Jonah: 12 Month Update

 



Weight: 24.5 lbs
Height: 31 inches
Teeth: 11 
Clothes Size: 12-18 mo


 

Milestones: 
1. Cruising around on furniture.
2. Climbing up and down stairs (with an extra long "back up" for a downward approach)
3. Lots of high-fives, blowing kisses, laughing and sticking out his tongue

 

 

Favorite Activities: 
-Watching cars on the front porch and declaring "car!" as each one passes.
-Being tossed, twirled and held upside down.
-Giving Big Bear hugs and kisses. 
-Being outside, especially playing in his new water-table!

 



 



Life Happenings: 
1. The Big Move: We sold our Bellevue home and moved just a few streets west to a beautiful home on Boneta.  Our new home feels a lot like the Bellevue house (same awesome neighborhood, same layout, similar neighbors) except bigger and nicer (three car garage!  four bedrooms!).  So much about the purchase of this home felt orchestrated by God, from our introduction to the home (saw a "coming soon" sign on one of our neighborhood walks) to being selected from several bidders at the right family (mainly due to a letter we decided to write to the seller, almost as an afterthought) to the amazingly quick sale of our house (200+ visitors during the Open House, and 8 offers within four days of listing, sold for $20K more than listing price).  We thank God everyday for this beautiful sign of His provision and grace.
2.  Jonah's First Birthday Party (and House Warming Party): To celebrate Jonah's birthday and our big move, we hosted a bunch of friends for a casual indoor/outdoor party at our new house.  
3. Grandparents Visit: We also got visits from Mom-Mom and Omi and Opa this month to celebrate Jonah's big day!  
3. Trip to the Cottage: We decided to kick-off the summer with a family trip to Jake's family's cottage on the Chesapeake Bay.  We met Bryan and Rob's family out there and spent a long weekend laughing, eating, crabbing and enjoying time together with their lovely families.  

Our big helper.

 

Saying goodbye to Bellevue!  (Notice the newly painted navy front door)

Bye, beautiful Bellevue home!

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The Little Man with his Mom-Mom

Jonah, Teddy and Omi

Getting his new car detailed by Opa.

Watermelon on the back cottage porch.

The Cottage Crew!

Summertime at the Maplewood Pool

Family pic on the back deck. 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonah: 11 Month Update

Weight: 23 lbs
Clothes: 12 months

Milestones:
-Climbing stairs
-Walking behind a walker
-Blowing kisses (well, kind of)
-First roadtrip (to see Aunt Caty and Uncle Ian in South Bend, IN)
-Made his first canine friend: His cousin Honey!
-Another haircut! (This one was mom's doing.)

Favorites:
-Sticking out his tongue
-Rocking violently in his high chair
-Dogs
-Shoving too many Cheese-Its in his mouth
-Climbing three stairs and bee-lining it for the kitchen sink

"I think we took the wrong turn-poop...I mean turn-pike." 

Even Jonah is amazed by the prices at Aldi's. 

Jonah: 10 Month Update

Weight: 21 lbs 8 oz

Height 29 inches

Milestones:

-Waving “hi” and “bye”

-Climbing stairs

-Creeping along furniture while standing

-Strategic “falling” to his bottom

-Crawling ALL OVER THE PLACE

-9 teeth, total (including one molar!)

-First haircut (thanks Omi!)

Personality:

For the first few months of his life, Jonah was a pretty fussy baby.  It was probably his gaseous belly that was bothering him, but to be honest, I worried that he was just a crabby baby.  This worry has been put to rest these past few months because my goodness, Jonah is such a happy, playful, silly baby!  When he spots you from a distance, he grins a big wide smile, squeals and almost lifts off the ground he flaps his arms so violently.  He’s also very active, crawling all over the house, climbing stairs, and pulling up on bookshelves and bathtubs and fireplaces. I guess it’s officially time to baby proof, huh?  The past month he’s been especially vocal, trying out all sorts of new sounds and having conversations with just about anything or anyone: books, strangers, friends, cars. We’ve heard the baby-babble versions of “God”, “dog”, “car”, “duck” and “good”.   And while sometimes he’ll bashfully duck into our shoulder around a new face, usually he warms up to strangers pretty quickly.  We’ve also noticed an increased interest in other children and babies recently.  He still sticks most things in his mouth, but now he’ll politely offer us a taste too.  No thanks, bud.  I’d rather not suck on a slobbery sock.   

Likes:

-Books: Jonah has turned into quite the bibliophile. He loves reading books in our lap and still enjoys turning the pages. But lately he’s also taken to standing up at our bookshelves and yanking everything from Dave Eggers, to The Homebrewing Handbook onto the ground for him to leaf through.

-Being spun, hung upside down, tossed in the air, or otherwise man-handled

-Being outside, especially on the front porch swing

-Talking to cars as they drive by

Dislikes:

-Having his face wiped

-The vacuum cleaner

-Having clothes put on or taken off him

-Being intercepted from tumbling down the kitchen stairs

Jonah's wrists: Where arm chub meets hand chub.

