London at 18 months...

Well I'm a little behind on my blog.  Imagine that.  I have like 4 older posts I haven't uploaded pictures to, so they aren't published yet.  One day you'll check out my blog and there will be just a ton of old, yet new to you, stuff that I finally got around to uploading.  I blame it on this computer storage system we have.  It's really not intuitive for me to find my pictures.  I should figure that out... but in the meantime I made a little video montage of some recent footage of London.  The two videos of London are some of my favorite!  I love how she calls Mickey (or Minnie) Mouse "Mou-sche!".  It's really the cutest thing ever.  No really, it is.  Watch for yourself!  The other video in the montage is London imitating Ian saying "Luke.  I am your Father.  ."  It's pretty funny. 

London is a great talker these days!  It's amazing how many words she says now.  When we took her for her 18 month checkup the Dr asked if she can say at least 8 words.  Um yeah, you mean like 8 different words a minute.  She's getting so smart!  She's such the helper too.  She is so sweet about helping pick up her toys and books and put them "back".  She also loves to read.  She will bring us a book and say "read it!"... which we are working on, "read it, please."  :-)  She is very polite though.  More often than not she already says please and thank you when asking for something.  She has also recently learned you're welcome too.

London's favorite toy currently is her Minnie Mouse AND her Daisey Duck figurines that she swiped from Aunt Annie's house when we were there in November.  She didn't pay any attention to them until recently and now she must know where they are at all times.  She LOVES them... "Daisey" and "Mou-sche" or sometimes she calls Minnie "Hair bow" because she has a giant hair bow on her head. Duh.  Speaking of... London loves her hair bows too.  She usually wants to wear one.  I have them hanging next to her changing table, so she always is asking for one.  She loves it, and so do I :)

Anyway, check out the new video.  Enjoy.  Love...

 

Hippity Hop, it' Easter!

What an amazing weekend it's been here.  The weather has been in the high 70s-low 80s and very sunny! The first official weekend after the deck project was complete, I can say I love it!  I relaxed (on the deck in the sun) WAY more than any other weekend AND got all my chores done earlier than every before.  YAY!  So Easter morning, we got up early and went to church.  London wore a dress she got from her Grammie Barbara and Grandpa Fenlon for Christmas.  It was perfect for Easter.  So Springy!  After church we went to one of the open fields near our house and took some Easter picts of our sweet girl.  She's so much fun.  If you notice in the one picture she's got a big piece of bark... she picks up stuff everywhere we go.  She is my sweet little helper!

Project D.E.C.K.

We are extremely fortunate to have a very talented carpenter brother-in-law, who agreed to spend his vacation time in TN building a huge deck for us!  What an awesome talent Ian has and how sweet of him to do this for us!  Ian flew in on Monday and the Ians got started on the deck project that day.  They worked through the week and Erin flew in on Friday.  London was so excited to spend time with her "Aunt E" or "EE" as she says.  As always we had a blast together.  On the following Monday they boys finished the deck and we had a great Mexican fiesta to celebrate!  Check out the before and after pictures!  Awesomeness!

It's a bird, it's a plane... no it's London!

So you know how you do the airplane thing to try to get your kid to eat their food... well this is us trying to do that and our 16 month old outsmarting us.

Refreshing weather!

As I've mentioned before, it doesn't snow in Nashville - well it didn't used to.  I don't know what happened to Global Warming or history but this year we've had snow every Sunday for the last 4 weeks or so.  Schools are almost always closed on Monday because we've gotten snow the night before.  It's not that we get that much snow, it's just icy and an inch or less - but that makes the roads bad.  So anyway, needless to say the cold weather has been no fun.  Well this weekend, it was 60 degrees out and just beautiful!  We knew we had to take London to the park for some fun outside!  What a difference a few weeks have made since we were at the park last!  London was able to climb stuff and crawl through things.  She had so much fun and so did we!  I just loved watching her explore and having fun.

