James at 9 months!

James is now 9 months old and growing well. He is not crawling officially, but has a pretty good military crawl to get him where he needs to go. I had yet to see him pull himself to the standing position until a few nights ago. I was home by myself bathing the kids, which proves a bit tricky since James can't yet sit up on his own in the tub reliably. I sit James on the floor while I bathe Noah, but on this day he was much too excited to get in the tub so he crawled over, pulled himself up on the side of the tub, and would have attempted his first dive if I had not been there to stop him.

Interestingly we are seeing more similarities in both kids' personalities than differences, which presents a whole different set of challenges. Almost every trip out I take strangers come up to me and say things like "you can tell they are brothers" or "they look exactly a like, huh?". Just for fun I found this picture of Noah around the same age as James climbing under the exersaucer... apparently in our house one of our gages of development is when the kids start to "crawl" under the exersaucer.

Noah Turns Three!!

Well, we officially have a 3 year old! Noah is definitely three and all that goes along with it:) He is talking much more than a year ago and is having far more spontaneous speech which is so cool to see how his little mind really works. He had an absolute blast at his birthday party this year. This was his first birthday where he was really excited for it to come. He chose a train birthday which he has talked about for about 2 months. The top picture is of Noah with his new baby stroller (Gabe was less than impressed that it was pink with flowers, but they just don't make baby strollers for boys;)). My goal here was to let him walk his baby so I could push James without Noah running him onto our neighbors' lawns. The second picture was Noah's face when Gabe brought the balloons in, not sure if you will be able to see his expression, but it was pure excitement. The third picture was Noah in his conductor hat with his ticket badge (everyone who came to the party had to have a badge too). Noah started asking to eat lunch at 10:30 and since it was his birthday (and he knew it) we let him, also why he is eating alone. He really had a wonderful birthday and, I am sure, can't wait to do it again next year!

When Noah watched this video he sat and waved at James each time he looked up to the camera:) You will have to pause the music at the bottom of the page in order to hear the sound in the video clip.

Conversations with Kitty

James is such a funny kid sometimes. I will often sit him down on the floor to play with his picnic basket while I change Noah or if I need to do something else in their room. On this day he had also found kitty. This is a little stuffed kitty that he got from our visit to great grammy and grampy Day in Florida... he really likes to talk to it (and chew on it's tail). He was having a lengthy conversation with kitty and these pics capture his thoughts, with facial expressions and all. I have some video of this I will try to put up later.

Quick Trip North

The boys and I recently made a brief (less than 48 hours I think) trip to East Millinocket to get our car fixed. The trip to Stanley's actually saved us over $300 so it was well worth it!! Anyhow, here are some pictures of Noah and James riding in the sled, which didn't last long... I think Noah was having flashbacks to the last time he and James did this when they fell out and James got a face full of snow:) The second pic was from when Noah was being very quite playing and when I walked into the living room this is what I saw. He just started laughing and saying, "I wear grampa's glasses".