A boy and his blankie...

This boy loves his blankies! Xander likes to make a big pile of all of the blankie's he can find around the house and cuddle in them while watching cartoons (as seen above) Xander also no longer lets us leave his bedroom without taking all of his bedtime pals along with us, including his blue AND green blankies, his singing sea horse and his sock monkey! Usually I try to sneak a few back in the crib while he's not paying attention, but he's catching on haha

He's getting SO big! Learning new words and concepts each day! It's hard for us to keep up! He is talking like crazy now, he knows sheep is "baa" and cow is "moo", he knows and can say pooh bear, elmo, dora and spongebob haha, he recently learned eyes, nose and mouth, how to say them and where they are. He knows cars go "Vroom, Vroom!", and all of his favorite foods, apples, oranges and bananas. We are looking forward to Thanksgiving this year with a curious 16 month old! Should be a first of many wonderful holiday memories!

Xander finally got the hang of riding his fire truck (that or his legs were finally long enough haha) he rides it all around the room and now knows what to do when he gets stuck or approaches a corner (rather than just crying until mommy turned him around like he used to lol)

Xander LOVES to wear his hats around while he plays, he was putting baby pooh bear to bed in this picture, I thought it was too cute!

October, what a month!

Well I know it has been a while since I've updated everyone. I apologize, but it's been harder keeping up with a toddler than I thought! Especially one who loves to disconnect the power cord when mommy's on her laptop or press buttons on the key board at the office. Now that Xander can walk there is a whole new world of things he can reach, just when I thought the house was sufficiently baby proofed he proved me all wrong.

Last month was full of exciting first events and big milestones. Milestones first... Biggest accomplishment is that Xander weaned himself off the bottle. Yes you heard me right, he did it all by himself. About a week and a half ago Xander began refusing to take his bottles. First his before bedtime bottle and then he refused to take another one again. I tried for two days to make sure he didn't change his mind, but no he's done with bottles and it's all big boy cups for him now! This is really amazing to me only because I have been so concerned on how I would get him to give up his bottles, he would yell "ba ba" when he wanted one. But we are now successfully bottle free, I threw them away (didn't think it was good to save them after their excessive use) and saved one, just in case haha
Next big milestone Xander has continued teething and now has more than I can count! Molar's top and bottom and a couple more front top and bottom. He has been pretty cranky these past few weeks, but it seems like he's feeling better this week and hopefully he's past the worst of it.

Xander's first Halloween
I spent most of the month making pumpkins, ghosts and bats to decorate our house and teaching Xander what they were. By Halloween he could successfully recognize and say bat and when he saw ghosts he said "boooo", it was SO adorable. He loved pumpkins, and we had an amazing time picking them. He never said pumpkin, but did say trick-or-treat twice! He was pooh bear this year, which was pretty neat because he knows pooh, so he knew that he looked like pooh bear in his costume. We took him trick-or-treating to a few houses on our block, by the end he was SO excited for them to open the door, he was jumping up and down.













Xander's first Balloon Fiesta
We took Xander to the Balloon Fiesta for the first time this year. I was concerned he was too little, but after watching it on the news for almost 2 weeks he knew what a balloon was and would jump up and down and yell "balloon" when they would come on tv. So we took him to his first Balloon Glow. He was excited and amazed at all of the big balloons and liked to make a blowing noise to imitate the balloons blowing up, it was so cute!

Michigan and Learning to Walk!

