Thanks James!

Helping with the laundry.

Ozarks

Oh James

One hour post-bedtime.

Halloween Store fun

Finally Fall

Sending this one into the J. Crew catalogue!

James and Dude

Walking Dude

Late nights, early mornings

This was Jamo at school drop-off this morning. When you get up at 4am, 8am doesn't seem like a bad time for a nap!

It doesn't help bedtime these days that James is now tall enough to do this...

Fountain at Pleasant Ridge

Cup update

So I was afraid I had spoken too soon after my last post, since James then refused to drink out of the new cup for a couple of days. I was trying to introduce it while letting him still drink out of his old cup. I talked to his speech therapist and we decided to completely take away his old cup. But in a stroke of brilliance, she noticed that the new top fit on his old cup! So now he has the old cup with handles, but the new hard top. He's been drinking out of it with my (and his teacher's) assistance (thirst is a powerful thing), but has also started doing it on his own! He doesn't quite get lip placement, and we've left out the valve so there's more immediate satisfaction, so he kind of pours the water in his mouth as opposed to sipping, but we're cooking:)

THIS IS HUGE!

So James had a birthday party yesterday and we'll get to that in a minute, but the big news is that I bought James a new cup. His teacher thinks it's time to retire his sippy cup as she's concerned about his biting the tops off (fair enough). I was pretty pessimistic about an easy transition, but bought this hard top sipper cup this weekend.

James is actually sipping out of it! I won't say 'drinking' because you can probably see I'm holding it in this picture, but he has taken some independent sips holding it himself. For those of you that conquered this phase when your kid was one, I don't expect you to understand the excitement, but I feel like this is a big step towards drinking out of perhaps a variety of cups, or do I dare even say an open cup!

We had James's party yesterday at Fair Park which was a lot of fun. It was a pretty small group which was how we wanted it. We managed to take not a one picture of the party which seems par for the course for us. The adults drank mimosas while the kids played and ate healthy things (see below). The more I read quotes from Michelle Bachmann, the more I feel James needs to learn about his Australian heritage. I also dug out his citizenship forms which I'll be filling out before November 2012 just in case. Pretty excited he's eligible!

It was such a beautiful weekend and we went to Motley's Pumpkin Patch this morning on LeeAnn's recommendation. We had hay rides, a train ride and got to watch pig races.

James had a great time as long as his skin wasn't actually touching the hay at any time!