A boys best friend

    They say a dog is a man's best friend. That can be the case for JT and Dexter. They have a great time playing and chasing each other, cuddling, and for the sake of this post sharing.

     I was washing the dishes and out of the corner of my eye, I saw JT's leg near Dexter's food and water bowl. Just how it was positioned, I knew he was up to something. Turns out I was right! JT was in fact sharing Dexter's water!!! I couldn't believe my eyes and so I decided to hit record on my phone so I could show John when he returned home.

     I understand this is quite gross and I don't plan on letting JT share Dexter's water in the future. I just wanted to capture part of this silly boy mimicking his dog....

Minute To Win It Games

I wanted to upload a few of the Minute to Win It games from this past weekend. I figured Sarah and her friends would enjoy seeing what fun they had :) 

When watching the videos, be ready for LOTS of background noise as you have both John and I directing the time limits and about a dozen or so teammates or friends cheering  the contestants on.

Bobble Head- Doug

Hanky Panky- Scarlett, Delaney & Austin

Nose Dive- Sarah

Cookie- All Play

Bobble Head- Ariel

Bobble Head- Paige

Booty Shake- Erika, Sierra, & Chelsea

Nose Dive- Christina

Nose Dive- Emily

Caillou

     This seems to be the month where JT's language is making big leaps! It's so exciting to see what new word is going to come out of his mouth each day.  Little did we think that we would be hearing Caillou as one of his new words.

     For those of you not well versed in preschool television, Caillou is a cartoon that is on PBS/Sprout. Sprout is a preschool channel with mainly all PBS shows that we allow JT to watch. For reasons unknown to us, Caillou has quickly become a huge hit with JT. Before this week, JT would request the show by sweetly pointing both hands toward his heart and say a Caw sounding word. It worked as we knew what he was trying to say.

     Then, just a few days ago, JT just started saying Caillou!!! Those toddler ears are always listening and working hard to make new sounds. The way he says it is so sweet that I just had to record it!

     Last night as I was preparing dinner, JT ran into the kitchen holding the remote up to me chanting Caillou, Caillou!!! I was able to grab my phone and record JT saying his new word. Sadly for JT, his charming way with words did not work and Caillou was not turned on. It was nearly dinner, so it wasn't the right time to watch his show. I'm sure sometime today it will be met with better success :)

Birthday Bash

     This weekend we held Sarah's 18th birthday party! We decided to have a fun, big party and not really limit how many people could come. Sarah wanted to have a party where we played a variety of games. We worked together to come up with 3 event rounds where teams would compete against one another.

     For an element of surprise, we purchased t-shirts in 3 different colors and had her friends "draw" their team color as they arrived. The 3 rounds were a scavenger hunt finding different items and descriptions of people or actions that the teams took photos of. The 2nd round was a quiz round that had questions from Movies, General Knowledge, Harry Potter, and Sports (among a few other categories), and lastly we held a Minute to Win It round doing a total of 6 games. Here are some snapshots highlighting the evening.

Picking their team shirts

Kameron, one of Sarah's dear friends could only stop by for a few minutes due to his religious beliefs (Friday is the start of his Sabbath), but it was so sweet of him to stop by considering he now goes to a different school and doesn't live very close. 

The Pink Team- Stefani, Erika, Delaney, and Paige (later on Emily joined this team)

The Blue Team: Austin, Christina, and Doug( and later Chelsea joined when she arrived)

Team Aqua: Scarlett, Sarah, and Lindsay as some friends had to work(Courtney was at the school dance). Missing from this picture is Ariel- not sure where she was hiding :) Later on Sierra joined this team.

After the scavenger hunt, it was time to grub!!! Homemade baked ziti, spaghetti with meat sauce, salad and dinner rolls.

Had to put this shot in of JT- he loved this little balloon Sarah received as a gift and I caught this joyful look on his face as he played with it.

After dinner, the teams took some time to decorate the shirts with colored Sharpies.

Time for the Minute to Win It games: Hanky Panky

The result after 1 minute- Kleenex everywhere!!!

Bobble Head

This was the biggest hit of the games- Nose Pile. Dip your nose in Vaseline, put face into a bowl of cotton balls and then try to transfer cotton ball to empty bowl on the other side of the room. There were some very funny moments. Here it looks like Sarah has cotton snot hanging from her nose!

Emily sporting a cotton Santa beard!

Sticky Situation- lay out a grid of peanut butter bread slices and then have the teams try to bounce their marked balls and stick to the bread.

The finale, per Sarah's request- Cookie. Put a cookie on your forehead and using your face muscles, attempt to work it down your face and into your mouth.

Sarah and Ariel working hard  with Doug just about to win the prize!

Chelsea trying to reach up with her tongue..

Sierra also using the tongue approach.

Courtney back from the dance had success!

All of the girls spent the night and this is just a glance of what it looked like the morning after... bodies everywhere!!!

20 Months!!!

     JT has reached another milestone- 20 months!!! With the addition of a "2" to his months, makes it all the more real of how close our little man is to turning 2 years old!!! I can't believe how fast this time with JT has gone...

     John Thomas continues to be our all boy daredevil- cars, trucks, balls, and climbing anything physically possible for him is what makes up of most of his days. He does still have a great love for having books read to him, so that makes for great calm and quiet moments.

