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.