Eleven Months Old

Jax,
You are our man on the move!  You love to chase after everything you see and it is getting harder and harder to contain you in baby safe areas.  You crawl faster than ever and are pulling up and standing for longer periods of time.  It is a good thing we are moving soon to a house that will have lots more room for you to enjoy!  You also seem to have no fear.  A favorite activity or yours is tumbling and we are seriously considering looking into baby gymnastics classes for you because you love it so much.  Your mom will roll you around which results in the biggest smiles and laughs from you.  Your father still worries about your safety, but it slowly learning that we aren't going to be able to keep you from somersaults for long and he is joining in on the fun.

When you do calm down to play you seem very interested in finding a place for everything and putting objects inside of each other.  If a ball won't fit into a certain toy, you will push and push to try and make it fit.  We are hoping that this interest will translate into helping with clean up of the toys soon!

You still love to entertain others and love when strangers talk to you at the store, on the sidewalk, or anywhere else.  You wave, smile and now clap all to their delight.

We now have story time which you seem to really enjoy.  We love reading with you, especially before bed when you curl up in our laps for "Brown Bear Brown Bear."    


We can't really put into words the joy you bring to us.  We are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that this is your last "month birthday" before you turn one.  How is that possible?  Well they say times flies when you're having fun.  You make every day so much fun and we love you so much.

Love, Mommy and Daddy

Jax's "photo shoot" was kind of a mess this month.  Let's just say he is hard to keep still and this was the best we got. :) 

Future Reader

Ever since I first found out we were pregnant with Jax, I have been accumulating a pretty large children's book collection.  I started reading to Jax when he was just a newborn.  Actually, it started before then while I was still pregnant.  I had Jasper and I take turns reading at night to my stomach.  Sometimes we read children's stories, other times Jasper read the news or sports to him.  :)  Once he grew out of the sleepy newborn stage (which was very early I might add) he had a pretty limited attention span and we could only make it through a few pages before he was no longer interested in the story.  Over time we have continued to read to him, but he never noticed the pages other than to try and chew on them making some of the board books look more like teethers.  This month however, something has clicked and Jax has discovered a love for books.  Of all the books in his little library, there is one particular book that is his favorite:  Brown Bear Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  

One morning he grabbed this book and handed it to me so I pulled him up on my lap and started to read it to him.  It was like he was noticing the pages for the first time.  He let his finger linger on each animal as we flipped the pages.  After we finished I put the book on the floor and he crawled over and grabbed it again, shoving it toward me.  So we read it again, and again and again.  Jax soon mastered the art of turning the pages which he thoroughly enjoyed doing.  Sometimes I would be able to read all the text before he turned the page, and sometimes we had to do the cliff note version.  I must have read Brown Bear 13 times that first day and it has been his favorite book every day since though we have added several other books to the rotation including "What Do Animals Say," an ABC book, many Sandra Boynton books, and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."    

I just love that Jax has discovered books and hope to foster this this interest in them as he gets older. 

 

 I should add that I shouldn't be surprised by Jax's interest in reading, as it is probably genetic.  My mom not only spent much of her career teaching the children in her classroom to read, but now has a career doing Reading Recovery with teachers and students across the state.  To say childhood reading is a passion of hers is an understatement.  It should also be noted that my mom is the one who gave Jax this onesie.  So this post if for you Madre. :)  

Water for Elephants

Continuing the theme of enjoying the highlands, Jax and I went to the zoo this week.  There are many things I love about staying home with Jax, and one of them is midweek zoo trips.  The crowd is small and you can just pick up and go last minute when the weather is nice.  Our current house is just a few minutes from the zoo which is so nice.  Our new house isn't far though and since it is a car drive either way, it really won't make much of a difference, but I still thought we should get in one more trip while it is sooooo close. 

Jax was all smiles as we stopped at the playground. 

Since Jax had an elephant on his outfit, we HAD to stop by to see the elephants while we were there.  When we got there, one was putting on a little show.  I got Jax out of the stroller and he loved watching the elephant up close.  It was the first time he has really taken notice of an animal there and was so much fun to watch.

 

After the elephant did all her tricks, she got a big bath with the water hoses which she seemed to love.  Jax thought that was pretty funny.  Maybe we should try that at home when he gets really messy.  :)

Enjoying the Highlands

So we are getting ready to leave our neighborhood.  While we are so excited for the new house and the great neighborhood that we are moving to, we will miss the Highlands.  There are just so many unique things to this area that we will miss.  Therefore, in our final days I have been trying to take advantage of as many as possible.

We have started with the park.  I have posted before about the great little park just a street over from our house.  It seems only the neighbors surrounding the park known about it because it is hidden down a path between two houses.  I love walking Jax down there to watch the older kids play.  Jasper, Jax and I made a trip down this week and Jax is finally old enough to really get out there and enjoy it some.  Especially when he has his most prized possession:  his ball.

