Arboretum!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our most recent trip to the Dallas Arboretum...

Nini, Lindsay, and Cooper joined us.

Spring is here!

Cami stayed home from school today because of an ear infection but since she seemed to feel fine after a dose of antibiotics in her system and a great nap we decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather. I took over 75 pictures in less than an hour time of our fun outdoor play. Why so many pictures you ask??? Well, we have had several unfortunate accidents of our whole memory card full of good pictures and video deleted from our camera :( So today I decided to try and make up for all the pictures lost. These first couple are not really of the outside play but are cute and funny, none-the-less. Cami has started digging in the pantry and taking out food that she wants to eat. I always said "my child will never go through the pantry without asking!" but I can't help but laugh when she does it. It's so funny to see what she chooses!

She has also started sitting in a booster chair at the table with us. It's so neat to have all three of us at the table for dinner.

These next few pictures are of

Cami having fun in the sand box.

Stick gatherer....

Look, a berry!

"moon" "sky"

Maddie smiling :)

Dancing...

Helping mommy make dinner.

Looking at the cows outside our back yard.

20 months

Cami turned 20 months over the weekend! It's hard to believe she's only a few months away from being TWO! I think this is the best age! She is so funny and entertaining. She can make us smile or laugh with just one of her looks. She brings our family so much joy and love. I wish I could freeze time with her at this precious age! All about Cami at 20 months:

• She parrots everything we say! She even repeats words when Neal and I are having a conversation and don't even know she is listening. We are really having to watch what we say now!
• She loves watching videos of herself. She will watch short clips from the computer and say "more" when they are done. Likewise, she will look at pictures of herself on my phone over and over. This is especially helpful when we are waiting at the doctor's office (these days we are at the doctor A LOT) and have no form of clean (a.k.a germ free) entertainment.
• She is a very picky eater! She is pretty much a self-proclaimed vegetarian. With the occasional small bite of chicken or turkey lunch meat she refuses to eat anything meat related. She refuses many of the typical kid favorites like chicken nuggets, fish sticks,hot dogs, french fries, mashed potatoes, etc.
  
• She loves school! She is very close to her teacher, Ms. Courtney, and feels comfortable and confident in her classroom. She is so cute with all of her little friends. There are 9 children in her class and they all have funny and neat personalities. She brings home art projects and has even started talking about what happened during the day. She will tell me when one of her friends made a "poor choice" or when "ort me sing" (Cortney sings.)

• She likes to reach for the phone when we're on it, but she's not so good at actually saying anything to the person on the other end. She does, however, love to walk around with the phone and play games on my iPhone. She's actually pretty good at several of the games. She plays a shape game and can accurately point out a circle, triangle, square, oval, diamond, star, heart, and crescent.

• She is very much a little helper! She loves to do everything all by herself and help out with all kind of chores. Her favorite chores are emptying the dish washer, feeding the dogs, putting the clothes from the washing machine into the dryer, putting trash in the trash can, and any and all cooking that we will let her do...she's a real good stirer :)

• She is getting the hang of smiling for the camera. Although, her "say cheese" smile is a little frightening :)

• One of her favorite things to do with daddy...airplane! To hear her giggle and belly laugh as she takes a ride on daddy's feet each night can melt away any of my "it's been a long day" bad thoughts!

• Bath time has slipped down on the list of Cami's favorite things to do. She has a major issue with the hair washing part of bath time. All the water running down her head and face just ruins her mood! But if she were to just play with bubbles and bath crayons with no hair washing on the agenda she could stay in the bath for hours.

• And last but not least, she loves art! Coloring, painting, play-dough, all of it! She likes to get messy with finger paints but she also likes to clean up afterwards. She knows to pull up her sleeves before she paints and before she washes her hands. She will say "hand" when she wants us to trace her hand. Then she will say "mommy's turn" when she wants me to trace my hand.

Valentine's Day 2010

Happy Valentine's Day! Cami loves hearts and candy so I think Valentine's day may just be her very favorite holiday! I added her Valentine picture from last year so you can see how much she has changed in a years time!

Snow Day!

The Dallas/Fort Worth area was truly a Winter Wonderland! We got record amounts of snow (in McKinney it measured up past 7 inches.) Cami officially loves snow! We have been playing in it for the past two days and she can't get enough! She loves our Cami-sized snowman and thinks his grape eyes and carrot nose is funny.

She could barely move with all that heavy bundeling!

This is the famous Cami face-

burrowd eyebrows and all! We are working on a "nice face."

Counting

It's true what they say...kids are sponges! Cami picks up on something new everyday. In the past few months she has gotten very interested in colors and can identify almost all the basic colors. She also likes to count things, although she can only count to two("shoo.") Here are a couple of videos from bath time the other night as she was counting her cups. I was trying to get her to show off her color naming skills in the first video-but she had other plans. :)

Christmas 2009

Well, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I did not take one single picture on Christmas morning! Neal was a good boy and took video, but we have no still pictures! I think I was just so excited to watch Cami open her presents that I wasn't even thinking about pictures. Either way, I did finally remember to take some at Grammy and Papaw's house later on in the day. Cami loves her baby dolls! She got three of them for Christmas. She is very loving to them as she rocks them and gives them their bottle.

I know this is a bad picture, but I wanted to show what we deal with when we try to take a family picture.

We got matching aprons and oven mitts. Now we can bake together. Not a word on how I don't cook...

Cami and daddy having a tea party

on Cami's new big girl table.

Papaw playing doctor.

She is so cute with this doctor kit. She will take the thermometer and put it in her ear because that is how we take her temperature. She will also put the stethoscope to your heart and say "bu bu" for bump bump like the heart goes.

This is Cami's idea of a hug.

She leans her head into you :)

Chad and Troy

I want to apologize, once again, for being such a procrastinator with the blog. I have heard from several people how they are waiting on pictures-all I can say is sorry! Being a working mommy is not suiting me so well, so finding free time is hard! I am working on getting some video uploaded, so please be patient with me. That will be my next task!

Rudolph!

Cami made the cutest Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Her teachers at school made antlers for each child in the class using their hands. Then the whole class went on a "parade" around the school. I got tears in my eyes when I saw this cute reindeer at my classroom door! I am making a collection of cute artwork to go in Cami's baby book and this tiny little hand trace will definitely make it. I don't want her little hands to ever get any bigger!

Christmas Fun!

We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas holiday and hope that you did, too! It was so much fun to watch Cami get excited about seeing a Christmas tree, lights, and Santa. She made it through her first Santa visit without a single tear shed. I will try to scan the overpriced, poor quality picture and post it soon. Trying to take a picture of our whole family for the Christmas card was quite difficult. We tried on several different occasions, but saying Cami is not photogenic is a huge understatement. She actually gets mad if you put a camera in her face! Ok, well maybe she doesn't always get mad, because these are a few cute pictures of her happy (or atleast okay) to have a camera around.

Cami loves wearing hats. Any kind will do. This particular hat is pretty cheesy but Grammy just had to buy it for her! Here she is actually saying "Cheese."

We made it through the whole Christmas season without any broken ornaments or opened presents. I was impressed! I thought for sure we were going to have to put all the ornaments up high and have wrapping paper pulled off everywhere we looked. But, not so. Cami was a very well-behaved toddler :) Cami loves to help, so I had her place the newly wrapped presents under the tree for me.

Nini came in town in early December so Neal and I could go Christmas shopping (without the Cam) and go on a much needed date night! We also took her along for Cami's first Santa experience. Here we are waiting outside to see Santa. The wait was over an hour...why so much hype for Santa? I can't figure it out!