Bubbles

I shot some video last night of Jonas saying bubbles. It makes me chuckle how much he tries to enunciate the sounds. He really doesn't say much else, but the few words he does know, he says really well.

And some footage of him walking. He still walks like a zombie with his arms out to keep balance, but at least he's trying to bend his knees now. :)

Bathroom Remodel

This week has been pretty crazy! I took on the task of repainting our bathrooms. I've been wanting to repaint from the moment we moved in (2 1/2 years ago!). Now that we will be renting our condo, I need to make a few improvements before that happens. My sweet dad came down three days this week to help paint. My mom also helped by distracting Jonas while we got some work done. It was my mom's spring break from work and my dad took some time off from his golf volunteering. I'm lucky to have such generous parents to spend their free time working on my house!

Check out the results:

Front bathroom:

Master bathroom:

Can you find James in one of the photos? Lol.

At first, we used the same blue as the accent wall in our bedroom, but it turned out to be A LOT darker than I anticipated when it was on all walls. So we got a shade lighter of the same blue, and it worked out much better. I still feel a little surprised every time I walk into our bathroom because it's so much brighter. My pictures were all taken on my iPhone and the afters all look so much brighter. 

You always underestimate how long it will take to paint. There was so much prep and taping and cleaning. Every night when Jonas would go down to bed, I'd work on taping, or cleaning until really late. I also touched up a few places in our home. When we painted the kitchen when we moved in, we didn't paint the entire ceiling, so I did that one day also. On top of painting, I got a couple opportunities to make some money from home that I couldn't pass up, so I had to fit those in when I wasn't trying to get the painting finished quickly to get our bathrooms back to normal function (it felt like we were living out of a suitcase for a week). I was so tired I slept in until 10 on Saturday and then took a 3 hour nap later in the day, then took another 2 hour nap today, Sunday. The bathrooms have just one more minor fix, but they are at least livable again. It feels so great to have so many things checked off my TO DO list!

1st Birthday!

I can't believe it's been one year already! Time has flow by! In his first week of being ONE, I feel like he has reached all new milestones. 

He's talking and signing a lot. I love hearing him say "bubble", and he says it a lot lately. We'll say, "say mama", and he'll say "bubble?". "Say dada", "bubble?". So cute! He's also really good at saying grandpa, he says "bopba". My dad came over a few times this week and he would say bopba all day. Also, when we pull up to his grandpa Lynn's house, he'll say bopba. He's learning signs really quickly. He signs "more", "milk", "please", "baby", "sleepy", "water", and "sharing". He loves his baby signing time videos, and asks to watch them every day. It amazes me how fast he learns and how quickly he picks up on new things.

He's also, reached the important "W" milestones, walking and weaning, and both within the same week. He's been taking a few steps for awhile, but this week he's preferred to walk than crawl. He still wobbles and topples a lot, but he's our little toddler now. I think weaning has been harder on me than him. If I wasn't so preoccupied with such a busy week last week, I think it would have been depressed with the change. Although it saves me lots of time and hassle, I'm really going to miss that connection with him. I'm also not excited about cutting out calories and I've been breaking out. You win some and lose some I guess.

Also this week he cut two more teeth. It took him 9 months to get one tooth, and another two months after that to get another. Then bam, two more teeth popped out in one day, and I think at least another any day soon. He's been really fussy today so I think more are coming.

His favorite things to eat are cheese, chicken nuggets, yogurt and smoothies. I love that I can throw some fruits and veggies in the magic bullet and he drinks it up so fast. His dad loves to make smoothies and as soon as he gets the cup out to make it, Jonas freaks out because he loves smoothies. 

We had a fun birthday celebration for him on his big day. He sure got spoiled by his mom and dad and grandparents. I didn't really have a theme, just a lot of different colors. 

Here is Jonas eating his birthday cupcake. He was more into ice cream than his cupcake.

More of his birthday decorations.

I made jello jiggler "slices" from oranges, an idea I found on pinterest. I took a few pictures of the process.

Here is the result with the "slices" and the rainbow cupcakes. I put colored frosting on them later, but forgot to take a picture of the final result.

Last but not least, Jonas' one year photos, and a few family photos. My friend Kate did an amazing job! I always love the work she does!

Brings a Smile to My Face

I have accumulated a cute/hilarious collection on my iPod recently of all of Jonas' cute antics. He makes me laugh constantly and is learning and growing up so fast! I feel like I'd need to post at least once a week to keep up! Since I haven't been keeping up, this will just be a random modge-podge of photos and videos. Hopefully I'll keep them chronological while updating what we've been up to! 

