And so it begins...

Babies learn new things at an amazing rate, it's so fun to watch James learn all about his world and explore his limits. He is experimenting with standing on his own and learning how to wrestle with Dan and how to throw things around. However there is one thing that he's learning far too quickly, my baby is learning to climb...

It started small, James would pull himself onto the metal chairs at church, then he climbed into the dryer one day. A few days ago he figured out how to climb onto the ledge by our fireplace. I found him standing up there once. But today he climbed something that I didn't know he could climb. James climbed into his high chair. He didn't even want food, he just wanted to play with the buckles, he loves those.

Part of me is thrilled to see my baby learning a new skill, but then again that also means that soon he will be climbing to higher and more perilous heights. This is going to be very interesting. :)

He got up there all on his own. :)

A Vomitastic Day

If you couldn't already guess from the title, this post may contain some information you might file under "TMI". So, consider yourself warned. That being said, I like to find humor in insignificant unpleasantness, and so you are the lucky one who gets to hear about it.

Last Thursday night, Lisa made a delicious dinner that contained some meatballs. We've had them several times before with no problems. It was really good, and so I actually ate quite a bit. As we were going to bed that night, Lisa felt a little bit of nausea, but we went to bed without incident.

Fast forward a few hours, and I found myself turning in bed with a bit of a stomach ache. I hoped it would go away, but it only seemed to get worse. While my stomach was trying to decide which direction to send all the food it didn't want, I did my best to convince it to send it down south. Throwing up is way up there on the dislike list, and I would take diarrhea over vomit any day. And so I sat on the toilet hoping relief would come.

(this paragraph is probably the worst, feel free to skip it)
A little bit came out, but it seemed like my stomach was going to allow me to taster dinner once again. So, I got off the toilet and readied myself in puke position. Unfortunately, I got a whiff of what I had already left in there, and so I instinctively recoiled a bit. This threw off my aim, and thus the first heave was far from a direct hit into the toilet. More heaves quickly followed, but I was able to improve my aim somewhat on those. After I had a chance to catch my breath some, I actually saw the mess I had made. There was throw up all over the floor, not to mention my legs. Lisa was such a dear, and asked if she could get me something to drink, but at that time, there was no way I was giving my stomach more ammo. Upon seeing the mess, I had to get out of there before I made it worse. I felt so bad leaving it all there, but I had to get away.

Considering I had puke on my legs, showering became priority number one on the agenda. I headed to another bathroom and started the water. As it was getting warm, the thought came to my mind, "Man, it'd be great to just sit in a warm bath for a while..." Fortunately, I had enough sense to realize that would mean sitting in vomit-water. Undesirable. So, I took a nice long warm shower, even if it meant standing.

I got out of the shower and headed back to bedroom. Lisa was being wonderful, as usual, cleaning up the mess I had made. However, I could soon smell the odor I had left. I was forced to rapidly retreat once again. I could not be near that bathroom anymore. And so, I spent the rest of the night sleeping on the recliner in James' room. He had since woken up from all the commotion, and spent the rest of the night in our bed with Lisa.

So, I spent most of the day, wasting away on the couch not doing anything. Thinking it was an isolated incident, Lisa had the leftovers for lunch. I saw her eating them, and I immediately had to roll over the way and not think about it. I suppose I should have offered some sort of caution, but I was banning all thoughts of that food from my mind.

Then came the evening, and Lisa was feeling the nausea once again. It wasn't long before she found herself in the bathroom. Fortunately, her aim was much better than mine, and so there was no mess to clean up. I had also recovered pretty well by then, and so I am grateful I could hear her without making a new mess on the couch.

And so our two beleaguered souls gingerly made our way around the house for the rest of the evening. Who would have thought James would be the only one in the family to not puke for a day? Well, we got James to bed, and made our way to bed nice and early.

By Sunday, we were both feeling pretty good again, but had pretty much sworn off those meatballs for quite some time. We usually go to Lisa's parents' house for dinner on Sundays, and so I mentioned to Lisa how we should probably warn her mom, and how it would be funny if that was what she made for dinner that evening. Well, turns out more humor was to be had, as we found out that those exact same meatballs are exactly what she had prepared. Needless to say, we filled ourselves on other parts of the meal.

Today Lisa returned the poisonous meatballs, and our house is no longer infected. After such a day, you can only help but laugh at it, and hope it doesn't happen again. So, what's the moral of this story? I'd like to think that it's something along the lines of: The family that pukes together, stays together.

Latest Happenings

It's been a long time since our last post so here it goes....

James now has 4 teeth on the top and 2 on the bottom. He is absolutely adorable and absolutely the most mischievous little angel ever. He LOVES stairs and he tries to get up them whenever possible. Any time we turn our backs, he makes a beeline for the staircase. He goes up really well, but he's still figuring out how to get down. If I happen to catch him at the base of the stairs, he'll look back at me, squeal with delight, and try to get up as fast as possible. James also LOVES his daddy. :) James and Dan will chase each other around and have a grand old time. :) James has also discovered the kitchen cupboards. He found my colander and had a great time playing with it. Here are some cute pictures. :)

I made bread! It is cinnamon bread and it's pretty good, check it out. I'm thinking of using it to make french toast.

I made a fabric wreath too, I think I like it. I wanted to make a Christmas Stocking for James, check out the picture below. The green is the lining. The red will be the top, and the yellow plaid will be the main part of the stocking...hopefully it works well. :)

We put our Christmas tree up!!! James helped as much as he could, he loves the lights on the tree.

