Jane these days… (nearing 2 and a half)

Jane is getting a little chattier, but mostly just with us.  When strangers try to engage her in conversation, she gets shy and defaults to animal noises or simply pretends to fall asleep.  Around us though, she says things like “actually…” or “What the heck?” or “Hey guys” when trying to get our attention in the car.  She asks for a banana and then asks us to “open the door” to it for her.  She usually eats her bananas diced with a fork, though.

Jane has cereal almost every morning. After inquiring after daddy’s where-abouts, Cheerios is the first thing on her mind when I get her in the morning.  She usually has two or three bowls and then insists that she wants another, waits until I pour the milk and changes her mind.  I hate that part.

She has always loved books, but it’s reach a new level lately.  She really listens to the stories now and can fill in a lot of the blanks in her favorite books.  Right now those favorite books include: Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site (every night), Little Blue Truck, and her “Princess Book”.

Jane finally got tall enough and learned how to open doors. Now she is obsessed with opening and closing doors, which often leaves Peter trapped or excluded. 

Jane loves trucks.  Love pointing them out on the road, love books about trucks, loves playing with toy trucks… anything to do with trucks.  We took her the other night to the Monster Truck Rally.  It was fun.  The noise concerned her a little at the start, but she warmed up to it after a little while and liked pointing out the trucks and cheering for the pink one or the doggie truck (Monster Mutt).

Jane said her first bedtime prayer all by herself about a month ago.  It went like this:

"Heavenly Father, thank you this day.  Thank you Zoey.  Thank you Mason.  Thank you Quinn.  Thank you Dave..." then came daddy, mommy, Peter, Jesus, Paw Patrol, Bubble Guppies, and Dinosaur Train.  It's fun to hear what's important to her. 

Jane loves her cousins and asks me all the time if we can go see them.  I told her we would seeing all of them in just two months.  She was so excited.  Then I said, "Ok, get your coat on we're going to the grocery store," to which she replied, "No grocery store.  We're going to go see the cousins."  I explained that they all lived really far away and it would be a long time before we got to see them again.  She broke down into the saddest cry ever.  She misses her cousins (and prays for them all the time too.)

For a while, every time Peter would lie down with a sippy cup or bottle, Jane requested a drink of her own to lie down beside him.  They like to be close to each other, but it doesn't often line up that they feel that way at the same time.

Louisville

 Louisville is less than two hours from Indy, so when we saw 50 degree weather in January, we decided to head down for the day.  50 degrees is a heavenly break from the single digits we've been having.  It was fun to do a little sight-seeing again and now I can add Kentucky to my list of visited states.  We stopped for lunch at El  Taco Luchador.  I would go back.  Those tacos were tasty.
There are really two main things to see in Louisville: The Slugger Factory and Churchill Downs. We stopped at the Slugger museum first.  Chris loved it, of course, but even I (not a big baseball fan) thought it was pretty fun to see the factory processes.  Afterward, we walked down the charming downtown area and enjoyed the not freezing weather.

 Daddy is trying to teach Jane a good batting stance.  (She's a lefty)

We stopped by Churchill Downs, but by that time, both kids were zonked out in the back, so we headed home.  Another time, Louisville.

Birthday Boy

We had an intimate little family birthday party for Peter.  We took him to the Children's Museum for his actual birthday and then the next day we opened presents and ate cake.  We were waiting for Peter to wake up from his nap to start the festivities and it was just killing Jane.  She couldn't stop touching the presents and getting as close as possible to the cupcakes.  I had to pull her away several times and then came back once to find her eating a cupcake.  She froze mid-bite when I found her but the look on her face said, "I couldn't help it".  I get it, Jane.  

Peter got a couple of "bump & go" trucks and two books, and Jane has been obsessed with them since.  Peter likes them too, but not as much as he like his cake.  He devoured his cupcake, smiling and laughing the whole time.

Peter at 1 year.

We keep thinking he's close to walking.  He's actually taken a step, bridging the gap between the ottoman and the couch, but then he goes days without wanting to try anything at all.  He LOVES to walk Jane's tricycle around and even does it one-handed sometimes.  He has gotten more use out of it so far than Jane has.  That's ok, she uses the trucks he got for Christmas more than he does too.

