Layton is 13 months!

My sweet Layton, you are 13 months already!  This has been a big month for you!  Lots I want to remember, so here goes...

You love the toilet!  One day I caught you like this.

Guilty!!  We try so hard to keep the door closed, but you just gravitate to this room!

You and Hannah are still just buds.  She loves you so much and has taken to picking you up and carrying you around--alot!  She really wants to be a little momma.  I love how she talks to you and is so good to you.  Totally makes me happy!

You are great at playing by yourself.  You will go to different rooms and find something to do and just play and play.  Now the week that Hannah and Lincoln were gone to Mimi and Pappaw's, you didn't want to be by yourself as much and constantly wanted me with you.  But as soon as they got home, you were back to your little independent self again.  You have started putting things into things now and spend several minutes trying to figure things out.

 You love to be outside and when you see a window or door, you point and grunt.  If I ask you if you want to go outside, you will nod your head up and down to say yes and try your hardest to say "outside".  You love to play with the water hose while it is filling up your pool.

 You get very upset with me when I turn it off and take the hose away.  You have a little fit.  I must say, even when throwing a fit, you are absolutely adorable.  AND you remind me so much of Hannah when you do this!!!  It is crazy how much you are like her.

 It is easy for me to melt with this face.  Other times that you will cry are when I try to leave you in the nursery for Bible class.  You are still having a lot of separation anxiety.  I can't really bear it, so I will either just take you to class with me or stay in there with you.  The other kids never really went through this.  I never had any trouble leaving them anywhere.  You are my baby, though, and I just don't like to see you so sad.  The thing is, I know that this phase will pass (all too soon) and you won't need me so much.  So, I am eating it up while I can, I guess.

You have some crazy hair in the mornings sometimes.  Had to take a picture of this do.

Side view!  Ha!  As for eating, I stopped nursing you right when you turned 13 months, so it took me about a month to completely wean you.  Bittersweet for me.  Thinking about the fact that that was the last time I will nurse one of my babies makes me want to cry.  I have spent about 3 1/2 years nursing out of the almost 7 years that I have had a kid.  Crazy thought.  I have been through a lot with nursing, but every single minute was totally worth it.

More about you and food.  You say "Ummm" when you eat something you like.  It is so cute.  You whisper "hot" and start trying to blow when you see us blowing your food before giving it to you.  You don't seem to care for bread much, but other than that, you just about like everything.  Lately you have taken to tomatoes. You love them and get so excited when you see them on the table.  We have been eating a lot of them lately from Mimi and Pappaw's garden.  You eat them like fruit!  Ha!  You also love anything green like broccoli, green beans, and peas.  You especially love strawberries and grapes.  You can eat 4 chicken nuggets from Chickfila and even had some steak this month which you liked.  You love your milk and when you want a drink you say "water" but it comes out sounding like "apple".  Funny.  I know exactly what you want and when I ask you if you want it, you nod your head up and down.  Your head nod is so cute.  You have started spitting food out of your mouth some mostly when you decide you want a drink at that moment and instead of finishing chewing up your food, you just spit it out.  A couple of times you have decided to throw your food off your tray and your Daddy has gotten on to you for this and boy did that hurt your feelings.  You just cried.  Pitiful.

I can take you anywhere.  You are so so good.  You were awesome during Hannah and Lincoln's week at soccer camp.  You were just starting to walk then.

I took this picture because you love electrical outlets.  I have to watch you like a hawk.  The one in your room that has your night light in it you go to EVERY single morning--if I don't take it out first and put a plug in it.  Scares me to death.

Your hair.  I love your hair.  I took you to get your hair cut while the big kids were gone.  It was pretty long and needed a trim.  Made you look like a big boy though.  These pictures were before your hair cut.  I love how your hair blows.  My favorite thing, though, is the part of your hair in the back that sticks up all the time.  Cutest thing ever.  People make comments about it all the time.

You can wave and say "Hi" now and sometimes say "Bye Bye".  You pull at your diaper if I ask you if you stink.  You try to say diaper and try to make the sound "Shoowee" to imitate me when I'm changing your dirty diapers.  You can blow kisses when you want to and give hugs and kisses.  Your Daddy is always asking you to give him kisses.  He loves your kisses.  You point at everything and when you hear loud noises like a truck revving its engine or a train you get excited and make a sound like "Whoa!"

You love for me to sing.  Your favorite song is still "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".  You also like Old MacDonald.

You are in a size 4 or 5 diaper (depending on what I have).  Your shoe size is a 3 or 4.  You are wearing size 12 months clothes mostly.  You are a little shorty and look absolutely adorable now that you are walking around.

