Clayton is 10 Months

On January 21st, Clayton turned 10 months old.  The past month has been a big one for Mr. Baby!  I had mentioned numerous times that I REALLY hoped it wouldn't start truly crawling until AFTER Christmas (so that I wouldn't have to worry about the danger of him and the Christmas tree).  Well, Clayton must have heard me, because on December 26th-the day after Christmas-Clayton hadn't been up for even an hour when he started crawling.  And he crawled straight to the Christmas tree...which we took down along with the rest of our decorations that very day!  He is SO SO happy to be fully mobile to go check out everything he's been looking at from afar for months!  It is adorable to see his little round body crawling across the carpet.  So officially Clayton started crawling at 9months+5days.  The funny thing is that he LOVES to crawl off of the carpet on to the hardwood floors in the foyer of our house.  We can ALL be sitting on the carpeted playroom floor with Clayton playing, and Clayton will crawl away to be on the hardwood floor! Silly boy!  
Now that Clayton can crawl from toy to toy he's really been enjoying his toys this month!  He got lots of great things for Christmas, and has been enjoying every thing!
His very favorite book is Little Blue Truck.  If he sees me sit down with that particular book, he will just smile and smile and get close to me to look at the pictures while I read.  It's so sweet to see how much he likes this one particular book.  
Clayton now has 4 teeth...almost 5.  The fifth one is barely under his gums, so it will be through any day now I'm sure.  
Clayton usually wakes up still one or two times each night, so we still aren't sleeping through the night.  I have confidence we will get there (one day) though!  Clayton nurses about 5 times in a 24 hour period of time, and now is eating 3 meals AND snacks each day.   He LOVES yogurt like his siblings.  He also likes pancakes or oatmeal for breakfast.  He eats the baby food I make for lunch and dinner-usually meat, veggies, and a fruit.  He WILL NOT eat the meat baby food by itself.  I have to mix it in with his veggie (for example, last night he had peas and chicken mixed together).  But if I cut off a few bits of meat from what I'm eating he will eat that on its own .  With four teeth and a very BIG interest in what me, John, and his siblings are eating-I think Clayton may be eating what we eat before too long at all.  Snacks are usually yogurt, puffs, cheerios, or maybe a couple of crackers.  Clayton barely drinks any water, which I am REALLY REALLY trying to work on.  We have a wide range of cups that we have tried for him, and he just won't drink of out of them.  The big kids have their Thermos cups with straws that I would have never dreamed of giving a baby, but he actually will drink a teeny, tiny amount from these.  Sometimes after he gets the water in his mouth he just spits it out-it's like he doesn't like water.  This seems ridiculous, but in an effort just to start getting him used to water-I've been letting him drink water out of my big Yeti cup-this way he probably drinks about an ounce of water a day.  I know that he needs to drink WAY more water than this especially as he nears his first birthday, but I'm really working on it so hopefully he will just change his mind about water very soon!  We haven't given him anything else out of a cup-so I can't say whether it's that he doesn't like water or that he doesn't like cups.  Either way, we've got a little work to do on this.
One really sweet thing that Clayton has started doing this month is giving kisses!  He leans really close to your face, opens his mouth as wide as he can, and puts his open mouth on your cheek-the sweetest (wettest) kiss! SO sweet.  Melts our hearts every time.  
Now that Clayton's on the move, all he wants to do is crawl, crawl, crawl.  So this month has been spent keeping up with Clayton as he is a speed crawler.  We are loving watching our sweet baby grow and learn so many things!

Now that we are mobile we really don't want to lay still for a picture! :)

His hair is getting so long!

And, it's funny...as curly as Nora Kate's hair is, his is straight! SO STRAIGHT!

In every ultrasound Clayton had his ankles crossed, and he still ALWAYS crosses his ankles like this!  He does it in the bath tub even!

Everyone was very silly for the pictures.  Clayton was trying his best.

LOVE these four so very much!

December 2016

December means lots of traditions.

On tradition in our home is that our Elf on the Shelf, Charlie, arrives at our house every year on December 1st!  The kids know and expect that on the first day he will be near the kitchen table and will have cooked breakfast for us!

They were right! Charlie was on Christmas lights and had made a North Pole special for us-eggs fried with red and green sprinkles, fruit, FRUIT LOOPS (and on a school day, none the less!), and muffins with red and green sprinkles in them.

The kids were thrilled with Charlie's arrival.

We continued decorating our house for Christmas-inside and out!

December 1st also meant Advent gifts began! Some days there was 1 gift to share, some days 4 individual gifts...here they are with day one gift!

John traveled to Nashville for work this month, but on his way out of town heading home he stopped by Hattie B's to buy us some Hot Chicken (we had watched all about this place on the food network). And it was still hot and delicious by the time he got it back to Maryville for me to try!

Our elf did all kinds of fun things this month!!

Nora Kate has an every increasing love for baking.  She's always asking if we can bake together!

Someone made this adorable little hat for Clayton at church! They left it for us and we have no idea who it's from.  It fits him perfect, is so soft, and was just in time for the cold weather! 

The first weekend of December is always a busy one for us.  One even that day was John's work family Christmas party.  NK danced with this pretend Santa there.

Clayton was perfectly content chilling on Santa's lap.