So it has been a while since I've posted anything, and Oh SO much has happened!
Xander and I took his First Plane trip to Michigan to see his Great Grandma & Grandpa! Just Mommy and Xander! Daddy couldn't come this time due to having to save his time off for surgery. He had his surgery last week, everything went wonderful and I'm looking forward to one more week of him home with us, I don't mind taking care of 2 babies! haha
Xander did awesome on the plane, although it was VERY nerve racking for mommy, and let me just say, please think of me and baby Xander the next time you're on a plane with a new mom all by herself, and try to be nice and even helpful if you can! I encountered a few meanies who didn't take kindly to a lady on a plane with a baby, but for the most part people were SO nice and played peek-a-boo with him on the planes or gave him cookies.
While we were in Michigan Xander had SO many amazing new experiences, seeing bunnies, chickens and sheep for the first time, singing "Hail to the Victor's" over and over, seeing grandpa ride around on the tracktor, everyday walks with grandma, but the by far the most important...
HE LEARNED TO WALK!!! Yay!! lol It was actually on Sept. 8th, daddy's birthday, what a present! We are SO proud of our baby boy, who sadly I can no longer call a baby but a TODDLER! And he is definitely a toddler now, it's amazing how one day you have a baby and the next day this little boy is walking around talking on his cell phone with one hand and carrying his cup with the other! Sigh... it really is so brief... I'm happy I took lots of pictures! Speaking of pictures... a good friend of mine is working on building up her professional portfolio and is taking pictures of Xander this Thursday at the UNM duck pond! I can't wait, I promise they will be posted asap... check these out for now : )























More to come SOON, I promise! : )

Arizona, 1st haircut & Elmo!

This past week Xander, Grandma Nancy and I took Xander's first road trip ever to Aunt Sami's house in Mesa, Arizona! A short 6 1/2 hour drive. We left Wednesday around 4:30 and Xander slept most of the way. It was such a beautiful drive, and on the way home Xander say several Chugga, Chugga, Choo Choo Trains! Ha ha I have gotten Xander into Trains lately, he LOVES them! It all started by neccessity, when Thomas the Train would come on tv Xander would get bored and cry so I would pick him up and say, "Look Trains! Chugga, Chugga, Choo! Choo!" and bounce him up and down, eventually he caught on and now everytime it comes on he gets oh so excited! I think he was really thrilled to see a real train, and it got me thinking maybe we should take him on a trip this fall to see a real train up close! I think he'd really love that.


Aunt Sami, "uncle" Kevin, Xander and I

So getting back to our trip, it was wonderful to see Aunt Sami and who we now like to call "uncle" kevin! Their new house was great, Xander really enjoyed crawling around a new place and opening all their cabinets! haha The dogs were a bit scared of Xander at first, probably because he chased after them excitedly, but they warmed up by the end of the weekend.

Also Xander got his first haircut! Don't worry I saved those first sweet locks of golden curls! Since Aunt Sami is a cosmotologist, we have been holding out so she could give him his first haircut. It turned out great after we distracted him with fruit snacks! haha She also did a fabulous job on my hair and mom's too, I have to mention! Aunt Sami also took all of us to see her work at Runway magazine, Xander enjoyed crawling around the offices picking up everything little thing off the floor and trying to eat it! lol The joys of motherhood!

Xander has learned alot of new words lately, he seems to be just picking up new words left and right! The cutest new word is Elmo! He likes elmo and I got him a book in AZ with elmo and when I showed it to him and said, "elmo" he repeated it and pointed to elmo right away! He says it alot now, it's very cute! He also is saying book alot. He loves his books and I even caught him pretending to read to the dog yesterday! It was absolutely adorable! He was going on and on in his gibberish and showing the pictures to Bailey, very cute!

Getting Bigger by the minute!

Xander will be walking anyday now. As you can see he loves to walk and run using the walker toy mommy and daddy got him for his birthday. He walks along the walls, the furniture, anything. He has ventured out and taken a step or two independently in between furniture, but is still too nervous to do it on his own. We've almost tricked him into taking steps a few times, but he catches on quick and will sit down in defiance ha ha


Walking Like Daddy






Xander had his 1 year well-baby check-up last week, 5 shots in total! It was torture! He is now 29inches long and weighs 18lbs. 10oz. He is still on the smaller side as far as weight goes due to his constant activity, the doctor said that was perfectly normal for a baby as crazy active as Xander. He is no longer anemic, but far from it actually! I stopped giving him supplements about a month ago when we beefed up on the grown up food. Looks like all those extra vitamins and minerals helped! The doctor also had me fill out a 6 page sheet on different development steps, Xander has completed every single one except walking on his own. The doctor was very impressed and even more impressed by the long list of words he could already say. She said that he was perfect in every way! (I already knew that though!)



