Camden likes to play catch!

Camden really likes playing catch now, and he actually catches the ball. He just walked over to me on Monday, threw one of those small basketballs at me (it's just like a real basketball, but it's really small, and actually he needs something softer but he bites all the foam balls so he's not allowed to have those, so maybe a plastic ball?), so I tossed it back and he caught it. He just wanted to keep doing it over and over, and he was really good at catching it.

Jonmark came home for lunch today, and he saw Camden come up to me in the kitchen, throw the ball to me, and then I threw it back. I forgot to tell him that Camden is catching balls now, oops! He was so proud of him, and realized that's what he wanted yesterday when Camden walked over to him and threw the ball to him, he just thought he was throwing the ball at him.

Maybe it's not a big deal to anyone else, but we think it's cool because Mykenzi couldn't catch at this age, and probably not until recently and I think she still misses a lot. We just figured it was her age, just not being coordinated enough yet, and so we never expected Camden to do be able to play catch this soon. We'll have lots of fun this spring outdoors, they need to get more active outdoors anyway, and so do I!

Back out in the snow!

We told Mykenzi this afternoon that she could go back out in the snow before it got dark, but she fell asleep, and then so did Camden and Jonmark. She woke up at 5:30, got her snow gear out, and started getting dressed. It's already dark out, but we decided to let her go because we're not sure it'll be here tomorrow. Then when Camden woke up a few minutes later and he saw them getting ready to go out, he cried to go to, and as much as I don't think he needs to be out there (he's either getting a cold or teething and we have ice coming down now), neither of us could tell him no. So they're back out there for a few more minutes in the snow, and I'm inside, wrapped in a warm blanket, reading a book. Life is good!

Snow day!

We woke up this morning to the beautiful site of snow falling! How exciting! I knew they were calling for some sort of winter precipitation (we always seem to fall on the line of snow, sleet/freezing rain, or just plain rain, so you never know around here), so I opened the blinds in the bedroom, and the kids went crazy. Even Camden picked up on Mykenzi's excitement and started yelling SNOW! Nevermind that he and I came out of Target yesterday during some good flurry activity and he acted like it was just any other day, while Mommy was giggling at the snow flying in her face and eyes. He acted like I was crazy, but this morning when his big sister showed excitement, he was energized from a long night of sleeping and joined right in! I was relieved because I was getting worried he wouldn't want to go outside to play!

I have a box sitting below this wooden box (it's one of those trash bins, we keep the dog food in there), and Camden climbed up on top of it to reach the phone. That's the second time, the first time was yesterday....the box has been moved. I think he wanted to call Daddy at work, we were anxious for him to come home this morning. He went in for a few hours to make sure everything was done, and then came home to play in the snow since we don't know when/if we'll get anymore snow this winter.

Mykenzi loves trying to catch snowflakes. She had preschool yesterday during the flurries, and she said her and her friend there were running around the playground trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

Camden, checking out the white stuff!

Ready for sledding.

Camden, not so much!

He just layed back on Mykenzi and went along with the ride...

a little more...

until Daddy took a sharp turn and Camden landed face first in the snow! After that he didn't want to get back on the sled again for a while.

My angel making a snow angel!

She looks sad here, but I think I just caught her at a funny moment or something because she was having a blast.

Walking around on the driveway, conspiring, then all on her own, she decided to make a snowball and threw it at Daddy!

He was surprised, but he immediately grabbed snow off the car and threw one back at her, which she thinks is hilarious.

Then she couldn't stop herself, even throwing them at me!

Camden just wandered around mostly.

Daddy fixing his hat.

Trying to tell me something but everything is mostly jibber jabber now with a few recognizable words thrown in here and there.

Mykenzi wanted to make a snowman, but Jonmark didn't think it would work, so we moved on to something else.

Camden heading to the backyard to the playground.

I got hit with a snowball that was supposed to be the snowman Mykenzi was trying to make, so I tackled her to the ground (gently so as not to hurt her or myself), and she just cracked up laughing. I love that I have a girly girl who likes to play with baby dolls, paint her nails, and do hair, but also likes to play outside and doesn't mind getting wet or dirty! She's so much fun!

We have a large mound of dirt in our backyard that was put there with the intention of Jonmark working on the yard, but it hasn't happened yet (I was actually pregnant with Camden when that load was dropped off), and since it's been untouched, except for the occasional whack with the weedeater, it's growing weeds. Anyway, we thought it might be good for sledding, but after one trip down Mykenzi wasn't interested anymore and wanted to play on the playground instead.




Sorry I had the camera flipped the wrong way for the video (it's a video shot with my p&s), but it was the only video I got of Camden going down the slide.




