). I was happy to go too because we bought a family season pass and have hardly used it. It has been so hot this summer that going to the zoo would not have been an enjoyable experience. It was a good time today, though, and I look forward to going back often over the next several months. Since I work downtown it will be easy to take a half day and make a family event of it.

We had a good time tonight with Joshua as he was just as happy as could be. He was smiling constantly and really responds – he even responded to his name tonight. He kicks and moves like crazy when I tickle him and I’m sure will be laughing here shortly. He is also pretty good on his tummy and can stand on his own if he is being balanced.

Sara will be turning three at the beginning of August and is looking forward to go back to school. We will be taking her to Sea World soon to celebrate her birthday. She doesn’t know about it yet, but she’ll have a great time. Darn television commercials, though. That’s where she learned about it. It’s not just Sea World though any commercial for Six Flags, Fiesta Texas, or any water park is followed by “I wanna do that”. I guess that she got her way on this one.

Joshua’s First Album

Wish us luck as we continue to prepare. I’ve still got to paint the nursery which we recently had re-textured top to bottom. 50 years of old paint, wallpaper, and more paint kind of makes it difficult for new paint to stick, and re-texturing was the answer. Aimee has most of the clothes organized, but not knowing the gender makes planning some of that stuff difficult. But c’mon – we’re realists…all the baby really needs is yellow, green, and white onesies, burp cloths, and diapers for the first few months anyway.

On to the other child – Sara is great and is currently doing very well with her potty training. She knows what to do, it’s just a matter of reminding her to go do it. We recently took Sara on her very first picnic as spring was arriving. Her mommy recently went through boxes of her old toys as we were preparing a garage sale to help purge our junk and found many of her old books and toys. One of them is a Mickey Mouse picnic story that Sara loves! As soon as she understood what it was talking about she began asking to go on a picnic. As soon as the weather turned we were able to take her, and she loved it. We will have to do it again soon.

It’s very exciting for us, though!

We were able to go to Houston for Thanksgiving this year to see my parents.  It was a good trip, although Aimee came down with a cold once we got there.  However, Sara did get to participate in her first Christmas tree decoration which she loved. So when we got home from Houston that was to be one of our first priorities. In that, we decided to get a live tree. This was my first one ever, and to be honest, I really like it so far!  Sara enjoyed putting up her decorations, and the first thing that she wants before eating breafast every morning at dark o’clock is to go turn on the lights on the tree.  I think having her put on all of her ornaments was a great decision because now she doesn’t go and mess with them or take them off.  She just wants to see them and put on the new ones that she makes at school.

We all spent some time a couple of weeks ago with my family and Sara got to celebrate her birthday once there, and celebrated last night with Aimee’s family.  Today, Aimee and I took Sara to a fantastic water park in Carrollton – she played for two solid hours, and then we took her for lunch to Chick-fil-A where she played some more.  Needless to say we hardly made it out of the parking lot before she passed out.  It has been a good birthday for Sara, and we look forward to many many more.

Happy birthday, Sara

We went to California for Thanksgiving and stayed with Aimee’s mother and grandmother.  Aimee and Sara actually went out a week before me as this would be our last visit while Aimee’s mother was still living there.  She mostly went to see friends and help her mom pack up and finish going through things.  When I arrived the following week our anniversary had just passed so we left Sara with Grandma (her first extended time away from Mommy) and drove up to Santa Barbara.  We did some wine country touring up in the mountains and really just relaxed.  For those that didn’t know, Aimee went to school at UCSB and absolutely loves it there.  I, in all honesty, do too – you’d have to see my twitter feed for more on that though (maybe I’ll post about my infatuation love ‘intense belief in’ ‘value recognition of’ hate of most “social networking”).  By the time we returned from our little vacation my family had arrived in the Inland Empire and we had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s house.  Aimee managed to  have our flight home switched from Friday morning to Saturday morning (for free – she pulled the baby card) so we were able to spend another day at her mom’s.

Our next big event – at least that I can remember – was Aimee’s mother’s big move!  The movers came the second week of December, packed up all of her stuff, and we accepted it at her new Texas home a few days later!  Aimee’s mother came along shortly thereafter with a packed GMC.

While she was getting all settled, Aimee, Sara, the dogs, and myself trekked down to Houston to celebrate Christmas with my family.  Everybody had a great time.  Sara got a rocking horse which she absolutely loved!

A particularly wonderful blessing this season was that we had the opportunity to spend Christmas at our own home for the first time.  Our family met Aimee’s mother and grandmother at church after I got home from work for the children’s Christmas Eve service and then followed that with dinner.  I had to be back at church to accompany a brass quintet at the 8 and 11 o’clock services.

Oh – did I mention that we had a blizzard on Christmas Eve in Dallas?  There was not a whole lot of snow, but there was a lot of it blowing around causing dangerous drifts.  Needless to say, the weather cut back a bit on church attendance.  I made it home safely though by about 12:30 am.

We awoke to a leisurely, beautiful morning on Christmas day.  Sara actually slept in a little bit and Aimee let me sleep too.  As we were eating breakfast we noticed that Sara had left the table and seemed strangely quite.  When we went to find her she was on the hearth beginning to open presents!  We let her go through a few and then we all (including Jack and Frank) went out front to play in the snow.  Sara needed a nap before she could go through the rest of her gifts, but that worked out well because she could nap until Grandma and Great Grandmom arrived for lunch.  All in all it was a great day.

snuck away

Christmas Morning Snow

The big news for today is that Sara said some words!  Now – she has been communicating for quite some time…we think that “graps” (read Grapes) was really her first word, but today came some new ones.  We noticed last week that she was beginning to try to mimic what we were saying when we spoke to her, and we knew that it would be very soon.  Today, as Sara and Aimee walked through the market (getting Sara’s daily snack samples) she pointed at the fish tank and said “FISH“!  Exciting, I know!  This was followed later in the day by “BALL” and “PISA” (I brought pizza home from Sam’s Club for dinner).  So, we can now tell everybody that in the last three weeks Sara has had 6 teeth come in and has decided to start using her words.  I’m glad that she has finally listened to me on this as I have been encouraging it since she was about 6 months old…I told her to just “use your words” and “tell us what was wrong” instead of crying and screaming about it.  Now that she has words somehow I still feel like we’ll still hear the crying and screaming (by my count the next time will be in approximately 7.5 hours).