A little fall recap

I can’t believe we’re already in the Christmas mindset! The house is decorated (although I have some craft projects in mind for extra décor to add), the tree’s up, and several gifts are already purchased! But November is not yet over, so I thought I’d share a few of our final fall moments.

Jace somehow got ahold of a transfer tag off a suitcase and it became a favorite toy before it was finally thrown away. I think I was asking him to do a trick for me, and he showed me his tag instead (reminds me of his cousin, Josiah, with “tickets”).

We got a light dusting of snow Thanksgiving week. Toby LOVED running around in it, and Jace loves watching Toby.

My contribution to the Thanksgiving feast was stuffing and two chocolate cream pies (a holiday staple in my family growing up). My crusts weren’t super pretty this year, but they tasted good!

I embellished a onesie for Jace for Thanksgiving. I appliqued a turkey on the shirt and stitched “little” above it. He was proud to show off mommy’s latest creation.

Jace with his Great Aunt Lenay. He loved having her tickle his toes!

Smiles from Jace were a little less frequent on Thanksgiving. Poor little guy had an ear infection in both ears. I think he’s had it for a little while—he had a cold a few weeks ago and would occasionally grab his left ear. It wasn’t frequent enough, nor accompanied by crying or a fever, so I didn’t want to take him in incase he just likes holding his ear. Then, on Wednesday, he was at his baby sitter’s and twice randomly grabbed his ears and screamed. And on Thanksgiving every time he was overwhelmed or nervous, he’d grab his ear and just scream. It wasn’t usual behavior for him. But once we got him back home, he hardly touched his ear at all. He woke up during the night on Thursday and Friday nights, though, screaming, so we took him in on Saturday. I guess this child can just ignore pain as long as he’s happy!

I can’t believe this child is almost 10 months old!

Jace Speaks

Jace said his first words yesterday! Before, "Dadadadadada" expressed happiness. Last night, he saw Nolan and said, "Dada," and has repeated it to Nolan again and again this evening. "Buhbuhbuh" was just a babbling sound before, but last night he said "Buh-buh" after we said it, while waving his hands. AND, I happened to capture it on video!

Jace Speaks from Nolan Nelson on Vimeo.

Some Rainy Day Cuteness

How does Jace spend a rainy morning? In his jammies…

…by the backdoor playing with the vertical blinds…

…and hitting the window with his measuring cup.

Nine Months Old!

Jace turned nine months old last week, but he was sick that day. And then I got sick. And then we were busy. And then he needed a bath. So we finally took his pictures today. But he wasn’t too interested in sitting still. And I didn’t realize that the flash was turned off. I was tempted to just give up and wait for another time. But you know what? This captures Jace’s life at nine months old!

Here’s the best picture of the group:

So what’s up with Jace these days? He' has very quickly become a very quick crawler. He finally figured out how to get himself to move forward on October 17, and then really took off with it on the 20th. He now spends his days exploring the house and chasing down the pets. His absolute favorite toys are the snot sucker and a measuring cup. Don’t you dare try and take them away from him! He hasn’t really grown in the past month. If anything, he’s lost some weight now that he’s take up crawling. He is completely done nursing. The day we switched to all formula, the spitting up pretty much stopped! He might spit up a few times a week now, but it’s normal baby spit up. He’s been off his medicine for a few weeks and doing great! It’s crazy to have a need for clean clothes rather than a need for more burp cloths driving me to do laundry. He thinks he’s hilarious. He’ll be playing and just start laughing at himself. He also loves to make us laugh, and loves it when we make him laugh. We are blessed by this child!

And, now for the rest of our photo shoot today:

Trying to crawl off the chair…

I was a second too late in capturing him licking the chair.

Trying to get off the chair again, and again. I finally gave in and stopped trying to make him sit still.

Playing with Daddy.

My back was having problems this evening, and Jace really wanted attention, so Nolan was amazing and held Jace while doing the dishes. Jace liked helping his daddy.

Nolan then cooked me dinner. He’s such a great husband. On Friday, I’d felt sick all day. He picked up dinner on his way home from work, took care of Jace all evening, and then spent the day on Saturday playing with Jace and cleaning house while I spent some time sewing. What a wonderful man I have!

What a Fun Fall We’re Having!

Wow! October was busy and fun! I didn’t realize what a busy month we had until I looked through our pictures. No wonder we’re tired! Enjoy all the pictures!

Cami spent a weekend with us while Dan and Anna were at a youth retreat. Jace loved having his cousin to ride in the grocery cart, entertain him in the car, and laugh with while playing. They’re good buddies!
 

We stopped by Grandpa Nelson’s work and had lunch with Grandma before heading to the airport to pick up Grandma Steiner.
 

Nolan and I went on a date and enjoyed a night off and then sleeping in thanks to Jace having a sleepover with his cousins and Grandma Steiner!
 

Jace loved spending time with Grandma Steiner!
 

Jace is growing so much! He outgrew his baby carrier and moved into a big boy car seat! (And yes, he is VERY tired in this picture.)
 

We visited EZ-Orchards Pumpkin Patch with the Steiner kiddos.


 

My brother, Dan, took some family pictures of us. He did a great job, and we found that Josiah is GREAT at getting Jace to smile for pictures.
 

Jace has become quite the crawler! He loves exploring our house and is getting pretty quick.
 

Playing with Daddy on the computer.
 

The best way to get Jace to let us look at his top teeth is to push up his lip and say, “Grrr!!!!” He thinks it’s too funny! He has another two teeth coming in soon!
 

Every month our church does a Family Movie Night. For October, we watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars and encouraged kids to come dressed as their favorite Star Wars character. I made a Yoda costume for Jace and I went as Han Solo (or should I say, “Sola?”).

This is our staff team: Jared, Lucy, me, and Spencer (our intern).
 

Jace wore his Peter Pan costume to church on Sunday. His friend, Elliana, came dressed as a pink kitty and they had fun playing in the nursery together (she just didn’t like getting her picture taken).
 
Now on to November…