All things considered, it could have been worse

Chris & Noelle are shopping and walk past a blind lady with her seeing-eye dog.

Noelle: "Look! That dog got to come to Walmart. Maybe some day we can take our dog to Walmart."

We need to rake

Jared's 12 Month Post

Jared turned one today! (And he even smiled for his pictures.) We've had a great day celebrating with our families. I'll put up a post with birthday pictures later, but here are some things I want to remember about Jared at this age.

He generally takes one nap a day right after lunch and will sleep 2-3 hours.

At night, he sleeps from 7:00pm to around 5:30am, drinks a bottle and then will sleep until 7:30 or 8:00. (Soon, we'll probably try to stop breaking that little habit, but it'll probably be ugly for a couple of days.)

He loves to play with balls and cars.

He started cruising on furniture a lot over the last few weeks. I still think he's a month or so away from walking, but he gets around pretty well between cruising and crawling.

He still only has 2 teeth, but his top 2 look like they'll come in any day. (They've been looking like that for a while, though!)

He has started signing "milk" without us prompting him to copy us. He also says, "Nanana" which we think is his word for milk or food.

Words he says: "Da" (Dog), Dada, Uh-oh, & Nanana

He wears size 4 diapers & 9-12 month clothes. I'll have official stats on him in a couple weeks after his check up. I'm pretty sure he's still under 20 lbs.

He continues to eat baby food well, but is a lot pickier about finger foods. His favorite thing at the moment is diced ham.

Here are a few pictures from the month:

He tried to eat a stamp and got ink on his face (it also gives you a good view of his teeth):

Enjoying a piggyback ride:

Before we left to look at Christmas lights:

He still sucks his fingers...a lot!

Cute jammies:

Crawling through his tunnel:

Trying to get a cute sibling picture. Their outfits matched and everything. Oh well:

Noelle can jump rope

There will be payback

Dinner Conversation

Sarah takes the last sip of her milk and spills a little bit on her tummy.

Noelle: "You spilled it on the baby!"

Sarah: "You're right. I did."

Noelle: "The baby is crying now."

Jared's 11 Month Post

Late again, but I'm still writing this post so I'll have something to look back at when I'm trying to fill in Jared's baby book. (Which I'm sure will not be happening any time soon!) :-)

--We took several pictures and he looks like this in all of them. Oh, well. I think they're pretty funny. He's in front of our Christmas tree, in case you can't tell.

--Biggest news of this month: Jared's going to be a big brother! He was actually the first person to know, since we knew he wouldn't tell anyone. :-) I'll have to eventually write the whole story of how we told our families, but it involved "Big Brother" & "Big Sister" shirts. Our families weren't expecting the news, and didn't put it together for a while. Like a few hours.


--From the time Jared was little, he's loved to play with balls, and has recently started throwing them, too. He loves for Noelle to keep bringing him things to throw.


--Jared found the dog door, much sooner than his sister did. He didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal when he ended up outside.





--He thinks peek-a-boo and pretend sneezing are pretty funny.

--He "helped" decorate the Christmas tree this year. We have a play yard around it this year so he can't un-decorate it.



--Here's our attempt at a family photo. Out of many takes, it's the best we got.


--The last week or two of November he started pulling up all the way to his feet, and shortly after that he was proficient at cruising around furniture. He loves to stand up!

--He's eating more finger foods, but has become pickier recently. His favorites are cheerios, mandarin oranges, peas, and toast. So far he doesn't like pasta. What kid doesn't like pasta??


--He's officially weaned now. Because of some medicine I have to be on during pregnancy we had to quit breastfeeding.


--He now has 2 bottom teeth. (I think his first one came in October 28th.) He's pretty cranky when he's teething.

--He babbles quite a bit. He can also "say" Dada and Dog. Occasionally he'll say mama, too, but I'm not sure if he is really saying it or just babbling the right sounds. But I love hearing it, anyway!

--We're doing a little bit of sign language with him now. He can sign "all-done" at the end of a meal (if we prompt him.) I'm excited that he's started copying us, and am looking forward to when he can actually use the signs to communicate. He also knows what we mean when we sign "milk" and "eat."

--He can clap and wave when we ask him (and if he's in the right mood.)

--A couple more photos from the month:



--In general he continues to be a very happy and cute little guy!

Faith

Noelle got to spend some time at the mall playground this morning. She was quite active and brave (for her). She even jumped off of the slide and bridge several times.

"That was a little bit scary, but I knew that my God would be with me...just like he was with David when he fought Goliath. I knew He would be with me. That's why I jumped."

The Teething Fairy

Here's my proposal. When babies are teething, a fairy should come and visit the parents and give them some cash. I guess that wouldn't really help anything, except that I'd use my cash to buy some cheesecake or something. :-)