Christmas Parade

We went to our city's little Christmas Parade tonight with our friends - the Lopez family. The boys loved seeing all the lights, Christmas decorations, bands, and of course the candy that was thrown from the floats was a huge hit.


Notice the FIRM grip on the Tootsie Roll .....

The boys were very tentative at first about running to get the candy and then they just wanted to eat it all...Alex's little pockets were over flowing : ). Thankfully he shared some of the candy bars with his Momma! Here is a video from early on...they needed some encouragement to be greedy and they were so distracted by what was coming next in the parade...

Stuck Inside for 3 Days because of Rain/Cold =

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a nice long Thanksgiving weekend. Until Sunday, the weather was sunny and beautiful and Alex enjoyed hours and hours playing outside with Daddy. He did not let Eric out of his sight all weekend and pretty much wanted it to be "Boys Only!" all weekend.


On Friday morning, Eric had to go to the auto parts store to pick up some oil. There was a limit per customer, so I went along to buy some as well. When we were getting ready to go Alex said, "Momma you no go auto part store". I said that I had to go buy some oil too. Alex said "only big boys and daddies go auto parts store". :).


Our friends, Josh and Rebecca, came over for Thanksgiving dinner. Once again we had so much wonderful food. The weather was so nice that we decided to eat outside. Alex loved playing outside all day with Daddy and Josh. Alex LOVES Josh and Ms. Becky!

Galaxy of Lights

We took Alex to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens Galaxy of Lights this weekend. We had heard about this "extravaganza", but have never attended before. We were lucky to have really mild weather on Saturday night, so we decided to do the walking tour. Alex loved to see all the different lights.....





*And of course the night was not complete with a comment from strangers about how huge I am and if I thought I would make it through the walking tour without going into labor. The comments are daily now - I am going to wear a sign that says "Yes - I know I am HUGE!" ; )

Alex Jon

It has been awhile since I have posted, so I just want to do a little catch up about Alex and what he has been up to lately. Unfortunately I have not been taking very many pictures lately, so fair warning - here comes a LONG, wordy blog. I want to have these things documented, so it's okay if only the grandmas read on from here ;)....

1. Alex is obsessed with Toy Story. It is the first movie we have showed him and he loves Buzz and Woody. We have the movies DVR'd and when he wakes up in the morning he is allowed to watch one show and every morning he picks to watch some of "Buzz".

2. Alex is big into imaginary play lately and I think it is so fun to see what he comes up with. Lately Buzz and Woody are like his little imaginary friends and they accompany us wherever we go and we have to buckle them in the car and tuck them in for naps, etc. My favorite was the other day when he took his Matchbox car case and pulled it in the kitchen and said "Momma I have suitcase, I go airport". I asked him where he was going to fly to and he said "Michigan" :). I asked him who he was going to see in Michigan and he said, "Eli, Tyler and Uncle Joel". Later he kept adding more people in MI - all his cousins and grandparents, etc. (It does make me sad that we won't be going to MI for Christmas this year!).

3. Alex loves it when I tell him stories - his current favorites are The Three Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man and The Three Bears. He will sit forever and cuddle and have me tell the stories over and over again. He will also help tell the story and try to make the different voices- SO CUTE!!!

4. Along the same lines, Eric does Alex's bedtime routine and puts him to bed every night. Eric will rock him for a minute before he puts him to bed and a few weeks ago while they were rocking Eric told him a story about a little boy named "Bob". Well, now Alex requests a "Bob Story" every night so Eric has to come up with new adventures...Bob will drive monster trucks, go find and decorate Christmas trees, go drive lawn mowers at Home Depot, light fire works, etc. And in the morning when I ask Alex he can always tell me what the Bob Story was from the night before.

5. We just finished another semester of Music Together, the Mommy and Me music class that I have been taking Alex to off and on since he was 6 months old. This has been my favorite semester because Alex has picked up on everything so quickly. He loves to dance and sing and imitates every thing the teacher does and will randomly sing the songs when we are home.

