18 months!

Vake - you are EIGHTEEN months! You are a year and a half old!! I can't believe it!


What are you up to?

I don't know exactly how much you weigh but am guessing about 36 pounds. I have NO idea how tall you are at this point- either!!!

You wear size 7 diapers (of course available only on the internet!) , size 3T or 4t clothes which is hard to believe, and size 8 shoes.

You have 8 teeth on the bottom and probably 8 teeth on the top- but getting you to open so that I can see the tops is not in the cards.

You still love to sleep- 7 pm to 8 am without interruption most nights and a 2.53 hour nap most afternoons.

You drink from a cup. You can tell us where your belly, nose and ears are. You have a vocabulary of probably 15 words, including wash, no, milk, bye, ball, purple (!) and dog.

You love to dance, as well. You ask for music and then just bop along.

You feed yourself pretty well with a spoon and you seem to be right handed. You have a great sense of humor and laugh when other people are laughing.

We love you, small pumpkin!

Eighteen Months Portrait at the Jay-Cee-Pee

We went in with our buddy Huff today to get our 18 months pictures made by the lovely Lindsay. If you live in Richmond and you want someone reasonable to take pics, I cannot say enough good things about her- she totally gets it!!!

And we took some pics with our buddy Huff.

Serious, introspective Vake.

Both of us cheesing it up for the camera.

Oh hello there! I am up to no good.

I am too cute. Look at my RED hair!!! And I didn't even use Sun-In.

Oh getting my picture made is a GOOD time.

I just LOVE it.

Hello ladies.

Hmmm. I wonder what I'll do when I grow up.

Good buddies.

Reading and Dancing!

Most of our weekend mornings when we are lucky enough not to have obligations outside of the house are spent reading and now, dancing, with little V.

On Sunday mornings, I've been doing the marathon training and then getting Vake ready for the day when I get back home. Over the course of the weekend I've taped a lot of our antics and tried to edit them for the best ones. Vake is so close to having a fantastic vocabulary- his new favorite word du jour (and I honestly feel as though each day brings a new word) is wash. He loves helping with the wash. Today, as I threw in what felt like the 300,000th load of laundry for the week (how that's possible with Eric traveling so much I have NO idea) and he just stood in front of the washing machine repeating wash, wash, wash.

There are four videos below- in the first two, he's reading along with me- he LOVES a rotating collection of about 5 books and knows sections of them by heart. This is The Pigeon Wants a Puppy. In the last two, he's showing all the people out there how to do the mashpotato.

When the cat's away the mice will play!

Daddy's been gone for almost a week now by the Alison math and today I just pulled the trigger and installed the chandelier that I LOVE in our bedroom.

Now the good news for all the daddies on the interweb who are playing along is that I took down the other pendulum that E was always hitting his head on when he would get his shoes.
The bad news is that when the A/C comes on, it makes a little noise of paper rustling. Let's call it white noise.

Pretty awesome, no?

And then after bath tonight, my favorite little streaker jumped on his scooter before I could get him diapered up.

No pants, no problem.

For Daddy- he's out of town a LOT these days.

Mommy and Vakey were like two ships passing in the night today- poor Mommy, poor Vakey, poor super T.

These are gratuitous pics so that daddy can see what his big boy was up to today- thanks T.

Scoot, scoot, scooty-scoot.

All of a sudden I have this big boy. Today while Mom and I were working on getting the laundry put away, Vake entertained himself by scooting on his scooter up and down the hall.

Next thing you know he'll be asking for the car keys.

Where did my baby go?

I worked on sorting baby clothes again today. That coupled with the scooter is almost more than I can bear. Lucky for Eric who cannot stand the emotional Alison that he's out of town.

10 miles

That's right- I did basically the longest distance I've done since the 1/2 marathon fiasco last year. It was great- weather was almost cool and I've got a good group of 30-40 something ladies who are at the back of the pack with me.

2 hours 12 minutes. If I can sustain that pace, I can finish a marathon in about six hours, right?