Part of the busy fun on the first weekend of December is the Junior Service League Breakfast with Santa.  Lolly always takes us.  Here are the kids with Santa at breakfast!  They love it.  Then we enjoy breakfast together and crafts!  Such a fun tradition.

Basketball practices started for Dawson this month.  He's playing at church again this year, and his coach is John and his assistant coach is Grandad! Who could ask for better coaches!

The kids wrote these giant letters to Santa telling them what they would like for Christmas.  Then we left them for Charlie the Elf to take to Santa.

Clayton is now big enough to ride like a big kid in the shopping cart!

More cold weather meant lots more fires this month!

Another fun tradition-visiting Shadrack's Christmas Lights at the Smokey's Stadium!

After driving through all the lights John got the kids out to check out the animals!

It was SO SO cold that night...

So this Santa baby and I stayed in the car!

Then that Sunday evening we had our Sunday School Christmas party.  Thankful for our great Sunday School class!

Fire and coordinating pajamas for these littles.

We have been letting Dawson practice his math facts using an app on the iPad.  Carter LOVES math and cannot stand to be outdone...so now he begs to do math on the iPad too...here you can tell he's using his fingers to count.

This cool dude always has great hair...even in the bathtub!

December was also the basketball homecoming for our high school.  John and I went and took the kids.  Dawson thought it was neat to be in our old school where Daddy played ball and I cheered, and Carter was getting really into the game!

The next day we went to Dollywood.  Remember how last year it was unusually warm at Dollywood when we went for Christmas-yup, not this year! BUT it was still fun...and beautiful!

Clayton's neck is crazy in all these pictures...he's craning around to see all the lights!

Toward the end of our trip to Dollywood, Lolly and Pop got to Dollywood.  They were coming to see the shows, but we met up by the giant Christmas tree before we left.

Right after we took the picture above, I checked the temp on my phone because we were FREEZING...yeah, now we can say we have been to Dollywood when it's 28 degrees!!!

The duck pond at Dollywood was even frozen.  This picture is of the ducks walking ON the pond because it's frozen! ICE DUCKS-kids thought this was hilarious!

The next Tuesday I got to go help Dawson's class with their Christmas party.  So fun!!

Then that night I took the kids Christmas caroling with our church--also so fun! We have never done this, and now it is something I want to make sure we DO NOT miss every year.  They all loved it as did I!

I remember making things with Perler beads when I was little.  Dawson got some as an advent gift this month and LOVES them too! Here he made a Santa!

Dawson's always so amazing to want to help...here he was learning to make lasagna.

Over Christmas break Dawson's sweet friend Riley came over to play.  These two could have played for hours and hours.  They had a blast!

Our Christmas tree!

Christmas Eve was foggy...but not too foggy to throw out our reindeer food in the yard!

We left homemade treats for Santa.

Christmas morning...Nora Kate got this princess car from Santa! This was what she had really really wanted.

LOVES IT!

Right after Christmas, we saw that Carter's picture was in the paper from a pancake breakfast he had attended earlier that month!  Obviously he's demonstrating the proper way to eat a pancake-hah!

(again, this post, the pictures are posting out of order-why?!)

Here we are at Breakfast with Santa at the beginning of December.

Nora Kate loves playing her dollhouse.

We always decorate a gingerbread house...

Check out this Santa baby...

The oldest and youngest in their Christmas pajamas.

Christmas Eve with the Wade family!  Such fun!!

Christmas morning! SANTA CAME!  Santa always leaves the letter of their first name on their pile of gifts!

And their stockings are full, and the cookies are eaten.

Clayton is so so close to crawling here on Christmas morning.  I have said all month that if he can wait until we take the tree down to truely crawl that would be awesome!

Dawson was thrilled with his Nintendo DS that he had asked Santa for!!

(It was so warm on Christmas that the boys did not want to wear their Christmas pajamas-too hot!)

And Carter was thrilled with HIS Nintendo DS that he had ALSO asked Santa for!

And this happy guy was just thrilled that it was his first Christmas...

and he got lots of things too.

Nora Kate gave Carter a whoopie cushion, and he was so excited he hugged her!

The big things the kids wanted this year were:

Dawson-new bike and nintendo ds

Carter-nintendo ds and a blanket and a scooter

NK-princess car and doc mcstuffins hospital

Clayton-baby toys, puffs, and a play in car

After Christmas morning at our house we went to Lolly and Pops. 

Clayton was sure happy to be opening his play horse.

Our family on Christmas day 2016.

Then for dinner we went to Nana and Grandad's to celebrate Christmas.  Clayton loves these little people he got there.

December is one of those months that is SO busy every year, but it's also full of lots of fun things to do and celebrations!  We are so very thankful.  The entire month leading up to Christmas was VERY busy, but John had a lot of time off around Christmas and New Years.  We LOVED this time!  We got to spend a lot of time together playing at home and going on a few outings.  We attended the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Show in Pigeon Forge.  I wasn't sure how this would be, but it was SO GOOD!!!  We were seated on the floor level so we were right at the stage where the kids could see REALLY well.  EVERYONE loved it.  It was kind of loud so I had worried about Clayton, but we were so close he was watching too and not bothered at all by the noise!  The kids have since been putting on their own Hatfield and McCoy shows for us which are hilarious!  We also went to the Muse which is always fun, but was an extra special treat since John was off to go with us!