Merry Chirstmas

Merry Christmas!

Details of Jonah's first Christmas will come soon.

Kevin Look-alike

It has come to our attention that, at times, Jonah might look a little like Kevin from The Office. Personally, I don't see it. What do you think?


(Josh, thanks for the picture.)

Ready to go...

We are packed up and ready to head to Fresno.

Chicago, Part 1 (a long one)

What a whirlwind of a weekend we have had! For Andrew it continues, as he is currently sitting in an airport in Michigan after a day of meetings in Ann Arbor. For Jonah and I, we used today for grocery shopping, regrouping and unfortunately a doctors appointment complete with shots. (More to come on that...)

The weekend was such a whirlwind because we made a 24 hour round trip to Chicago! Why? Because my best friend got engaged, that's why! Her fiance' (ne' boyfriend) contacted me a month ago and allowed me to follow along with all of his plotting. One of the many surprises he was hoping to have in store for her (besides a trip to Chicago and a ring!), was our arrival in the city to congratulate her after the big event. Though is was quite an undertaking for us to make it happen, it was certainly worth it. Not only did we get to be there for a big moment in their lives, but Jonah also got to make his first trip into the city.

When we got to the city we stopped to eat on the north side of Chicago at a place called Glen's Diner. We went there because it was featured on the Food Net work show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. We love the show and have tried to make note of places around us that are on it. This place was a small diner that served typical diner food and some incredible seafood from around the world! It was super good. After that we checked into our hotel, changed and made our way to the John Hancock building where the big moment was gonna take place. The trees of Michigan Ave were lit up and a huge tree was lit in front of the building. So festive!


We went up to the 95th floor of the John Hancock and surprised Stacey after Jared had proposed. She was blown away by us being there as I had lied and told her that we were in Wisconsin. After that we took some pictures of them and headed back to get some sleep for little man before the next days adventures around town.

The next morning we grabbed coffee and met up with S & J. We did a little shopping, had lunch at Giordano's, and then headed to our favorite place in Chicago... the Bean! I never get tired of looking at it and it was just as impressive as always. Next to Millennium Park, where the Bean is located, there was an ice skating rink surrounded by beautiful skyline. We left the park and made our way to a German Christmas festival that was taking place in the city. After that we stopped by the famous Chicago theater sign, and then got back in the car to head home. All in all we were there from 4pm to 4pm. I'm still tired.


Tired or not, we had Jonah's 6 month appointment today. He was a champ, taking 5 shots with only minimal screaming. He weighed in at 19 lbs 6 ounces and measured 27 inches. Still a big boy but plateauing slightly.

Snow Day

Yesterday was a major snow day for us in the Midwest. There was a full fledged blizzard that came through and closed just about everything. (For actual snow totals, you'll have to do research on your own!) The University shut down, which almost never happens, so Andrew got to stay home too. It adds more on his plate to get done today, but it sure was nice to have him here! A couple of our friends braved the weather and walked the block or so to our house and hung out with us for the day. We ate our weight in cookies that I had collected from a cookie exchange the night before, and chit chatted by the fire. Not a bad way to spend the day overall!

Today is blisteringly cold because all of the cloud cover from the snow storm has passed. It is crystal clear and frigid. Last I checked it was only 1 degree and the high was supposed to get all the way up to 7. The overnight low will be below 0. Andrew added a weather update on our blog site so everyone can keep up with our joyous weather day by day. Winter has officially begun.

Weihnachten Magic

This weekend we continued doing Christmas themed things, inspired by Jonah to take in all the stuff that is offered to do around here. Only about 6 months old and he is getting to soak up the experiences!

On Saturday we went into the Amana colonies, a little old German town about a half hour away. They have a Prelude to Christmas every year (hence the German blog title) where they decorate the streets, have Santa come in, and basically make the quaint little town even more so. People still live in the Amanas, but it is a big tourist place to go. (I was gonna say "big thing for Iowa" but do we really need those disclaimers anymore?) We knew it was gonna be cold and that we needed to bundle up. Apparently Andrew is a bit heartier stock than Jonah and I are.

