2 Little Monkies...

This morning we were upstairs getting dressed for the day...and ended up with 2 crazy little monkies jumping on Jim's bed!!!  Love some of the faces in the 'action' shots!!  And yes, Ben climbed up on the bed himself, with the help of Jim's stool...And like I said we were getting dressed for the day, hence just the underwear on Jim.

And these next pictures are of Jim & Teddy Bear going night night.  I didn't realize that he sleeps on the floor with his head under the bed....

Brothers

Just a couple of pictures from the past couple of days:

Here is Jim helping Ben drink his milk:

And then Jim helping Ben eat his lunch.  And no, I did not put Ben that close to Jim...Jim pulled the high chair closer to him...

Ben's first try at coloring where he actually did not try to eat the crayons!!!!!

Can you see his little work of art?!?!  He doesn't look happy because I took the crayons away from him because after a couple of minutes he got bored of coloring and wanted to eat the crayons...

Jim is hard at work coloring as well.  Lots of concentration going on (check out his tongue!)

We have just a couple of books in our house...

We spend a lot of time playing here!

Happenings Around Here

This post has been a couple of days in the makings.  I finally finished our taxes, so I can move onto other things like updated this with pictures....So first we'll start off with a couple of pictures of the 2 boys:

Love this one of them playing together - And love the face Jim gives me when I tell him to say 'Cheese' -

Both boys curious as to what's going on outside...or maybe a sign that they are really looking forward to spring & warmer weather...

Playing trains together:

And what a great big brother Jim is - he loves 'catching' Ben when he's walking - love it!

I've been meaning to update with the latest happening in the VZ house -

First off Jim is officially potty trained!!!!!  No more diapers for him!  I posted last month how he was doing great during the day - but we were still working on naptime & night time...After our weekend in Pittsburgh we decided to get rid of the diapers at nap-time (he was walking up from his nap dry, so I figured this would be easy!  And then the next day or 2 we decided to get rid of diapers at night time since he had been waking up in the morning dry.  I think when we started off with the potty training he knew that he wasn't supposed to go in his diaper hence him waking up dry.  But he did such a great job - and continues to do a great job!  Very proud of my Jimma!

How sweet is Jim?!?!  He was very excited for his red heart shaped pancakes on Valentine's Day!!!

And I love this picture of him!!!  Maybe I'll get around to posting all these pictures, but for Valentine's I had the boys hold letters that spelled L-O-V-E - and I love this one!!!

Sweet Jim relaxing:

We lost power this past Sunday, and it was cold.  Here's Jim warming up his hands!!  And don't worry he didn't come anywhere close to touching the fire -

And Ben is officially walking!!!  He's all over the place now.  I love turning the corner to see him walking around (with his hands straight up in the air!)  He no longer needs Mark or I as motivation to walk.  It won't be long and he'll be running around the house.

See, hands up in air:

Getting ready to take off -

Walking out of the playroom:

Hahaha, Ben cracks me up.  He gets stuck places when he uses his walker, and gets so mad that he can't keep going.  Here he is trying to walk under his highchair, and not liking that he and the walker can't get through -

11 Months

Wow - One month away from being the big ONE!!!  Hard to believe it...A happy 11 months to you Ben!

What Ben's been up to at 11 months:

- Loves to climb up on anything and everything.  Bath nights he makes a beeline to Jim's bed and climbs up on that.  (He uses the stool to climb up).

- Can't leave the gates / open even for a second.  It's like he can hear if we go upstairs and forget to shut the gate....in 2.2 seconds he's over to the stairs climbing up!  The other day I was making breakfast, and I come out to check on the boys, look in the family room - Jim's sitting on the couch watching Super Why...Look in the playroom - No Ben...look up the stairs, and there he is smiling at the top!

- Is still loving to eat anything and everything!  He's such a great eater.  I don't think we've found a food he doesn't like.

- Has 8 teeth now...4 on top & 4 on the bottom.  I'm thinking maybe he's starting to get his next top teeth.  He's constantly chewing on his fingers (a lot more than normal) and lots of drool.  Only time will tell.

- Wearing size 4 diapers...and 12 month clothes.  Need warmer weather to switch him into 18 month clothes...

- According to our scale at home he's 21 pounds.

- Still wouldn't call him an 'official' walker.  He was sick for a couple of weeks and really didn't do any walking then, so there was no practicing.  He'll take steps on his own, but it's still usually only between Mark & I.  I'll call him an 'official' walker when he doesn't need us as an end point.  It won't be long.

- The last couple of weeks were a little rough health wise - first he had a nasty cold - a runny nose, cough, just looked very sad.  And then he got over that and then was hit with a stomach bug.  But he's back to his healthy happy self!

And with that I'll leave you with his 11 month pictures.  He's been great letting me take them!!  Although he is very curious as to what I put on his shirt...

A picture with big brother Jim -

Trying to get a picture of him walking...

Standing...