Then I remembered to turn the camera, and Camden wanted nothing else to do with the slide after his last landing. You'll hear him calling out, he's yelling Zoey, he sees her and just starts yelling her name. A little loud one like his Daddy!

Camden's new thing, answering yes and no with uh-huh or mm-hmm and uh-uh or mm-mm. We just carry on conversations with him now, whether or not they make any sense at all.

We can't stop watching this video. Watch closely as they come by me after going around the mound of dirt, Mykenzi was actually laying on the ground being dragged and yet she was still laughing and having fun. I never noticed it until I watched the video afterwards. Then they just slid right off the sled together and layed there.

***

We were hoping to go back out in the snow again before it goes away, but Mykenzi, Camden, and their awesome Daddy are all snoozing now. As for the weather, now we're getting the freezing rain/ice, and I'm really hoping that everything will freeze tonight and school will be cancelled tomorrow so Mykenzi can have a day off!

Camden is talking like crazy!

It's mostly his own language, but he is saying so much all of a sudden. We both noticed right around Christmas that suddenly Camden is really talking, in a non-stop, uh oh, here we go with 2 talkers kind of way. He's not just labeling things, he's telling us stuff, and we're communicating much better now. He's also telling his own stories with his own language, and shakes his head yes or no when we ask him questions. Wonder why he won't say yes or no? Not a big deal, he sure knows how to tell Mykenzi to stop it, which comes out like "bop bit". He still has a long way to go, but some of the new things he says and how he's telling us what he wants or what he's doing is really neat.

His newest thing is pointing out his body parts, which I have yet to get on video, but it's so cute how he shows me and says each body part. As best as I can describe, his body parts sound like this: hair - air (not much emphasis on the r though), ear - eah, eyes (says this the best), nose - dough, mouth - bow (as in bow wow), tongue - ton, belly button - beh bun, elbow - belbo, knee (also says this right), feet -pete, and toes - dose. He hasn't said hands, but when I ask where they are sometimes he'll hold them out for me and smile.

He likes to sing and dance, a lot. When I sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" he loves to put his fingers on his cheeks for the "then your face will surely show it" part. They watch the Disney channel, and he loves Choo Choo Soul. He sings right along with them, especially the beginning where they say, "all aboard the choo choo train, all aboard the choo choo train, all aboard the choo train, all aboard, all aboard, choo choo, choo choo soul." In addition to Mickey Mouse, which he also sings along with, he loves the Imagination Movers, and sings along to their songs too.

My favorite new thing he does is that he's learning to count. He can actually count to ten in his own language if he hears a toy or Mykenzi doing it. He doesn't do it too often with us, but sometimes we can get him going. It's not any where near the actual words, but he does have the proper inflection, he just uses the wrong letters to make the sounds. I don't think he totally understand what it means, how can he, he's 19 months old? However, he will point with his index finger at things and make the sounds like he's counting, and I also know he's about to jump off something if I hear the sounds, if he's counting to three loudly then he's getting ready to jump! I think he gets all this from watching Mykenzi.

He even sat on the potty the other night for the first time while I was getting the tub ready, and when he wouldn't do anything I had Mykenzi get on the toilet, well he actually peed a little in the potty. I made a huge deal out of it, even showed Jonmark, who was not really thrilled. He said it was such a little amount and he didn't know what he was doing so it didn't matter. I thought it was cool. I'm in no rush to potty train him, in fact I fully accept the fact that we'll most likely have 2 in diapers this summer (Mykenzi refused to use the potty until she was 3 years old), but he's shown a lot of interest in the bathroom goings-on lately and Mykenzi's potty has been in there his whole life, in fact, he's recently started sitting on it (lifting the lid and sitting down, in a diaper), so I thought I'd have him sit down anyway instead of peeing in my bathroom floor, which he has done before.

I thought I'd post some of the new things he's doing lately since I don't have any new pictures to post!

A NEW growing Sullivan!

Pregnancy Tickers from WiddlyTinks.com


We're very excited about a new addition to the family this summer! Mykenzi keeps saying, "I'll love it if it's a boy, but what I really want is a sister." No surprise there, what little girl wouldn't want a little sister? Especially since she already has one little brother. If Camden realized what was happening and he could express his opinion I have no doubt that he'd request a little brother to play trucks with, enough with all these babydolls! She did tell us yesterday though that she thinks it's a boy. I asked her one day what we're going to do if it's another boy when one day Daddy will take off in the woods with both boys, leaving us here alone, and she said we would go paint pottery. (She saw this on Jon & Kate Plus 8 for Kate's day out with the 5 girls, and she's been asking for just her and I to go do this one day.) Jonmark has not decided what he thinks it is, though we often both think this must be a girl when making certain comparisons to my pregnancy with Mykenzi, but in a lot of ways this pregnancy is totally different from both Mykenzi's and Camden's, so who knows! He knew Mykenzi was a girl and that Camden was a boy, so he's determined to be right this time as well, and says he hasn't gotten that "feeling" yet one way or the other. I will be thrilled with a healthy baby either way, with Camden born in May and Mykenzi born in June, we have all the clothes we need for a July baby. I just hope all goes well the next 6 months, and that this baby continues to grow and is born healthy!

