Cameron Turns One!

I can't believe it! Last week my baby turned One!

Our sweet little princess is growing up so fast.

Here she is on her Birthday!

Cameron Renee was born one year ago weighing 5lbs 9oz. Now she is 4 times that at 21 lbs. She is still our sweet baby girl even though she is becoming more of a toddler and less like a baby every day. She is standing up next to anything she can hold on to, (including furniture, Mommy's legs, her big brothers, etc.) She moves along the couches quickly and can walk behind the baby stroller that Grandma B got her for her birthday. We know that any day she will be walking on her own. She has two bottom teeth and is cutting two top teeth this week.
She can be a bit of a picky eater, but generally she does well, (her chubbiness is evidence.) Her favorite things to eat are Honey Nut Cheerios and baby raviolli. In fact sometimes I have to put Cheerios's on her spoonful of baby food to get her to open her mouth. She likes to do things on her own, like feed herself and put her pacifier in her mouth by herself. She even tries to put her clothes and shoes on by herself, but as you can imagine that ends up mostly being her banging her shoe on her foot or ankle smiling at me like she's actually getting it right. She thinks she is so funny and so tricky. When she thinks she's done something clever or cute she will clap for herself and wait for you to join in.
She loves her brothers, especially Carter. Whenever I put her in the car she has to turn to see if Carter is in his seat too. She calls his name if she can't find him, and loves to wrestle with him and play "chase me" with him. She thinks Kyle is hilarious! He can always make her laugh big belly laughs even if she's upset. His tricks usually involve a fake fall of something else that appears to hurt him and she just loves it.
She speaks a little bit. She can say Mama, Dada, Carter - "Crtr", Kyle - "Ka", More - "mo mo", Bye Bye, and Ni-night. She can sign More, and waves for good bye, hello, and good night. She doesn't like to speak on Que and if I ask her to say Mama she will often look me right in the eye and clearly speak "DADA". She's such a turd! Lol!
My sweet little girl loves to make messes! She will sit in front of a basket of toys or diapers and pull them out one by one, throwing them over her head behind her until there is nothing left, and then move on to something else. She pulls socks out of drawers, shoes out of bins, Kleenex out of boxes, everything out of the diaper bag, and anything else she can mess up. Her favorite thing to destroy is nice neat folded piles of laundry! She lights up when she sees them. I learned very quickly that folding laundry on the floor is NOT and option if Cammie is awake. Sometimes I let her have a pile of dish towels just because she is so funny and cute when she is being destructive. I thought girls were suppose to be neat and tidy. Boy was I wrong!
I could go on and on about her...

She Mommy's sweet little princess,

the light of Daddy's life,

her brothers favorite playmate,

and she just crawled up into my lap so I thinks I'll go snuggle her for a few minutes.

Happy Birthday Bam Bam! We love you to bits!

My Stubborn, Sleepy, Little Guy

Kyle is by far my most stubborn child. In fact he may be the most stubborn child I know. He rarely takes naps anymore, (because if I let him nap for even 30 minutes I don't get him to sleep until close to 11 PM most of the time.) This week all of the kids have been sick with a particularly nasty cold. Kyle is just getting over the worst of it and was so tired yesterday afternoon, but refused a real nap and was fighting falling asleep. On the way home from Carter's school Kyle started crying and throwing a fit saying, "My eyes are broken Mommy! They won't stay open!" After we got home I tried to get him to lay down on my bed and watch some cartoons, but he knew if he did that he would fall asleep. I couldn't even get him to sit on my bed, or sit at all for that matter. He just wanted to stand. So I turned on cartoons and put his little chair next to him in case he changed his mind. A little bit later I went in to check on him and found him like this. He stayed like that for almost an hour and a half. Poor little guy.

O-F-F Spells Off

Carter came out of the spare room the other day and said, "O-F-F says off. I saw that on your treadmill." I was very impressed. Nobody told him that word says off he figured it out on his own. He read the word. He can recognize his name and a few other words, but this one he actually read! Later we grabbed dinner out, and he wrote it on his place mat. Again, he knows how to write all his letters, but this was the first word he wrote all on his own! Not something from a worksheet that he copied, or something he was prompted to write letter by letter. He just did it! My baby is getting so big. I guess Pre-School is paying off (no pun intended)!