Andrew and I went a few years back and thought it was a really lovely, warm, and sentimental type of thing to do. Sweet little stone houses and shops all decorated for Christmas. The fences along the street are hung with big retro light bulbs and greenery. Every shop has cocoa or coffee to try and the there is a 100 year old barn at the end of town that is just swallowed up by Christmas. The barn is my favorite part and we wanted to get there while Jonah was in a calm, humoring mood so we went there first.

Though it was freezing outside (in the 20's I think), the barn was cozy with lots of people and space heaters! It is full of decorated trees from all of the local businesses, all of the rafters are strung with lights and there are musicians playing Christmas carols.

There was even a whole area set up to celebrate the birth of Christ, with a nativity, banner and pathway made of white lights and greenery. Hmmm. Imagine that! (The picture does not do it justice. It was really precious.)

One of our main reasons for visiting this year is that we wanted a more picturesque setting for the first time that Jonah saw Santa than the local mall. Old fashioned and traditional as it was, we did not bank on Jonah having no interest at all in the guy. Not a stare, a tear, or a beard pull to be had. Maybe he was wise to the fact that this wasn't the real McCoy. Or maybe we had unrealistic hopes for the attentiveness of a 6 month old. Who knows!

Joyful Noise

Hands down, my favorite sound on the planet is the sound of a child laughing. It is clear and pure and innocent. It makes me smile and literally makes my spirit just feel lighter. There is nothing to compare it to. We are now at a point where I get to here this joyful noise erupting from my very own child and I adore it!! Jonah finds odd things funny. He loves to be startled and loves high pitched noises. Words like "ewww" and "delicious" really get him. And being startled while hearing a high pitched "delicious"?? Well, forget about it. He even has anticipation laughter as he waits for the next jiggle. Funniest thing ever. The video is 2 min long, so anyone other than a grandparent might get a little bored. That's ok. It was too hard to cut the video down in a timely fashion so just watch what you will.

Beginning to Look Like Christmas

Last weekend Andrew was at a conference in Boston and Jonah and I were home alone. That's right, I was a "single parent" for 4 days. Let me tell you... I do not envy those who have to raise a child like that all the time! Jonah was no worse behaved or anything, but there was very little downtime for me to regroup (hence the lack of a blog about this experience as it was actually going on). I tried to keep us busy and we did a lot of stuff with one of my girlfriends here, but nothing compares to our little family being together. Andrew missed Jonah a lot too and gobbled up his time with him for days afterward (Thanksgiving pun intended). After being separated it was especially nice to have a long weekend for Thanksgiving. We took the opportunity to make a semi-traditional dinner. (There were no where near as many leftovers as a full blown traditional dinner.) I got a little shopping done sans husband and baby on Black Friday. (I love sales, but I love sleep more, so I didn't get to shopping til about 9am.) Then on Saturday we decorated our tree and put up Jonah's first nativity set! (Thank you Nana and Papa)

We started with the tree and fell into our traditional roles: Andrew does the lights and I do the ornaments. This year Jonah helped a bit with both jobs. Follow Jonah's natural progression whle decorating the tree. Fascination, distraction, eating.*

*No babies were harmed while decorating.

Later on we set up the nativity in his room so he can see it whenever he wakes up from his naps. We tried to explain the different people to him, but he was really more concerned with making sure he tasted each of their faces. Good thing it's made for babies. (I'm pretty sure that the good people of Fisher Price knew that face mauling would be a possibility for their product.)

Even though Jonah doesn't really understand anything about Christmas yet, it was fun for us to include him in the festivities and get a little glimpse of what it will be like from here on out. Super fun!!

Happy Thanksgiving

In honor of the holiday, Jonah would like to demonstrate his "turkey call". We think it's dead on! Oh yeah, there is a little rolling action captured too. He certainly is multi-talented. Happy Thanksgiving to all those that we love back home.

