Beautiful!

Obviously, I think my baby girl is beautiful. I've been waiting for months to be able to put her in her little Christmas dress from Grandma A, and since December has arrived, she wore the dress to church today. Unfortunately, my little girl isn't so little (she's wearing 9mo clothes at less than 4 months old), so we were barely able to squeeze her in it. Since she may never be able to wear it again, I took a picture.


While we may agree that our baby girl looks beautiful, Paul and I disagree about the beauty of winter. I was THRILLED to see this yesterday:

Paul, on the other hand, was rather sad. He's not so fond of snow.

James was on my side!

It has snowed now, so bring on Christmas!

Mystery

I left the room for 5 to 10 seconds (literally), just to put something in our bedroom, and I came out to find a sticker on Katherine's nose. Now, I'm trying to figure out what happened. Either Katherine put it there herself, or her older brother stuck it on. Hmm . . . which one could it be? If you look closely, her pajamas have a few decorative stickers as well.

James' Birthday

So, after receiving chastisement from my brother, I figured I'd better start blogging again. Honestly, it's hard to get around to now that I'm teaching piano again and have a baby, but I'll put the effort in for you, Ben.

Anyways, we recently celebrated James' second birthday. Where has the time gone? My big boy is two now . . . Wow! We decided to go to the National Aquarium in Baltimore so James could see the fish. Of course, he was initially excited to ride the "choo-choo" (Metro).


He insisted on sitting in his own seat (the two mentality is already kickin' in).

Here he is in front of the bubble tubes at the Aquarium. Doesn't he look so big now?

Watching the fish:

And, the best part of all was the dolphin show. James LOVED it! He doesn't speak in sentences yet, but for days he kept telling the story: "Big fish jump high splash!"

Since James loves Mickey Mouse, I made him a giant Mickey cookie. It was easier to decorate than a cake.

I think he liked it:

And, his favorite part of the whole day: blowing out the candles. He wanted us to relight them several times so he could blow them out again . . . and again . . . and again.

Ahh . . . good times! We sure love our big boy!

By George, we won!

That is all

Neighborhood Baseball

We don't have too many young children in our neighborhood, but the few that live here enjoy playing at our home. It's convenient for James that they like to come over, because he loves them and he's too young to go over to their homes without me.

Anyways, James convinced the kids to play baseball with him one day. Then, the missionaries that lived in our basement took a moment from their P-day (preparation day) to play with the kids (convenient to have a pitcher).

James up to bat. Surprisingly, he actually hit several balls. He never even struck out, which amazed me:

James was watching one of the elders in the outfield, and when it was his turn, he automatically assumed this position:

James' friend, Akile:

James throwing the ball to get John out:

James was in Heaven! He LOVES playing sports already, and he loves playing with other kids. He's never thrown a bigger fit than when everybody left and the game ended. I hope that we'll always have neighborhood kids for James to play with (and that I feel comfortable with him playing with). Although the neighbors are several years older, they are so good to him.

Katherine's Blessing Day

Random Pictures

James has been a very good big brother to Katherine. Because she sleeps a lot, he and I still get plenty of one-on-one time. When Katherine is awake, however, James likes to be close to her. In this first picture, he was playing with his car across the room, but when I laid Katherine down, he ran over to play with the car beside her.


Here's another "Daddy's Girl" picture:

For Labor Day, we went with Paul's parents to Fort McHenry. It was our first real outing as a family since Katherine was born, and it went well. This is what Katherine looked like the whole time (meaning that she slept through the whole excursion, not that her head was flopping down like that for hours).
Here's James showing off his guns in front of the big guns (which he called 'boom booms').