Baby Love

Last Summer I happened upon a yard sale that had an '80s Cabbage Patch Doll for sale. She was in perfect condition and she even came with the authentic little birth certificate. I loved my little cabbage patch when I was growing up and I just couldn't resist buying this one. By the way, her name is Hannah Hetty and she was born on November 1, 1986. Anyway, when I returned home and showed Jason my proud purchase, he was a little puzzled. The first thing he said was, "Well, you didn't buy that for Roman, did you?" I reassured him that I wasn't going to try to feminize his son by making him play with dolls, and that if was more for me. So, little Hannah Hetty has been sitting in one of Roman's toy drawers and he really hasn't paid much attention to her until recently. Lately he's really been interested in babies. Every time we see one he points and screams "Baby!" really loudly. So a few weeks ago he finally noticed my little orange-haired Hannah and he ran up to me with her screaming "Baby!" Then he proceded to throw her on the tile then pick her up by the hair and throw her again. I decided that it might be wise to teach him how to be "soft" with babies since he'll become a big brother in July. So, I showed him how we don't hold babies by the hair and throw them and that instead we give them hugs and kisses. He's at that age where I'm never really sure if he understands what I'm saying or not, so I was actually really surprised when he started being so sweet to her. He instantly started holding her like a real baby. Then he started stroking her hair and giving her kisses. It was so cute! Much to Jason's dismay, Hannah has become one of his favorite toys now. He's not always sweet though. I'll still catch him throwing her every now and again, but for the most part he loves his little Cabbage Patch doll. I'm hoping that this love for babies will continue until I have his little sister. She may not have the long flowing orange hair like Hannah Hetty, but I think he might love her anyway.

one-and-a-half

My little baby Romie turned 18 months old on March 29. I've been wanting to do a post about some of the things he's doing at this age. First of all, here are his stats: He's 30 inches long and 21 pounds. Yeah, he's just a little guy. He's in the 3rd percentile for height and the 5th for weight. Maybe he'll have a growth spurt someday :)
A few things Roman loves:
Playing outside
Anything sweet
Elmo...unfortunately for me
Cars, airplanes, trucks, and pretty much anything else that goes fast. He's especially fascinated with cars. He calls anything with wheels a car.
His mom and dad, obviously. He really loves when his dad comes home and they can play.
Balls
Babies

A few funny things about my Romie:

• He's very clean in some ways. For example if he gets a crumb on the sippy part of his cup then he'll give it to me and say, "Uh-oh, mommy." That means I have to clean it off before he'll drink out of it again. But don't be fooled, he has no problem with throwing his food on the floor.
• I recently started weening him from his binky and it's been surprisingly easy. He mostly just used it at night. Anyway, now he sucks on his pointer finger to get to sleep. Strange, huh? I guess he's just gotta be different...no thumb for him.
• He loves to put his finger in his belly button. So much so that I have to put a onsie under his shirts or else he'll have his finger on his button all day long.
• Roman doesn't walk - he struts. He's got the funniest little strut. I tried to take a picture of it, but it really doesn't do it justice

Some words he says:

• Mommy and Da
• Cookie
• Car
• Ball
• Cold (which means outside and cold)
• Lala (means Elmo)
• No
• Cheese
• Ju (juice)
• Beh (his friend, Beck)
• Baby
• pane (airplane)
• Cheekie (chicken)
• bee-dee (birdie)

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of all of them right now. He also can do the animal sounds for dog, cat, rooster, lamb, pig, goat, and birdies. Anyway, I know this was a long post, but I felt like I needed to document some of these things (especially since I don't have a baby book). I can't believe that my baby is turning into a toddler. In some ways I feel like he's been here forever and in another way I feel like he was born a few weeks ago. Time flies and I love seeing my baby grow and do new things. He's such a joy to Jason and me...most of the time :)

Our 700 mile journey...

A few weeks ago I was feeling a little homesick for my mom and dad because I hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving. So, I convinced my sister Danna to go to Powell with me to see our parents, our little sister, Cicily and our brother Clint. Then we found out that our brother Kimball and his wife Elaine were going to be visiting too for Spring Break. So, it ended up being a little half-family reunion. Anyway, our journey there was a little eventful. I was worried that the four kids would be terrible, but luckily they weren't too bad. Danna's three were pretty much angels and my Romie was the only one causing problems. Unfortunately you can't plan on driving through MT at the end of March without hitting a snow storm. We were just outside of Bozeman, MT (which is about 3 hours from Powell) and we hit this huge snow storm. It was dark and we could not see at all. It was so scary. We had to take the first exit we could in Livingston and we got a hotel. Anyway, once we got to Powell, the kids were so excited to see their granparents and we had a really great time. Of course whenever you get kids together for a few days they seem to all get sick. Unfortunately they all got the throw-ups (except for my nephew Tate). Anyway, we ended up extending our stay for one day so that all the kids could recover from the illness. I hope we didn't destroy all the bedding in my mom's house! Other than that we had a great time and as always I ate a ton of good food thanks to my mom. This is Roman with his cousin, Ella. Grandma bought a lot of fruit snacks for them and they were happy to eat them all.

We also visited my Grandma and Grandpa Hopkin who have a farm outside of Powell. Grandpa took all the kids to see the baby cows . Roman really loved them from afar (he was pointing and mooing), but as you can see below he didn't like it when Grandpa got him close to one.

One of my grandpa's neighbors had these little ponies. I can't remember the name of the breed, but anyway, this is a full-grown ponyl They were so cute. The kids really liked them.

Here's Roman with his great grandma and grandpa Hopkin. It was so nice of grandpa to take the kids around the farm. They really loved it.

So, that's our Powell trip in a nutshell. I have to give a shout-out to my sister Danna because she seriously drove the WHOLE time...there AND back. I did offer to help out, but she said that she'd rather drive than have to deal with the kids. We decided that we didn't know which was worse. Anyway, it was a fun little adventure and I was glad to have my sister there on the long drive. We had some fun conversations and lots of reminiscing :)