18 Months Old!

How time flies! It seems like just last week we were bringing her home and now she is a year and a half old. What fun it has been. She is such a big girl now and each day seems to be something new and saying a new word. She is very chatty and will carry on a conversation with you, complete with hand gestures and all. Of course at this stage its mostly just babbles, and she can't seem to understand why we don't get what she is telling us. She does use a number of sign language signs (more, eat, please, milk, water) and is saying a lot of words, too, so communication is getting easier and easier. I'm sure I'll forget some of them, but these are words she says with understanding what they mean: daddy, mommy, ball, baby, doggy, cat, eat, bath, cracker, duck, bubble, book, eye, go, sit, up, shoes, car, truck

I realize that I haven't taken many pictures of her lately. One of the reasons, is that most of them end up looking like this:

or this:

or this:


Sitting still is not one of her strong suits! In trying to get these pictures yesterday, I did end up with a few cute ones to document her at 18 months old! Enjoy!





One of her new favorite things is to walk to the pond past the park to see the ducks. She gets this huge smile on her face and exclaims, "Ducks!" She loves to sit there and watch them and imitate what they do. Today she starting shaking her head after one finished shaking his tail to ruffle his feathers!




I was hoping to download a video of her singing, but I can't get it to download and I need to head off to the airport, so stay tuned and maybe I'll get that posted next weekend.

More Christmas

Here are the rest of our Christmas pictures:

Family shots on Christmas Eve:


Playing with Unckee-T and Auntie Meg after dinner

She got to open 2 gifts before going to bed on Christmas Eve:
The clothes were immediately thrown over her shoulder :)

The kazoo, however, was a whole different story! She had us all in tears by the end of the evening, and I think it might be safe to say that it was the hit of Christmas!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...'

Look! Santa came!

Christmas morning:

Merry Christmas! Examining the things Santa left for her:


It's teatime!




Unckee-T and Auntie Meg's gift was lots of fun to open since it was filled with icicles!


Grandpa fixed up the rocking horse that he made for me on my 2nd Birthday! Madeline loved it



Aspiring artist!


It must have been a pretty fun day, as this is how she finished it off. For the record, she has *NEVER* fallen asleep in the high chair! She was one tired tot!


Other pics from the trip:

Feeding the llamas with Grandpa


Madeline loved playing the organ.

This video documents the aspiring musician. I especially love the commentary about midway through. Brian thinks she is asking, "Now what do you think about that?"



We had lots of tea parties at Grandma and Grandpa's

You must make sure all your guests get plenty to eat...

...and have time to engage in good conversation.

Going to the cabin


Sledding fun!

Tasting the snow


Down the hill with Auntie Meg

We had two surprise guests at the cabin:

Collecting lots of friends at Unckee-T and Auntie Meg's house

Singing Unckee-T's favorite verse, The drivers on the bus say, 'Move on back..'
Knuckles with Auntie Meg

Stories with Grandpa

Looking at the airport displays with Grandma

All ready to fly home to Houston


Such a fun and memorable holiday. Seeing everything through her eyes made it that much more special. I hope everyone enjoyed your special days!

Christmas.....Take 1

I've been MIA these last few weeks mainly because I've found the hundreds of pictures we took over the holidays a bit overwhelming. But I guess they're not going to post themselves, so here we go...

Our Christmas celebrations started early with a visit from Grandpa Marv and Grandma Kay. They spent a long weekend with us and Madeline enjoyed showing them her new house, Brian cooked us all a great Christmas dinner and we had a great time enjoying the company. I realized that I didn't take many pictures that weekend and failed to get a picture of her with both Grandma and Grandpa. Bummer! Here are some pictures I did capture from that weekend:






She had soooo much fun tumbling around in her new tent. The smiles and giggles went on for a long time!

Enjoying a James family classic: Costco's '7 pound chocolate cake'


After a short week of daycare celebrations, holiday outfits and late night packing we were on our way to MT for a white Christmas. This was Madeline's first actual experience with snow as last Christmas she was still too young to play in the snow during our Christmas trip to Idyllwild, CA. So, after getting her all bundled up (while laughing of flashbacks of the Christmas Story's 'I can't put my hands down' scene) we set out to enjoy the snow:


Our little snow bunny!


"What is this?"





"Is this supposed to be fun?"

"....because I'm really cold!"


When she started getting super serious, we knew it was time to go inside. All in all, I think we spent as much time outside as we did getting her all bundled in preparation to go outside! The pictures are deceiving since it was so sunny, but it was really cold!

Stay tuned for more Christmas pictures...coming soon!