Hunter on a Plane!

We flew to New Mexico for Christmas this year. In Hunter's 18 months of life he has flown three times already. The first time was when I flew to my friend Aimee's wedding when Hunter was 6 months old. I held him in the bjorn through the airport and he did great on the plan cuddling me and nursing during take off and landing. The second time was just a few days before his first birthday. All three of us flew to San Antonio, Texas to attend a family reunion. This time the three of us flew to Lubbock, Texas where my mom picked us up and took us the rest of the way to New Mexico.
Every time we prepare to fly, I get stressed out that it is going to be hard to keep Hunter happy, or that it will hurt his ears, or that I won't be able to carry everything through the airport. But every time Hunter has done wonderful. This was by far the best, though. We flew southwest and ended up having three seats to ourselves the whole flight there, even though technically Hunter was supposed to be on one of our laps. I guess the flight wasn't completely full, and who wants to be the poor soul forced to sit in the aisle with an 18 month old? So, yay for us, we had more room than we thought.

Our flight took off at 6 a.m. so that meant we had to wake Hunter up at 4 a.m. Check out his sleepy eyes:Our flight back we had the third seat for most of the trip, but not all of it.

STL Snow

I got Photoshop for Christmas! YAY! I am having such a wonderful time editing photos and learning how to use Photoshop!! It is an excellent program. Here are some of my pictures from last week when it snowed here.

19 months old!

Hunter is 19 months old today! He shocked us all yesterday by weighing in at 27 lbs! That means he has gained 2 and 1/2 lbs in the past month. WOW! It is such a relief to know he is gaining weight again. He is 33 inches tall, meaning 1/2 in growth this month.

Hunter is learning new things everyday. He is excellent at mimicking sounds and so his vocabulary is growing by the minute. Most of the time when he is asking for something or showing us something he sticks to one-syllable, usually the first syllable of the word. He can say words that have multiple syllables, but when it comes to using them he usually just says one. So funny.

His favorite toys are blocks, books, and colors. He is pretty good at entertaining himself for a little while now, which is why I am able to write this post! ;) He loves to know how things work and press buttons. He whistles a lot now. What a skill! He loves anything musical and he continually impresses me with his rhythm. He LOVES anything and everything Thomas.

3 Stories from the past week:
1. Today we were getting on an elevator in my school library and he pointed to the buttons and said, in his typical mono-syllable form, “butt, butt, butt.” He was so excited to recognize the buttons and know how to refer to them that the utter shock and horror on my face probably really confused him.

2. The other night at the dinner table we were going around asking Hunter to name all of us. “Daddy!” he said proudly when I pointed to Josh. “Mommy Mommy” he said when Josh pointed to me. Then I said, “What is your name?” He got very serious and said, “Choo choo!”

3. Hunter has been so affectionate recently. He gives hugs throughout the day and now he has gotten really good at giving kisses, too. When I ask him for kisses he presses his lips to my cheek and then turns my head and presses his lips to my other cheek. He goes back and forth about 4 times. We aren’t sure where he learned the European style of kissing, but it is so cute!!!

Hunter's new word

Hello my long neglected Blog. I have missed you. Look for more updates soon, but for today, here is a video of my adorable baby boy. His vocabulary is growing by the minute.

17 months old!

Hunter is 17 months old! He has been sick for the past week with an ear infection. The only good to side to that was that we were able to get him weighed at the doctor's office. He has gained weight! At this appointment, he weighed 23 lbs and 5 oz. That is much better! Hopefully he will keep gaining! :)
He loves graham crackers, yogurt, apple sauce, milk, and his antibiotic (ha!--guess they make those things super sweet).

Hunter has 10 teeth completely through and four that are half way. He has another 2 or 3 that are right at the surface but have not cut yet. Whew... that is a lot of teething!
He talks a lot-- a lot of gibberish but has more words that are clear lately. He can say:
Watch
Dog
Bear
Go
Woah
Yuck
Ball
Ouch
Good to go (good to go to go to go)
bath
apple juice (ahhhh juuuuu)
Duck
Cookie
Choo Choo
Cracker (caaacaar)
Car
Shoes
Up
More
God (Gahhhhhh)
and my personal favorite: diaper (he says Bop-per and it is the cutest thing I have ever heard!)

Today I did my workout after he was awake. I set up the living room with all his toys and set up the gate so he would have to stay in there with me. He was too cute. There is one part of the workout where I do squats and then lift weights over my head. The girl on the video says, "down, up, down, up." Hunter watched really intently and then started bending his legs and then standing up while saying "up!" He did this over and over with me... looks like I have a new workout buddy!! :)

Cute Stories

One early morning about a month ago, I woke up to Hunter screaming. Not just his normal morning cry. It sounded like he was in pain. I flew to his room and in my groggy state I saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I figured he just wanted to cuddle. So I brought him to bed with me. For a few minutes, he was very happy cuddling, but then he got worked up again. Now I knew something was wrong. I looked him over and realized his thumb was STUCK in his hair.

Hunter has an adorable habit of twirling his hair around his fingers to soothe himself. I guess he twisted and curled so much that his thumb got stuck this time. By the time I figured what was wrong, his thumb was a bluish-purplish color. Josh and I freaked out and then grabbed scissors. I tried to cut as little of his hair as possible to free his thumb.

You would think that would teach him, but no.... this has happened two more times since then. Once I had to cut a bigger chunk of hair and the second time I was able to work it free with no cutting.
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We have been teaching Hunter a few of the catechism questions. The first one is: Q: Who made you? A: God. He picked up on this very quickly, but for the first few days his answer was something that sounded similar to "CaaaaCaaaaa." Oops. Now he says, "Gaaaaaaaa." Both adorable, but the second one sounds much better!!!
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Hunter drops his food A LOT during his meal times. He thinks it is sooo funny. We are trying to teach him that this is not appropriate, but in the mean time we are cleaning the floor a lot! More than once now, as Hunter has been playing, he will walk over and grab a tissue and then walk to the floor by his high chair and rub the carpet with the tissue. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, but his daddy got it right away: he has seen us clean the floor so many times he thinks it is something he should do, too!

Roaring and Coloring

So today Hunter and I colored together while listening to the Wicked soundtrack. We had so much fun! I had to film him... he is beginning to understand how to make lines with the crayons instead of just dots. It is adorable. Plus, he likes Wicked.

I edited the video from today with one from a few days ago where he learned how to "roar."

Enjoy!!!