6. Alex had his first dentist appointment this week. He did amazing!! He was so easy going that the hygienist was even able to clean and floss his teeth. Except for the little overbite that is starting thanks to finger sucking, everything looked great.

7. We were at the mall on Sunday and we ran into Santa Claus as he was coming back from his break and Alex waved to him and Santa stopped to say hi. Alex just lifted his arms up to Santa and gave him the biggest hug ever - so sweet!

8. Alex still loves his Baby Brother and his newest thing is to walk up to my stomach and pretend to take Baby Brother out of my stomach. He will then pretend to play different things with him - so cute, except for last week when they were playing basketball and Alex slammed dunked his Baby Brother through the hoop ;).

9. Alex loves crafts - painting, gluing, shaving cream, markers, play dough...usually the messier the better. The other day we drove cars in paint and made tire tracks on the paper - fun fun fun!


10. Alex is a lot of fun right now - except for when the 2 year old monster decides to rear it's ugly head. As always it usually involves torturing poor Buddy - throwing his toys behind the couch so Buddy can't reach them or taking Buddy's toys and running playing keep away - fun for all. Alex definitely tests the limits, but overall is a pretty easy going, sweet boy.

Wow - it is exhausting to be a 2 year old...(this was a first - falling asleep on the couch while I was making lunch - a little time change jet lag)...

Trick or Treat

This was Alex's first year to go Trick or Treating and he was a pro! He went Trick or Treating with his best friend, Evan, and they were the cutest little boys ever.

The "scary" dinosaur and Alex's "monkey face" -

Group shot....


The boys mastered the routine very quickly and as soon as they were done saying "thank you", they were saying "go another house", "get more candy". They loved ringing the doorbells and did a great job saying "trick or treat" and "thank you".


Most of the houses just held out their bowls of candy for the kids to choose what they wanted. Our "not so shy" Alex took this as an invitation to take SEVERAL pieces of candy (that's my boy : )).

Alex was constantly checking out his loot as we walked between houses...


At one house there were several high school girls gushing over the boys and one of them said "what a cute monkey". We were leaving the house and Alex said to me "Momma, I a cute monkey" : ).

We let Alex pick his costume. I narrowed it down to Buzz Lightyear, monkey (Curious George), football player or Elmo and he kept picking the monkey. When it first came he did not want to wear it, but being motivated by candy tonight he had no problem putting it on and wearing it all night.

It was absolutely precious watching Alex decide what piece of candy he could have tonight. He labored over the decision forever. Sorry the lighting in the video is so bad....I wish you could see it better as he had the cutest little smirk on his face! It took him two minutes to choose and he settled on a purple tootsie pop.

Baby Brother

I want to take a moment to document Alex's current attachment to his Baby Brother. It may be my very large stomach, but Alex is definitely very aware of and quite attached to Baby Brother these past couple of weeks. Whenever we are on the couch, reading or whatever, Alex will say "Momma, open up Baby Brother" and I will have to lift up my shirt so he can be close to the baby.

Here are a few things that Alex likes to do with Baby Brother...
- he will pretend to feed him his cereal in the morning and give him sips from his sippy cup
- he will take his medical kit and listen to Baby Brother's heartbeat
- he will tell him things that he is going to do with him - "I give you pacifier", "I share my taggies you", "I play football you and tackle you" (can't wait for that one!).
- he will point out things in the book we are reading - "Look Baby Brother a choochoo"
- he lifts up my shirt and gives Baby Brother good night kisses every night when he goes to bed
- he likes to use my stomach as a pillow and lay his head on it and cuddle with Baby Brother

Right now Alex is a sweet and loving Big Brother - hopefully he will retain a few of those feelings once Baby Brother comes and shakes up his world.

I am going to spare you the pictures I have of Alex giving my big ole stomach some kisses :).