New Car and Our 18 Month Old!

We decided it was finally time to be a two-car family. It has been hard only having one car, but since Cameron works so many nights, that allowed me to have the car most days. It just took a lot of extra scheduling and getting lots of rides from people. Cameron even took the bus to work a few times which was not fun for him. It took him TWO HOURS to get to work, which normally would take him 25-30 minutes. ANYWAY, with us moving to a new house soon( I will talk about that in a minute), we thought it was a good idea for me to always have a car in case of an emergency-(I have felt ok about the emergency thing since right now we live in a duplex with our friends and they pretty much always have a car around that we could use if we needed to.) Also, since Cameron will be starting school in August and will need the car every weekday, it was just time. We had been looking around casually for a few months, but after Christmas we got to work. We got a great deal on a 2004 Chevy Aveo (yeah, I had never heard of it either), but it gets great gas mileage and came from an owner that took good care of it. It is a pretty small car, but we didn't need it to be big since it is just going to be Cameron's car to get to and from school/the hospital for clinicals etc. It definitely gets the job done and so far we really like it and are very happy with the purchase.

Here are a couple pictures of the car. **These are from my phone, so they aren't the best.

Well, here he is folks! Our 18 Month Old!

This is him on February 7th-the day he turned 18 Months.

I am trying to remember his exact stats from his dr appt right now, so here are what I remember and when I get the actual numbers, I will put them up here.

Height: 32inches-45th percentile

Weight: 28lbs 4oz -74th percentile (again these might not be exactly right, but they are very close).

the dr said that Grant had stayed on a very consistent growth curve since birth(apparently it's good that he has been growing at a regular pace.)

I'm trying to think of all the words that he says... I took a little video the other day, but Cameron said I need to do another one because I couldn't remember half of the words he can say. So I will do another and get that up soon. But for now, here is just a list:

"pate"-plate

"Miii"-milk

more

"peeese"-please

chair

door

NO

"III KK"-I'm ok

Ball

"caka"-cracker

car

"fooobaall"-football

bed

"Pabo:-Pablo, his favorite cartoon character

doggie

"tichen"-kitchen

"Caddie"-Callie, his friend and downstairs neighbor

"Nenna"-Jenna, his friend and downstairs neighbor

choo choo-train

"baanky"-Blankie

cheese

"wadddder"-water

"hep"-help

"showdo"-shower

"cuddor"-color

He can repeat almost anything you say to him, but these are things he says on his own. I know there are several more, but I can't think right now. Maybe i'll add some when Cameron wakes up to go to work- Everyone asks us if it is weird having such an opposite schedule with Cameron working nights fulltime. We are pretty used to it since he has been doing pretty much only nights for a good year and a half now. But yes, it is still somewhat weird thinking about how "normal" people go to work 9-5, Mon-Fri. We will never have that schedule, but we like the perks that come with the schedule we have right now too. We will be good with whatever schedule he has. If anything this schedule has just taught us early on how to be adaptive and go with the flow! (:

I need to add some videos of this CRAZY bath-taker. You can kind of see in this picture how much the water is moving. He is a maniac in the tub.

"What? I didn't do anything. Look at my innocent little face..."

The next several pictures are all from my phone. I need to get a phone that takes better quality pictures since I snap so many quick pictures on it. These are all from the past several weeks or so.

Grant snuggling with me in bed after church. He refused to take even a short nap(church is right during his nap time), but he laid there for a bit and that was nice.

This was Grant after his 18 month checkup. This picture basically sums up his feeling about the dr's office. The whole office(including all the receptionists, nurses, and our dr) have an ongoing joke about Grant that he never smiles and that he just takes his health very seriously. He didn't even have to get any shots or anything this time and he still is just so serious. We have brought them pictures and videos because they wanted proof that he laughed and smiled. We really love our dr and the whole office. They totally know us when we call or come in and they always make you feel like they have all the time in the world for your visit. I have never felt rushed or blown off at all, which is so nice since the dr we took Grant to until he was 3 months old NEVER knew who we were and ALWAYS acted in a super hurry and blew off any concerns I had. (Sorry that was not supposed to turn into a rant, but there you go).

haha! I love this picture. Just him being goofy in the tub again.

We had a few really nice days in January and one was even nice enough that we headed to the park to make the most of it.

Grant got two of his very own plates which he loves. He always insist that he needs his "pate" every time he eats, even just "cakas" -crackers.

We have been doing a lot of this lately... Child labor. Just kidding(mostly). We had also started looking for a new place to live after we found out that Cameron had been accepted at Case Western, but had not planned on moving until late April or maybe even May. We had looked around for a bit, but again, through connections of some friends of ours, we found a perfect house fast. It was going to be ready ASAP. So after going and looking at it a few times and meeting with the landlord, we decided that it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

This has all happened in the past two weeks and we will be moved in on February 27th! I was asking Cameron "why is it that we can never move at a normal pace. It seems like every time we move we are in a rush. This is nothing compared to our last move into this house(where we had to be out in TWO days), but it stills seems somewhat rushed.

I will post pictures of the move itself and then of the house once we are all moved in. I think I will like this move much better than the last one since we won't have a 6-week old to take care of and then leave on vacation two days after moving in. We should be able to just take our time and get everything set up just how we want it. The whole idea of moving was to find a house big enough for us to grow into over the next 5 1/2 years that we will be in Cleveland. This house should have plenty of space and we love it! I love the idea of knowing that we will be there for a good chunk of time. So for the next two weeks, we will be doing LOTS of packing and hopefully I will have pictures to show you not too much after that.

Here is Grant with his best friend, Marin. They were born on the same day, which is fun. They both light up when they see each other and have lots of fun playing and getting into trouble together. We will be sad to see them move to Montana in a few months, but are excited they get to be close to family again.

I just thought this picture was cute. Grant was waiting so patiently as I changed our laundry in the basement. As you can see, he was very ready to go outside and play, but he just sat and rocked in the rocking chair until I was finished.

A couple of pictures from an impromptu fun day as a family.

First off, Cameron and Grant both had to get some routine blood work done= NOT fun for anyone! So after that I took them to a fun little diner in Cleveland. It is actually one of the places that Cameron and I stopped at when we first flew out to Cleveland to look for a place to live over two years ago, so it had some sentimental value (really the only memory I have from it is walking out the door after eating there, getting about ten feet from the car and losing my entire meal on the snow in the parking lot... good ol' morning sickness. Anyway, here are the boys drinking the BEST fresh squeezed OJ.

After breakfast, we all went home and took naps. Then we decided that since Grant had been so good the past few days(looking at millions of cars and then waiting at the DMV to get our new car all registered) that we wanted to go do something fun. Cameron had the day off, so it was perfect. We went to the Bay Village Nature park. The last time we were there Grant was too little to really enjoy it, but this time he loved seeing all the animals and all the other cool kid stuff they have.

Here he is in a spacesuit

After the nature park, we went on a walk and then went to Chik Fil-A for dinner. Grant loved the food(he has become quite the picky eater lately) and loved the cow mascot who would come over and talk to him. It was the first time we had been there, but if they can get Grant to eat WHILE being entertained, we might become frequent visitors. (: