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Time To Play Some Catch Up!

So, it's been about 5 months since I last posted...yikes! Gosh life has been runnin about a mile a minute for the past while! Mostly all good things though! Let's see...We'll start with Jace. He is now 18 months old and keeps me busy, busy, busy! He is now pulling to stand very well and is doing great cruising the furniture. He will walk if his hands are held, but he's not quite strong enough to stand up or walk on his own yet, but it's coming! He's got all sorts of teeth now and enjoys sharing them with his mommy's skin! :P He's now 21 lbs and is wearing 12 month size clothes and is starting to really catch up size wise, but for now, he's still our little peanut. He's also started to talk and LOVES to talk all the time! Mostly unrecognizable, but he does say "Mama"! That's my boy! He loves going outside and playing with the cats and dog, he love love loves animals! He also just started to dance to music, which just cracks us up because he just stands there and bounces his little diaper booty around. :) He definitely has his own little personality, which can be delightful at times and challenging at other times. He is very loving and affectionate and wants to flirt with everyone, but he is starting to become very attached to his mama, which while it flatters me, it also smothers me a bit. ;) We're working on gaining a little bit more independence, but it's slow going! Overall Jace's health is great! He's happy, very active and continuing to grow and develop! He's feeding himself with a spoon pretty well now and is starting to understand how to eat so that he can swallow his food. Lots of sips of water in between bites and taking his time is working pretty well for him. He was able to handle swallowing whole peas this past week, which is huge for him! He actually likes his hearing aids and doesn't fuss when I put them on him, because they help him hear. :) With his hearing aids, his hearing tests show that he is hearing at a normal level for speech! I have been learning sign language and have been trying to teach him probably for a good year now, but he's a wee bit stubborn and prefers to yell at me instead of signing. But he does seem to understand the meaning of some of the signs, because when I sign "all done" he reaches his arms up for me to take him out of his high chair. But I am still holding out hope that he will eventually embrace sign language as well as speaking. He does think that some signs are ridiculously funny though and will throw his head back laughing at them. The sign for hot really gets him going! His appointments have slowed to about 1 per month now and he has in-home therapy sessions weekly, which is wonderful! Overall Jace is really progressing and enjoying life!

Bryce has been VERY busy working full-time as well as completing his Paramedic internship which required a 48 hour shift each week. This was a very challenging program and it was difficult on us as a family, but we are soooo happy that Bryce has been signed off and now only has to pass his school exit exam, the national registry test, and his skills test and then he'll be an official Paramedic! We are hoping that he'll be able to complete all of this in February, maybe March. :) He has done a fantastic job and worked so hard! We are very proud of him! It will be nice to get to spend more time as a family and be able to do more of the things that we would like to do. He is hoping to get a fire job working as a Paramedic Fire Fighter in the somewhat near future.

I have been very busy over the last few months taking care of Jace and running my 3 businesses! My preschool and child care business wasn't taking off quite as quickly as I was hoping for, so to make ends meet I started looking into additional options and I found Melaleuca, which is a fantastic wellness company that helps me replace my harmful chemicals with safer and healthier products for my family. I'm in love with this company and their products and it allows me to make an extra income working from home helping others to do the same. I've also started participating in an online weight loss program through the company and I have lost 6 lbs so far over the holidays! :) I have also lost some inches which is very encouraging. I'd like to lose another 15 lbs maybe by the end of May, then I'd be satisfied. I have also booked some more photography jobs that I'm really looking forward to in the next little while. Also I finally got my own domain names for my preschool and photography websites, so here they are if you want to check them out:

http://www.ourplacepreschoolandfamilychildcare.com/ and http://www.crystalclearimagesphotography.com/

So now I'm all official! Haha. Anways, so I had quite an answer to prayer a few weeks ago that I wanted to share. I decided that I would fast and pray for a day that our financial situation would improve and no joke that week, I had 4 families enroll their children in my preschool! So now I am working about 48 hours per week and 5 days a week with my preschool kiddos! Can I get a Hallelujah?! It is so nice working again and still getting to see my little man grow. And Jace loves having his little friends come to play each day! I would love to get just maybe one or two more families per day and we'd be doing great! :) Regardless I am so grateful for all of the many many blessings we receive as a family and I hope that you feel blessed in your lives as well! Happy 2011 everyone, make it your best year yet!!!

Jace is 1 and I'm another year older as well!