In February Jonas' cousins came to visit and we had a great time playing. The older boys saw Star Wars in 3D, while I watched the younger kids. 

 Jonas loves playing with his cousins!

A few days later, we all went to the new Natural History Museum in Salt Lake. What a cool museum! I can't wait to take Jonas again when he gets older. Jonas loves shoulder rides from Grandpa. And it helped me out a lot because he didn't want to stay put in his stroller and I ended up having to hold him through a lot of it. 

The excavating pit with the cousins!

It has been really nice weather lately, and we've been trying to go outside a lot to enjoy it. Jonas doesn't really like to crawl on linoleum or cement, only on carpet really. It's actually really good for keeping his clothes from getting holes. So, when he encounters these, he just bear crawls. Love it!

  

 Last week was his cousin Aaron's first birthday! I love that they are already so alike and love to see each other. Jonas loved playing with the new toys Aaron got. :)

 As you can see he's been practicing his walking a lot lately. He loves to push around his wagon. The other day while watching my friend's son, I turn around from doing a little work in the kitchen and see this going by. It made me laugh so hard. These two have really loved playing together, it's so cute.

And... drum roll... Jonas is getting brave enough to walk! The past few days he's been taking a few steps on his own when he's pulled himself up on something. I think the most he's walked is about 4 feet. He's getting pretty good!

Seriously, this kid cracks me up. This is such a Hillstead picture. Ugh, you got a little something...

And, as a side note, and I guess a somewhat of a momentous note, James will be starting school for his MBA in August! He got accepted to the U of U's PMBA program recently and made his decision to attend there. We will be moving up to Salt Lake. I'm excited for the change, but have also realized how much I'm actually tied to this area now. It will be hard to move away from good friends and to be further away from James' family. I guess we won't be too far, but it will still be an adjustment. 

Letters and Reading

In Jonas' room, we had a quilt that came with his bed set we had pinned above his bed. We had to take it down because he is able to reach it now, and I didn't want loose pins in his bed. Instead, I got an idea from pinterest to cover letters with yarn. I actually created the letters freehand (which is why the O looks weird, but I'm satisfied with the others). I found some cute felt buttons too that I glued on. I used cardboard from one of his diaper boxes, and the yarn and buttons only cost 5 bucks. Not bad. I should have taken a closer picture but I think it looks pretty good on his wall. 

Lately, Jonas will wander to his room and play in there by himself. Often, I find him sitting surrounded by his books, opening them and "reading" them. I hope he always loves to read. Love this video of him "reading".

Who Needs Siblings When...

...you can play catch with yourself! Jonas was cracking me up tonight playing catch with himself. Here he is in all his cuteness:

So sometimes I feel bad Jonas doesn't have any siblings to play with (well, not bad enough obviously, not yet at least). Luckily he's got cousins and friends. He is pretty social and likes to be around other kids. (I've been getting into Instagram lately, can ya tell?)

Jonas and Aaron at one of our recent play dates

Jonas and his friend Colin from Denver! How cute that they are wearing orange shirts with jeeps on them? They were meant to be best buddies! 

Let's not forget his friend the vacuum! I usually keep the door closed to the office, but sometimes when I forget, he goes in straight for the vacuum! He'll stand up next to it and just laugh and laugh. What a goober!

This little nut has been making the funniest faces lately! His favorite is scrunching his face like he's about to growl. He mostly does it to strangers, at restaurants, at church, etc. 

His other tricks include (kind of) signing "more" and if anyone says, "so big" (intentional or not) Jonas will raise his hands high up in the air. He has also gotten really good at waving "bye". 

Lastly, I gave him his first all over buzz. I buzzed the top a few months ago, but the back was getting long and had to cut it again. I think he'll get buzz cuts for the next 5 years until he can sit still and I can actually do different lengths. 

I sure do love having this kid around! He has grown so fast the past 10 months yet I feel like I've been his mom forever! :)

Spicy

Normally I don't like food very spicy. When I was pregnant, however, I craved spicy food. Really weird, from what I hear, for a pregnant woman to crave spicy food, considering all the food aversions. This was one of my first indications to me that I was carrying a boy, a mini-James if you will. James loves his spicy food. 

Well, the other day at Costco, they had a sample of some pretty spicy chili. I thought it would be funny to give Jonas a little taste. To my surprise, he loved it and wanted more, and pretty much finished it for me. Today I went out to lunch with James' step-mom, Valerie, to a Mexican restaurant. She wanted to see how he'd react to the salsa. Again, he loved it! He ate half of the bowl we had for our chips. We both shared our black beans with him, but he preferred them with salsa. What 9 month old loves spicy Mexican food? Yup, James' kid.