Bedtime

Look what we found when we went up to bed the other night...

Apparently, Nate thought this was a better place to sleep than in his bed.

Our Big Three Year Old

On Christmas, we celebrated Nate's third birthday. Nathanael is such a good-loving little boy. He is pretty laid back and so happy. He goes off and plays by himself in the basement for hours. He also makes it his goal, while he is down there, to dump each and every box of toys. The next time I head downstairs, it looks like a tornado went through. The other kids don't like that he does this very much, because they are the ones who we make clean it all up.

His birthday and Christmas gifts pretty much consisted of trucks, tractors and cars. It made this little boy VERY happy.

Here, one of the boys put dish cloths in his shirt to be like football pads. This is the face and the growl he thinks football players do.

One of the funniest things he does lately is tell everyone how old he is. For example, someone will ask him how old he is and he will respond, "ten." We then tell him, "no, three." Just the other day, we asked him and he responded, "ten!" We said, "ten?" He then said, "no, probably eweven." He cracks us up more than we can count everyday and we are blessed by him.

Look Who's TWO!

Once again, along with Christmas we were able to celebrate another special day in our family, Nathanael's second birthday. We celebrated after dinner with both sets of Grandmas and Grandpas. He loved tearing into more presents. The other kids think it is no fair that he gets to have his birthday on Christmas and get even more presents. I don't think it is something to be jealous of. He doesn't get anything the rest of the year. Bummer! Since he is still young and doesn't have much of an opinion, what we have been doing, by having a birthday party on Christmas night, works well for us. When/if he starts to get bothered by his birthday on Christmas, we will change things.

I just love this little pose!

Tearing into some pressies!

Enjoying the first licks of his birthday cake. He was adorable trying to blow out his candles. He tried, tried and tried but finally gave up. He just looked up at me as if to say, "this is too much work."

We are so blessed to celebrate another year of Nathanael's life. It was also neat to be able to celebrate it, along with Christmas with the rest of our families.

Wagon Torture

Nate - 16 Months

Well, he is not actually sixteen months for a little over a week. I did have a few cute pictures of him and I wanted to share them. He is growing so fast. Nate is a funny little guy and still so good. He is finally walking all the time. He has been doing it for about two weeks now. He just took his mighty time and gradually faded out the crawling. I was watching him walk around this morning and thinking that he has been walking forever. He is quite stable. It is funny to watch him try to run from us or one of the boys. I will try to get a video of him walking up soon.

Since the weather has been nice here, the kids have been outside quite a bit. Nate loves watching them out the windows. He also stands at the open back door and throws anything that is near him out the door. It is a fun game for him. He also loves to be outside. The boys take him out and play with him. He loves it until they try to lug him around or pull him in the tiny wagon (picture to come). Then he starts to yell. It is so fun to watch your baby explore their first year of being able to go outside. All of a sudden their world gets a little bigger. Mom also notices that her little baby is growing up too (weep, weep).

Nate's new hair-do. Isn't the mohawk in?

In this picture, the boys got him to say "cheese". That is exactly what he is doing.

Nathanael 14 Months

I took these cute pictures of Nate this week. As you can see, he isn't too keen on being locked in his room by the baby gate. He tries to pull it down. He has some room playtime everyday when I am putting the girls down for a nap. He just crawls around and plays with his toys or one of his brothers. He also likes to play with the diaper pail (as seen in the photo below.)

He is still not walking, although he is so close. He is taking more and more steps each day. He just has to do it when he doesn't know he is doing it. If he is focused on something other than walking, he will walk straight across the room. I will have Steve get a video up soon. He is also starting to show that he has an opinion on things. We can no longer have a cookie or dessert and not give one to him as well. He just reaches out his little hand and begs.

When we are all around the table together the kids do a lot of voting on things by raising their hands. Nathanael has picked right up on the hand raising. If we are talking about something and then look at him, he assumes we are voting and he raises his hand. It is so funny. He can't be left out.

Just thought you would enjoy a couple photos.