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…

Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning…

Jace is going to be Peter Pan for Halloween. And yes, this is one of the cutest things you’ve ever seen. I finished making his costume last night, and was so excited to try it on him today. It fits perfectly. And if how excited he gets when wearing it is a measure of how much he likes it… he LOVES it! I couldn’t get him to sit still for a picture.

The costume includes pants, a tunic, hat, shoes, belt, sword and shadow. Can’t wait for him to charm everyone one Sunday with his cuteness!

It’s 9:45 pm and What’s Jace Doing?

That’s right, an hour and forty five minutes after he normally goes to bed, and Jace is jumping. And jumping, and jumping, and jumping. He always gets to bed a little later on Saturday nights because of evening church, but tonight we did pretty well at getting him down at 8:30. Then, around 9:15 he was a little too busy in his bed, so we got him up, and discovered he’d had a blow out diaper. Into the tub he went and so commenced some extreme hyperness. So hyper that I had to let him try crawling around the tub (despite the fact that he hasn’t figured out how to crawl forward yet), and had to then put his diaper on from behind because there was no stopping this child from rolling and scooting away. Thankfully, the jumperoo is doing what I hoped and helping him quickly get some energy out. Maybe now he’s ready to sleep?

Eight Months Old!

Our little guy is eight months old already! He is such a delightful little boy! Jace thinks he is the funniest person out there… he loves to make us laugh and cracks up anytime we act silly. He is also becoming sweetly affectionate. He’s been giving kisses (nice and open mouthed and slobbery) for a while, but seemed the most intentional about it the other morning. I was giving him kisses on his cheek, and when I stopped, he leaned toward me for more kisses, and then turned and kissed my cheek. I think that’s been one of my absolute favorite moments with him so far.

He’s becoming quite the little mover. He now can hop/bounce/scoot around while sitting on his bottom, and can push himself backwards on his belly to wherever he wants to go. He’s good at seeing something, wanting it, and finding a way to get it. This past week he figured out how to push himself into a sitting position from his tummy (which makes bed time and nap time oh, so much harder now). He also likes to hold himself up on his hands and knees and rock. I’m guessing crawling is going to happen very soon and then I’m in trouble. One of his favorite things to go after are shoes! He’s a boy after his mommy’s heart. He also loves to rip up magazines and eat his stuffed animals. Books are a big hit and he’s getting really good at turning pages. He also has fallen in love with a little Bob the Builder we have, and likes to hit it on things and talk in a high pitched voice. It’s almost like he’s trying to play pretend :)

He’s still a great sleeper at night (aside from a bad week last week), and naps pretty well, but I do have to remember that schedules are a nice goal and aren’t necessarily followed with this kid. And he LOVES LOVES LOVES to eat! He is starting to get a little particular though and likes to voice his opinion while eating veggies—making it clear that he’d rather have fruit.

Oh, and we think he’s pretty great.

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Pumpkin Patch!

We headed out today for a wonderful family day! Our plan was to eat a cheap lunch at Shirly May’s (a hole in the wall on the way to Lebanon) and then go to Grandpa’s Pumpkin Patch between Albany and Lebanon. Shirly May’s was too full, so we ended up at Sharis instead—which meant Jace got to sit in a highchair like a big boy! He loved it!

It was cloudy when we left home, but clear skies and BRIGHT sunshine by the time we got to the pumpkin patch… odd as it is to say, it was almost too bright!

Jace had refused to nap before we headed out, so he was a little sleepy, and thrown off by the bright sunshine, so smiles were a little harder to come by. He did love taking everything in though! We went for a tractor pulled hay ride and he especially liked staring at and trying to grab the scare crows and corn stocks on the wagon.

There were two goats. Jace was willing to smile and try jumping over them!

He was VERY interested in the hay bales. He clutched these pieces of hay the rest of our time at the pumpkin patch.

Jace LOVES sitting on Daddy’s shoulders!

Still holding his hay.

Out looking for a pumpkin.

In the car, headed home, Jace loved holding onto his two baby pumpkins. As long as the binky was in his mouth, he wouldn’t try eating them.

We had a great day, and Jace took a great nap when we got home!