Baby Signing

We've been doing baby signing with Jonah since he was about 6mos. He started signing back when he was around 9mos, his first sign was 'dog'. I've recently been trying to make small movies of his signs and send them to my sister, who teaches baby signing, so she has some examples for her classes to see.

The last few weeks he has been picking up a new sign almost every day. It is the absolute coolest thing and I'm so glad that we decided to do and have stuck to it. It is SO much fun when he learns a new sign and can tell us what he sees/hears/wants etc. The other day he signed 'fan' when we were out somewhere and I thought he had made a mistake and said 'thats not a fan' and then realized that he was pointing to a fan that was way up in someones balcony that I hadn't even noticed. SO cool.

Below are a few I've been able to get on film. Cheese is one of the newer ones. Some of the signs he does now are: mommy, dog, fan, more, all done, cheese, ball, tree, brush teeth, hat, shoes, and eat.

I just realized the videos don't quite fit..I will try and fix that soon...

Jonah is 1 Year Old!

My tiny beautiful baby just turned 1 year old. Its absolutely crazy how fast this year has gone. He is so much fun, but I do miss that tiny snuggly baby since hes now way too busy wanting to crawl around and play with his toys to snuggle up with mom anymore. For his party I rented a shelter at the state park that is right next to our house. We had a fabulous time!

Jonah's friend Connor

The McCurley crew

My friend Melanie helped me to make Cookie Monster cupcakes. They were super easy and turned out so cute!!

The Fam

Allison and Emerson

Thor and Gavin

Jonah's first time having sugar...oh boy!

Hmmmm..I think he likes it.

The party!

Fun with Jonah

No one could have prepared me for how fast the first year would go. People told me, but its just crazy scary how fast the time went. Jonah will be 1yr old tomorrow...TOMORROW! Here are just a few photos of the last few weeks, what a fun time we all have together!

Curls, curls and more curls!

Standing for a few seconds at a time, but still needs just a little bit of support.

First family bike ride together. so fun!

Funny boy!

He loves the dogs. We don't let him torture them, but he did get one grab in before we could save poor Indy. Indy's expression is so funny...like, um, really?

Pool time!

Alaska!

We decided to take a big family vacation to go and visit my best friend Teresa who lives in Anchorage Alaska. We figured we'd go while Jonah flew for free and would still be content to be on our laps for a long time. I was a little worried about the 12hr+ travel day and then what the 4 hour time change would do to Jonah's sleep schedule, but overall he did really well. We did have two awesome episodes of poop blowouts on the flight there and the flight back, but everyone survived.

I haven't seen Teresa since Jon and I got married and she has had two kids since then, so I was excited to see my god daughter Lyla (5) and then the two new babies, Keenan (3) and Cora (1). The kids got along great and we just had a wonderful time hiking and visiting things around Anchorage. Jon, Jonah and I took an overnight trip down to Seward to do a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords and to try and see whales (which we did!!). The landscape and glaciers were just breathtaking and we had the most amazing weather the entire time we were there!

Also, while we were there Jonah started waving, clapping and signing 'more' and 'ball'. Of course, clapping, more and ball all look about the same, but it is still really cool! Here are some photos from the trip.

funniest family ghetto rap vid I have ever seen

Jonah is taking steps along the couch...full blown walk due any minute.

Why buy expensive toys...

....when you have household supplies. They seem to like the simple things better anyway :)