Practice Makes Perfect

Abram has been practicing to be a good big brother and a great older cousin to Gabe.  He takes very good care of his 'baby', giving it baths.  He looks like he might have something up his sleeve in this picture.

Such serious thoughts for a little guy - he must be worried about the baby getting too cold in the tub.

Babies also need to be taught how to snuggle.

 

 Ahhhh...what do I do when the baby doesn't do what I want it to?????

 

When all else fails - do the most outrageous thing you can and hope the baby is distracted enough to stop crying.....'So get naked and bite my toes?'

 

I think I better keep practicing - this baby stuff is hard!

21 Months

I can't believe my baby is only a few months away from turning 2!  He is definitely showing more signs of being a big boy and less 'baby' every day.  One of his favorite activities is playing ball.  This will be much more fun once the snow is off the ground and we can play outside but he is currently content to play in the basement playroom.  It's hard to catch him in action kicking or throwing because he moves too fast and if your face is behind a camera it's harder to anticipate the ball coming at your face!

 Abram is stepping up his helping activities and this past week helped Josh make cauliflower for dinner.  Abram really enjoys vegetables (most of the time) and likes to try to say words like cauliflower and broccoli even more than he likes eating them.

 Abram likes to help after dinner too - in order to keep his hands out of the hot water, he got his own side of the sink filled with bubbles and a plastic dish - he thought he was pretty hot stuff.

For those who are counting - we are 31 weeks along.  9ish weeks to go to meet Abram's brother or sister!

Things That Make Me Laugh

Josh prefers that Abram calls him Papa.  Lately Abram calls him:

• Buddy
• Dada
• and my personal favorite ‘Josh’*

Helping:  Abram has started helping pick up after dinner.  We’re trying to teach him the art of holding things with two hands but he’s just not catching on.

In the mornings when we get him out of his crib he’s usually stripped off his PJs and is down to a diaper or his onsie.  He holds up his pajamas so proudly like a cat presenting a mouse.

He calls belly buttons , ‘bunons’

He likes to try and share things like his toothbrush with everyone who is around him.

If we let him, he would brush his teeth 8-10 times a day.

He knows way too much about electronics – literally as I am writing this he came up and plugged the power cord into the laptop.  About two minutes later he unplugged the cord and tried to plug himself in via his ear.

Abram has learned to use the phrase ‘One Mo’ – one more, while reading books before bed.  He looks at us with a furrowed brow, slightly crouches down, holds up his index finger and demands 'One Mo?' but says it more like a statement than question, then he nods his head and takes off for the book shelf before we could say no.  He got so good at the one more routine we had to come up with the 'Last One' phrase so that he knows we really mean business about the last book. 

He loves to dance and shake his little booty.

Abram is learning his colors.  The only reason that we think he is learning them is so that he can effectively tell us what type of ‘PADOUGH, PADOUGH, PADOUGH’ he wants (playdough).  The child loves playdough more than bathtime - which is a lot.

Abram loves to wear hats - he has a couple of actual hats but he can improvise as well, underwear, bowls, scarfs, playdough and food.

Here's some shots of my favorite guys modeling Abram's favorite accessories - hats and glasses.

 

I could go on and on but that's it for now.  He pretty much keeps us entertained all day.

Big Move

So we've spent the last two weeks  moving...just across town but it seems to take just as much energy to move across town as across the country.  Because we've been packing and unpacking I haven't taken a lot of pictures, nor have I posted much to the blog.

Abram and I spent most of the time on the couch while Josh, and our generous family and friends packed and moved us.

Abram helped papa cook one of our final meals in our 'first house' together.  Nana Comstock will actually move into the house while we have it on the market to sell and she'll watch Abram during the day.  This is a great help to us so that we can move into a place that is bigger to make room for our growing family.

Abram and Josh both seem to be in happy moods when food is involved!

Unpacking in our new location - Abram was very interested in helping out.

He really 'got into it' :)

What a silly boy!

20 Months

Abram continues to provide us constant entertainment and somehow has tapped into an endless source of energy.  Some might say our energy level is in an inverse relationship to Abrams.  (Mr. Miller would be shocked to know that I remember that term). 

We are roughly 14 weeks away from meeting baby #2.  The baby is moving more and more each day which makes everything seem more real.  I am starting to wonder how we’ll make it with two.  We are lucky that in a few weeks Grandma Debbie is moving to town to help out with Abram and the new baby when he/she arrives.  This will be a huge help!

I don’t have a lot else to report – Abram is learning new words every day, we definitely have to watch what we say around him.  I’d say we know what he’s trying to communicate 80% of the time which we think is pretty good.  Abram continues to have very strong opinions about books, food and life in general. 

Some of his current favorite things to do:

-At bedtime Abram has learned to say ‘one more’ which comes out as ‘one mo.’  He says this on his way to the bookshelf.  He will proceed to pull out what Josh calls the encyclopedia.  It is Abram’s biggest book.  His favorite page has trucks, cars, planes, boats, etc.  He will sometimes get impatient and flip to his favorite part.

-Another great thing about books at bedtime is that Abram has learned that he can prolong storytime if he will listen to longer storybooks.  This allows me to read Abram childrens books that I remember growing up.  Our current favorite is, ‘There is a Monster at the End of this Book.’

- He continues to love dancing to music, brushing his teeth and taking baths.  Of all of these baths pretty much trump all other fun activities.  This is especially true since he got bubble bath and bath foam for Christmas.

We've had some cold temps and yucky winter weather so we were stuck inside most of the weekend - here are a few pictures from our weekend inside.

Livermore Christmas

So this is my third attempt to get this post to save and each time everything gets deleted, so my descriptions have gotten shorter each time. Last weekend we celebrated Christmas with Josh's family.

So many presents!

Abram cut straight to the chase and grabbed his Christmas stocking/bag.

Who needs to open things one at a time when you can just dump everything out at once.

Abram was nice enough to share his treats with great-grandma Artis.

Abram opened up a great gift from Grandma and Grandpa Livermore and all the aunts and uncles.  They each put together a CD of music they thought he would enjoy and he got a Lego cd player.  Abram loves to dance so we've been listening to his new cds and he has had a dance party each night.  What a wonderful present!

Here he is is jamming out.

Abram also got an amazing chair/stool made by his great-grandpa Rex.  Here he is enjoying his new truck in the chair.  It was a good day for Abram.

Josh and I also got to go out to lunch one day on our own while Abram hung out with the rest of the family.

They got some pretty great photos of our little guy.

It looks like he was really sad that Mama and Papa were out of the house :)

 Let's Party!!!!

It seems like Abram may have worn out grandpa.

Christmas Continued...

 And the goodtimes and pictures continue..

Grandpa's place has all kinds of fun toys, fish, and loooooooong hallways for Abram to run down.

Of course our Christmas wouldn't be complete without putting Uncle Chris in a headlock.

This was actually taken Christmas morning, it was Abram's first peak at the stockings filled with goodies.

It's our family tradition that our stockings are actual socks - so here Abram is showing off his Christmas socks.

And what would to do next?  Put your socks on your hands and try to keep your blinking antlers in place.

Baby #2 received their first official gift.

Showing off all our Christmas socks.

Abram was pretty sure that Nana's new coffee maker would work better with his assistance.

Abram was pretty tired of pictures by the end of Christmas day so this is the best shot we could get with Aunt Vicki and Uncle Chris.

Merry Christmas!!!