Now that we know everything is going well and we're in the second trimester, we'll be searching for a name. We've talked about it some the last month or so, but we don't seem to like many names, nor do we agree on any one name for a boy or girl. We settled on Mykenzi's name at 19 weeks, one week before the ultrasound where we found out that she was a girl. With Camden we only really talked about boy names, I wanted Camden and he wanted Tanner. After the ultrasound we took Mykenzi to breakfast at Chic-Fil-A (she loves that place), and I brought up the name battle we'd been having and Jonmark told me he had gotten used to Camden weeks ago but was enjoying driving me crazy with Tanner. Now that we've been discussing names, he no longer likes Tanner (glad we didn't decide to use it after all). This time we may not actually be able to choose names until we know what we're having, though I wish we could at least pick out a few boy and girl names. Middle names aren't too difficult as we hope to choose a special middle name just as we did with Mykenzi (Rylynn, combo of our middle names, Jonmark's is Ryan and mine is Lynn) and Camden (Phillips, my maiden name, to honor my father). We have a few options for middle names, but we need first names before we can choose those. We have a book with 100,000 baby names so there are plenty to choose from. Who knew it would be so hard for two people to agree on one name, especially when there are 100,000 suggestions at our fingertips!

Away In a Manger

Mykenzi's class also sang Away In a Manger during the Christmas program, though not quite like this, and she did mess up the ending, but notice how she picks back up when she stops.


Away In a Manger

Mary

This was the fingerplay that all the preschool classes did together at the Christmas program.

Singing the Wonder Pets song for Trenton

This video was supposed to be done 4 months ago, but like everything else, I kept forgetting and putting it off when I did remember. I wanted to get a few videos of Mykenzi doing the stuff from her Christmas program, so I decided to get them all this morning. Now I just need to get Camden talking on one so that we can remember his sweet baby voice later!

Sorry she sort of messed up the words at the the end, Trenton! Don't mind Camden signing along there if you can hear him!

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year, everyone! We like to celebrate New Year's Eve at home now with the little ones, keeping off the road away from drunk drivers. So to make it fun for them I serve finger foods/appetizers in the evening in lieu of dinner. This year I also made a party punch for them, which we all loved, just Hawaiian punch and Sprite mixed together. They have party hats which we bought to ring in 2008 and they were in good shape so I decided to keep them and reuse them each year, until they get messed up, which will most likely happen eventually. We also take them to the party store after Christmas to get noisemakers (those they usually mess up, but I think I managed to save them in time this year) and Mykenzi wanted the sunglasses with the year on them again because she had the 2008 sunglasses and Camden loves to wear those, so they each got a 2009 pair.

Yes, Little Man was running around all evening in his diaper. I saw him and asked Jonmark why he took his clothes off and he said he was trying to get them off so he helped him. Whatever, it's warm enough inside I guess, as long as he doesn't take his diaper off, which I have to watch because he will and he has, a lot.

Mykenzi was ready to go in her Minnie Mouse pjs, but I told her she could stay up as late as she could make it, figuring she wouldn't make it, and wouldn't you know she made it until about 11:58 p.m., or so Jonmark says! Mommy certainly didn't make it! The ball drop was recorded for her though, so I watched it with her when she woke up on New Year's day.

Daddy has the tallest hat with a clock on it.

Sporting those 2009 shades!

We let them celebrate with the horns early in the evening before Camden went to bed so that she could get it all out of her system and so that he could get into the excitement too, which he did.

Camden cracked up everytime Jonmark blew his horn, which he did repeatedly because he loves a laughing audience!

Camden was trying to blow his horn, but it didn't work so well for him, we mostly heard him hum or something.

***

It was a great New Year's though! Here's to a wonderful, even better 2009 full of laughter and love!

Sharing toys

Camden was thrilled to have a turn on Mykenzi's new laptop.

I believe she let him play with it so she could sneak off with his new trucks. Don't mind the face there, she did not want me taking her picture. She's 4 and full of sassy attitude......good luck to all the moms with those sweet baby girls out there, they go from sweet to sassy in no time, but I wouldn't trade her for anything in this world!!!

