"nigh, nigh"

Well, we have had a bit of a crazy week. Crazy cuz it has been cold and so I haven't been as keen to go freeze my hiney off at the park for hours on end. James on the other hand, would love to do just that. At least, until he realizes that he is freezing and then he starts to cry. He also decided that he can't just crawl normally like most babies. He decided that he likes to combine 3 different styles. He still occasionally uses his "army" crawl that he favored for so long, he also uses the "normal" crawl that we all know and love and he also does a hands and feet crawl that is pretty funny to watch. Check it out in the video below.

I have been torturing James all week with trying to get him to talk more. I know it is too early to really get on his case but I can try. So, every time he came up to me this week and clearly wanted to be picked up, I would say, "Uh uh uppp", very clearly. He said it a few times, usually in the morning when he was in the mood to humor me. Occasionaly, he would start to whine when I tried to get him to say something, usually in the afternoon when he was not in the mood to humor me. The only thing that he says really consistently is "da da". He says that all day, every day. He also does a lot of nonsense babbling and it has increased a lot lately which is why I started the torturing in the first place. So, tonight when I picked James up and told him that it was time for nigh, nigh (our word for bedtime) he happily stuck his fingers in his mouth and put his head on my sholder. This is totally normal for him. Next we proceeded to his bedroom for his last 5 min. feeding and when I went to put him in bed he pulled his fingers out of his mouth started waving at me and said, "nigh, nigh". It was the cutest thing I have ever seen! I just wish I could have caught it on video for everyone (mostly Brian) to see. Unfortunately, I don't usually (well never) video bedtime. That would be way to distracting. It is not part of our "routine". Anyway, I just wanted to share that James is starting to talk a bit and I will be posting as he says new things. So far the words that I can understand that he has said are (in order of frequency) da da, ma ma, up and nigh nigh. He also does a whole bunch of babbling and tries to mimic sounds that we make but I don't really count those.
New subject. So while we have been chillin indoors mostly this week we have had to become creative in our choices of entertainment. These are a few of the things we have done to keep busy. We got out the twix it clips and made them into toys. Can you see how entertaining they were? We also ran naked through the house. That was tons of fun as you can see. James thought he was super cool for getting up onto the tv stand all by himself. He is so my kid, he totally loves to frolick naked whenever I allow him to. Usually it happens after baths for a few minutes. James also enjoyed taking all his toys apart and randomly depositing them throughout the house. He loves pulling all his books of the shelf and "reading" them. Anyone have any other ideas about fun, inside activites that we could try during the cold days?
On another subject entirely, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! James and I were invited to an excellent Halloween party this week. James got all dressed up as a cowboy and had a blast watching the other kids.He kept stealing a binky from another little boy there and "tasting" it. Funny that he won't use a binky if I give it to him. They made the most fun, spooky lunch and it was great to get out of the house for a few hours. We are going to go to another Halloweek party tomorrow the the English ward is putting on at the church. No, we are not in that ward but yes, we were invited by their bishop so we are going. Hopefully James will cooperate and let me take more pictures of him as I was only able to get 2 the other day cuz my memory card was full after that. Hope y'all have a great Halloween!

Photo Tag

Thanks to Shannon, I have been "tagged". This is how it works. I was supposed to go to my pictures and click on the 6th folder and then the 6th picture and post it on my blog and then share what it is about. Well, I only have 2 folders. "James" and "everything else". I chose James and then I went to Month 9 and to the 6th folder there and then to the 6th photo. This is what I came up with. It is James, of course, in the swing at the park by the hotel we stayed at when we first moved to Geneva. This photo was taken on September 10, 2008 so James was almost 10 months old here. As you can see he was having fun in the swing. We went to this park pretty close to every day that we stayed in the hotel. Usually we would start with a nice long swing and then we would stroll around the park watching all the interesting people and animals. James loved watching the older kids play soccer and basketball. He also loved watching the dogs stroll by and seeing the pigeons eat day old bread that people would throw to them.
Now I get to tag a few people. I tag Crystal, Jill and both Emilys. Can't wait to see what your search turns up.

11 Months

James is 11 months today. I don't have any official stats this month either because I still have yet to find a pediatrician. It is on my list of things to do this month. James is doing great. He is happy as ever and is learning new things every day. He has finally perfected the crawl and he is officially better at real crawling than army crawling. He is on the verge of standing by himself but he still doesn't quite trust himself. He still climbs everything and he still tries to eat everything. He now knows when he is being naughty and he gets plenty of joy while being naughty. He really likes it when we say, "uh oh" cuz that means he can grin mischeviously while doing the "uh oh". I have to keep most of the doors shut in the house so that he won't get into too much trouble but he seems to find it anyway no matter what I try to do to keep him out of it. Here are a few pictures of him from the last month. Enjoy.
Here he is enjoying the snow in Murren. He tried to lean over at one point to taste it but he was so overdressed that he couldn't bend at the middle enough to get there. He really liked the snow.

