hello, jonah

jonah is 11 months old!

Oh no!  Only one more month until this kid isn't an infant anymore (but he'll still be a baby!).  Crazy.  I don't know how Jonah's first year of life went by so much faster than Tobey's.  Jonah still loves food, loves his brother, and loves to crawl around and check things out.  He is not walking yet, but he is so fast when he crawls that he has little motivation to learn how to walk.  He loves to check things out, and perhaps he will be the kind of kid that likes to tinker with things.  Jonah is also so different from Tobey.  He may occupy himself for a full hour without trying to get our attention.  He loves to push around cars, trucks, and trains...just like Tobey did at this age.  What else, what else...my brain is fried because we have all been sick.  He's pulling up all over the place and is super strong.  He can actually crawl up the slide in the backyard...something that some two-year-olds can't even do!  Jonah has separation anxiety and has a temper when someone takes him away from something or takes something from him or puts him down for a nap...typical 11 month old behavior.  He's been doing only one nap lately, and that's been hard to figure out his schedule with Tobey having to be dropped off/picked up from preschool.  But hey, we do the best we can within our life constrants.  Jonah also LOVES Dany, the neighbor girl who I babysit for an hour every afternoon.  He squeals with delight whenever she gets off the bus.

I really wish I had more Jonah stories to document.  I did better with pictures this past month, so maybe I can be better with stories this month!

Future musician?  Maybe.  More likely to be an athlete.

Again with the music.  Loves to play the keyboard.

Grapes!

Watching daddy do something in the backyard

Our little pumpkin!

Loves to play under the computer desk because of the cords.  We finally blocked them.

Started using the walker

Action shot!

Uh oh...got himself into a pickle!

You need help out, Rudolph?  He busted on the driveway a few days before this pic was taken.

All boy

11 Months Old - About 20.5 lbs!

Diggin in the dirt

Tobey really wanted his picture with his brother!  So sweet!

who is this kid?

As we really struggled disciplining Tobey today, I find it funny that Tobey was so well behaved and helpful when I visited his classroom on Wednesday.  When I walked into his class, he was sitting on the floor reading a book.  Then when it was time to clean up the books, the teacher played a song about cleaning up.  Not only did Tobey put his book away, he helped put other kids' books away too.  In the three weeks he was been in school, he has not gotten into trouble once!  What is it that his teachers are doing that I'm not?

Also, this week Tobey went to chapel for the first time.  When I asked him about it, he said he learned that "God has the whole world in His hands."  I just realized today that they were probably singing the song "He's got the whole world in his hands".  Cute!  So glad Tobey remembered that!

tobey's lovin' school!

After a rocky first week, Tobey started to love school!  He can't wait to get there in the morning, and then in the afternoon he tells me that the day went by so fast.  He also says, "I missed you, mommy."  Melts my heart!  Some days he talks about school, other days not so much.  Today when I asked him about school he told me he was too busy thinking about something to tell me about school.  (When I asked him what he was thinking about, he didn't tell me!  Must have been very thought provoking!)  Anyways, we are so thankful that everything has been working out so well with school!

ink

Today we went the INK (Interactive Neighborhood for Kids) for a birthday party.  The boys LOVED it.  We'll definitely be back.

Pumpkin coffee and pumkin donut for my birthday

Driving a police car

Milking a cow

My boys

homemade larabar love

headed to the dump

in a little bit of a pickle

tobey's logic

I really think that Tobey has good logic skills considering he is only three.  We just had this convo:

Me:  What are you doing?
T:  I'm putting this box on Jonah's head.
Me:  That would be a bad choice, not a good choice.
T:  But that is my choice.
Me:  Fair enough.

I can't remember the other thing he said to me today, but I thought, "golly, this kid will be outsmarting me pretty soon."

tobey's first day of preschool

We survived the first day of preschool!  And I think it actually went okay, even better than expected.  I honestly had visions of Tobey screaming as they took him from the car kicking and screaming into the building.  None of that happened.  He left his Gee and walked straight inside without looking back.  I was kind of sad he didn't look back, but maybe it was for the best.  When I went to pick him up, his teacher said he "was emotional at first" but that he had a good day.  "Emotional at first" could certainly mean a lot of things!  But we will see how the next week or so plays out.  He may cry again tomorrow, but it probably won't be as bad as today, whatever "emotional" meant.  When I asked Tobey later, he told me he cried.

So what I picked Tobey up, I really didn't know anything that he did or what happened at school.  So the first thing he said when I asked him is that he went to the bathroom a few times!  Ha!  BTW, he was still wearing his original clothes so I was glad to see he didn't have an accident.  And when he took off his shoes, I could tell he'd been in the sandbox.

Here are some other things he told me about his first day:

• He saw his friend, Cooper, when he was walking out.
• The teacher told him he sat on the wrong letter and had to move (not sure what this was about - ha!)
• He painted (He did handprints).
• He didn't eat his snack because he was crying, but another girl was crying the whole time.
• He said the teachers told all the kids to put the lunch boxes down (I'm sure this was just some sort of instruction that he got fixated on).
• He didn't make any new friends or learn any names of the other kids.  (This made me a little sad, but I'm sure that takes time).
• He said there were a lot of people there.
• He told me there was a tv they were watching, and the teachers left one light on and the door open (but he never told me what he watched...ha!).
• He learned about washing his hands to not spread germs.

I wish I could remember more.  He said they read some books, but he couldn't remember which ones.  He also brought home some artwork.  I laughed so hard because I really don't do many crafts with Tobey because it really just isn't his thing.  His colorings looked like he colored real fast so he could move on to something else.

The good news is that he said he did want to go back again tomorrow.  He also said that he wanted to go three days a week (which before he said he only wanted to go once).  I'm looking forward to see what happens and seeing how much fun he starts to have in the weeks to come!

Before we left

His first packed lunch - Train Peanut Butter and Jelly, Cheddar bunnies, a banana, a prune, watermelon, and jelly beans

The note I put in his lunchbox.

game day

We didn't watch any football on the first weekend of the season, but I made sure we all dressed in Orange and Blue!  I also made a fall "House United" wreath, as opposed to all those "House Divided" car plates, since Florida and Tech never play and are not rivals.

first preschool assignment

He has named it "Froggy", but he might have meant "Frog Gee".  He got this at open house to decorate for the first day of school.

we went on a dam hike

Last weekend we went to Buford Dam for a hike.  We started up at the parking lot up top a little east of the dam and then hiked down, explored, and came back up.  We've done this several times before, but this was the first time with Jonah outside the womb.  In fact, I think the last time was when I was 30 weeks pregnant with Jonah which would have been about a year ago!  It seems like just yesterday.  Not much to report about going on the hike other than it was enjoyable to be out in nature and that Tobey left a big "present" for the wildlife out on the trail.  Here are some pictures!