Christmas...Take Two

Christmas Day (the actual December 25th one) was spent with the Smith/Jacksons. At Nana and Papa's the schedule usually goes: stockings, breakfast, gifts. This year it followed that schedule, with the minor change to: kids gifts, nap for Jonah, adults gifts.

In the stockings there are always a number of little goodies. This year there were art supplies (markers and watercolors), a light up whistle that had a flashlight too, books, and the yearly orange. The boys had a great time going through the stockings. Jonah was thankful that Nana puts a box of sugar cereal with each stocking (a treat when the Smith kids were growing up) because he worked up quite a hunger opening his stocking. He thought that Sierra may be hungry too, so he graciously shared with her.

Just like at Mimi and Pop Pop's, there was no shortage of cool presents at Nana and Papa's. He got puzzles galore (flat and easy to pack you know!), a darling personalized frog towel (cause the hoody ones are waaaayyy cute!), and a dinosaur from Cuz Hunter and Cuz Brooklyn (though he is still a little wary of it). The trend of the day was that he seemed to be much more interested in Cuz Noah's presents than in his own. Each time he would hear the "rip" of paper, he rushed over to see what Cuz got. The grass is always greener I guess!

The day ended with the usual Crab dinner. It was delectable and a great time of eating and drinking together. All in all it was a (relatively) calm and cozy day together; the way I like Christmas best.

Christmas...Take One

Christmas Number One, as it is being referred to this year, took place at the Reed household. After a very early wake up call of 5 a.m. by Jonah, we headed to the Reed house at the more respectable time of 9. (Well, 8:30 and a trip to Starbucks, which has become a tradition of ours.) Uncle Josh arrived shortly before we did and G.G. arrived shortly after. We started the day with Mimi's (Gramma's?) homemade cinnamon rolls, and then moved on to the good stuff....presents! (Not to say that Mimi's cinnamon rolls weren't good. THAT goes without saying.)

 Long ago, I was the Christmas Elf that passed out all of the presents on Christmas morning. Then the torch got passed to Josh. Now, because of his maturity (laziness?) he passed the torch to Jonah. Though Jonah was a bit young, he made a good effort, and carried the presents to each person before chucking it at them. Jonah also did a great job of helping others open their gifts once he had handed them out. Just about everyone had a helping hand at some point. Here he is helping Pop Pop and Uncle Josh open a few.

 

 

Jonah did enjoy opening presents of his own too. (Though Christmas morning was broken up by an interlude of Jonah and Pop Pop playing with a set of salt and pepper shakers for at least a half an hour.) When he returned to the gifts, he opened them with his usual curious speculation. After all of the wrapping was off he found that he had some pretty cool things to play with.

 

 

I decided to help with Christmas dinner this year, being 30 now and all, and was able to muck it up quite a bit. None of the new menu items were keepers. Better luck next year I guess. After dinner we headed out to Christmas Tree Lane. Before we left for Fresno, Jonah had started noticing the lights around town and we knew that he would get a huge kick out the all the lights at the Lane. His reaction to Christmas Tree Lane did not disappoint. He oooh'd and aaah'd and pointed at them all. Thought the Lane dragged on a bit (we heard a factoid that it is the longest of it's kind in the world) we were glad we went.

 

With friends

After an uneventful plane ride, Vanessa, Jonah, and I arrived in Fresno late on the 18th.  The next day, a bunch of friends came by so we could catch up and have our kids play together.  In the morning/early afternoon, the Jacksons and Akinas stopped by.  The Hulstroms (and Neil) were able to drop by later in the afternoon.  Like a true parent, I only took pictures of the kids.

We haven't seen little Kate in a while and wow is she getting big.

David gave Kate a nice hat.

Lizzy was very focused when she was "baking" cakes for all the parents.

Noah is a tad bit excited.  Can you tell?

Kaden was playing with a toy fire engine for quite some time.  He pushed it around the entire house and "rescued" everyone.  A little later, Kaden thought the rescuing needed a bit more realism and decided to try out my parent's fire extinguisher.

Like his big brother, Isaiah pushed trucks all around the house.

At times, Jonah was a bit overwhelmed by all the excitement around him.  However, all in all, he did really well and had a great time.

Thanks everyone for coming over--we only wish we could do it more often.

Let there be light

A while ago Jonah figured out how to climb onto our bed.  It wasn't long before he realized he could reach our light switch by kneeling on my nightstand.  Needless to say, flipping the lights on and off occupied his time for quite a while.

First Haircut

Well...I held out as long as I could. Unfortunately, the time came for Jonah to have his first haircut. Unlike his Cuz Noah, Jonah's hair did not turn into a mop of mingling curls over time. No. His hair is thin and stick straight and just seemed to get more unruly with each centimeter. After 17 months, I could no longer turn a blind eye to the old man hair hanging over his ears, or the bad toupee look that was starting to happen in the front. I'm not even mentioning the rat tail that he was starting to rock in the back! But the disheveled hair was his "baby" hair and I was not quick to get rid of it. Logically I knew it was time for the haircut to happen though, so I bit the bullet.

To make the experience a little more sentimental we decided that I should cut Jonah's hair for the first time. We came to this decision for a couple of reasons. One, so we would just do it already and two, so it could be a family event. Decision having been made, we set up shop in our kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. (Thanksgiving isn't really a full day event when there are only 3 people in attendance!) Here is how it all went down....

The "before" shot. We actually have pictures where his hair is more ridiculous, but we'll post this one for continuity.

Here I am taking a couple of cuts. Jonah didn't love sitting in his chair for an extended period of time, but with goldfish crackers and something to drink he was able to hang out long enough.

