14 months old

Camden with his new chucks! He is ready to ball!

These are picture from my grandad's place in Hickory Flat, MS. It's out in the country and I couldn't resist just letting Camden run around naked. He loved it! I had to redress him when the bugs started biting and he wasn't happy:) He'll probably kill me when he gets older and knows I put these up but I can't help it!!

Running down the gravel road

Helping CeCe water the flowers
Just taking a hike...

So Camden is growing super fast! I cannot get over how much he has changed in just the past two months. Cam's newest things:

-he has a total of 12 teeth even all of his molars. we are just waiting on the incisors on top and bottom
-he is running, literally runs around the house chasing the dog, his cousin etc
-Camden is a big climber. The other day I was on the phone and turned my back for a minute and when I looked back he had pulled out the kitchen table chair and had climbed up on the table was standing up and hanging onto the chandelier!! So he was literally swinging from the chandelier. We have our hands full....
-he has began using a spoon by himself, still eats mostly with his hands but trys with the spoon in between
- only drinks out of sippy cups - no more bottles here!
- still takes a passy, we are working on it but I'm not pushing it until he is through teething
- can do a forward roll all by himself! We just say "hands down" and he puts both hands on the floor and his head down and does a little roll! We learned it at Little Gym
- Loves mac n cheese, grilled cheese, ravioli, peas, potatoes, watermelon, oranges, all fruit really
-says Uh oh, mamma, dada, bye bye (sounds more like dah dah), says 'dat' (meaning "that") and points when he wants something
-loves the pool and playing outside I usually let him play for an hour outside in the morning whn he gets up b/f breakfast and the same thing in the afternoon after nap
-loves his dog and plays with wrigley all the time wrestling and giggling
-waves bye bye, plays patty cake, and slaps his hands together like saying "all done"

eating breakfast with a fork
a normal morning playing outside. Although he usually has a handful of rocks!

He is starting a full time daycare in a week and we are nervous but excited. Up until now he has been with me on my off days and with a sitter or my mom on the days after I work my night shift and I pick him up when I get up at 2:30. This has worked great and we love Billie Jo ( a friend of mine who I worked with at Chili's and found again on facebook) who keeps him. But since I'll be starting back to school in two weeks and I feel like he is starting to grow bored of staying at home with just me we thought it was time. He will be going to a small Christian Academy daycare where he will be one of the only one year olds but have full 2 and 3 year old rooms. They have a curriculum where they are big on activities and learning. A friend of ours had her little girl there and they got her potty trained by 18 months...oh we could be so lucky!They also have a cook who makes them homemade breakfast lunches and snacks which is nice. I got him all of his school supplies last week and I was shocked. He had to have crayons, glue, stickers, markers plus the traditional changes of clothes, nap maps, etc. It's funny that a one year old would need such grown up things but makes me excited to see what he is going to learn! I will have to make a picture of him on his first day like my mom did each year with us.

One of my oldest friends Amanda is expecting her 2nd child which is a girl so we threw her a surprise baby shower at a mexican restaurants near our house. It was so fun and she was truly shocked!

Losing Granny

This seems like a recurring theme in my blogs but unfortunately we have lost another grandparent this past week. My dad's mom Olene Cresswell otherwise known fondly as "Granny Cresswell" passed away last Thursday at the age of 85. She would have been 86 in September. We knew that her time with us was drawing to a close since she had been diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer with mets to the bone last year. She had been living in a hospice center in Tupelo, MS and was doing well except she had lost alot of weight and in the past few weeks took to sleeping most of the day. My dad's brother Eddy lived close and so when the nurses called and said she wasn't really responsive he was able to rush there in 4 minutes and there when she took her last breath. She was surrounded by the nurses who were holding her hands and speaking softly to her to hold on until her son could get there which she did until a few minutes after Uncle Eddy arrived. The visitation and funeral were this past Sunday in Grenada, MS where she lived most of her adult life. She was a remarkable woman who grew up in Alabama where she was the oldest of the Sanford clan with 2 brothers and 3 sisters. She was a short fiery redhead who was nicknamed the "little general" b/c even if she wasn't in charge she always thought she was!! She met my grandaddy on a greyhound bus from the army base that she worked on back to her hometown of Alabama. She tells the story that he gave his seat up for her and that they were the only two on the bus awake on the long drive and he swept her off her feet she had turned her class ring around at first to give the impression of being married but after getting to know him she made sure it was turned back so he would know she was single! He was in World War II and was stationed in Paris, Germany, etc while they were dating and he wrote her often. We found some of their love letters while going through her house this past weekend and it was like reading the notebook! So sweet and so wonderful to read. They were married 54 years when grandaddy passed from lung cancer in 2003 at 80. She had 3 boys and a daughter who kept life interesting. She was a wonderful story teller and the stories she told on those boys would make you cry with laughter. They were all so funny and into trouble constantly. In her 40's she went back to school and got her nursing degree and worked as a nurse into her 70's. She was known for always dressing in her nurses' whites and never left the house for the hospital without donning her nurses cap and pins. She was a staunch patient advocate and never afraid of standing up to a doctor or administrator. She was a forty plus year breast cancer survivor. She was a wonderful sister, wife, mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother and will be sorely missed. She had an incredible faith in God and spoke about it often praying over everything. I know that she died a believer and she is in Heaven smiling down finally reunited with her loves Jesus and Grandaddy aka "Chick". The service was nice and we had quite a bit of family in town whom we hadn't seen in years. It was nice for them to meet Camden and Walker and see them again. The church that Granny attended in Grenada had a luncheon for us and one of the little old ladies of the church who was in charge of the children's ministry volunteered to watch camden and Walker during the visitation and funeral which was a life saver!

At Christmas 2007, After I graduated from Nursing school Granny was so proud she gave me one of her nursing caps. At Mother's day when we went to visit her at the hospice home. You can see how small she had gotten and how she had lost her signature red hair. She loved Camden and he always made her laugh.
This is almost all of the third generation cousins and second cousins at the visitation those on the right reside in MS, those on the left reside in AL