Big Boy Room

This past week we have helped Jonah make the transition from sleeping in his pack and play in our room to sleeping in the crib in his very own room! We have had his room ready since he was born but have kept him in our room for convenience sake since the very beginning. The first night that he was away from us felt very odd to me. It was nice to be able to walk into our room at bedtime with out tip-toeing and whispering and I have really missed reading in bed, but it just felt so vacant without out roomie there. He has done very well with the transition though. He is not sleeping through the night yet but that has nothing to do with a new room. He just LOVES his food! Anyway...these are a few pictures of his humble abode. We still need to hang a few family photos on the walls but it's basically how it will be. I still think the pictures painted by my hubby just makes the room. Nevermind the blue tape on the floor by the crib. Just keeping some cords out of the mouth of Addyson!

29 Years and 5 Months

Today Jonah and I share a birthday. Well, sort of. One of us is counting by years and the other is counting by months, but still! It's cool to share just about anything with our little man. Since we celebrated my birthday last weekend, I will focus on Jonah now. (It's a good thing we celebrated my birthday early cause it is GLOOMY here today. We did go out for breakfast and Andrew gave me a book and a card, but besides that it was just a normal day dotted with well wishes from family and friends.). Honestly, I don't look much different than I did before and haven't learned any new tricks recently, but Jonah has, so it's only fair to give him the spotlight.

Here is our good old picture next to Green Monkey. It took us five months of pictures, but we finally got a monthly photo with a smile. YEAH!! I like to think that it was my birthday present. Thanks buddy.


In the last month Jonah has picked up some new fascinations and talents. Just after he turned 4 months old he found his tongue and took to sticking it out often.


More recently he has become enamored with his feet. It probably helps that I always have some colorful socks or shoes or booties in the shape of dinosaur feet on him, but for whatever reason they've got his attention. It makes feeding a little harder cause he's always doubling over to look at them, and changing his diaper a little harder because he's always bringing them up to his face.


The greatest feat with his feet yet, is when he chews on them. Flexible little bugger that he is he just pulls them on up and pops them in his mouth. Sometimes I get him up from a nap and one of his socks is soaking wet, but he most often does it in the bath when his feet are wet and clean. It may be weird looking, a baby chewing on his feet, but at least he's somewhat hygienic about it!

Why we love Iowa

This story has nothing to do with babies or kitties, but we felt it worthy to post, none the less. We may not have crime and general mayhem in Iowa, but we do have an Ostrich on the loose. This is a real story that was on the local news yesterday. If you'd like to read more, Click Here.

Des Moines

The weather this weekend in Iowa was beautiful! Both Saturday and Sunday were about 20 degrees warmer than average (we were in the low 70's both days) and were sunny, sunny, sunny! We decided to take advantage of this great weather and make the drive to Des Moines for the day on Saturday. Jonah has been dying to to see the state capital since he was born so we made sure to add that to our day. We didn't have a lot on our agenda, but just wanted to be out in the beautiful weather before it is gone for many months.

Jonah did a great job on the drive and fussed very little. We took him in and out of the car several times for a rest stop, a walk around the capital and a brief errand to Babies R Us. Every time he got back in the car (not his favorite thing to do) he took it like a champ. Here he is with Daddy stretching his legs during the trip. Yes, they match, my two little peas in a pod!

At the capital Jonah kicked back and took in the majesty while relaxing on a bench. After that we circled around to the other side so we could see downtown as well. The capital building really is a beautiful building and we have way too many pictures of it. Every time we go back we still take more though. It's very dramatic in real life.


We ended the day by going shopping at the mall in West Des Moines. It is much larger than the one we have and has a number of stores that our mall lacks. We were celebrating my birthday early so Daddy and Jonah went to all of my favorite stores without complaining once. For dinner we went to Cheesecake Factory (we don't have one any closer to us than this one, so it's a treat) and then headed home. Jonah is obviously done humoring us by this point and just wants to go to sleep, which he did...all the way home!

Comic Relief

Here's a little "laugh out loud" for a Friday afternoon. This hat was some of the best money I've ever spent!

Yummo

Having recently done so many "events" with family and friends, I have been remiss at making mention of one of the milestones that Jonah has recently reached. While Gramma was here, just a week or two after Jonah turned 4 months old, he had his first rice cereal!! He loves to eat so we knew that convincing him to try a new kind of food would not be a problem. He is quite messy, which we obviously expected, but has been taking it in like a champ. Every once in a while he makes faces while he eats indicating that maybe the white reconstituted powder isn't quite as good as the milk laced with Mexican food or Panera that Mom serves. Overall though he has taken to it well and we are exited for the day when we can give him something with flavor.

