MOAR VIDEOS!

I found a couple more that I just had to share.

The first one... I don't know. They're just brothers and they're just kidss. Being silly.


 This next one is a little long, so it may only be interesting to grandparents, but it's of Johnny singing, and it's pretty awesome. There isn't a lot of singing and dancing that goes on in our house because Johnny loses it every time I sing or dance. Thus, neither child does much singing or dancing either.



The actual song can be found here: We Are Busy Beavers: The Calendar Song

Documentation of the video variety

I think this blog is a testament to how awful I am at keeping things up to date. I'm not the best pen pal, it takes me forever to return phone calls, and I really only download photos and/or videos off my phone when I absolutely have to (i.e. the iOS needs an update and there isn't any space because I have 1200 photos saved on my phone).

I am just now posting videos from earlier this year because I finally downloaded them from my phone and they are too cute to keep to myself. I'll post a few of my favorites this week as I uncover and edit them.

This one was taken at my mom's house, where she will take the boys on "The Crazy G-ma Ride" and they loooooooove it. Can you tell? I just adore their faces when she's about to start the "ride". They're a little bit scared and a lot a bit excited.



Just too adorable. Hank's face makes me laugh every time.

This one is old, too, but I wanted to put it up because Hank's little voice is so sweet, isn't it? (Just in case you can't tell what he's doing, he's naming all of the "sauces" that are in his little kitchen cabinet.)
"This is one's orange sauce and this one is ketchup and this one is jam and this one is yellow mustard... And that's all the food we have." <---- synopsis; he repeats some a few times.

What could possibly go wrong? (Alternatively titled: Boys are weird.)

Yes, another post about bath time. We were in a bath-loving stage last week... probably because we didn't leave the house for nine days and baths are a good change of pace. Since they spent so much time in the bath, Johnny and Hank had to come up with better ways to keeping themselves occupied than merely splashing water all over the bathroom. So they came up with this lovely game:

(Note: No teeth were lost in the making of this film. At least not yet.)

Boys + Running = Presh

It was a relatively typical night. John got home at a normal time, I was scrambling to put dinner together, Hank was clinging to my leg and screaming his head off because I wouldn't pay attention to him right. that. second. and Johnny was upstairs putting his letters in order. Normal.

But then it was suddenly... abnormal.

John and I sat down to our meal and the boys actually sat down with us and ate their meals. No whining and crying about not wanting to eat dinner. No rejection of the food on their plates in favor of PB&J (that's just Johnny, Hank is not a picky eater, that's for sure). Just sheer hunger and enjoyment of their parents' company while we had a toddler-esque conversation about the day.

And then this happened directly after:
Head explosion cute, right? All I could think about while watching it happen- no, wait, my brain had fizzled out because of the CUTENESS that was happening in front of me and no thinking was going on during the performance. But later, once all of my synapses were firing again, I was thinking about a conversation I had eavesdropped on between two moms at the grocery store. I had Johnny in the shopping cart and they were behind me talking about how they really wished they had boys because boys are so much QUIETER than girls.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Ha ha.

Ha.

The video above is a pretty accurate example of the volume in my house at any given moment. Which I love and embrace because really? Laughing, talking and squealing kids are what makes my world go 'round.

And an old video of Johnny

I don't take a lot of video of Johnny... well, I do, but on my fancy camcorder and I am HORRIBLE at uploading those. Mostly because my poor old laptop doesn't have the storage capacity for all of those videos. Plus it takes FOREVER to process them.

But that's neither here nor there. Here's a really hilarious video of Johnny that I posted on facebook a month ago that I figured I'd share here in case you don't follow me on facebook.

Belated

I have this horrible habit of taking cute videos and pictures with the intent to throw them up here and blog about them and then COMPLETELY forgetting about them. *sigh* I guess that's how I roll. I'm not the most organized person, nor do I have the best memory, so stuff like this gets shunted to the side.

Anyway. So I took these videos about a month ago, so Hank was 11 months. Better late than never. Or something.


Cute, right?

I guess I need to post something

I know. I've been gone. [insert excuse here]

So Hank is full-on crawling now. Okay, maybe not the kind of crawling you see those adorable babies doing on diaper commercials, but his crazy spastic crawl gets him where he wants to go. Which is always toward Johnny and whatever Johnny is currently playing with. Hank has yet to figure out how to move his hands and knees in sync and instead just randomly throws a hand here, a straight leg there, a knee out the side. It's actually quite adorable. However, this new ability to move means that he's squirmier than ever. This kid was already quite the handful when being held (my Uncle Charlie described it as wrestling with a 25 pound kettlebell), but now he's got motivation to get down. Which makes him fight all the more.

"Let me down so I can play with the stuff Johnny doesn't want me to have, MOM!!!" he seems to say as he arches his back suddenly as he twists away from you in an attempt to make you drop him. It certainly is a workout.

I don't have any video of him crawling, but I have a really adorable one of him showing off another of his new-found talents. Enjoy. (This was taken with my iPhone, hence the weird aspect ratio.)

Hank's first word.

I know, I know, Hank's only 7 months old and certainly not old enough to talk, but I'm going to take this one and run with it because it took Johnny about a year and a half before he would say this:

Yeah, he's a Mama's boy for sure.

