Grayson 11 months old

So Grayson is now 11 months old. While I'm glad that the year 2009 is over, it's sad that baby Grayson is about to be 1 year old. Grayson has grown up a lot in the past month. As you can see by his picture, he's now pulling up on furniture and standing with the support. No, he's still not crawling regularly. I think he just likes doing things a little different and isn't going to give up army crawling. He can move really fast that way so why give it up? He's also started getting a couple of teeth. Again, trying to do thing differently, he's getting two of his bottom teeth. Not the two directly in the middle, but one on each side of the middle two. You see a tooth, space for two more, and then another tooth. They haven't come all the way out so I can't get a picture yet. He is already gabbing non-stop. He'll wave bye-bye and smile every time he hears his name. He's our happy and content baby and loves his brother and daddy to death.

(this is a picture Jackson snapped of him)

White Christmas

This was the first Christmas that Jackson really understands what Christmas is all about. He knows the true reason we celebrate Christmas is because it's Jesus' birthday but he also knows about Santa. On Christmas Eve we made cookies and set them under the tree for Santa. Jackson was told that if he comes out of his room before morning, he might keep Santa from putting all the presents under the tree. Apparently it worked because he stayed in his room all night (this is a huge accomplishment these days!). When he woke up and saw all the presents under the tree, he was so excited he couldn't stand it. We opened presents and played in our jammies all morning.

Christmas Eve Snow

All week long they were reporting that we'd have a chance for snow on Christmas Eve. We didn't actually think that we'd have snow...and definitely not as much as we wound up having. Here are some pictures from the 1st time Michael & Jackson went to play in the snow. They wound up going out 3 times before it was finally too dark to play. Unfortunately, I only got pictures of the first time. Look at our pictures from Christmas morning to see how much snow we got. It was crazy...for Dallas at least.

Jackson and daddy having a snowball fight.

Grayson watching all the action.

Jackson trying to make a snow angel.

Grayson wanted to go outside but it was too cold and windy.

Jackson had to lick every snowball before he threw it.

Very proud of his snowball.

Christmas Lights

We drove around last night looking at Christmas lights. We were all in our jammies, Christmas music on the radio, and found lots of BIG houses with great lights. Jackson was really excited about it this year. We saw a nativity scene and Jackson said, "Jesus isn't a baby, he's a big guy because he takes care of everyone." That was the precious moment of the night. Grayson, on the other hand, was hungry & tired. He'll enjoy it more next year.

A Star is Born

Jackson had his first performance this past week. In his preschool, the kids will sing in front of their parents in the classroom as 2 year olds but it's not until they turn 3 that they get to sing on stage in front of a group of parents. Jackson's been singing the Christmas Musical songs for a month now so I knew he KNEW the songs, I wasn't so sure how he'd do on stage though.

The morning of the program I had a meeting I was supposed to be at. Since the church staff is working on "supporting" other ministries, they decided that we'd start the meeting by watching Jackson's performance and then meet after it so Jackson had a huge crowd of visitors watching him.

Anyway, Jackson did great. He sang every song, did every motion, and loved every minute of it. He was a natural and was so proud of himself after it was all over. He was precious! I'm sure there are many, many more performances in our future.

Grayson 10 months old

So he's 10 months old. Wow! The months seem to be going by faster and faster. Not a whole lot of change since last month. Grayson has got to be one of the fastest "army crawlers" I've ever seen. For some reason he refuses to try to crawl on his hands and knees. He is starting to pull up. Every once in awhile he'll pull all the way up to standing when he's next to the couch or ottoman. He's finding his voice. When I picked him up from daycare the other day, they said that he was "very vocal". No surprise here. All in all he's still our happy and content baby. He loves being in the center of the action and loves all the loving he gets.

Christmas Shirts

Thanksgiving

Grayson enjoying the nice weather.

Jackson playing spy. He was spying on me & Grayson. Do you like his outfit?

Family Pictures

A couple of weekends ago we went out and had our annual family pictures done by Wend (http://gigglengrin.blogspot.com). She took our pictures last year when I was pregnant with Grayson so she was excited to take our pictures this year with a 9 month old.