The End of January

The rest of January seemed to fly by after our traveling for the first half of the month, really the entire month flew by!  

The weather here has been CRAZY!  We had our first ever "snow" day with schools being closed (including Joseph's preschool) and this is what the "snow" looked like in our neighborhood...can you see it there on our neighbor's roof???  It did end up being icy that day (I guess) and was definitely cold! It hasn't been this cold in Texas since we have been here so that is taking some getting used to but I guess I shouldn't complain since it normally only lasts a few days and then we are back in short sleeves.

But, by the end of the week it was in the 70s again and this is how Joseph went to the park one day.  Construction goggles, Superman cape, firefighter boots and his purple Little Saints shirt.   Gotta love him!  Poor kid is so confused-he wears shorts all of the time inside the house and is always asking, "Can I wear shorts outside today?"  

 

 Ella's new favorite toy is to have Joseph push her on the school bus.  Her squeals and giggles are ADORABLE and sometimes they go a little too fast for my comfort zone but no bus accidents yet!

 Ella is a walking machine, now!  As of January 21st I think we can officially call her a walker.  She was taking up to 10-12 steps for most of January but it seemed like it all came together on the 21st where crawling is now a thing of the past for the most part.  One afternoon we played "zoo" where Joseph lead Ella and I around the house looking at the different animals and it was so cute watching Ella just follow him around toddling behind him.  

Here she is walking over to the shopping cart

 And still loves showing us her nose!

 Now that Joseph has mastered riding his bike (with training wheels) this is how we roll to the park these days.  Ella loves being on the tricycle.  Her feet can't reach the pedals yet but she just hangs out and enjoys the ride.

 Rich was in California for the last week of January so we sent him some bath pictures one night.  Ella loves to stand in the bath-after about the fourth time of asking her to please sit down she normally will.  

 This 13 month old is just so much fun.  She loves giving hugs and kisses and is still such a snuggler.  I caught her recently playing with a car and saying "brrrrm brrrm brrrm"-it is truly amazing the things that they pick up!  She is saying "ma ma" and "da da" but not very often but she has perfected the grunt "uhhhhhhhh" as we call it and grunts all of the time pointing to whatever she wants.  She still emphatically signs "please" though so at least she is grunting politely.  She uses "more" once in a blue moon-usually doing "please" instead of "more" which how can you deny her when she has polite manners.  She is asleep by 7:00 most nights and sleeps until 7:15ish in the morning.  Her naps are still kind of all over the place-sometimes 2, sometimes 1 but she can hang pretty well even when she's tired.  She is still using a pacifier to go to sleep,  at times during the day when she gets tired and in the car pretty regularly.  I am trying to wean her off of it but those car trips can seem a lot longer when she's yelling (she doesn't really fuss or cry, it is more of a yell) in the car so I either find myself passing snacks back to her and tossing the pacifier (or pacifiers) to her!  She has the best laugh but on the flip side also has a pretty good whine especially if she wants to be picked up.  We just love her to pieces and can't believe she is officially 1 now!  

Joseph loves taking the bath during the day-he plays super nicely in it and can entertain himself for a long time which is helpful especially if I am cleaning in there.  One day he was "finger painting" the tub and decided to also paint his face.  Thankfully it is non-toxic and of course washed right off but we did talk about next time not quite so close to his eyes!  I think he got the idea from the picture below the bathtub photo where he had face painting done at Emma's birthday party the last weekend in January!

 Such a cute tiger!  

Can't believe the first month of 2014 is over!!