James is Two

James officially turned two today and it was a full day! He loves donuts so we started the morning with a stop at the Krispy Kreme. We also bought donuts ("noduts" as James calls them) to celebrate his birthday instead of cupcakes. The day care ladies said the kids loved them.

Daddy came home early from work and we opened a few more presents and sang Happy Birthday to James again. He loved this, especially being able to blow out his candles. So we had to sing to him four times. The last time he figured out that we were not going to sing to him anymore and so pretended not to be able to blow out the candles to prolong the fun. Smart boy...

And yes he wanted a plain cupcake - no icing, no ice cream. What kid do you know who doesn't like icing or ice cream? By his third birthday I bet he wants only icing.

Finally, as if he knew today was a milestone, James sat on the potty for us today for the first time. Nothing happened but he did want to sit on potty and said he needed to potty. Definitely a step. A new adventure begins.

Thanks to everyone for making this such a fun day for James and for us!

James' Second Birthday

Yes, this is my third post tonight... I am catching up. And yes, I will have a new post tomorrow for James' birthday probably.

James turns two tomorrow and so we had his party this weekend. We invited a few kids from the neighborhood and with Spencer and all four grandparents, we had a full house! The kids had a great time. We celebrated with James' favorite book, Go Dog Go, and let the kids make their own cupcakes. They actually didn't make too big a mess. I only have a couple of pictures from the party because I managed to delete all of Mike's photos :( Still don't know what I did.

Anyway, with all the family in town, James had as much fun playing with them and getting ready for the party, as he did at the actual party. He especially loved his tunnel from Meme and Poppie and making cupcakes with Gee.

Our little Frankengirl

So Darby is eight this year and had to have a little "work" done. Over the past couple of years she has developed some fatty tumors that aren't cancer, just little growths. So long as they don't get too big or grow in a place that can affect a joint or her movement, the vet said she can just leave them. This past year, however, they have grown and it was getting about time to remove the three that she had. We were just waiting for a good time...

Well, during the snow weekend, Darby developed an abscess tooth. When we got her to the vet, she had a big knot under one eye from the infected tooth. The vet confirmed with X-rays that her entire tooth had to be removed, under anesthesia. While we were handling the tooth we decided we might as well remove her three little fatty tumors.

Turns out Darby had FIVE tumors, including one under a muscle on one shoulder that was hard to get to. So in an afternoon Darby had a tooth extraction and five tumors surgically removed. The four small tumors each left about one inch of stitches, but the one under the muscle was a cut THREE INCHES LONG. Needless to say, Darby had a rough day and had to spend an extra night. When we finally picked her up, my first thought was that she looked like Frankenstein!!

Anyway, I am glad to report that Darby is much better. She has dutifully taken all her medicine and we are weaning her off her pain pills. Her face is only slightly swollen now and most of her stitches are healing up nicely. Plus the tumors were all benign.

The only fun part of all this? One of Darby's tumors was on her tummy. So let's just call this a "tummy tuck" for our old girl and be done with it!

Snow Day!!

You would never guess this from our current weather of about 75 degrees, but two weekends ago we had about four inches of snow. James napped through the best part of the snow but we did manage to get out and play in it just a bit. While he napped, I watched it snow for about three hours and it was so beautiful. James thought it was great fun as you can see.

James' big boy bed

So we bought a big boy toddler bed for James this weekend. We got it at IKEA, which if you haven't been to an IKEA, deserves its own post. James won't sleep in his bed for a while because we have to rearrange a lot of furniture up and down the stairs to get his room situated. With my growing belly, I can't really help Jim with that. In a few weeks when some family comes to town we might start trying to let James sleep in his bed.

James loves to help with any project lately, especially projects his dad is working on. So of course, he had to help his dad put his bed together today. They had a great time. I'll keep you posted on how James likes sleeping in it.

(And yes, that's Darby sleeping on the bed in the back. The bed project was way to much excitement for her!)

What's wrong with the Gazelle?

One of James' favorite toys lately is the wooden magnetic animals he got for Christmas. It is a Melissa & Doug toy. Don't they make the best toys?? Anyway, there is a magnetic board with different scenes you can change out: an ocean, a safari and a farm. The animals stick to the board and different animals go with different scenes. From the get go James was not interested in making sure the animals were in the proper scene. So for example, the rhino goes right along side the dolphin in the ocean scene. No big deal. Lately though, four of the "animals" get excluded for some reason. James will separate the barn, the farmer, and the pumpkin patch, say "no, no" to each of them and put them aside. Sometimes they get shoved under the couch pillow and out of sight. This sort of made sense for a while, because these aren't really animals. These are the only non-animals pieces in the set. But then he started separating out the gazelle as well, for no apparent reason. The gazelle also gets a "no-no," but he doesn't join the barn and the farmer in hiding under the couch pillow. Usually the gazelle is placed even farther away from the magenetic board.

So... What is wrong with the gazelle? Did I miss that Sesame Street where the evils of gazelles are explained? Did James get attacked by a gazelle in a dream? Did Anna Lauren tell him this past weekend that they killed Bambi's mom? Perhaps we'll never know. Ah, the mind of an almost two year old.

Jim's laugh

Before we had James, we attended a birthing class at the hospital. To introduce ourselves to the group we had tell everyone one characteristic of ourselves that we hoped our baby would have. I told the group that I hoped our baby would have Jim's laugh. For some time I have been thrilled to hear Jim's laugh loud and clear through my son. Today I managed to capture it on video. Hear it for yourself.

A bit of background first. Our entire family was hit last week with a nasty stomach bug. James got it Monday night and it passed to dad and then me. James was only at school one day last week. Even as late as this weekend, we were waiting for James' system to get back to "normal." Well tonight James gave me a bit ole fat diaper of "normal" that was very stinky. I started telling him it was "shoo-ee" stinky and he thought that was hilarious. I managed to catch him laughing at me saying "shoo-ee" while he was in the bath. Why in the bath you might be wondering? I knew he would be still in there.

So there you have it. Our exciting evening - loving my son's laugh amidst a very stinky diaper.