20 Months

Julia turns 20 months today! It's hard for me to believe she's only a few months away from being TWO. How crazy!

The Zoo

To start, I wanted to post this picture from the zoo. It didn't make it on to my last post because I had taken it with my iPhone and forgotten to upload it. Since Jarret's the photo guy, I'm usually the parent in the pics with Julia. So here's a cute one of my favorite two people:

Christmas
We also never posted any Christmas pics. Although very, very late, I thought these were too cute not to share:

New Year's Day

For New Year's, we had the pleasure of Kendall and Caden spend the night with us. Jacob was supposed to as well, but poor guy got a fever the day of! We took the kids to Dave & Buster's to eat and play games, then they all took a bubble bath that night (This video is posted for Julia's sake. She can watch it over and over again, and she thinks it's hysterical). That was followed by silly dancing and some Wii games. Julia absolutely loved having her cousins stay with us, as did Jarret and I!

Watermark Anniversary Celebration
Our church celebrated it's 10 Year Anniversary on January 17th, with bounce houses, pony rides, and Fair food. It's hard to believe that I've been a part of the church for 9 of those 10 years. What an exciting journey it's been to watch all the ways God has used the people of this church to grow and shape my life. We were thrilled to be part of the 10-year celebration.



We discovered at the State Fair last year that Julia loves cotton candy. The church celebration proved no different. It starts out really cute, but as this precious child gets covered in more and more blue goo, it actually becomes a really frightening sight...especially when she does her "Say Cheese!" smile. See for yourself: The first two below are pretty cute, but the second two are just plain scary.




Julia enjoyed running around even more once her cousins arrived!

Last, but not least, she especially loved her first-ever pony ride. As soon as we put her on the pony's back, she started bouncing up and down saying, "Gallop! Gallop!"

Julia's First Wedding

We celebrated Jarret's actual birthday (January 23rd) by attending the wedding of a Eubanks family friend. Julia looked so cute (thank you Andrea for Paige's precious dress), but we lost the bow before ever making it to the reception. That's the second black bow we've lost on the 1st night she's worn it. Grrr. As always, she loved being with her cousins and having some free floor room to run and explore. They also gave everybody little silver bells, which she clung to and happily swung back and forth. (Somehow Kendall didn't happen to be in any of our pictures?! Sorry sweetheart, we love you!)

Feeding the Ducks, er, Geese

It was so nice outside this past Tuesday, that I wanted to take Noah and Julia to feed the ducks after picking them up from school. The timing happened to work out perfectly with Karla's other two kiddos, so they met us at the pond. We only saw a couple ducks, but we fed a lot of aggressive geese! More than anything, it was just nice to walk around and soak up the sunshine. I kinda forgot to take pictures of my own kid while we were there. Next time Jewels!

Other Random Stuff
Sugars for daddy:

Calm Cuteness (she's gotten tremendously better about being in her car seat now that we have the portable DVD player installed):

Tutu Time!

Julia loves to accessorize herself with hats and sunglasses, even when they're not needed. (Note the winter hat in multiple zoo pictures when it really wasn't THAT cold outside). However, the accessories came in handy on this particular sunny day as she flaunted her style:

I pulled the baby bath out for a friend to borrow, and Julia kept carrying the huge thing around all by herself and then would plop herself in it. Silly girl!

And these are my new favorites because it shows how curly her hair is getting and because her smile is genuine instead of terrifying!



One of our absolute favorite things right now is enjoying this stage of life in which some of her words make complete sense to her, but not to anyone else. This video shows you our current favorite word that makes us laugh repeatedly. It sounds so foreign and so nasaly.

For Jarret's 31st birthday, we celebrated with his family at Blue Mesa for brunch. (Separate post to come about his birthday). While there, Jacob got a first-hand experience of just how much fun the Gallop game can be. Katie B. taught me this little game and Julia adores it. She comes up to one of us often bouncing up and down and saying, "Gallop!". If you notice closely in the video, Jacob and Julia are holding hands. They're just too darn cute when together.

All About Julia at 20 months:

• She's finally about to outgrow her Size 4 shoes. She clearly has her daddy's little feet!
• She weighs about 22 pounds.
• She parrots everything we say! We've noticed that she's started repeating words when Jarret and I are having our own conversation and we don't even think she's paying attention. Guess that means we really need to start watching everything we say (not that we weren't already).
• We've noticed recently her speaking more in phrases rather than single words, and sadly many of those phrases begin with "I want..."!
• She is amazing with our iPhones. When the phone is off, she knows the button to push to turn it on. Then she knows how to swipe it to unlock it. Then she'll swipe to the page of apps she wants, push the button for the game she wants to play, and play the game all by herself. Most of this I didn't ever teach her, but she just learned by watching me. Scary.
  
• I swear the iPhone is the most educational toy she has. She is learning colors, letters, and shapes so well from the kid games we have on the phone. When asked to pick the correct shape, she can select star, crescent, triangle, rectangle, square, circle, oval, heart, and even hexagon with 100% accuracy. Again, scary. (My favorite app picks are FirstWords and Toddler Teasers shapes. I've heard the other Toddler Teasers are good, too.)
• She loves watching videos and cartoons, or "moo moo" as she calls them for movies. This has solved our car battles and is a life saver when I need to fix dinner.
• She is such a picky eater. She's become a near vegetarian except for the occasional chicken nugget, and we've resorted to bribing her in order for her to eat most any other meat. She still refuses many of the typical kid favorites such as grilled cheese, pizza, pasta, ham and cheese sandwiches, etc.
• She loves to draw as well as have us draw for her on her Magna Doodle. She will call out the pictures we draw such as flower, tree, car, airplane, clock, boat, moon, sun, and others. She also recognizes her written name and will say "Ju-Ju" when she sees it.
• She is a prayer warrior! When we sit down for a meal (and sometimes when going to bed) she sticks out her arms to hold our hands and says repeatedly, "Pay, Pay, Pay!" to pray with us. After we pray she always ends with an excited "A-men" or "men" and then will ask to pray again, and again, and again...
• One of her favorite activities now is jumping from the chair/ottoman onto some piles of pillows she helps us setup. Sometimes she goes running off the end and face plants on the stack of pillows and other times she will do a track star long jump and land on her bottom.
• One of our favorite things is how she has her own version of certain words. We find ourselves starting to use HER words for things instead of the real words. Our favorites include please (pronounced me), thank you (pronounced knuck), milk (pronounced mi), water (pronounced lawlaw), hat (pronounced tat), pray (pronounced pay), carry me (pronounced tuh-tuh), and I love you (pronounced i-luh).
• She thoroughly enjoys listening for airplanes, and will proudly announce "eh-pane" while pointing to the sky (or to the roof when we're indoors). Most of the time she hears them before we ever do.
• She seems to have a lessened interest in her two lovies: Bunny and Elsie. During this time though her love has greatly increased for JAK. For those of you who don't know, JAK (standing for Jarret And Katie) is a brown bear that we bought at FAO Schwartz in New York. The crazy part about the purchase of this bear though is the fact that we bought him while we were DATING! That's right...we were (are of course) so much crazy in love and desiring a life together that we bought OUR FUTURE CHILD a present before Jarret even got down on one knee!
• She is obsessed with home movies and pictures...especially the ones she is in!
• She loves to do sign language and is quick to learn every time we teach her a new sign. Her current ones include church, school, boat, eat, tree, thank you, baby, and book. I'm now realizing the benefits of baby sign language and wish I would have started back when she didn't have words.

We love you Julia. You bring our family and this home so much joy and laughter, and we wish we could freeze time with you at this precious age.