One crazy week

This week has been full of new adventures, some good and some that were really not so great. James started off the new adventures on Tuesday night, when his new tooth started to come in. He had a fever and did not sleep well at all that night. The fever got up to 101.9, but he seemed to be fine so I just watched him the next day. His fever dropped Wednesday morning, but by Wednesday night, well Thursday morning around 3am, it was up to 104. Thankfully it dropped to 100.9 by about 9am Thursday morning and he has been so much better since then.

Through all of this, Dan's throat had been hurting, but he hadn't said too much about it because we were both concerned about James. Thursday night Dan decided to look at his throat in the mirror to see if he could see anything. Sure enough, there were a few white dots on his throat. We had plan's to be with Dan's brother and his family on Saturday night, and to be with the rest of Dan's family that lives in Utah on Monday for FHE. I was fairly confident that it was nothing to worry about, that Dan just had a cold and the spots would go away, still I felt like he should get his throat checked out just in case. So I set up an appointment for Friday morning.

Dan was a good sport and went to the doctor, even though he was feeling much better on Friday. I went with him and we left James with his Grandma Christiansen. The doctor came in and asked some questions then looked at his throat. She swabbed it with the longest Q-tip ever made, and then left. The LAST thing that I expected was for the doctor to confirm that Dan had strep throat....but when she came back in the first thing she said was, "You've got Strep."

As soon as we got in the car, I looked at Dan and laughed. I had fully prepared myself for Dan to tease me on the way home for making him go to the doctor for nothing, because I was so sure that he didn't have strep throat. Dan's mom and his boss at work both laughed at him too. The upside of all of this is that Dan didn't have to go back to work, so we had more time together Friday afternoon. We went out to Salem Pond, and then we walked up and down Main St. in Spanish Fork to see the scarecrow's. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to go to a BYU football game. We took James with us. That kid can sleep through anything. I was holding him through the first half. I'd jump up and cheer loudly for the Cougars, all while James slept peacefully in my arms. Even the cannon didn't wake him up, that kid can sleep. :) It was a lot of fun to take James to the game. During the second half, I'd put him on my shoulders while we sang the fight song after touchdowns and he smiled at the people around us. Someday he will probably/hopefully show some interest in the game...but it was still fun to have him there. :)

Climbing

One of the things that I have really liked about the layout of our house is that there is a little den right next to the kitchen. It is perfect for James to play in while I am in the kitchen because there is a little step up into the kitchen which has been very effective in keeping James contained...until now. On Thursday I was in the kitchen putting mozzarella cheese into smaller bags to put into the freezer. James was playing happily by the step. I was keeping an eye on him as I worked. I turned to put everything into the freezer. I closed the door and turned to go pick up my baby only to find that he had climbed up the step and was scooting towards me happily! I was shocked, but in a good way. I had no idea that James knew how to do that. At the same time I was a little sad because I hadn't seen him climb up. He did it the next day too, only I missed it then as well. :( FINALLY I got to see him climb up as Dan and I were eating dinner Friday night. Then tonight I caught him on video as he was trying to get to his Daddy. :)

Cousin's

James loves his cousins! :) It's so fun to watch James interact with his cousins, he gets so excited when he sees his cousins, especially the younger ones. On Labor Day, Dan and I were at his parents house celebrating Cam's birthday. James had a blast playing with his cousin Ryan. Ryan is about 9 months older than James and James loves him! Ryan would look at James and James would laugh, it was so cute!

James also loves playing with his cousins, Kai and Jimmer. Yesterday we went to my parents house for dinner. James loved playing on the floor with Jimmer.... especially with his toys. Everything that Jimmer had, James went after. This morning, Kai and Jimmer came over to be babysat. As soon as James saw him, he started to kick and talk. He was so excited to have more little people to play with.

It's so much fun to see how excited James gets when he gets to play with his cousins. :) I love it!

I had to post this picture too because it's just so cute! Dan and James both fell asleep on the couch yesterday while Dan was feeding James a bottle. :)

Baby Pride

Today was James 6-month checkup, which means new baby stats (length, weight, etc.) and percentiles. It's a bit humorous how excited and hopeful I get for these. As most of you probably know, I am a big basketball fan, and I would love to have tall children to teach the game to. Height is a very good thing for basketball players, and so I love to see how tall James is comparatively for his age.

In his first few checkups he went from the 73 percentile to the 83 percentile to the 97 percentile at his last visit. The graphs for length tend to flatten out over time, but his was pretty much a straight, steep line. That got me excited for today to see if he could crack the 99 percentile and keep his same rate going.

Lisa emailed me the numbers from today which put him in the 92 percentile. To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was one of slight disappointment. I wanted him to continue his unrealistic growth rate. It didn't take me long to realize how silly this was. However, when Lisa told me it looked they measured him wrong, and that he should have measured longer, I had thoughts of, "Of course, that must be it! That's why he's not as tall as he should be!"

It's funny how you're always so sure you'll never be one of those parents, but you inevitably are. I do realize that James may not even like sports, that he may only grow to be 5'6, or he may even *gasp* play soccer (I kid, I kid.... mostly....). Despite all this, I always have in the back of mind this vision of James being a dominant basketball player, leading Orem High School to state titles, BYU to national championships, and his NBA team (I haven't picked that one out for him yet) to countless championships.

Only time will tell what will become of my little baby boy, but it's fun to dream about what may come. The most important thing is that he dominates at being a good person, being kind and honest. Then, no matter what his end destiny is, he will have one proud papa.