Dear Samuel, Month 36

Dear Samuel,

I'm a little late in posting this, but you are now 3 years old!! Wowsers...where has the time gone?!?!?!  It was so fun to see you turn 3!

One of your recent quotes is,"Thank you for telling me".  It's funny how, as a parent, you don't realize what you say until your child repeats it. Evidently when you actually tell me that you have to potty (you're getting better at doing this), I say, "Thank you for telling me".  So now every time you tell me you have to go, you say to me, "Thank you for telling me".

You prayed tonight for "...chicken & fries". I don't know why that came into your mind tonight to thank God for them because you didn't eat either of them today, but it did. I love the randomness of your mind and I love your simple faith.

You are so affectionate in what you say & your actions. You love to give hugs and tell daddy, Livi & I that you love us. You also randomly will tell Elmo that you love him and Beren too!

You go once a week to Dawn's house. You get very excited to go and see your friends - Brideget, Emily, Charolette and baby No-No(Noah). You also enjoy going to Moppets while I am at MOPS every other Thursday. The teacher have commented lately that you have come out of your shell -evidently you were pretty shy the first month or so.

Your favorite movie to watch is Toy Story 1, 2 or 3 (yes, you have all of them) and you absolutely love to play Wii Party. Your daddy and I are amazed by how you can navigate the controllers.

I love you so much, buddy!

Love,
Mommy

Olivia Crawling!

Olivia began crawling a little over a month ago with an army crawl, but just a few weeks ago she started to crawl on all fours.

Samuel turns 3!!

We celebrated Samuel's 3rd birthday over the course of a few weeks. We did a mini birthday celebration while my parents were in town and then this past weekend we took him to Red Robin. Samuel (& Ben) love Red Robin! Samuel loves to get a balloon there. When they sang Happy Birthday to him, he got a bit shy.  He doesn't really care for ice cream so Ben & I gladly ate that for him. As we left, he picked out an orange balloon. Not too long after we got home, it popped on the ceiling!  It was absolute devastation! Samuel was SO upset! We felt so bad for him! It broke my heart to see his disappointment. So, after he went down for a nap, I went to the grocery and got an orange balloon. When he woke up, he was quite pleased and has not let it out of his sight since. Seriously. We tie the ribbon to a teddy bear at bedtime because he wants it right by him. He now carries it around the house in addition to his 2 Elmos.  Yes, I said 2 Elmos. He figured out that we had a spare!

Red Robin

Olivia at Red Robin -she mostly slept

Holding the orange balloon that would soon pop...

On Sunday, he opened presents & ate birthday cake. We wanted to do all of this on Sunday even though his birthday wasn't until today because Ben & I aren't home at the same time during the week (yes, it's a crazy life).  So, all in all, we have successfully trained Samuel to think that birthdays and presents are on-going. He randomly asked me to open presents last week sometime.

Cars birthday cake

opening presents

Buzz Lightyear

Waiting for daddy - right as we were about to have him blow out the candles, Olivia needed a diaper change.

eating the icing, not any bit of the cake

New Year's weekend

My parents visited for New Year's weekend. It was a very cold and snowy weekend so we mostly just hung around the house. We did do an early birthday celebration for Samuel at Chuck-e-Cheese. This was Samuel's first time and he really enjoyed it. He mostly just wanted to go down the slide (which was free). My dad, Ben & I played the games which was fun for us!

Playing with Papaw's shirt buttons!

Olivia even enjoyed herself

Mamaw & Olivia

He loved going down this slide over & over!

Cupcakes!

He only ate the icing!

And Another video...

Cute video of Sam & Olivia

There are many things I love about this video! I love that Sam wanted to help feed Olivia, I love that they had so much fun together & I love the huge spoonfuls he gave her!

Dear OIivia, Month 8

Dear Olivia,

You love to move! You started crawling this past month. The first week was an army type crawl like your brother used to do, but it quickly moved into a real crawl on all fours. Then, just this week you started pulling yourself up on anything and everything! Another week or so and you will be completely pulling yourself up on tables, chairs, etc. 

You now have another tooth (that makes 3) and your top 2 on the way.  Grandma & Grandpa Watts visited over New Year's weekend and you managed to not sleep thru the night all weekend! We joked that you wanted to stay up for New Year's and you just about did. I think you finally feel asleep at 11:30!

You love to listen to music and have started to rock back and forth to tunes.  One of your favorite Christmas presents was a CD player from Grandma & Grandpa Watts.  Now you can listen to music as you fall asleep.
You have started to clap your hands even though you don't really hit your hands together all of the time but you try. You also do a semi "wave" when talking with family on Skype.

I have a feeling that you will be walking by a year at the rate you are going. You continue to be such a joy!
Love,

Mommy