So lots of excitement this past couple of months! Jace got his first haircut (and he needs another one!), we took him swimming for the first time and we went on our first family camping trip together. Jace LOVES swimming and relaxing in the pool, he's so cute when he kicks his little legs and splashes with his arms! Our camping trip was um... an experience (that I don't want to experience again until he's at least 2!). It was beautiful, but there just isn't much for a non-mobile baby to do in nature and Jace didn't sleep well at night, so it turned out to be a somewhat stressful few days. But next summer'll be better! Next came Jace's first birthday party! Jace turned 1 on July 20th and we had his big birthday bash that weekend. It was so fun! I made a special dvd of Jace's first year and a lion cake with a cupcake mane (even though some said it looked like a cat). Jace had a lot of fun opening all his presents and destroying his birthday cake! Then over the period of 2 weeks we went on 3 road trips! First Jace & I went with my mom & stepdad, sisters, and 3 of my cousins to visit our Nana. Next Bryce, Jace and I drove the grueling 10 hour drive to Utah for Bryce's Best Friend Evan's wedding which was so beautiful! And as a bonus I got to do a maternity photo shoot of my darling friend Brittany and her hubby which was so fun for me! After that I drove with my sisters and Jace to visit our grandma Joyce. I haven't seen my grandma Joyce in a long time and it was Jace's 1st time getting to meet his great grandma Joyce. I had such a nice time getting to visit with so much of my family! I also got to spend part of my birthday there with my grandma, mom, stepdad, sister Elisa, and my cousins Eric, Patrick, and Amy and we got to eat the yummiest and prettiest fruit mousse cake. Then when we got back to town Elisa took me out for my favorite...Sushi! MMMM! What a great birthday! Jace has developed many new skills over the past month. He is now getting in and out of sitting all by himself, army crawling around, and just starting to pull himself up on things. He just got his first pair of hearing aids on Sep. 1 and he is doing great with them! He's leaving them on and appears to be hearing more! He also just had another esophagus dialation which went great and so his esophagus is such much wider now and we're just starting to get to feed him chunks of food rather than all pureed. So exciting! Bryce only has about 3 months left of his Paramedic program and is doing fantastic and I have my preschool up and running with several new children hopefully starting in the next couple of weeks.

Oh Boy! Life Life Life! Well once again I find myself posting months later than planned. Well, Jace has had his esophagus dialated twice now with a third time coming up in about 2 weeks. The GI Doc was very surprised to find that Jace's esophogus was only 2mm wide (about the size of the tip of a pen)! He was able to stretch it out to about 9mm (about the size of a whole pen around), but was unable to get his scope all the way through the first time. The second visit, he found that Jace's esophogus had narrowed back down to 2mm again, but he was able to stretch it wider this time and get his scope all the way through, so that's good. Jace is eating the best that he ever has, which is fantastic, but we'll find out more over the next few months what we're looking at in the long run. If his esophogus doesn't stay open, then he will need to have his surgery repeated. We also will be meeting with the ENT specialist and Jace will repeat his special hearing test on July 8th, so hopefully we'll find out what we're looking at in regards to his hearing. Jace has had a couple of different illnesses in the past month which hasn't been super fun, but he's feeling fairly well now and we've had super silly moments even if we haven't all been up to snuff. Jace has just started cracking up when others laugh, which is ridiculously funny and he has made me laugh so hard I've cried on several occasions. He is now getting out of sitting onto his tummy the right way and is just starting to want to crawl, but it's going to take a little while longer before he gets that down. He has 8 shiny little teeth to bite things with including his mommy on occasion. He also loves putting things in a container and taking them out again. Jace also just decided one night to take his bottle from me and feed himself and he hasn't looked back since! I can't believe my little man is going to be a year old in less than a month! :( Time really does fly! It truly is amazing to see how far he has come! Bryce passed his classroom portion of his paramedic program which is awesome! Now he's about to start his hospital clinicals, so life is going to get super busy for him again in the near future! My preschool is ready to go and licensed now...finally! I am hoping to open up for business the beginning of August. Here's a few pics of my preschool.Overall life is great and we are looking forward to spending time with friends and family this summer and enjoy summer fun together! Here's some fun pics and videos from the past couple of months.

Listen to bryceandcrystaldewitts Playlist

More Random Occurrences

Well Bryce is almost done with his in-class portion of his Paramedic program, so yay! Next he's got his hospital hours and then last he has his internship on an ambulance. He's hoping to be done this October! I have been very busy getting our home ready to be inspected by the child care licensing people, which I am proud to say is pretty much there and my application has been accepted. Now I just have to get Bryce fingerprinted and get inspected, which will hopefully happen within the next month and a half or so. Life is pretty good! I love having my home neat and organized! I have also been really trying to exercise and go walking with Jace every day, which we both really enjoy. I love my sweet little dude! He's so funny, because he's got this little stubborn streak so he refuses to even try crawling, so instead he just rolls across the floor to get where he wants and when it doesn't work he accusses me of being at fault. He's also talking alot now and it just cracks me up to see his multitude of expressions and silly sounds that he uses while conversing with you. Babies are so funny! He's also discovered that he really likes exploring different textures. He is so fast during meals that I have to be careful to at least get most of the food into his mouth before he dumps it over very sneakily and smears it all over. here he is playing in dried beans (don't worry I was right there to make sure he didn't put them in his mouth, which he didn't even try to by the way) and also dry baby cereal.

Here's a little video of Jace doing crunchies, he really goes all out trying to get those abs in shape!