Rounding out 18 months!

Ezekiel James is rounding out 18 months old this Friday!

He is growing and changing so fast and we are continuing to enjoy every stage! He continues to bless us more than I have ever thought possible! He is such a joyful little boy and he is so good at already passing that joy onto other people! Of course he has his melt downs and tantrums but I am feeling blessed to this point and they are always short and reletivly painless! I know some of you are saying, "oh just wait..." and that I will! I will take what we have and pray for the best moving forward! I know no child is perfect (and neither am I!) but I do my best to stay as patient as possible with him and not get frustrated, even tho it definetly does happen from time to time :-)

Ezekiel continues to talk up a storm! He LOVES letters/the alphabet and he now can identify the letter "O" which just blows my mind! Just the other day we were at Costco and we had him in the cart and on the handle of the cart it says "Costco" and he leaned forward and was looking at it and pointed to the "O" in Costco and said "O"! The other night he said his first 3 word sentence and it was after I got done changing his diaper and he said "Thank you mama"! How blessed am I! And he said it out of the blue too, without being promted or anything! On that note, he says "thank you" ALL the time, I think this is God blessing us for withstand the "NO, NO, NO" phase! lol! We were out for dinner this last friday night and when the waiter would bring anything over to our table Ezekiel would say thank you every single time! Its SO sweet; and he says it very applicably! Pretty much anytime one could say thank you he says it! He says a ton of words, I can't even keep up with all the words he knows anymore! One of my favs was from this last Friday; we got together with Steph and Toby, and a couple of our girlfriends and their babes, Carissa and Caleb and Katie and Lena. As we were walking out to the car Carissa said to Ezekiel, "Have a good day!" and he responded with "Good day!" Gosh he just cracks me up! My least favorite and quickest reminder that we need to watch what we say around him was 2 Sundays ago during the Vikings and Packers game Mike got frustrated with the Vikes (I think Ponder had just thrown another interception, shocker!) and Mike said "GOSH!" and like clock work, guess what came out of Ezekiel's mouth, you guessed it "GOSH!". Thankfully we don't swear, but still "GOSH" doesn't sound that awesome coming out of the mouth of your almost 18 month old! :-) He has offically named Grandpa Bear "PAH" and Grandma Bear "MAH" and he is also saying Uncle Joe, we continue to work on the rest of the family! Every where we go he is always saying hi to everyone and he will continue to say hi to someone until they say hi back! I love that he can make the crabbiest person smile by making them say hi to him! I love that he is already making a difference in the world, even if it is just something so small as saying hi to someone at the store! It may of just made their day!

He is starting to drop some of his sign langauge usage, but that is just because he is using his verbal language so much more. Sign language has been a huge life saver for us! I was just telling Mike the other day, what do people do when they don't know that their kid wants more or wants a drink! :-P Its nice to not have to just guess what he wants! And its cute to see him say/sign more when he is having fun doing something and wants to do more of it!

Ezekiel continues to be a great sleeper and a great eater the majority of the time! He has gotten a pretty handle on the fork and knife concept and insists on using them himself during meals! Which means our mealtime is getting slower and messier, but I guess how else will he learn!

He has several teeth coming in, so I am now afriad to stick my finger in and check on because last time I got bit pretty hard by some teeth that I didn't know where there! :-) Jaxon Bear probably remains as his favorite family member!

Though he has been quite giving of his "Jaxon Bear hugs" to the rest of us lately and I will take them all day long! He is continuing to love tractors, trucks, and books! Close second are his balls and the football! Recently we pulled out all of the Little People toys that Mike's cousin Helene so generously gave to us and he has been having so much fun playing with all of them, though the farm set and the animals are his favorite! He also love to watch Word World on PBS and Baby Einstein is still a favorite too, though it is so fun to watch it with him now because he will name all the different animals and say their sounds! He does this new thing where if something was there but now is gone he will shrug his shoulders and hold his arms out like where did it go. Lol! It's so cute!

He loves to play hide and seek, chase, and any thrill seeking activity that Dada comes up with! He also is still loving music and dancing along to the music! He has got some pretty sweet moves if I do say so myself! lol!

He also has taken a liking it coloring and finger painting. It's nice now when we go out to resturants because he can be occupied with coloring until our food comes!

The first finger painting experience was fun and he was a little unsure about it but created 2 masterpieces!

The Christmas Season has been beyond amazing and we are only half way through! I have always heard the saying "Christmas through the eyes of a child" and "knew" what it meant, but now I can say I fully understand it! I am loving every moment and new experience that he is encountering during this special time of year. My parents got us all tickets in the hot seats at the Holidazzle Parade and both Ezekiel and Toby LOVED it!

I think I took more time watching Ezekiel than I did watching the parade, it was priceless to be able to see the look on his face as he watched the floats go by!

I truly hope this becomes a yearly tradition for our family! He has loved seeing all the Christmas lights through out our house and through out the neighborhoods! We have driven around a couple times looking at lights, and he just "Oooo"s and "Aahhh"s while looking at them, it is so precious! He had a blast with our first real snowfall of the year this last Sunday! He wasn't overly opposed to bundling up and then when we put him in his sled and took him for a ride he enjoyed it so much!

He would ask for more anytime that we would stop!

 Then he had enough of that and wanted to get out and walk in it and he had a blast tromping through the snow and didn't want to go back home!

We got him a shovel so he could held Dada and Pa and that was fun but short lived! He wasn't too excited about tromping through the snow in the backyard that was up to his knees so Mike built a quick snowman for him and actually it looked more like a snow puppy! :-)

Later that evening we went over to Uncle Darek, Auntie Steppy, and Toby's house to try out some real sledding down the hill in their backyard! Both boys thought that was the best thing ever so needless to say we made several trips up the hill and back down again!

Though it was totally worth it to see the expressions on their faces! Can't wait to do it again!

Sorry for the long post again! Time just goes to fast and its hard to keep up with everything! This year again the thoughts that I wrote about in this blog, Mary, did you know?, continue to flood my mind! I won't go on about it as it will just be a repeat of that post! We are just beyond blessed by our little man!

If I don't get back here before Christmas, Merry Christmas to you and yours! We truly hope that this season blesses you as much as it is blessing us!