Our Little Driver

Nolan's mom has become quite the garage sale shopper and is amazing at finding great deals! She stopped by a sale the other day, saw a fun little car-exersaucer in wonderful condition and asked the lady how much. "$5" was all that they were asking. What makes this deal so amazing is knowing that the same thing would be listed for at least $40 on Craigslist... probably more because it's in such good shape and it makes lots of fun noises and lights up. So now we have an exersaucer for upstairs and downstairs, which makes me very happy. Until a week or two ago, Jace was still content to hang out in his bouncer while I got ready in the mornings, but then it became too boring (and he's probably too big, too). So the exersaucer went upstairs, and we started missing it downstairs (but were too lazy, or perhaps smart, to carry it up and down the stairs as needed).

Jace LOVES this little car! While playing in it last night, he discovered the mirror and that he could see himself. Nolan and I were laughing so hard at his reaction to it. Each time he'd notice himself, he'd quickly grab it with both hands and lean in until his nose touched it. We finally thought to grab the camera. While this shows his interest in himself, it's not quite as funny as before. But still cute, so enjoy!

Jace playing in his new car from Nolan Nelson on Vimeo.

Getting A Little Crafty

I’ve been having a lot of fun getting crafty lately, and usually it involves my sewing machine. I follow a ton of creative blogs and I love using them to inspire me to come up with something new. These blogs also have fun contests where you showcase what you’ve been working on. In order to not clutter this blog up with all my projects, I started one just for the things I make. You can check it out here.

A few of the projects I’ve done lately…

A cute, ruffle shirt for a friend’s one-year-old daughter. [I had to have Jace model it to make sure it turned out ok, even though it’s too big… oh, and pink.] 

Ruffle flowers on the front of the shirt.

A dress I made to wear to a wedding.

A diaper bag and changing pad for a friend.

Little Milestones

Jace is living up the life of a six month old. He had his regular check up and vaccines on Monday and he did so well. He only had to have 2 shots this time—one in each leg. For the first one he just jumped and made a fussy noise, and then for the second one only let out a loud squeal, and then calmed down once he realized the pain was over. He’s such a tough little boy. He weighed in at 17 pounds 3 ounces, which puts him in the 46th percentile for his age. He is 28.5 inches long, which is in the 96th percentile. So he’s long and lean!

Has has also had a lot of new experiences lately!

We went swimming with Anna and the kids while my mom was here. It was Jace’s first time in a pool, but I knew he’d love it considering how much he enjoys baths. And I was right! This kid loved splashing and splashing and splashing (and chewing on his thumb the whole time as well). Every time his cousins came near he giggled, and if they happened to splash him it was even better! He stayed in the pool for an hour and a half before getting fussy, and then quickly fell asleep on me. We’ll have to take Nolan with us back to the pool soon.

Jace got to ride on Daddy’s shoulders for the first time. He wasn’t so sure what to think of Nolan’s hair, but really didn’t mind the experience despite the look on his face. He now smiles and giggles when Nolan does this with him.

At Josiah’s birthday party Uncle Mike put his cap on Jace and it was too cute!

Snuggling with Josiah after the party. Jace loves his cousins!

First time in the backpack. Nolan took Jace and Toby for a walk and all three loved the experience.

Jace is so good at sitting up on his own now! I can put him down and he’ll just sit there and play for a while. He is getting really good at correcting his balance. Our dear, sweet friend Mary who loves to watch Jace for me every chance she gets ordered Jace some new books. He had a lot of fun looking through them!

Jace loves books!

Jace loves to hold anything that comes near his mouth, but he has a hard time holding his bottle and figuring out how to tip it enough to drink from it. So, I thought we could start working on learning to drink with a sippy cup. It only took a few times of me helping him grab the handles for him to be able to hold it himself. He also got to have apple juice for the first time and loved it. He just needs to improve on swallowing after sucking a bit. Oh, and he’s not afraid to express his irritation at finishing the juice.

Six Months Old!

Happy Half Birthday, Jace! I can’t believe our little guy is already so old. But he’s also so cute, so fun, so entertaining, so crazy, so stinky, so silly, so lovable, so busy, so, so, so… Every day I fall more and more in love with my baby boy, and every day I find it harder and harder to stop playing with him and put him to bed at night. Jace charms everyone he comes in contact with—whether it’s by smiling at the person behind us in line at the grocery story, being happy regardless of who is holding him, or talking up a storm to anyone who will listen.

