Fall With the Kids

Playing Together

The kids are starting to have so much fun playing together. I'm certainly enjoying the privilege and challenge of this stage :). This past week was certainly a lot of fun.

Jewell thinks her brother is a horse sometimes :)

Cooking!

Brother and sister love :)

We made play-doh in OT and she fed the horses with it :). She had a blast. She did most of the ingredient dumping and stirring.

It's time to keep up with Jewell and play in her kitchen. This was tough for Jewell at first, but she's greatly improved in the sharing department.

Harvest Fest

Our church has a Harvest Fest each year for the kids for Halloween. We love that it's an innocent and safe place for kids to dress up and get candy. Jewell was a cow this year (Matt's Mom and sister Stephanie got it for her last year). And Jefferson was Pooh's honeycomb bee. After the activities at church, we went down our street that we live on. Jewell let everyone know that she was a cow when they opened the door. She greeted them with a cute "moo."

9 Months

Jefferson turned 9 months on the 1st. We still can't believe it! Time must fly even faster with each kid! Here are the stats/milestones.

• Weight: 21.92 lbs. He's already tripled his birth weight.
• Clothes: 18 month tops and body suits. Pants and bottoms are still in the 12 month range. The 18 month one piece pajamas are still too big though.
• Shoes: He's between a 2 and a 3. He has thick feet so size 2 is too small, but size 3 fall off.
• Moving: Jefferson pulls up on everything and even does pull ups. He can climb the stairs really fast, but can't go down them. He crawls everywhere and is trying to balance on his two feet without holding onto anything. Yikes! He also stands in his crib whenever he's ready to get up.
• Sleeping: He still sleeps from 7 PM to 7 AM, and takes a nap from 9 to 11 and 1 to 3.
• Talking: Jefferson is still in the babble stage. He loves to repeat babababa over and over again. Sometimes it comes out as dada or mama, but not that much.
• Eating: Jeffers never misses a meal. He has 4 bottles a day, and then eats 2 tubs of baby food when we eat. Except, he's not that much of a breakfast person :). He would eat bananas all day if I let him. Which I pretty much do because that really helps out in the diaper department. Boys...

Jefferson is overall a very happy boy. He adores his big sister and loves to follow her around. In fact, he's taught her to climb into many things at home :). He also loves to watch the Denver Broncos play with his Daddy!

Proof that the big man does do pull ups! :)

This is a 9 month hat. As you can see, it doesn't come CLOSE to fitting.

Learning and Joy

We've been busy lately! Between going to the library, Bible Study, and regular daily activities I've hardly had time to think, let alone blog. But I'm happy to report that the kids are being as cute as ever! Here are a bunch of pictures and the captions of what we've been doing.

Matt always puts Jewell to bed. They have a special routine that they do together. But the very last thing they do together is read the Storybook Bible. Jewell typically doesn't sit still for books with a lot of words on a page, but she's glued to this special Book :).

I've been doing my best to include Jewell in my daily routine with meals. She LOVES helping me cook. Last week I let her help me get the chicken ready (it cooked all day, note the bed head). She was adorable putting all of the spices on the chicken!

Jefferson is a full crawler now. He manages to find himself in some funny situations! This is how I found him when Jewell and I were cooking/baking!

Fall is my favorite time of year to bake. Jewell loves to help me. Her favorite part is pouring the ingredients in the bowl. She gets very upset if I don't let her do it.

She LOVES to watch it cook.

Jefferson tried so hard to get into the bouncy in order to eat the bird...teething time!

Trying to be like Daddy already!

I thought this was so cute. If I don't put Jewell on a chair while I cook, I put her on the counter next to me. So one morning last week I caught her doing the same thing to her baby. She picked the baby up (it was on the couch) and sat her down on the her kitchen counter and said, "sit, there!" And then she decided to cook right next to her! Priceless.

This past week Jefferson had some unusually horrible diapers. He had a bad diaper at least 3 times a day. Well today I figured out why, he cut his first tooth! He's 8 months old and has a tooth! It took Jewell until 13 months to get a tooth so I was surprised. I don't have any pictures yet because it literally just cut through his gums. Poor baby! He's pretty sensitive about it too :).

Life is full of challenges right now. Jewell is 2, and Jefferson is all over the place. But I'm grateful for the little moments of happiness that the Lord brings. I'm learning more to rely on Him with these precious kiddos. I'm truly learning more about what God expects of me as their Mommy! I close with one verse...

Luke 12:48b, "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more."