Speaking of Great Pumpkins....

James, Charlie, and The Great Pumpkin

A trip back to Southern Indiana in  the fall would not be complete without some pictures with Uncle Jason's pumpkins!

And a visit to the pumpkin patch!

James loved the pumpkins so much that we made several trips back to see them over the course of the week 

And when we got back home, he put the pie pumpkins in the playroom to play tractors with, and wanted to bring one of the pumpkins in from the front porch inside when we read It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!.  

We may have a future pumpkin farmer on our hands!

I couldn't post pumpkin pictures without sharing the ones from years past, too!

2012

Click here for the full post from 2012 (which includes the announcement that we were pregnant with Charlie!  Can't believe that was a year ago!!)

2011

Click here for the full post from 2011.

Happy October!

Vacation in Indiana

A couple of weeks ago, Matthew had the week off, so we drove down to Southern Indiana to spend it with our families.

There was a lot of visiting

A little fighting

And a lot of tractors

A Birthday Celebration and concert

(Matthew turned 32 on Sept 22, and James now thinks everyone is either 2 years old, or 32 years old!)

And some attempted Birthday singing

Stay tuned for more posts from our visit.  They may involve things that rhyme with bumpkins and burtles.  Or they may not.  (But they probably will).

5 Months!

Well, another month has flown by, so time for more pictures!

Charlie was a lot more expressive this time around.  He's such a happy, easy-going baby, which is a good thing when you have a crazy older brother like James!  I'm not sure if I've mentioned this here before, but most mornings, James wakes up before Charlie does and as soon as we hear Charlie start to stir, James wants to "get in Charlie night-night!".  So we go into Charlie's room, and I lift James into his crib so they can "cuddle", which consists of James throwing his arm around Charlie's neck or sometimes trying to sit on him.  About half the time, Charlie can't keep his eyes of of James, and they'll lay there and hug or James will kick his mobile and they'll start laughing.  The other half of the time, Charlie gives me this look that says "ok, I'll humor him for a little bit while he puts me in a headlock, but what I really want is breakfast."  It's one of my favorite parts of the day.

 He didn't have a checkup this month, so I'm not sure how much he's weighing these days or how tall he is, but his legs seem to be awfully looong.  He's started to do the tripod thing - sitting on his bottom with his hands on the floor between his legs.  He's still pretty wobbly, though.  And as far as I know, he's only stuck his toes in his mouth once, and it happened when he was tripod-ing:

I'm really surprised he's only done this once, as everything else goes into his mouth.  I have a feeling we'll be seeing some teeth soon...

And the best news since last month is that he has slept through the night!  The first time was on the night of his 5 month birthday.  He slept from 11:00pm to 7:30am.  He's done it several times since,  but he occasionally still wakes up.  He is becoming a night owl, however; he prefers a bedtime of 11pm!

 

 

So Charlie does this thing where he lifts both arms up, and then slams them down.  He usually does it when he's sitting, but he'll sometimes do it when he's laying on his back, too.  We affectionately call this Donkey Kong, as in "Charlie's doing his Donkey Kong thing again".

Short Sports!!

A couple of weeks ago, James finished up a program at the YMCA called Short Sports.  It was a half hour class that was held once a week for 8 weeks.  Each class would start with some "stretching", and then kids would play a different sport each week.  The class was technically for 3-5 year olds, so he was the youngest one there.  He LOVED it (well, except for maybe that parachute play that had at the end of each class - he wanted to keep all of the balls to himself!).

I was the only crazy parent there that was taking pictures and videos.  Lucky you!

PS The movie was set to James's (current) favorite song.  We probably listen to it about 20 times a day.  Seriously.

4 Month Old Charlie

 On August 24th, little Charlie turned 4 months old!  That morning I sang Happy Birthday to Charlie, and James asked if we were going to eat Birthday cake :)

The little guy wasn't too excited for this photo shoot (see the bottom left pic below!), so I had to work hard to get that smile above.

James gave him a little pep talk,

And once he got his hands on some toys, he was much happier :)

Charlie had another excellent check up this month (aside from getting shots).  He gained 2 lbs (up to 14lb 3oz) and grew 1.5", up to 25.5" (70th percentile!).  I was pretty shocked to find out that James actually weighed more at 4 months (he was 14lbs 7oz), but Charlie's an inch taller.  Maybe that's why he seems so big to me.  And why strangers comment on how HUGE he is.  I really had one lady tell me "Wow, he's huge!" three times.  Thanks, lady.

As for milestones this month, he's found his toes (but they haven't found their way into his mouth...yet).  He also started sleeping in 8 hour stretches!  I'm not 100% certain (probably because sleep deprivation is slowly killing off my brain cells and my memory is shot), but I don't think James did that until he was 18 months old!  Charlie had an awesome week of sleeping mostly 7 or 8 hours at a time, but after his shots, he started waking up every two hours :(.  That lasted about a week, and he's thankfully now back to his good sleeping habits.

That's all, folks!

A Morning Cup of Joe

Yesterday morning while eating breakfast, James wanted to try some of my (decaf) coffee.  So I did what any good parent would do - gave him my mug and grabbed the camera.

That's a true Seattleite right there.