Gluten Free with Julie B: Thanksgiving and 16 months old!

Is anyone else in full - on Christmas mode like me? I finally know what everyone on our list is getting and I'm proud to say I'm almost done shopping and wrapping. I love this time of year!

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving VanLue style with my side of the family. When we all get together it's always fun, loud and a little bit crazy...and I wouldn't have it any other way! We had a fabulous meal and in true VanLue fashion lots of jokes and hilarity. Here's some pictures from our day!

Quite the spread!

Delicious!

Mel and Leni - the two tallest VanLue girls :)

My sweet boys!

My dad stayed dressed like this the whole day. This won't surprise you if you know my dad very well :)

Desserts!

I was super proud of this "turtle" cheesecake - and Jon has requested it again!

Mimi and her Wubba

Decorating cookies

These two <3

Attempting a Christmas card photo :)

Love our little family!

Sooo worn out after a long and fun day!

Jon and I left Josh with Mimi overnight and went out to a fancy dinner for Jon's bday and to see a movie. It was a glorious 18 hours "away" but we sure did miss our boy! Thanks mom for watching him!

Josh is now 16 months old and hardly ever slows down these days! Definitely a toddler in every sense of the word...including a defiant little attitude coming through! Oh dear. I realized that up until now what I thought was "parenting" wasn't actually parenting at all. It was simply keeping a child alive. Now come the parenting years and boy I feel very unprepared at times! Days are long and hard sometimes but I wouldn't trade them for anything! I'm so thankful I get to spend my days home with our precious boy! (Remind me I said that the next time Josh hits or bites me will ya?)

In addition to becoming even more of a toddler this month, Josh has also officially graduated to a new car seat. He's honestly needed one for a while but we kept putting it off. He still fits in his infant seat but his poor little feet were dangling out of it for a while :) So...we finally picked one out (I tell ya it was a hard decision with as many models as cars out there!) and so far we are very happy with our new big boy seat! We are keeping him rear facing until he turns two (no judgement here if you turn your tot around earlier...we just think it's safer) and as you can tell from the pic below Josh is totally comfy in it :)

Josh's favorite activites these days are park dates with mom, climbing on everything (he can now get up on our bed by himself), wrestling with daddy, going on ~~walks~~...make that RUNS in our neighborhood, and playing with his ball, cars and reading. He also LOVED the big box his car seat came in as you can see below :)

I am absolutely loving this age! Hearing him say new words (our newest is "rectangle") and learn new skills (he new exactly what to do with that basketball hoop!) is just so much fun to watch. He's been without his paci (Wubba) now for 2 months with no problems, and he's off his bottles now for the last month too. He's still a good eater as long as it's something he likes (ha!) and adores his aunties when they come over to play. He's growing up! We love our little Wubba man!