 

I will say, I don't know who will miss this park more, us or my mom.  She loves this little park and would walk Jax down to it all the time when she came up.  I have promised her that we will drive back over when he is a little bigger.  :)

What We Have Been Up To

So as I mentioned, we have been busy.  When we haven't been busy with showing the house, we have been doing lots of other things and I wanted to share some of the pictures from the last two weeks.

Jax and I got a chance to go visit my friend Paige and her daughter Ava.  They are 10 months apart and it is funny how quickly that age gap is disappearing.  When Jax was born Ava seemed so much older.  While she is running around and Jax isn't, they seem much closer in age now and it is just a matter of time before they play together more I think.  

Jax was outgrowing his ducky tub so we made the transition to the full tub this week.  Of course I had to take of picture of his last night in it and first night in the "big boy tub."  I feel like in all of these pictures Jax is thinking "seriously, does she have to take pictures of everything?"

We also made a trip to Frankfort to see Meme at her office!  Jax was a hit with all the ladies. While hanging out in Meme's office, Jax pulled out all the books from her shelf.  He was particularly interested in one of the textbooks she wrote that was in Chinese (I think).   Luckily Jax's Meme didn't mind the mess and insisted it meant he was really smart. :) 

Before heading to lunch, Meme needed to send a quick e-mail.  She made the mistake of thinking she could do this with Jax in her lap.  Little did she know that Jax LOVES keyboards and immediately starts pounding on them whenever they are in reach. 

We also were home a lot since we had lots of cleaning to do.  I just love this picture I snapped of Jax at home.  

The other night was the terrible weather that produced the tornadoes in Southern Indiana.  Our basement isn't finished (though we have a finished basement in the new house!) so we hung out in the tv room with the weather on to see if we needed to head downstairs.  I never have the tv on when Jax is in the room, so at first he was pretty interested in what was on the tv.  The weather coverage had all those bright flashing lights that Jax loved.    

He then became more interested in all the cords underneath the tv.  It reminded us why we never hang out with Jax in there, it is so not baby proof.  

This weekend while the house was being shown twice in the morning, Jax and I went to the Home, Garden & Remodeling show with my parents.  Mom and I both found someone to do some fencing for us, so I call it a success.  Also Jax got an inflatable hammer, so it was a win/win.   

Sold

Ok, so I know things have been silent on here for the past few weeks.  Yes we are still here, but things have been so busy that there has not been a moment to update this blog. 

What have we been up to?  

Well for starters, on Monday we put this up in our front yard:

 By Saturday this was in our front yard:

That's right, we listed and accepted an offer on our house in less than a week.  I cannot explain how shocked we were.  The entire week (and week leading up to the listing) were such a blur.  We have been here 5 years and accumulated A LOT of stuff in this house.  I spent the week before we listed de-cluttering and removing personal items that don't do well when showing your house:  though I did leave our canvas pictures of Jax's newborn shots up because I mean, who doesn't love seeing a cute baby!  Anyway, the house has never looked better. 

The very next day we had two showings, and two showings a day for the entire week.  Now this might not seem like that big of a deal, but for someone with a baby and two kids, it was a BIG DEAL.  The house had to stay spotless with everything put away and I would have to put the dogs up and pack Jax up to take out of the house for several hours, including during nap time.  Good times.  This is still a tough housing market and while we felt we priced it well, we were prepared to have it listed for several months and just hoped to have it sold and be in a new house by fall.

Well we were shocked by a call from our realtor over the weekend that an offer had come in, for almost our full asking price!  The buyers knew we had several showings and were about to have our first open house.  They apparently didn't want to risk others making offers after the open house, so they made a solid offer and only gave us a few hours to respond.  After a counter by us (that I am sure our realtor thought was crazy, but hey, we are attorneys and negotiating is in our blood!) our counter was accepted and we had a contract signed.  Then I started to panic thinking "We need a place to move!"  The buyers wanted to close in 30-45 days and we needed a house ASAP.  Fortunately, we had seen a house the night before that we LOVED.  We made an offer that night and within a few days and some counter offers back and forth, we reached an agreement.  So now, pending home inspections this weekend and all final paperwork, we have our new home and will move in the beginning of April. 

I just can't believe how fast this is happening and feel slightly overwhelmed at all that needs to be done in the next few weeks.  I am excited, really excited, for this move and our new house.  However, as excited as I am, I am already a little sad to be leaving this home.  We love this house and this area that we are leaving.  Just today I took Jax out for a walk after his nap.  I just put him in the stroller and we headed down to the local florist down the street to discuss flowers for my cousin's upcoming wedding shower.  I then headed to the local hardware store one block over to pick up a chain to replace one that broke in our guest bathroom toilet (we will see how handy I am at that repair!).  When we got back to the house Jasper was home and we walked to the park mere minutes from our house to play until it was time for Jax's dinner.  There are not many neighborhoods that you can do this in.  I know we will love our new home and new neighborhood as well though and can't wait to make the move!

While we haven't been updating the blog with pictures much in the past two weeks, I do have lots of photso and videos to share and will hopefully get them up soon.  For now... I am off to start packing, it is going to be a long few weeks.