Xander has learned alot of more advanced skills lately, like pushing the small button on this light up toy to make it turn on and flash! He likes to push buttons, stack cups, put animals and toys in his big wagon and cart them around, he now can throw a ball like a base ball (pretty impressive I think), he enjoys dumping out a box of raisins and pick them all up and putting them away,
and he is now learning to recoginize the words for several of his toys and foods, for example bird, whale, peach, plum, banana, he can bring each one to me when I ask for it and he can even give them all hugs when I ask too! It's super cute! The amazing things he can do!


But in the end he's still my sweet baby boy!

1st Birthday and so much more!

So it's been a while but we've been BUSY! Xander and I had a fabulous 2 weeks of swim class and by the end we discovered he has no problem being dunked or going under water, also he's a bit of a natural swimmer, the only little one in swim class that instinctively kicked his legs and moved his arms (sort of a doggy paddle) but it was amazing! That two weeks wore us out!
Then it was time to prepare the the BIG birthday! Mommy went on a cleaning and organizing frenzy but it all was done in time and the party was a success! I made Xander a "classic" winnie the pooh cake, my first attempt at cake decorating, but I think it was a success!


The Party was a winnie the pooh 1st birthday theme! I made lots of yummy finger foods that Xander would like to eat and Xander had so much fun playing with all of his cousins!








I also made a simple cake for Xander's actual birthday, it was just Chris, Xander and I, but we wanted to sing him happy birthday on his real birthday...






Xander got lots and lots of amazing gifts for his birthday and he really enjoyed ripping the paper this time! He got a new car seat (yay!), TONS of books!, toys, clothes, diapers and more than we could ever have asked for! We are so so thankful! And with the gift cards I was given I was able to go out and purchase the final Extra-Large Size baby gate we so desperately needed for our little escape artist!








As of the past couple weeks Xander's eating habits have really started to change. I transitioned him over to whole milk a couple weeks ago, which he seems to like just the same as formula. He still refuses to take milk out of anything but a bottle, but he will drink juice or water out of a sippy cup, go figure? So my goal right now is getting rid of that bottle but it looks like it will take some time and a lot of patience. Also Xander has all but started to reject his baby food! He now believes he should eat whatever we are eating. If I have a sandwich I end up losing half my bread to him! His favorites include: shreeded cheese, blue berries, any type of fruit really he can chew it all now from strawberries to watermelon and he loves it all, bread or toast, chicken, hamburger, speghetti, he can eat it all now. Which is very fun but frustrating that I can't just whip out some oatmeal in the morning or other easy baby food.

We've had tons of milestones and Xander has learned SO many new tricks in the past couple weeks, I'll try to list them all...
He has learned to clap and high five, He learned to click his tongue on the roof of his mouth to make a noise, He can paly ball (push it back to you when you push it to him over and over), He will walk around the house pushing his wagon or the new walking toy I got him for his b-day, He is getting ALOT of practice walking but still is nervous to take off on his own. Xander learned to use a Kazoo (we got them for his b-day and he learned to use this noise maker quick!), Xander also learned to push buttons, on toys, his little flash light, etc., he's finally got that hand-eye coordination down!

Summer Time Fun!

Xander's 1st 4th of July! He was too little to stay up for fireworks this year, but mom and dad watched them on tv, and talked about what future 4th of July's would be like...




Xander started swim class with me this week and we are having a ball! We go every day for a half and hour. It's TON of fun! It's nice to get out in the water and sun and let Xander splash and kick or just float. He is already kicking and moving his arms at the same time like a pro, very impressive! lol And he doesn't mind getting water in his face at all!

















Also two awesome accomplishments this week, Xander learned how to dance! His first song was Billie Jean by Micheal Jackson, it was the day after he had passed away and I was dancing around the living room with Xander and when I set him on the ground he continued to bob up and down and back and forth till the song was over! He's been dancing ever since, and will even start to bounce up and down when a jingle comes on a commercial, it's very cute!
Xander also learned how to brush his hair this week. Which is just a funny cute little trick more than anything, but it's really adorable to watch him do it!