The best 45 seconds of every day

I pretty much live for the last 45 seconds in London's day every day.  Around 6:45pm I give her a bath.  Then we brush her teeth, turn off the bathroom light and get her jammies on.  I brush/comb her hair and sometimes we sing the 'Itsie Bitsy Spider' to keep her entertained when really she just wants to go to sleep.  Daddy comes in and kisses her goodnight and turns off the light.  I sit in the rocker and London cuddles up with her head on my shoulder and a strand of my hair in her hand.  We rock and cuddle for a little bit and then I lay her down to go to sleep.  Some nights it's only about 45 seconds before she's ready to lay down, other nights it's a couple of minutes.  Some nights she is silly and wiggles about and laughs or gives me eskimo kisses in the dark.  Other nights she's so tired she just wants to sleep.  But no matter how bad my day has been, I know the best part of the day is always ahead of me.  Whether it's 45 seconds or a couple of minutes, I cherish that time more than anything.  I thank God every day she still wants to cuddle and hasn't decided she's too much of a big girl to cuddle before bed. 

Beautiful day at the park

The weather has been kinda yucky here lately.  From freezing cold to raining buckets.  Today it was in the mid-50s and nice.  It was a little windy, but it was nice outside.  Serena and I decided to take the girls for some playtime outside!  We had a nice lunch at Chick-Fil-A and then went to Charlie Daniels Park.  What a cool park that is too!  London used to love to swing, not so much today.  She really didn't want any part of it.  Her new favorite thing is the slide!  She couldn't get enough of it!  She would slide down, then try to climb back up and then turn around and hold her arms up and me and say "more".  It was such a joy to watch her have so much fun going up and down the slide over and over.  She had fun following Katie around.  It was a great day!  London was so worn out afterward and napped the rest of the afternoon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updates

It's been a while, so I took a little time this afternoon and updated our blog back to Thanksgiving, so if it's been a while since you've checked us out you have a lot of catching up to do now!  :-)

Since I don't get the opportunity to talk to you all often enough, I thought I would take a minute and talk about what Ian has been up to lately.  A few months ago he started working with a friend of the family on some video production stuff.  Over the last few months they've rebranded the company to Digital Vineyard and have actively been pursuing new ventures.  They specialize in digital video production for businesses.  They have done some work with new country artists creating EPKs, working with a contractor to produce videos about the home build process and some other corporate video work.  Some of his contractor webisodes are posted on their YouTube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalVineyard  Ian has also been creating some creative videos just to practice different techniques and stuff, which you can see on his personal YouTube channel.  My personal favorite is the intervention.  I crack up every time I watch that.   http://www.youtube.com/user/iflomas  Please feel free to leave your positive comments on either site and rate the videos if you enjoy them!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Love,
Amanda and Ian

London is offically a "toddler" - First day in her toddler class

As I've mentioned in previous posts, London has outgrown her time in the baby room at her preschool.  Over the last couple of weeks before Christmas, she spent some time in her new class getting used to the kids, the routine and toys there so she could start Jan. 4 full time.  Ian and I both went to drop her off.  As we were walking down the hall her favorite teacher from the baby room was in the hallway and London got to give her hugs before going to her new class!  It was really sweet.  So we ventured in to the new class.

We walked in and set London down.  There were two little girls in the class that day.  They were both close to 2yrs old.  London walked up and said "Hi!", then turned and started playing with the toys.

We set her lunch down in her cubby and then we just stood there.  Now what?  She was playing and having a good time and we weren't sure what to do next.  So after a couple of minutes of just standing there, we thought it was time to go.  She's so grown up.

When Ian picked her up that day, her teacher said London did amazing!  She picked right up on all the new routines!  The kids in the toddler class all sit at the same table for their meals.  They take naps on mats on the floor all at the same time.  She was such a big girl and followed along so seamlessly!

After just a few days of being in her new class, London is already growing up so fast.  She's running through the house, talking, singing, and just growing up before our eyes.  It's so crazy to see how much of a difference it makes being around kids older than her, challenging her daily.

A day full of energy around the house!

I was blessed to have about 10 days off of work during the holidays.  One of my goals was to get the house organized and do some home improvement projects.  As London has gotten bigger, so have her clothes.  Shocking, right?  Yeah I know.  So folding her clothes in her dresser just wasn't working anymore.  I decided to put up an extra rack in her closet and get her clothes organized!  Take a look at the before and after...

BEFORE

AFTER

Later that day I decided to refinish a table that I got to hold my new jewlery box that I got for Christmas.  I think this one came out great!

BEFORE

AFTER