Thanksgiving in the Lone Star State

I didn't mention it on the blog, but for Thanksgiving we drove 12 hours to be with family in Texas! As I've never been to Texas before, it was quite an adventure.

To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit worried about how the car ride was going to fare. Jake seems to have an aversion to sleep while traveling. People always tell me about how their children fall asleep the minute they stick them in the car. I'm pretty sure that those people are lying. They must be. Jake has never, ever, ever done that, even as an infant. Go figure. Needless to say, 12 hours in the car with a sleep-deprived toddler didn't really seem like a cake-walk to me, but I underestimated the sweetness of this little guy. He didn't sleep, not until about 9:30 pm anyway, but he was SO GOOD! Luckily, we were driving with Nana and Papa (Joseph's parents) and they have a DVD player in their car, so we had Thomas the Train and Elmo's World running to keep him happy. He loved it. He also had books and games to play, and treats to eat, and he didn't hardly fuss at all. Thank goodness!!

The reason that we went to Texas was because Christopher (Joseph's twin brother) and his wife Eliza live there and they just had their baby and we were going there for the baby blessing. A lot of Joseph's family was able to be there, and it was a great experience for us all to be together. It was filled with lots of football (it's a Dougherty tradition), great food (including TONS of leftovers!), shopping, and best of all, time spent with family. Jake was in seventh heaven with all his cousins.

WARNING: Tons of pictures coming up. Hey, I told you I would give you more pics, didn't I?

Jake just hangin' with his cousin Madalyn.

Jumping on the tramp with daddy.

Turkey Bowl. Jake loved seeing his dad out there playing, and it was just so fun to watch these two boys together.

Turkey dinner!!

Nana gave all the kids new pajamas. The girls got pretty ballarina pjs, while the boys got cool football ones. This was the closest we could get to a group shot. The girls all wanted to hide behind the pillows and the boys desperately wanted to get off the couch. Gives you a little idea of how crazy it was over there!


After pictures, we had a surprise visitor! Santa came to visit the house, and we all got to see him except Uncle Jason (wink, wink). Jake was thrilled. He didn't really want to go near him, but he was perfectly happy standing back and saying, "Ho, ho, ho, Tanta!!"Finally, here we all are at Reese's baby blessing. What a great trip! Thank you, Elizabeth, for letting us all come to your place for Thanksgiving! I'm sure you're relieved to have your house back to yourself now. ;)

Lazy days

We enjoyed a wonderful lazy Saturday yesterday. Usually our days are so packed full that we end up running from one activity to the next, but this Saturday was just a breather day. Even Jake got in on some of the lazy action (which is a very rare occurance over here). He woke up on Saturday morning at his usual 7:15 on the dot time slot, then proceeded to join daddy on the couch where they laid (lied? layed? lay? whatever.) down and watched Thomas the Train together. Obviously, Joseph got a little extra sleep while Jake just cuddled with him on the couch. I can't imagine how he could have fallen asleep, seeing as Thomas the Train is so thrilling! At least, it is when you're 20 months old.

P.S. Jake is in love with Thomas the Train. It's the only show that he will watch for longer than 5 minutes at a time. This was something that he discovered while at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Michigan, and he frequently asks for "Choo-choo." I'm pretty sure we spent at least 30 minutes on youtube this afternoon watching different videos of trains. When I finally told him it was time to stop he started sobbing. I can feel the terrible twos coming on fast...

It's here!

Well, we finally just broke down and bought another camera. It came in the mail yesterday, so you can expect more updates (with pictures) coming soon! I can't guarantee that the upcoming posts will have you sitting on the edge of your seat, but I'll do my best. :)

I can smell Jake from the other room, and it's not one of the pleasant odors either (are they ever?). I taught him how to say "I'm stinky," and he's pretty adorable. It sounds more like "I keenky." Unfortunately, he doesn't come up to me and tell me, he waits for me to smell him first. He's getting a potty seat for Christmas. No, we're not going to potty train him just yet, but I would like for him to get used to the idea, you know?

Anyway, that may not have been what you were expecting to read when you came to my blog, sorry about that. Of course, I'm not sorry enough to delete it. Just some thoughts.

Mostly I just am posting to say MORE PICS COMING SOON!

Say What? Part II

Speaking of Jake's speech (that's a little funny), Jake calls all of his friends - no matter who they are - Noah. You may remember that Noah is one of his friends that has the twin brother, Ethan. No matter who Jake's playmate is, he always call them "Woah." This video was taken the other night when we were trying to teach Jake how to say "Ethan."

Like I said previously, there are a few little hiccups in his speech. :)

Say what?

Jake is saying all kinds of words lately! It's rather adorable, if I do say so myself (which I obviously do) and he is learning new ones every day! He's pretty much stopped babbling for the most part and is pointing out objects and trying to say them. Thus far, he's done a pretty decent job with his sounds. For example, "apple" sounds like "bapple," grandma is "mama," grandpa is "bampa," truck is "wuck" and so on and so on. For the most part, you can tell that he is really trying to make the right sounds. However, there are a few little hiccups in his speech. For example, the word "pacifier" sounds more like "cah-cah," which, oddly enough, is also what he says for applesauce...weird, I know. He also pretty much refuses to say "please," opting for the ASL sign for please and saying "yeah" instead. This is a daily occurance in our household:



Jake: "Du, du, du" (pointing to the juice)



Me: "Jake, do you want some more juice?"



Jake: *big smiles*



Me: "What do you say?"



Jake: "Yeah" (while signing "please")



Me: "Can you say please?"



Jake: "Yeah"



And that's all I get. Joseph and I love all of the things that are coming out of his mouth lately. He's started to say bye-bye to everything: bye-bye mommy, bye-bye daddy, bye-bye pumpkin, bye-bye river, etc. It's so much fun for us to watch our baby grow!

On a sad note, we still have yet to find our camera, so I apologize for the lack of pics. A new camera may have to be an early Christmas present for us, so please be patient and use your imagination until we can get our act together over here!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween fellow bloggers! We pretty much had a blast over here on Halloween. For starters, this is what I made for dinner:

Get it? They're hot dog mummies! They're supposed to have little mustard eyes on them for the face, but Joseph pointed out that some people don't like mustard (and by "some people" he meant himself) so he suggested that we just imagine the mummies have eyes. We also had loaded nachos. A simple dinner, mostly just to tide us over for the big trick-or-treating event!

This was Jake's first time trick-or-treating, and surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) he loved it! He caught on to the concept pretty quickly, once he saw that people were handing out free candy. He went trick-or-treating with his best buds Spencer, Noah, and Ethan. It looked like these kids just stepped off Noah's Ark. We have (starting from left to right) Ethan dressed as a tiger, Jake as a lion, Noah as a giraffe, and Spencer as a frog. I painted a nose and whiskers on Jake's face, but as soon as he saw them he tried to wipe it off. So instead of a nose and whiskers, it just looked like he had a dirty face.

Of course, before we left the boys had to have their chance to make a mess together in Jake's bedroom.

Jake the Lion trick-or-treating for the first time!

What a face!! They don't make 'em much cuter.

Like I said, we had a blast over here. The kids were so hyper on their sugar high, and we parents may have had a bit too much sugar ourselves! All in the name of Halloween, though!