Two Days of Halloween

Rather than just have one Halloween this year, we decided to have two. Well, sort of. We actually aren't doing anything today but have paraded Jonah around in his costume for the last two days instead.


On Thursday night we dressed Jonah up in his snuggly costume and headed to the North Liberty Rec Center for a Halloween carnival. Being such a small town the festivities were modest but there was a flow of people the whole time. There were the usual carnival games to be played: fishing for candy with a string and a clothespin, ring toss on old pop bottles and musical chairs. One of the attractions that Andrew and I had never seen before was the train "rides." Reminiscent of the Flinstones, the train cars were cardboard boxes that the kids put around their waist and walked with, all tied together, and went through a refrigerator box cave covered in black trash bags. The whole loop was maybe 30 feet. There was also an area where about 20 pool fun-noodles were hung from the ceiling for kids to run through. No point to it, just a way for kids to run around and get hit in the face with foam noodles. It was a big hit! There was also a maze and a photo opportunity when you came in (on hay bales of course!). Jonah was too small to do anything but we had fun going out as a family. He even had trouble leaning against the hay for a commemorative photo. He was so focused on the hay in his hand that he kept leaning over. Daddy was right there to keep him from really falling though.


Yesterday we dressed Jonah up again and showed him off to Andrew's co-workers. He had a lab meeting scheduled and thought that Jonah would be a fun little way to kick it off. Other than his adviser, we are the only people who have a kid so the younger people in the group loved oohing and aahing over him. We kept having people guess "Is he a dragon?" to which we said...yes. Of course the next person would ask "Is he a dinosaur?" and we would say...yes! With no tail and no wings, it is hard to say definitively what he is. Let's just say we are leaving that artistic liberty to the eye of the beholder. At the meeting we let Jonah do "reverse trick-or-treating" and hand out candy to the people there. He was really sweet and tried to stick each piece of candy in his mouth before he handed it out. Safety first!!


I left him in his costume and we continued the reverse trick-or-treating when we went to the mall. Everyone who passed us would comment and smile and the store workers really appreciated getting candy from our little man. It was a very early lesson in sharing and felt really good just making people smile all day. Jonah was a good sport both days and because his costume felt so much like his sleepers he never complained about having it on. All that is left to do today, on ACTUAL Halloween is to stay in and watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown as a family. Perfect!

Bloomsbury Farms

On Sunday we took advantage of pleasant fall weather and went out to Bloomsbury Farms for a day of fall festivities. When my best friend Stacey stayed with us last year we visited the farm for the first time and loved it. There was so much to do and it was such a fun environment. Though we knew that Jonah was too small to take advantage of most of the things that the farm had to offer, we thought it would make for a fun experience anyway.

We wished so much that Jonah's cousins could have come out with us because it was such a playground for curious little boys. There was a petting zoo where you could feed lamas, donkeys, pigs and goats. The goats had huge scaffolding's that they climbed on to get extra food off of conveyor belt contraptions. I fed the animals while Jonah looked on, since his little fingers would have certainly been mistaken for food!


We sat in the "cornbox", Iowa's version of a sandbox, and I tried to keep him from putting handfuls of dirty corn into his mouth.


We took another hayrack ride through cornfields since he liked it so much last time. This time Gramma got to hold him and he didn't fall asleep!


We opted not to get a pumpkin to carve this year, but decided that Jonah should at least get to see a few up close, just so he could know what all the commotion was about. It was picturesque.


We also got to watch pig races at Farmer Dave's Pig Race track. The pigs were really cute, but Jonah was more interested in trying to grab the little girl's hair that was standing next to him and Dad. Luckily he was unsuccessful.


Throughout the day Gramma got ample time to hold Jonah and even got a few smiles and goofy faces out of him. She is really good at that and got to see a number of goofy Jonah faces during her trip.


We left the farm a couple hours after getting there and heeded the advice of the exit sign. We came with one little pill bug and left with one. No more for us thank you!!