Cheating with the fork

I apologize for all of the videos lately, but I have this bad habit of taking lots of video and then leaving it on the camera. I don't know why I never get around to downloading video to my computer. It's not like it's hard, I just never do it. For some reason I can download pictures like a madwoman, but video? Forget it.

Anyway.

For the most part, Johnny still picks up food with his hands when he's eating. Yes, I know I should be pushing eating utensils, but I don't care. I let him use a fork when he's interested in one and I don't push it when he's not. Honestly, it's WAY less clean up for me if I just let him use his hands. Hands generally don't become accidental food catapults... generally. That being said, this particular day Johnny wanted to use MY fork. Not his little fork, my large adult fork. So I let him try it.

His use of eating utensils a bit unconventional and kind of defeats the purpose of using said utensil, but at least it's cute.

Wanna wrestle?

This is how Daddy and Johnny play:

Cute, right? What's even more adorable is that after Johnny was done playing this game, John turns to me and says, "This is what I always imagined being a parent would be like. Wrestling and rough housing with my little boy is the best."

::heart melts::

My kid hates cameras

I've said a few times that Hank is all smiles all the time until the camera comes out. This is evidence:



He's all adorable and happy and then he sees the camera... cue personality shut down. I suppose he won't be quite the ham that Johnny is... at least for now.

What Johnny and a teenage girl have in common.

Remember how I wrote about how many "words" Johnny can say and how a stranger would probably only understand the word "yes"? I think there's a new word a stranger would understand.

My kid is cuter than your kid.

Evidence is below:

Words

I've been getting all kinds of questions lately about whether Johnny is talking or not. It is my duty to inform you that no, Johnny is not talking. I mean, he says a few words here and there and can get me to guess what he wants, but we are not having full-on conversations.

Before I was a parent, I thought children started talking around 1 year of age or so and I had it in my head that this was a magical milestone when children would start spouting philosophy in short phrases. Apparently that's not how it works. I realized this when Johnny had been saying "da" for "dog" for about two months and the pediatrician was stoked that he has "words" for things. So really, this whole talking thing is entirely subjective.

And here is the subjective list of words that Johnny uses:

• dog
• daddy
• this
• that
• mom
• hot
• cat
• car
• truck
• bus
• giraffe (to be honest, I know he's saying giraffe, but the rest of you would hear "af-va!"
• phone
• water
• yes
• no
• bye
• hat
• spoon
• fork
• berry
• vacuum
• bubble
• blue
• duck 

I'm probably missing a few, but you get the gist of it.

Of all of the words listed, the only one that a stranger would understand is "duck." It sounds a little more German in that the "k" sound at the end comes out as "ach" but it's way closer than giraffe. Here's the thing: I'm the only one who understands all of these words. If we were taking a walk in the morning and he says "bva!" I know that he's pointing out a truck. So does that really count? No idea. I guess since I get it, I should say it counts, so according to me, his vocabulary is not half bad for a nearly-17-month-old.

Anyway. So all of this was to bring you what I consider Johnny's first real word:


I was just absently asking him if he wanted a protein shake one day and he says, "yes" complete with "s" sound at the end... and I almost dropped him out of shock. After only saying "da" for months on end he busts out this one. Way to keep me on my toes, kid.

Flava Flav probably did this as a child.

This is a little old, but I uncovered it and felt I should share.

So I lied

We're not back in action. Our Internet has been on and off for the last week or so, hence the lack of blog posts. Sometimes we'll have access for a few hours and sometimes for only a few minutes. Supposedly it's been fixed, but I don't think I'm the only one lying... anyway.

On to the reason you visit: Johnny. And this video is of him spraying himself in the face with water from a spray bottle.

I was making dinner and needed about ten minutes to get things finished up, so I handed him the spray bottle, an item he had coveted from afar and had never been allowed to touch. As you can see, the results were awesome.

Well, I guess you can't see all of the droplets of water that have formed on his face, but whatever. It's an excellent picture to show off how good his hair looks since I fixed it. No more chop-cut for this guy!

Sign Language

I've been trying to get Johnny to sign for a good nine months of his life and he's FINALLY getting it. Okay, not really, only one sign so far. And pointing. But I don't think that counts. Anyway, I've been working with him on trying to sign "more," "milk," and "all done" for a very long time. He has picked up the "more" sign, although I'm not convinced he really knows what "more" means... whatever. I should just take it and run with it, right?

Toys

Since Johnny's birthday is so close to Christmas, he got an awful lot of toys all at once. So, I took a few of those toys and put them in the closet so that I could dole them out as he tired of his other toys. Last week, I brought out this one from Grandpa and Grams Mitchell and he LOVES it. It plays little songs about nutrients and vegetables and he dances to it, which is adorable. I tried to catch him dancing on this video and he does at the beginning and at the very end.

Sorry, I guess that was a little long... I need to work on video length.

Ears, Nose and Mouth

For some reason, Johnny picked up the location of ears pretty quickly and with very little coaching. The nose and mouth, however, have required a little more work. He still has issues with the exact location of his nose, but we're getting there.

For Aunt Julie

We're looking forward to seeing you this weekend Aunt Julie!