The Raspberry Patch

A good friend of mine let us know about a neat place just about 5 miles away from our home: The Raspberry Patch! We went there Saturday morning and picked some perfect berries. If it wasn't starting to get so hot, and James wasn't inevitably going to get in trouble for just picking and eating whatever he found, we probably would have been there all day!

Also, here is a little 30 second clip of James at the patch: http://youtu.be/SgKJ1neLQxA

As soon as he got out of his stroller, he knew exactly what to do:

Garrick: "Aahhh! I look just like my dad!"

The big spider Garrick found. No worries, it is called a "St. Andrew's Cross" spider because of the X-shape it makes while sitting in the middle of its web.  It is not dangerous, but we made sure James stayed away, because who knows... he might have just picked that and ate it too. 

James is trying desperately to reach for the jug full of berries. He would eat them all if we let him....

Little Lizard at the Park

James discovers a very heavy ball that my cousin Andrea brought over as a surprise. He is kind of confused why he can't pick it up. 

Then we decided to grab his ball and head to the park by our house. Now that James can walk, the park is a lot more fun for him. There is a lot of exploring to be done! 

James just got a package in the mail from Grammy in Tucson. She sent him some cute pants with lizards on them to match the shoes she found him (they also have lizards on the front.) She also sewed a bit of the fabric on the front pocket of this t-shirt. It was a great outfit for the park!

Check out some videos of him at the park on youtube!

Summer is here!

Just in case anyone has been wondering where we've been with blog posts, here's what's going on:
1. We found it was a lot easier to record videos on our photo-camera and post them on youtube. It takes several minutes instead of several weeks. If you are interested, you can see my channel on youtube, called "Annabosen" where there are a handful of short, sweet videos of James.

This summer has turned out to be full of busy things!
Garrick just finished a week-long Suzuki Method training camp, has a concert coming up in Colorado, a week long gig in Park City, and is busy building up his private studio.
I have also been busy getting ready to teach Chinese at BYU's STARTALK camp for high school kids. I'm also applying to get a teaching certificate in Utah so I can apply for a Chinese teaching job if I can find one that is not full time and close to home.
James is growing like a weed, getting rashes, learning to talk, avoiding learning to walk, but sure is being a little ball of energy. Lucky for us he is still a pretty easy kid to take care of. He likes his nap, sleeps like a log through the night, and is quite good at entertaining himself as long as he has something interesting to get into.

In the beginning of June, right around when cousin Amelia was born, James learned his first word: "uh-oh!"
He uses it correctly most of the time, but still seems to think that it's right to say it as he is throwing something on the ground.
*Note: I suppose "dada" should really be his first word, but he still says dada when he talks to me, to his toys, and at other happy occasions. He also sometimes looks at me pleadingly and says "Mum! Mum! Mum!" "Uh-oh" is still the first word he consistently uses in the right situation, and really seems to grasp the concept.
His next word was "doggie" (which actually sounds a lot like "daddie," but we'll give him credit for it.) He is positively tickled when he sees a dog - and laughs out loud when John and Erika's dog CJ licks his sticky baby hands. We have several baby books with pictures of animals, and their names in Chinese and English, and when he gets to the page with the dog, he talks to it, smiles at it, touches it. I thought he wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between a dog and, say, a lion, but that page with the dog really does get more attention than any other animal. It is the same with the Brown Bear book. Garrick said today that we're probably going to have to get a dog at some point in our lives because of James...

Now that I got started writing about James, I could write all night about him. He is so amazing and fun, and is certainly a gift from Heavenly Father to make us better people, to inspire us to make life good, and to help us love each other more. I am so grateful that he is a part of our family!!

Sunglasses

James is learning to interact with us and the world around him. Just in the past week, he has learned to share things with us. He hands us objects, and often tries to feed us some of whatever he is eating. He is becoming better at remembering what certain objects are for, or what they do. For example, in this video, he remembers that sunglasses go on your eyes, and he likes to take them off and put them back on us.
These may not seem like big things... but it really is so neat to be the first ones to witness him making each little milestone in his development.
For some reason I had trouble uploading the video to this blog, so I put it on youtube. Here is a link to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyzONTTnFrg

Shoe Rack and Sunday Shirt!

James thinks it's his personal mission in life to pull things off shelves, out of boxes, etc. It's not that he plays with the things he pulls out... he just finds a certain joy in the action itself. Here he is in our bedroom after he took every shoe off the rack. He was quite pleased with himself.

Here are a few pictures we took on Sunday of James in his Sunday best. I tried to pick one picture of all of these, but I thought they were all so cute that I just put them all!!! 

Fishing trip with Uncle Alex!

• We did a little fishing today at Salem Pond, and it was the first time Alex came with us. The fish were being rather devious and stealing all the bait though, so instead of the highly anticipated 4 large trout, Alex caught one small one (that we let go) and the large one pictured below. 

9 Month Copy-tiger

James is a tiger (Chinese zodiac.) Instead of being a copy-cat, these days, he is a copy-tiger.

Here are some videos of James trying to do things we do.

First, James has been sticking his tongue out at the world since he was born. You can't really tell in this video, but we are sticking our tongues in and out at him and he is copying us. Often times he will do this while we are shopping or while he is crawling around on the floor exploring.


Second, here is a video of James and Garrick playing with the top. James liked to try and grab the top's handle and it would spin in his hand. Right before we took this video, James would literally scream in delight when Garrick would rev up the top.



This video shows some of the first voice-copying interactions we've had with James. When he was just a couple months old, he would try to imitate our lips, but then he stopped for a while. Now he is starting to imitate our sounds a little more. It's really fun!!!



Finally, here is a little sample of how James crawls now. He still seems to prefer the army-style scoot, but he crawls a lot more often. His crawl is rather interesting though... he still uses his right foot to propel himself forward - really quickly!!