18 Things About James

James is now 18 months old. Wha?! Here are 18 fascinating facts about him.

1. James hugs a lot. We haven't done an official count, but he's probably averaging 20 head-on-your-chest hugs a day.
2. James continues to be an oddly large child. At his 15-month check-up, he was still off the charts for height (almost 35 inches) and newly off the charts for weight (just shy of 30 pounds). As Ava likes to point out, however, he is still one pound lighter and a few inches shorter than her.
3. Jamesie-pooh is CRAZY about going outside right now and would never come inside if he didn't need to eat at semi-regular intervals.
4. Eating with James is maddening. He's fairly picky at this point, but will repeatedly yelp for "more" if he sees any food nearby, no matter how much of that item he has on his tray.
5. A favorite word of James's right now is "baloobaloo", or balloon. He systematically goes through all the books containing balloons and points out the balloons on each page and then moves on to the next one. It's kind of shocking how many children's books contain balloons. Perhaps he's not the first with this obsession.
6. James is particularly fond of kitchen activities. He still loves to prepare meals for us in his kitchen, but he's equally at home in our Tupperware drawer, which gets ransacked on a daily basis.
7. James trots with very stiff legs.
8. There are very few things that can get James as angry as a diaper change. As if cleaning someone else's poop could get any worse, now we have a huge wriggly, screaming toddler as our diaper-change partner.
9. James loves watering cans, which he uses to water his feet and the driveway.
10. James has 14 teeth.
11. Our 30-pound child generally demands to be carried at all times. If you refuse, he falls to the floor and pounds his fists and wails. Just today we had a breakthrough and walked halfway to the store holding hands. Baby steps, as they say.
12. James likes wagon rides so much that he will retrieve the wagon and just sit in it until someone takes him somewhere.
13. James is mesmerized by cats (his favorite), dogs, and birds. He uses his best animal calls whenever he sees one.
14. We keep a harmonica in James's car seat at all times so that he can play us some sweet tunes while we drive around town.
15. We have to reprogram the stereo several times a day. It's one of his favorite toys.
16. If James is able to lift an object, he will throw it across the room. We spend a good deal of time telling him, "If you'd like to throw something, you can throw a ball." Then he replies, "ball!" and gets a ball to throw.
17. James really likes waving and has a stiff-arm beauty-queen wave.
18. Whenever James sees something that looks like a phone, he puts it against his ear and says hello, then giggles.

April 2013

At the beginning of April we welcomed a new Edwards into the family! Leo is Tom and Emily's third child in so many years (we kid you not...their oldest is 3 1/2), which has landed Tom and Emily into the "certifiable" category in our eyes. We can say that because we know without a doubt they won't have time to read this blog post. Thus far, we have only Skyped with the young man, but we will be meeting Leo for reals when we go on a big ole Edwards vacation to the Cape in July. We can't wait.

Next to bringing life into this world, I suppose our April was comparatively uneventful. The entire family got a week-long stomach bug and for the first time both Helen and Brian were sick at precisely the same moment which made caring for the other two sick humans in our house quite miserable. It's times like those that we long for the days when being sick meant a relaxing day off of work watching Ellen and The Price Is Right.

The majority of April was gloriously warm and sunny so we shook off the winter blues and spent pretty much every day outside, or "ow-dide," as some call it.

Life in Balance

I was going to make all sorts of (likely hilarious) jokes about our lives being totally balanced right now--which is most assuredly not the case--but really this video just makes me giggle. Even though they are the same age, Griffin is so much heavier than Ava we actually had to move the seesaw along a notch so that Ava and Griffin could even attempt to seesaw together. And here's the result:

Gymnastics

Ava has finally made her long-anticipated entrance into the world of gymnastics. She's so excited she even allows her hair to be put in pigtails. The Children's Gym doesn't mess around though--by the second class she'd tried her hand at the rings, beam, vault, bars, and (her favorite) the trampoline. 

Warming up with the other athletes

What they don't tell you in the brochure is that viewing the Tiny Tumblers class is a wildly inappropriate pastime for an 18-month old. I'm not sure what I was thinking but I assumed there would be some sort of a barrier between the spectators and the "athletes." Instead, they have a few chairs set up right next to the mats so that your curious 18-month old can take a running start and then a flying leap into a tumbling pass. In fact, a relentlessly curious 18-month old can continuously take a flying leap into a tumbling pass for a full hour, until the class ends. Had I known, I certainly wouldn't have scheduled Ava's class on a weekday during work hours, thereby requiring the pursuit  and containment of said 18-month old to be a one-person job.

While gymnastics seems to be in the Rabold blood, it most certainly is not in the Edwards', so this could be a short-lived endeavor.