Now that its safe to put stuffed animals in the crib, James has made some new friends :)

The many faces of James

Here's some pics of the nakey cutie

Birthday Cake

Birthday Toys

Happy Birthday James!

Well, the big boy turned one! Here are the things that you should know about the one-year-old. He weighs 35 lbs and is 34 inches tall. Yeah, I really can't carry him for longer than 2 minutes. When he's really happy and playing he says "da da da da da". When he's sad, tired, crying and clingy he says "ma ma ma ma ma". Yeah, Ben has a field day with that one. When you tell him Hi or Bye he waves-with both arms :) He claps whenever anyone says "yeah!" He now expects us to say "yeah" whenever he eats a bite of food or drops a ball into the right slot or any other number of things.

He still won't pick up food and eat it with his own hands--except for the very occasional cheerio or baby puff. He will come and beg for a bite of what we are eating, and after he's had about two bites, he's done. His favorite foods are yogurt, applesauce and green beans. He still cruises the furniture and walls and does the one legged crawl. We've got to post some cute pics of that later.

His birthday was fun. Granny and Papa came to watch him smear cake all over his tray. He got lots of things with wheels-'cause those are his favorite toys right now. The pics and vidoe aren't terribly exciting, but its almost like you were there, right?

All I want for Easter is...

Happy Easter Everybody!

Life is way too short to explain why we have this many stuffed bunnies. Just enjoy the pics of James, who by the way, is enjoying his second Easter before his first birthday. His birthday is in four days, so come back for those photos and videos!

That which precedes the spit-up...

Aaah, lovey

Do you think he's fond of it?

Some cranky cruisin

A little bit of cruising

He stands and shows off :)

I'm Mobile!

So James has learned a great deal in the last week or so. He was already pulling up and cruising furniture, but not much else. Last week, in the same day, he figured out how to crawl and sit himself up from being on his belly. IT WAS ABOUT TIME! HA! Anyway, a couple of days ago he figured out how to cruise the walls too. Soooo, lucky me, I spent a lot of Stake Conference literally "walking the halls" with James. Here he is walking the halls at home. I'm pretty sure I'll never sit down again.

Why won't he eat real food?

I don't know how many different kinds of finger friendly foods I have tried, this child won't eat them! He will eat ANY FLAVOR of baby food, including green veggies, broccoli and chicken, etc., but he won't eat any thing with texture. If there is the tiniest lump in his food he spits it out and swallows the rest. Well, actually he will "beg" for food off of our plates, and occasionally he'll actually keep it in his mouth-this weekend he ate some tiny pieces of chicken from 5 Brothers and some noodles from beef stroganoff. He has eaten a couple of little pieces of graham cracker and cereal bars, but that's it. He will not pick up food and put it in his mouth, though apparently he feels my slippers have an exquisite taste! yuck!

James got this Animal Train for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Swan. He just didn't open it until January 6th :) (Which is somewhat appropriate since that's Dia de los Reyes and we do live in the Southwest...) Anyway, he ended up getting so many great presents from family that we didn't even give him the present we bought for him. Its in his bedroom, still wrapped in Santa paper-and it will be his first birthday present!

Here's a few of James' first Christmas. We did more videoing than photographing. This is at Granny and Paw paw's house. Don't you just want to eat him up? :)

You should smile, 'cause James thinks you're funny!

I don't know why, but I think this pic is so adorable! Its like he got in trouble and they're having a time out.











Here's to better days with the bear.

Here's a four generation pic that we took at Christmas time. My grandma, Lois Bond, her son, Victor Bond, me, and my son James Victor Swan.

This is the first piece of candy James has ever had. I gave it to him to keep the peace as we roamed around Galveston. Needless to say, he LOVED it and it was not very peaceful when I took it away from him.