Clearly I'm out of order on updating past events. It's Christmas Eve and I'm still trying to catch up on posts from events in October. For Halloween this year, Isaiah dressed up as a train conductor. Honestly, we debated so long as to what to dress him as that it was too late to order something, and he already owned every part of this outfit.
Normally we would attend our church's fall festival (usually a week before Halloween), but this year Isaiah had a GI bug and we stayed home. We did enjoy time with friends on Halloween night at the Alley's home. They live in our neighborhood and host the annual Halloween party for their block. We don't live on their block, but they're kind enough to include us. Isaiah and William Jones trick-or-treated a bit down the street with their daddies in tow. Isaiah is becoming more difficult to photograph these days as he often refuses to look at the camera and rarely smiles for it, but here are a few pictures from the night...
William Jones, the astronaut, and Corban Cartner (I mean, Peter Pan)
We traveled to North Carolina to celebrate Thanksgiving with Chris' family this year. We spent Thanksgiving Day in Winston-Salem with Ginger's extended familiy. We met Arlo (Isaiah's second cousin) for the first time. It was a beautiful day and the kids enjoyed playing outside. There is a decorative metal rooster and chicken in the yard that Isaiah was obsessed with the entire time. If we asked Isaiah what the rooster says, he'd say "dock-doo-doo". We couldn't really get him to eat any lunch because he was so fixated on the rooster. Of couse, he did take a break for dessert.
Charlie with Arlo in the background
Aunt Deda and Arlo
We made the beautiful drive from Hickory up to Blowing Rock for some shopping. Unfortunately, Isaiah didn't really get a nap so it wasn't the most pleasant experience. We did stop at the park in downtown Blowing Rock for the kids to play for a little while.
Hallie and Isaiah had a lot of fun together during our visit. Hallie now says "Saiah" for her favorite cuz. She likes to give him kisses (which tend to look like she's trying to bite him). Isaiah calls Melissa "Sissa". We also learned that Isaiah's very vocal nature comes from the Starnes side of the family...he and Hallie have very similar volumes when expressing happiness or discontent :)
Kiss on the head...
Trying to escape more kisses!
Here's a fun video of the kids playing in the hall/entry...
Overall, we had a great Thanksgiving and truly we have so much to be thankful. It's very easy to lose sight of the purpose of the holiday in the busy-ness of traveling. Hopefully, we can impress upon Isaiah the importance of daily thankfulness to God for his many, many blessings.
Mom, Lindsay, and Landon came in town in November to visit Lindsay's friend, Brooke, who is experiencing difficult health issues. They stayed with us and the boys had some playtime. I love this video of them dancing to the rhythm of the washing machine!
Chris turned 30 on October 11th this year. We celebrated with Corky's BBQ and cookie cake with the Jones family. Chris is the best husband and father to my son I could ever ask for, and I'm so thankful for the 30 years he's graced this earth. I hope they'll be followed by many, many more!
Isaiah has become such a little sponge with information. It's a really fun age and exciting to see him learn new things. He's mastered the basic colors (red, yellow, blue, green, pink, purple, orange, brown, black, gray, white) and shapes (circle, oval, square, triangle, rectangle). He surpised me the other day (see below on video) by knowing his numbers from 1 to 5.
I've worked on a memory verse from Sunday school with Isaiah a few times from Psalm 119, "How sweet are your words to my taste. They are sweeter than honey." When I ask him to tell me his memory verse, he says "how schweet", and then he can chime in "honey" at the end.
We've had such a beautiful autumn thus far, and Isaiah is old enough to
really enjoy the season and its activities too this year. Two weekends
ago we went to Waverly and Murfreesboro to visit my family and had a
great time. It was so fun to watch the boys playing together. It's neat
to think they have a lifetime of friendship ahead of them.
We spent Friday night at Mom's house. Isaiah and Landon especially loved playing with the keyboard and Fisher-Price farm set. We got to see Austin play a soccer game on Saturday morning (well, I did...Isaiah and Chris were asleep in the car:).
After the soccer game, Mom took us to a really cute corn maze/pumpkin patch in Tennessee City (Keller's Corny Country). Isaiah was very clingy at first and only wanted me to carry him (everywhere!). About midway through, I offered him a snack. From that point on, he carried his little bag of chips everywhere oblivious of where we were. He loved seeing the animals (donkeys, goats, pig) and sliding down the big slide in my lap.
Look at that boy's face...if that's not funny, I don't know what is. He's thinking "no one's gonna touch my chips!"
We spent Saturday night at Dad's house and enjoyed watching the Vols game together (despite the disappointing loss). Jordan, Meagan, and Jude joined us as well, and we managed to get a few shots with all three boys.
We went to church on Sunday with Dad, Marie, and Kristin. Dad taught children's church, and Isaiah enjoyed sitting in his lap for the lesson. He even sat quietly with Dad through half the sermon (after a small bribe with a tootsie roll pop...haha).