He's picked up pointing and it's become his primary form of communication these days.   The other day he pointed to his blanket, indicated to me he wanted to be picked up, pointed to the stairs, then his room, then his bed.  Message received.  He did that for 2 of his naps that day.

Peter love bath time.  He crawls around happily and tries to drink the water whenever I'm not watching.  He is completely unfazed by water splashing, spraying, or pouring on his head.  (That's quite a bit different than our little Jane.)

He has four teeth and a fifth one just cutting through now.

Peter is learning to handle disappointment and frustration.  He has more emotion than he knows what to do with and it spills out in little tantrums here and there.  It's pretty funny actually.  He's happily playing with something and then the next minute he's throwing himself on the floor pounding fists (classic) or crawling really fast right into a wall (he's done this a number of times and of course it only makes him angrier).

He makes a lot of noises and sounds, but nothing I would qualify as a first word yet.  I like it when he says "da" and I respond in kind and we each take turns getting louder and louder.  It usually ends in giggles.

Clementines are still a staple in Peter's diet, but he's finally expanded to a lot more foods. He's a pretty good eater now, especially since he can handle dairy now.  That helped a lot.

Peter is constantly climbing.  He particularly likes to climb up on the kid's picnic table and then back down again.  He hasn't fallen yet, but I suppose it's only a matter of time.

Christmas in Colorado

We had an awesome Christmas vacation hosted by my sister's family in Colorado Springs.  13 adults and 16 grandchildren.  It was a full house, but maybe I'm just used to it.  It never felt that over-whelming.  This year our vacation featured...
    the addition of a few more grandchildren and a soon-to-be new sister-in-law
    a couple of trips to the movie theater (Interstellar and Unbroken)
    a morning at the trampoline place (that ended in a sad back accident for Brian)
    the introduction of a new game, Splendor
    an adults only dinner at Magnolia's
    a Jimmy Fallon-style lip sync contest
    subzero temperatures that kept us indoors most of the time
    lots of Dominion, sprinkled with a variety of other favorite games
    the playing of the Christmas chimes
    a girls lunch/bridal shower for Carly
    Red Robin with the Gardners
    and last but certainly not least, the production of our 2nd biannual Walton Christmas lip dub.  If you haven't seen it, you have to watch.  We had so much fun practicing our slow-motion singing. Special thanks to Mike and Carly for really owning this project this year.



I get lazy about taking pictures around the holidays.  I do it every year, relying too much on my family of talented photographers to get most of it.  But here are a few from our week together (and mostly just pictures of Jane and Peter anyway).

The kids' table for Christmas Eve dinner.

The adults' table.
Peter was sick AND getting his two front teeth, so for the first half of the trip he was a clingy mama's boy.  I still tried to make him take Christmas pictures, but he was just too miserable.

 Jane got a tricycle from Santa and Peter got a Fire truck and a dump truck.

 I think watching Jane open her stocking was my favorite.  Prior to Christmas, if you asked her what she was going to get in her stocking, she'd say "toys and candies and lollipops and candy canes".  On Christmas morning she added "nail polish" and thank goodness Santa already knew she would love that.  She got everything she wanted in her stocking and more.  It was fun to watcher he pull out each little treasure one by one and put them in her pile.

 Peter's first Christmas was kind of lame...

He did muster enough energy to play with his toys a little.

 The Johnson kids opened a trip to Hawaii.  Lucky!

Mike and Brian stole the gift giving show when they presented everyone with their "Family Timelines" book.  They spent two years researching ancestors, gathering stories and adapting a timeline my dad had made years ago into a beautiful family history book.  They bore their testimonies of the power they felt doing this marvelous work and hoped it would be a starting point for many of us to draw closer to our ancestors.  It is the most incredible gift.

Carly made Mike a little countdown to the wedding bubble wrap calendar.  We're very excited for these two.

When Peter was starting to feel a little more himself, I tried to catch some photos in their Christmas PJs together.  The photos aren't great quality, but I still like them.  These two kids make me so happy.

 Little Owen Walton, just 2 months old.