James gets really excited when he is going to eat. I have to give him his own spoon so that he won't try to steal mine. He gets so excited and just starts waving his arms and bouncing up and down in the highchair and laughing. It is funny.Here he is trying to figure out how he is going to get that rice into his mouth.And here he has figured it out. There is a park across really close to our house and James just loves to go there and play. He especially loves it when Brian can come and help him down the slide. He thinks it is super fun.The following are just a couple of examples why I can't leave him unattended for more than about 3 seconds. It makes it difficult to go to the bathroom when he is awake. Here he got himself stuck in the basket of his stroller cuz he was trying to go after the bag of bread that I had left in there. (This happened while Brian was home watching him and I was out.) All of a sudden Brian heard some whining and came in to find this. James was stuck and couldn't figure out how to get back out. I was in the other room for a minute doing dishes and I guess I didn't get the door closed all the way. When I found him and I said, "Oh no". He looked at me and quickly tried to get as much fun in as he could and started trying to touch everything all at once. Good thing I had just cleaned the toilet but he still got a bath anyway. JIC (just in case).

From the Top of the Europe...Almost

(Brian writing.) We finally had our first Alpine experience. For those of you who have never experienced the Alps, I highly recommend that you consider putting it on your list of things to do in life. The geography is so serene and majestic, and at the same time daunting and menacing. We took a little weekend trip to a town called Murren, in the German speaking part of Switzerland. It is in an area called the Berner Oberland or in the Interlaken/Junfrau region for those of you quasi-familiar with Swiss geography.
We had two mains goals while there: have fun and try two meals that we typically would not order. The town is closed to vehicles so the only real way there is to go by train. So our itinerary started with three trains, then a gondola, then another train and we arrived.The town is about 5400 feet high, and is literally built on the side of the mountain. You can move laterally in the city, but to go up or down is literally a steep climb. This is how it looked on Saturday morning. This is the Jungfrau mountain. The tallest in the region at over 14,000 feet. From Murren, we were able to take a funiculaire that took us up to 6,250 ft, where we enjoyed a nice Swiss meal and some major snow. James and me on the Funiculaire ride.Becky and James at the top. It was totally snowing. It had a great hill for sledding which we will have to take advantage of when James is a bit older. James really liked the snow. He thought it was super fun.Becky enjoyed a plate of Raclette, which for cheese fanatics should be a piece of heaven. I enjoyed a nice bowl of Alpermakaroni. This met our second goal. I should mention that it snowed Friday night and half the day on Saturday. You couldn't see any of the mountains, even though they were right there.
(Becky writing now.) Saturday afternoon we decided to walk to the nearby town of Gimmelwald. These are from the road going down. Notice how Brian refuses to wear a coat. It totally snowed that day. Where else can you have flowers in bloom and snow on the ground? It was so lush. I just love the greeness here.See how the clouds are covering the mountains? It was so pretty the way they were all misty. You can get an idea of how steep the verticle is. This is Brian and Bimmy standing on the road and you can see just how steep it is if you were to go straight up. Crazy steep. It is such a classic Swiss mountain village. Here is Brian and Bimmy outside the cheeze hut where we bought some locally made cheese. That was our souvenier from the trip. Sunday morning was crips and clear; emphasis on crisp. It was 3 degrees Celcius, which is 37.4 F. Given that you could see everything, we took a gondola (it is actually 2 gondolas) up to the Schilthorn, which is at 10,000 feet. The view from the top. Have you ever seen anything more amazing? It was awesome! Looking back the way we came. You can't even see the town of Murren. The first gondola station is on that rock cliff at the right of the picture. You can barely see it.We could see as far as the Black Forest in Germany. The black forest is that line of black in the background of the picture and the city by the lake is Bern, the capitol of Switzerland. It is a 1.5 hour train ride from Murren to Bern so you can imagine how clear it was to see that far. It was one of the clearest days they have had in a long time. (According to the guy opperating the gondola). This is a view from the gondola as we are going back down. See at the top of that mountain is where we took all of those amazing pictures. It took 17 minuts and 2 gondola rides to get from Murren at 5400 feet to the top of the Schilthorn at 10,000 feet. Totally recommend it to anyone in the area. We would be glad to take you there when you come to visit. Here is Brian and Bimmy on the ride down. James was such a good sport being dragged around all weekend. Here we are right before we got on the train to go home. We finally asked someone to take our picture so that we had one with all 3 of us. It was so amazingly beautiful. This is the tiny train that we took from Murren to the gondola that takes us back to Lauterbrunnen. It was literally one car. That was it. I guess it really isn't a train then is it? Technically, doesn't it need to be more than one car long to be considered a train? I don't know.

We ended the trip with James finally giving up and going to sleep on Brian's sholder about 10 minutes before our train pulled into Geneva. Typical. Isn't he so darn cute? I love that he sucks his little fingers when he is tired. It make the cutest little sound.

Still Waiting

On our internet to be set up at our new appartment. That is why we haven't been posting lately. As soon as it is up, I will do some catch up posting. Until then? Well, no promises. I am only posting now cuz I have internet at the hotel we are staying at in Murren, Switzerland. We are just waiting for Bimmy to finish his nap before we get on 3 trains and a gondola to take us back to Geneva. I will post about our first official trip when I get internet at home. I hope it will be early this week. Hope you all are doing great!