I just had to share these precious videos with you. Isaiah is such a little lover boy. He tells us he loves us more times than I can count in a day. He gives great big bear hugs and sweet little kisses. The first video is extra short cause Chris thought he was just taking a snapshot.
A few little updates:
- He can correctly tell you the colors for red, blue, green, yellow, white, and brown now.
- When he's not saying "I love you", "no-mine" is a close second. Often he's not talking to anyone in particular. He was fast asleep in bed one night and we heard him say "no-mine" over the monitor. I wonder what he's dreaming about.
- I've taught him to say "Go Vols!" with a hand motion (though it sounds more like "Do Da"). We recently watched the UT/Florida game with our friends Sarah and Brandon, and everytime we'd get excited over a touchdown, Isaiah would look up with this huge smile at us like, "I don't know what I did, but it must have been something good."
It's been months since I've devoted any blog time to Isaiah and his development. There's lots I need to catch up on, but I'm going to start there...
Isaiah is such a fun, handful of a boy! I tell people he is extreme with every emotion, and he can be quite the drama king. I'm sure part of it's his age, but truly I think a lot of it is my sweet Isaiah. He's very outgoing and gregarious; he makes friends wherever we go and he's quite the lady's man already. I'm not really that sure where all of these traits came from, but I like to tease that he channels my diva sister! Here are some of his favorites:
- Favorite pastime: when we get home, he immediately goes to the couch, throws the pillows on the floor, climbs up and rolls around and then often rolls off it purposely onto the pillows. He gets such a kick out of it, and he can be a little too daring for my liking but no serious injury with this activity yet.
- Favorite color: red. His Grandmom (Ginger, Chris' mom) came to help watch Isaiah while I was in Haiti and she worked on teaching him his colors. I came home and was majorly impressed that he correctly told me something was red and then another object was blue when I asked. Then I figured out that no matter what color it actually is, he always guesses red first and his second guess is blue! If you can get him to focus and actually think about it, though, he'll sometimes answer correctly and can also identify yellow and green.
- Favorite character: Elmo. Maybe that's also why he loves red so much. Elmo is on his diapers and there's a picture of Elmo at school that he points out to me everyday. We bought an Elmo video for a long roadtrip recently, and Isaiah was in heaven.
- Favorite person: I think this would have to go to Hallie at the moment. Hallie is a younger cousin (on Chris' side) who just turned one. While Grandmom was visiting here, she watched some videos of Hallie on their blog and Isaiah got to see too. Ever since then, he thinks the one and only purpose of the computer is to watch Hallie. He asks about her multiple times a day, and when we went there to visit last weekend for her birthday, he loved crawling after her.
- Favorite songs: Grandmom taught Isaiah several songs with hand motions, and he'll let you know which one he wants by using the motion. He'll let you get mid-song, and then he'll motion for the next song he wants. "The Wheels on the Bus", "This Little Light of Mine", and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" are the main ones. He also loves "Old McDonald" and has for some time...he's got the e-i-e-i-o down (see below).
-Favorite object: Just in the past month, Isaiah has shown an attachment to his blanket. It was knit (or knitted?) for him by a church member (Thanks John!) and it's almost always what we use to cover him up at night because it's a good thickness. Now, when we put him in bed, he holds out his arm waiting for us to put the cover down so he can pull it up and snuggle his face in it. It's really sweet and obviously comforting to him. We keep having visions of Linus from Peanuts.
Humor: Isaiah has already learned the art of manipulation. For some time now, he has said "I love you" (sounds like "I duv du") back to us when we say it to him. The other night Isaiah was playing on the couch. He's been punished numerous times for standing on the couch and he was walking a fine line that night. Chris said his name with a scolding tone and was about to correct him, and Isaiah looked right into Chris' eyes and said "I duv du" before Chris could get another word out. We just cracked up laughing. Obviously he knows he's got us wrapped around his finger.
I'm partial, but I think this kid is pretty bright. You only have to tell him what something is once or twice and he's got it down. He can spot an airplane when it's just a speck in the sky, and lately he'll start telling us "airplane" when he just hears one flying over the house. He feeds himself quite well with a spoon or fork, and he drinks out of a big cup without a problem (though we often have to take it away when he starts blowing bubbles). He's gotten to be fairly picky about some foods in the past few months--the only meat he eats is ground beef (mostly in tacos or spaghetti) and he no longer even likes pizza. He still eats most fruits and vegetables really well, so we try to focus on those. In the past couple of months, I've noticed he's able to entertain himself a lot more, and while he likes to play with us, he no longer demands the constant one-on-one attention.
Here's a couple other fun videos. Kara has made a star appearance in a couple. She's the daughter of our friends (and pastor), Travis and Jenna, and we've had the pleasure of keeping Kara a couple of times for them to go on a date night and they've done the same for us. In total, I think Isaiah and Kara have had 4 play dates and they get along quite well..
Pictures from Landon's first birthday in Indianapolis:
Pictures from Hallie's first birthday in Hickory, NC:
It just occurred to me that Isaiah and all of his cousins (Jude, Landon, and Hallie) are now all one!