Learning to Ride a Bike

Last Friday was a beautiful sunny day and we were all out front playing. Some of the "bigger kids" in the neighborhood were riding their bikes up and down our street. Carter noticed that their bikes were like his but without training wheels. Gregg told Carter that we could take his off and teach him to ride like the big kids if he wanted. Carter is not a daring child and opted not to do it. No big surprise there. The next morning we were surprised, however, when Carter brought it up on his own. Apparently in the night he decided he'd like to try it. Unfortunately our beautiful sunny day was now a freezing foggy morning. We bundled up and walked down to the park. Gregg thought that the grass and dirt of the baseball field would be a better training ground that the asphalt in front of our house. I concurred.

One last shot with the training wheels.

A few practice runs with Daddy holding on to him.

Then...he did it (briefly)!

Kyle wanted to try.

He could have probably done it if only he could reach the pedals better.

After a few more runs we went home. Carter didn't want to fall anymore, Kyle was mad that he only has a tricycle, and Cammie had been cold and screaming for 20 minutes. At least Carter was able to do it a few times. Now we can practice more on nice days and hopefully he'll be a pro this summer!

Happy Birthday Babe

Gregg's Birthday was last weekend. We didn't do much. He had the weekend off so we mostly just hung out at home and played with the kids. Carter and I secretly got a birthday cake from the bakery the day before and hid it in the outside fridge. Carter tried so hard to keep it a secret, but before dinner daddy told him to be good or he wouldn't get dessert and Carter accidentally let it slip. You can't really blame him. A big chocolate cake in the fridge is a really big secret for a 4 year old to keep, even for just 24 hours.

You can see how excited they were about it!

The boys wanted a turn blowing out the candles so I re-lit a few for them.

Kyle practically licked his plate clean.
You'd think we never give the boys anything sweet by the way they sucked it down.

The cake was obviously the highlight of the day! We had dinner with friends the next night to celebrate and that was nice. All in all a nice Birthday weekend.

Happy Birthday Babe!

Rub a Dub Dub, Three Kids in the Tub!

Last night I had all three of my kids in the tub together. This is not a common occurrence because, well lets face it, 3 kids is a lot for one little tub. The boys like bathing with their sister because she LOVES the bath so much. (In fact she gets very, very mad if she hears the water running but doesn't get to be the one bathing.) She is so much fun to watch and play with. She squeals, and screams, and splashes, and laughs. She normally gets her own bath, but last night I opted for the quicker, One Bath for Everyone option. My sweet little Cameron is kind of a bully in the tub. She's not use to having to share the toys and kept taking everything away from her brothers. At one point Kyle turned his back to her so that he wouldn't have to give up what was in his hand. They looked so silly squished together in the tub. Not wanting to leave the kids alone to go get the camera, I grabbed my always handy cell phone and started snapping pictures. In hindsight I should have had Gregg grab the camera for me because they're pretty blurry, but at least I got some shots of the action.

Not a lot of room for playing, but nobody seemed to mind.

Action shot: Carter with bubbles in his eyes, Kyle trying to drink the bath water, and Cammie happy as always!
Rub-a-Dub-Chub! Look at her little arm rolls!

I said, "Kyle, make a funny face."
This is what I got:

I had a really cute picture of Kyle here, but Blogger didn't like it I guess because It wouldn't let me put it up!?

Carter doing his ever popular "scary face"...

...and my little angle hogging all the loofahs. Gotta love her!

More Sudsy Pictures

For Christmas the boys got special colored, foaming bath soap (thanks Auntie Allie.) Since I was doing a bath post I thought I'd put up some of the sillier pictures I've taken of them using it.

"Cheese?"

El Diablo!

(I know it looks like Carter's always grabbing his crotch, but I tell him to cover himself up. Nobody wants a "wiener shot" and I never know if I'm going to want to use something on the blog.)

Kyle rubbed it on his shoulders and chest and said, "Look Mommy I made a shirt!"

I'm really going to have to start keeping my camera closer during bath time, cell phone pictures are convenient but SO blurry.