You are sleeping pretty good.  You typically go to bed around 8:30 p.m. and wake up between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m.  I will go get you and put you in the bed with me for 30 minutes to an hour depending on if you go back to sleep or not.  Sometimes you do and sometimes we just cuddle for a bit before getting up.  I love this time with you.

One last thing I want to remember about you is your laugh.  You love to laugh and laugh easily.  I'm going to try to get your cute little laugh on video soon before it changes or something.  It is the cutest thing.

 Layton - 13 months

I could go on and on about you Layt and all that I love and want to remember.  You are an angel and I love you to pieces!

Soccer Camp

Two weeks ago the kids went to a Challenger British Soccer Camp here in Bryant.  It was from 8:30 to 10:30 each morning for 5 days.  I thought it would be something fun for them to do, help them learn more about soccer and better their skills, and let them get some GOOD exercise outdoors!  I think it did all of those things.  They seemed to really enjoy it, learned a lot, and worked up some serious sweat!  It was super HOT!

I love all the action pictures.  I took lots of pictures.  There were only 6 kids in their age group which I think was the perfect number.  This camp teaches through play, so the kids played lots and lots of fun games all the while working on different skills.

This game was Mud Monsters.  One person was the mud monster and went around trying to tag the others.  Meanwhile, they had to dribble the ball away from the mud monster to try to keep from being tagged.  If they were tagged, they had to stand like Hannah is standing below and scream, "Help! Help! I'm stuck in the mud!"  Another teammate had to come kick their ball through their legs to get them unstuck.

Coach Luke, who was from Wales, was really good.  He taught them cute little catchy ways to remember skills like "Three, on the knee."

This game was called The Sleeping Giant.  Coach Luke was the sleeping giant.  All the kids had to try to dribble towards him while he was sleeping.  If he looked up though, they had to stop really quick and be still.

They were trying to get up close enough to get the "gold" and run away with it without the giant knowing.  Here is Hannah about to get some gold.

Love Lincoln's face!  He was definitely having fun!!

Coach Luke dressed up one day with items that each kid brought for him to wear.  Hannah brought the wig and Lincoln brought the green tie.

At the end of each day, they would spend a few minutes playing for the World Cup.  They divided into 2 teams of three.  Hannah was on team Australia, and Lincoln was on team China.  They played a little game where the kids got to try to score goals.  Both kids did really well at this.

Sweet Layt hung out with me each day in the hot, hot sun!  He is just so good.

Here is Coach Luke on the last day holding up the World Cup explaining to the kids what they were playing for.

In the few minutes they played, Hannah scored 2 goals and Lincoln scored 1!  She was so proud of herself, I could tell.  This was definitely a confidence booster!

Lincoln scoring his goal!

At the end, Australia won.  Coach Luke congratulated them and then picked one player from each team that was like the MVP of the team.  Lincoln got it for his team!  Yay!  Coach Luke used the World Cup as a make-shift microphone and had Lincoln say a few words upon his receiving his award.  Ha!  So cute!  I think Lincoln just said, "Thank you!"

Hannah got MVP of her team!  Not sure she said anything, but she was proud! :)

At the end, they both received a t-shirt and a note from their coach telling them what good skills they had and just encouraging them.

Group picture.  I forgot to mention that they had to make their own flags for their country for the World Cup!

Goofy group picture!

I think this was well worth the time and the money.  I know the kids had a blast and learned a lot!  We are really having a good summer!

D is for...

We finished the letter D last week.  We haven't made it very far on our ABC's of Summer I know.  However, we are taking it slow and there is really no hurry.  I know we won't finish the whole alphabet over the summer, so we will probably just continue throughout the school year where we can.  I am having fun with it and I KNOW the kids have enjoyed it thus far.

One morning we made doughnuts--the biscuit kind.

 Hannah and Lincoln were ready to help dip the doughnuts in powdered sugar or cinnamon and sugar when they finished frying.

 They were yummy and fun!!

 One day we made daisies out of paper plates.  They were great decoration for our kitchen window!

They drew a picture of their Dad and wrote down things about him.

 Hannah wrote "You are the best builder, He is great, He takes care of me, He is a good friend, He grills good steaks, He is handsome, He loves me."

 Lincoln had me write for him that "He is a good friend, He is great at building things, He loves Layton, He is funny, He is the best, He takes care of me, He is good at fixing lights, He does stuff with me."

 They made Dotted D's.

A few other things we did were to count the doors in our house.  There were 91 doors--including cabinet doors and the like.  We traced the Letter D too to help learn how to write it.

Our scripture last week was "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..."  Matthew 7:12  We really need to work on this one! :)