This is a picture of the midway point. You can really see how much more "streamlined" the one side is compared to the other!

The final product. My isn't he dapper!! His hair isn't always worn swept to the side, but it looks a little more polished for his "after" shot.

A few days ago I took him to Sports Clips to get his haircut cleaned up a bit. (My work was passable, but not great!) He was a trooper there too. He just sat and looked at books like he went to the salon all the time. Another milestone checked off the list.

Bathing Beauty

What is cuter than a baby in the bath? Not a whole heck of a lot!! With Jonahs long hair on its way out (we will be cutting it in the next few days) Andrew decided to take this opportunity to style Jonahs hair in the bath, ala Ferris Bueller. Someday these may be a bit embarrassing to our little man. Eh....I will cross that bridge when we get to it!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Shameless copycats of the Jacksons)

17 Months (give or take 2 weeks)

There are no new stats on Jonahs weight or height since he doesn't have another doctors appointment until he is 18 months. He is doing well with his new ear tubes and everything seems to be "so far, so good". He is teething again (how many freakin teeth do they get!!) and these teeth seem to be taking their sweet time to come in. Jonahs temper tantrums are also in full swing. "Terrible two's" are even more terrifying now that we are living through the "unruly 17 months". As usual there are always cute photos of our little man to be shared! We were lucky enough to catch him in a really good mood when we took this months photos. Addyson took his loving abuse and he was all smiles. Good times!

Dancing machine

There are some songs that when you hear them, you can't help but dance.  For Vanessa, that song is currently Dynamite by Taio Cruz.  For Jonah, apparently it is a song on the cartoon show Phineas and Ferb.  Which, by the way, is actually a really funny cartoon—totally ridiculous, but fun and goofy with lots of music.

The silver lining

A few days ago, Jonah and Vanessa got a pretty bad stomach flu.  Because we share everything, they were nice enough to give it to me.  I've been out of commission all day today and wasn't able to get to anything on my to do list.  This, of course, stresses me out as I feel like I've got too much to do even without losing a day.  Fortunately, there is a silver lining.  Because I was basically a bump on a log all day, Vanessa was solely in charge of Jonah.  This gave me a rare opportunity to watch Jonah and Vanessa interact with each other (without me butting in as I normally do when I'm around).  It was awesome.  They are really funny together and it is quite apparent that Jonah loves his mama.  He follows her around when she goes from room to room and he'll "ask" for her when she leaves.  Vanessa certainly isn't afraid to be silly with Jonah, and he just loves that. Jonah can often take quite a bit to be entertained and Vanessa fits that role very well.

Vanessa's 30th birthday is tomorrow!  While I'm sure her life isn't exactly how she thought it would be (Iowa?), she has certainly made the most of it and is doing a great job of being a mom and wife.  In short, I'm so proud of her with how she cares for Jonah and looks after me.  Thanks babe, and Happy Birthday.

Jonah loves to "read"

As we've mentioned before, Jonah is quite the book worm.  We read to him every night before bed, but that isn't nearly enough for him.  Jonah will often grab a book off his shelf and bring it in for Vanessa or me to read to him.  When he's feeling a bit more independent, Jonah will go into his room and read by himself.  The video below is a recent example of one of these times.  As you'll see, he's quite content to flip through the book all by himself.  When he is finished with one book, he'll grab another.

On a related note, it is amazing how quickly Jonah is learning new things.  Vanessa recently taught him how to roar like a lion.  Because he's so small, his "Roar!" comes out more like "roar."  It is really cute.

At the office

A couple days before Halloween Vanessa and I took Jonah into my work so we could show him off.  Jonah is the "token" baby of the group, so everyone enjoys getting to see him.

Needless to say, all eyes were on Jonah in his dalmatian costume.

Jonah doesn't look too thrilled here, but this picture shows off his costume.

Jonah loved looking around and exploring his new surroundings.  He certainly is a curious little bugger.

Jonah's visit wasn't just a social call--I also put him to work.  Here he's reading up on how to use SPSS so he can help me analyze the data from my experiments.

Jonah had a few important business call to make while he was there.

In all, Jonah did very well and I'm glad that we had the opportunity to show Jonah off to all my coworkers.

Wilsons Apple Orchard

This time of year, Wilsons Apple Orchard is the place to be! It is an apple orchard/pumpkin patch about 15 min away from us and is quite the attraction. Last year we visited the orchard when Nana and Papa were out for their visit, but this year we didn't make it to the orchard until after they left. There are still a lot of things that Jonah isn't quite old enough to appreciate about it (like the actual apple picking that you can do there) but it was still a fun little family outing anyway!

 Here is Jonah and me in front of the same tree that we took a picture in front of last year. Wow have things changed!!! (Look at the clothes too! Last year was coats and scarves, this year was short sleeves and sandals! Gotta love Iowa weather.)

With so many apple trees and so many people picking from them, there were a lot of sad little apples that got left behind on the ground. A few of them had already been sampled by people. Jonah found one, examined it (saying "ba...ba.." for ball), and then tried to eat it.  (Don't worry, my hand is just outside the frame of the picture reaching to grab the icky apple from his mouth!!)

There was a lot of area to cover so Jonah walked around a ton. He didn't seem to mind at all! I tried to help him a bit...when he would let me.

In the store at the orchard they sell fresh baked apple turnovers, pies, and apple cider. Let me tell you. It does not get any better than an apple turnover fresh from the oven, made with homemade crust and apples picked from one of the trees you sit next to as you eat it! Mmmm.

It was an afternoon of good old fashioned family fun!!