Christmas at my parents house

After playing with their new toys for a few hours, we went to my parents house for an early Christmas dinner with my brother's family. Six grandchildren (just between the one brother and I) plus the six adults is starting to crowd that house, but we have fun anyway and we always look forward to a few hours with them on Christmas.

Daddy helped Camden open his presents from Maw Maw and Pop. Here he has a new special sippy cup with Thomas the Train on it.

Mykenzi got some new Dora hair ties.

For some reason Mykenzi loves the old Etch-a-Sketch, so we gave her a regular size pink one for Christmas and Maw Maw and Pop gave her a travel size one.

Maw Maw and Pop got her a pair of snow boots...just in case. Oh, how we want some snow at this house!

Playing with a few of their new things while waiting to eat dinner. I didn't take enough pictures of them while unwrapping presents, but they had a great time and got some cool new toys. Camden especially loves his new race track, the Playskool Wheel Pals Speed 'n Go Funway, he can just sit and watch the 2 cars go around and around and he'll yell at Mykenzi if she tries to pick one up. Mykenzi got a remote control My Little Pony on a scooter and she loves to make it go around and around in circles.

Christmas Morning

No fireplace/mantle on the main floor (there is one in the basement), so in order to avoid Camden pulling down heavy stocking holders on his head every time he yanked on a stocking, we chose to use the 3M hooks to hang them on the wall. They really work! The fifth stocking there is for Zoey, the dog. Santa even hung winter gloves for Mykenzi and Camden from their stockings.

Santa's plate of cookies he enjoyed, and one of his own candy canes that he brought (he hangs candy canes on our tree every year before he leaves), and he even left a note for Mykenzi and Camden this year and put the picture of him and Camden (though he's screaming and trying to get away) next to the letter.


"Mykenzi and Camden, Thank you for the delicious cookies and milk. I helped myself to the milk because I saw the cup and chocolate syrup sitting out. I LOVE chocoalte milk!! Thank you both for the reindeer food! All of my reindeer enjoyed the snack, especially Dasher and Rudolph! Dasher did not want to leave, he ate so much! I hope you both enjoy your gifts! Remember, I like giving to good boys and girls! Have a great Christmas! See you next year! Love, Santa
P. S. Maybe next year both of you guys will want to take a picture with me! Oh well, at least I was able to see you!"


I woke up first, and laid in bed, watching A Christmas Story, until everyone woke up (Mykenzi went to bed with us, and when Camden woke up in the middle of the night we were exhausted so he joined us too, thank goodness we have a King, but there won't be room for baby #3 in there, who will sleep in the bassinet in our room for the first several months, but Jonmark says the 5 of us are not sharing one bedroom). When Mykenzi woke up she was very excited to see if Santa came, and so Camden got excited too, but just before we started unwrapping presents Mykenzi laid down on the floor and wouldn't move. She ended up having a fever, so after the tylenol kicked in she perked up and was ready to see what Santa brought.

Camden loves his new choo choo trains, so I have no idea what this face was about.

Mykenzi, wearing her new purple Dora robe that we got her for Christmas, found the chocolates that Santa always leaves for us, and I even let her have a piece. After all, it was Christmas!

Camden enjoying the blanket I made for him. I made Mykenzi a Dora blanket, and Jonmark a reversible blanket, Virginia Tech Hokies on one side and Washington Redskins on the other. It's extra long too so that it actually covers him.

Santa gave Camden a Mickey Mouse dinnerware set with a sippy cup, and he LOVES that cup, even though he already had two Mickey Mouse sippy cups. He just can't get enough of Mickey Mouse. It's always been his favorite show on tv and I always say it's because that was the only show Mykenzi would watch when I was pregnant with Camden. She didn't start liking tv shows until she was 2.5 years old, and the only thing she wanted to watch was the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so we recorded a bunch of them and she watched them over and over, so I figure Camden heard it so much in the womb it's all he likes now!

Mykenzi's new pink piano. She asked for one for Christmas 2007, and when she didn't get it she continued to ask for it all through 2008.

You can't see them very well, but she got a new pair of pink heart earrings in her stocking, along with some games for her Leapster2 and some other things.

Camden got his own cell phone in his stocking.

He also got a train, an airplane, and a 4-wheeler, along with a bunch of other little things.

Daddy was going through his stocking, now playing with some crazy knife/tool thing, and Mykenzi was playing with her new laptop from the Carters. She absolutely loves this laptop, so does Camden, and she didn't even wait for us to take it out of the box before she started playing with it.