Perusing his library. Just like in Beauty and the Beast.

Car-gazing.

Church.

Stair climbing.

Taking some much-needed alone-time in the stroller. 

Swinging at the park. 

Playing with one of his favorite toys: a dad-designed Kaotix RC car. 

Jonah: 9 Month Update

Weight: 21 lbs 4 oz (74%)

Length: 29 inches (72%)

Clothes Size: It's time to call it. He's officially in 12 mo clothes now. 

Milestones:

-Crawling (sometimes a real crawl but usually an army crawl)

-Maneuvering from sitting to tummy and back up to sitting

-Putting toys away (dropping items back into their storage container)

-Giving high-fives

Crawling toward the camera. 

Food:

Jonah continues to love mealtime each day.   His current favorite foods include: blueberries, whole grain waffles, veggie burger patties, white beans, plain full-fat Greek yogurt, baked fish and cheese (Havarti and Colby Jack).   Plus frequent gulps of water from his sippy cup. When we’re out and about we rely pretty exclusively on the Plum Organics baby food pouches, which I bought in bulk on Amazon for about $1.25 per pouch.  They come in combinations like "Kale, Strawberry, Greek Yogurt and Amaranth".  Really? Amaranth?  I don't even know what that is.  But Jonah loves them. He can seriously down one of these pouches in about 3 minutes.  No joke. This kid’s serious about his amaranth.

Blueberries and white beans.

My little kitchen helper.

Health:

Well, we finally encountered our first illness episode. I’m surprised we made it this long, honestly.   Jonah had had a mild runny nose for a couple weeks, but nothing that interfered with his mood or sleep.  But a couple days ago his temperature spiked to 102.5* and he was really fussy so we took him to the doctor.  Turns out, it was nothing more than a random virus.  His fever was well-controlled by ibuprofen and we continued to use saline drops and a humidifier to ease any congestion. What a trooper, though.  Even at his sickest, this sweet boy babbled and smiled and charmed every nurse and doctor in the place. 

The Foot Book, indeed.

Favorite Activities:

(1) Using Mom and Dad as scaffolding for climbing and exploring: Jonah will often crawl towards us with excitement, but as soon as he reaches us, he’ll climb up and look past us, or twist around and look back at where he came from.  Always looking for greener pastures, this guy.  Or, looking for something better to shove in his mouth, more accurately. 

(2) Reading: We’ve finally made it to a point where Jonah will focus on a book without trying to chew on it!  His (our) favorites: “Night Night, Little Pookie”, “I Love You as Big as the World”, “Little You”, “The LMNO Peas” and Dr. Seuss.

(3) Tickles from Brown Bear during diaper changes: We now have to strategically position toys for Jonah to play with during diaper changes, lest we wrestle his wriggly little body right off the changing pad.  Brown Bear is a current favorite. Jonah squeals with delight when he makes an appearance, and then promptly gnaws on his face straight up bath-salts style. 

(4) Hugs from Big Bear: Somehow this enormous fuzzy companion made it home with us from Baltimore last month stuffed into a medium sized duffle bag.  And good thing he did, because he is one of Jonah’s absolute favorite toys.  Big Bear is great for climbing, hugging, wiping drool and, of course, laying on in the early morning when your son wants to play at 5:30am and you still want to sleep. 
(5) Wrestling and Rolling-Around with Dad: All of Jake's daddy-dreams have come true: he has a son that loves to wrestle. Well, "wrestle".  Jake will hold him and roll around on the floor blowing raspberries on his neck and Jonah giggles and squeals like it's the best thing ever.  Which, of course, it is. 

Playing with Big Bear.

Blocks!

Bedtime reading with Daddy.

Things I Want to Remember:

Touring the MRH ECC: This month Jonah and I got to visit his future school, the Maplewood-Richmond Heights Early Childhood Center.  We are part of the MRH Parents-As-Teachers program and were invited to come for a screening and a “campus tour”. For the screening, Jonah played on the floor while the PAT teacher and I talked and she observed his development.  As we suspected (but of course were reassured to hear from an expert), Jonah is perfectly on track developmentally and even ahead of the game in certain aspects.  It’s funny how proud I was of even the smallest “achievements”.  Teacher: “I see he’s moving toys from one hand to the other.” Me: “I know. Isn’t it amazing?”  

Then she walked us around the campus and explained the school’s teaching philosophy and some of its innovative programs.   It was so exciting to experience first hand some of the newest ideas in education.  The curriculum is similar to the Reggio Emilia philosophy, where school is seen as a “studio” and instruction is inquiry based and child-directed.  Even the physical space of the school was refreshing: light, open, exploratory and largely created by the students themselves.  Its no wonder the school has won so many awards.  I can’t wait to send Jonah here in a couple years!

Hanging with his newest bedtime friend, Floppsy Bunny.

Standing in his crib. Time to drop the mattress down.

A trip to the zoo on an unusual 60* January Sunday!

Yak attack!

Looking up from inside his stroller.