Beyond having a great personality (and being cute too), he’s reaching new milestones each day. He can sit up on his own for quite a while and can even adjust himself to keep his balance. While he learned to roll over a long time ago, he’d rather just stay on his back or his belly—and when he’s on his belly, he tries to crawl. Unfortunately, his attempts at crawling are pushing his knees under himself while plowing his face into the ground, and then he wonders why he didn’t get anywhere. He loves, loves, loves to eat—so far he’s had green beans, sweet potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, pears, apples, peaches and apricots. Pears are his absolute favorite.

He’s been taking reflux medicine for the past month and we’ve seen so much improvement because of it! He still spits up here and there, but a bib is no longer a necessary accessory and he doesn’t act like he’s starving all the time. In fact, we’re now able to go four hours between each feeding, and he sleeps for 11-12 hours straight each night!

I LOVE THIS BABY!

 

Loving Some Summer Time

Sorry these are in a bit of a random order, but here's some of what we've been up to now that summer weather has *somewhat* arrived.

Jace has been gradually losing his hair--some to rubbing, but mostly to cradle cap (each flake of scalp took all the hair from that spot with it). It was so sad to see his wonderful hair go, and pretty soon the comb-over wasn't very cute anymore, so it was time for a major haircut. Check out the before pics...

This picture shows his lack of hair in the front and crazy wave in the back.

This one perfectly captures the craziness. Add a little spit up to the mix and it gets even better!

After he got his first buzz! You can also kind of see his TWO bottom teeth. They came in within 5 days of each other.

We decided to walk to the Linn County Fair on a beautiful day. Jace was great at wearing a hat and kept it on the whole time!

Daddy and Jace on the walk.

Having fun hanging out while Mommy and Daddy enjoy some fair food.

All worn out before heading home.

Our friends, Amy and Ken were visiting from Paris and had to meet Jace and Elliana, who are 2 days apart in age.

All bundled up for fireworks on the 4th of July. We had friends over for a barbecue and then went to Independence for the show. Jace was mesmerized by the first half, and then slept for the rest.

Food and Fury

I've been planning all along on making baby food for Jace and tried my hand at it for the first time last week with green beans. Jace loved them (but I have a feeling he's going to like anything I give him, he's so obsessed with food!). I'll be introducing one food a week, so today I bought sweet potatoes, pears and bananas to get ahead on making food for him. Thanks to my wonderful food steamer (Christmas gift from my friend, Mary, last year) and my amazing food processor (thanks to my Mom last year), baby food it super easy to make! I think I went a little overboard on sweet potatoes (as seen above). I'll know better next time how much to buy! I spent a total of $12.61 (oh if only I had a Winco or Super Walmart in town, it could have been less). I figured out in the end that with how much I made and how much I would have spent to buy that same amount at Target, I saved at least $31.04! It could be more... I still have a lot of sweet potatoes to freeze, and I'm just estimating how much it will make. I feel a fun sense of accomplishment each time I get some food out of the freezer and watch Jace devour it.

And now for the fury...
Jace has always been verbal, but he's seemed to discover his sounds in a new way these past few days. Yesterday he found out how fun it is to make the "da" sound, and loved using his high pitched voice as well! Nolan managed to get some video of it by using his phone (Jace recognizes all our other cameras and stops whatever he's doing to stare). This video is 3 minutes long, and he'd been doing the exact same thing for several minutes before and after it!

Untitled from Nolan Nelson on Vimeo.

A little more cuteness

Just a little Jace update: when I took him to the doctor last week about his spit up problem, he'd gained 10 ounces from the month before, and I finally measured him today. The kid is 28 inches long now, which means he has grown TWO inches in one month! No wonder all his pants were looking short on him. Yay for finally having summer heat so shorts and onesies are his daily wear!

One of his front bottom teeth is about to break through (it may have broken through today, but he hasn't been very cooperative in letting me get a good feel/look at it today) and the other is right behind it. Yesterday his nose and mouth wouldn't stop running, and today it's lessened quite a bit, so it wouldn't surprise me if the tooth came through.

His reflux medicine is helping quite a bit! We still have a few spit ups here and there, but he can actually go the entire time between meals without a real spit up here and there! We see the biggest evidence of how well the medicine is working when we forget to give it to him and are reminded how much he spit up before. Hopefully we'll get the referral to the GI specialist soon so we can see if there might be a stronger reflux medicine he can take (while the spit up is less, he does still have quite a few huge projectiles).

As I said in the previous post, Jace and Cami are pretty big fans of each other. Last night while she was holding him, Cami was singing his name to him, "Jacers, Jacers, Jacers..." Of course she stopped singing when I got the camera out, but I was still able to get some of their cute interaction. Enjoy!

Cami and Jace from Nolan Nelson on Vimeo.