     JT won't go to the Dr for his well check until he is 2, so I don't have official stats, but it looks like he is quickly approaching the 30 pound mark weight wise and his pants aren't nearly as long on his legs as they were at the beginning of the season. JT's speech continues to improve and he is starting to mock many of our words that we speak. I am hopeful this is the beginning of his language explosion- I'm so looking forward to being able to understand his verbal words and hearing those precious "toddler jargon" words. Though I'm eager, I treasure the simplicity in such things as JT signing and saying "More" and "Milk" along with the occasional "NaNa"(banana) or "Cookie" that he requests.

     Here are some pictures of JT over the past month. Looking forward to the warmth that Spring will soon bring to my outdoor loving boy!

Love this pic Sarah took of our messy milk faced boy!

JT always finds the most unique places to play.

Cars, Cars, Cars!!!

Love those big hazel green eyes!

All wrapped up in a cozy blanket...

Having some indoor fun sliding on the wood floor with Courtney!

Looking so cute in Daddy's winter beanie hat.

I love this! This is how JT does his "prayer hands". He still names us all as we pray and finishes the prayer with  "men" (Amen) and claps very happily.

Bad/Good of being an early teether- 2 year molars coming in already! These have been by far the most painful and slow teeth to come in. Most of this month JT has his entire hand shoved in his mouth trying to relieve the pain. Poor little guy :(

He still manages to flash his sweet smile in spite of the pain...

Calling for Daddy

     Most mornings, John leaves for work before JT wakes up. However, that doesn't mean JT doesn't miss seeing his Daddy. Several times, JT has called out around downstairs looking for John. Here is what JT did one morning as he was looking for John.



This video is one of my favorites as you will see JT go to knock on a closed door. It just so happens to be our downstairs bathroom! I loved how extensive JT's search was for John :)

No stone was left unturned as JT even looked outside to see if John happened to be there.

Flowers

   A few weeks ago, Sarah received some flowers from Doug and JT thought they were very pretty. It was the first time that he said "Purple". We took some time to video this and it resulted in some typical fun JT moments.

     Look on the video to see how JT is demonstrating how to sniff a flower, how he signs the word flower (fingers touching his nose), signs and says please at the same time, and of course lots of giggles!* Note I was only able to get 1 video to upload right now, but will try to upload it again later*

More Birthday Celebrations!

     Early Feburary is always a busy time for birthday celebrations here as Sarah and John have back to back birthdays. We always say Sarah was the best early birthday gift for John 18 years ago. Being a Daddy, John's birthday has sort of taken a back burner once Sarah arrived to our lives. Nothing wrong with that and to no fault of Sarah, just one of those things that just "happen".

     I was hoping to recongize John's birthday with a present that he will remember and of course love. John had been really wanting to get another dog for our family for some time. Almost 2 years ago, our beloved pug, Turk, had an accident and died. Grief, along with the arrival of JT we thought it would be best to wait a while to get another dog. John had been more than ready for some time, but I was hoping to hold off until warmer weather considering we would have to potty train the pup.

     After talking, we decided that for John's birthday, we would get him his dog! We searched and called and finally found what we thought was going to be the place to choose our pup! John and I headed out with JT and met the breeder to select our new puppy.  We had decided long ago to get another pug and John

decided that he wanted another black male.

     We surprise the girls with John's gift and there were squeals of delight as we presented our new puppy! John is having a very difficult time naming this little guy, so for now we call him Pup, or Dog-Dog as JT would say :) Hopefully the right name will be revealed soon.

 JT wanted to be VERY close to the pup the first night :)

  
  I had a video of us surprising the girls with John's gift, but blogger being blogger, it doesn't want to upload right now :( I'll try again later and add it here.

18!!!!

This past Friday, Sarah had a momentual birthday- 18!!! Never again to be a minor, our baby girl is now an adult!!! It's the first time that I have really started to refect upon being "old" or at least getting old!

We had a fun time celebrating Sarah's birthday even though she had school. Her party with many friends is in 2 weeks so there will be more birthday posts in the future.

John and I decorated Sarah's car windows the night before with the same window markers the girls used to write notes on the mirror for John. It was a fun suprise to start Sarah's day!

 Later in the day, it was time to open presents!!! From Nanny- books 3 and 4 from Harry Potter. These were replacement books for Sarah to once again complete her collection. (A friend didn't return these 2 boooks several years ago) Nanny is working on one more present that will be heading here soon.

 Aunt Cathy found great wrap!

 In addition to a DVD, she sent this book: 1001 Things Every College Student Needs to Know.
I think I'm going to read this book to help ME as we send her off this summer :)

Presents from Mom & Dad

A rare minor meltdown from JT as he really wanted to help unwrap the presents....

Luckily, he has a sweet big sister who doesn't mind sharing the spotlight or unwraping.

Sarah, being our bookworm, what she asked for this birthday were various classic authors books. As seen above, we purchased her 3 Jane Austen books and 2 C.S. Lewis books. Then for her "big" present, Sarah recieved a Kindle. Thinking this will be a great way to bring her love of books with her to college all in a package weighing less than 9 ounces! The Kindle can contain 3,500 books!!!

It just wouldn't be proper to not get a black and white photo :) Sarah isn't a big fan of cake, so instead we made a cheesecake! Yum!!!

Making her big wish!!!