Sweet November: Random Rambling..

Sorry for the long blog break... I tried desperately to add three videos I took of Jace last week after promising that I would. Only problem was that the website wouldn't upload them, I'm not sure why. After that I got frustrated and posted them on my facebook account instead. So if you're on facebook you can check them out there!

We've been having a really good week, for no other reason than we're finally back on a normal schedule. Last week was Tate's first time back on a normal work schedule after the Holidays and the move, and it was really nice to be able to have that structure back. At the same time Jace started getting back onto his normal sleep schedule, except for one bad teething night. Now that we're completely unpacked, settled in, and on our normal schedule it's finally sunk in that I'm a stay at home mom. Because of the timing of my leaving my job (right before the holidays, packing, moving, unpacking...) I hadn't even noticed I was unemployed. Now I just walk around feeling really, really happy and I realized it's because this staying at home thing is awesome! I always spent alot of time with Jace, because I often brought him in to work with me, but now it's uninteruppted time that I can devote completely to him, which is priceless. Before I would have alot of mom guilt about bringing him to work with me because I knew it was boring for him.

The simple things in life that other people might think are just normal things, seem so amazing to me now. For instance, being able to cook dinner for Tate and Jace everynight and eat together... being able to spend Jace's sleeping hours relaxing instead of those being the times that I tried to squeeze everything else in... being able to do laundry in my own house instead of hauling it to my moms (I've been going a little overboard on the laundry lately, just because I'm still in the honeymoon phase of having my own washer and dryer!)... having two full bathrooms instead of one tiny cramped one... I could keep going. It's just nice to be able to step back and enjoy the little things in life that make life easier. Maybe I'm just overdosing on Vitamin D here from all of the sunlight, haha!

Obviously the one thing that is not better about being in South Carolina is that our family and friends aren't here with us. I know that we'll eventually make friends here, but family is something you can't duplicate, and now that we have Jace we think about that more. We've been spending alot of time together, just the three of us... all day, everyday actually. For three weeks straight now. While that's been great, I don't think I can go to Buffalo Wild Wings and watch football championship games much longer... and I doubt Tate loved watching Julie and Julia or going to the mall the other day. We definitely need to make some friends!

Jace really likes being around kids his own age, so I've taken him to two different Libraries for Children's Storytimes. We're going to another one tomorrow morning. While these aren't all that exciting, they at least get him out for a little while socializing. He's a very social kid, and he loves being around people, so I think it's really important for us to become involved with other moms and kids in Summerville. At the end of last week I started my own mom's group called Summerville Moms and Munchkins. My friend Christin was the organizer of Moms and Munchkins in Minnesota, and it was such a great group for us to be apart of that I hope we can find some similar experiences here. Christin helped me get the Summerville group started and before I knew it people were already requesting to join! We have about ten members already and I haven't even told anyone about it, or made flyers yet. Pretty exciting! Alot of the members seem to have children right around Jace's age so it seems perfect. Here's hoping it becomes a success.

Jace has developed a couple of fun new habits this week. His climbing has improved quickly and I'm now finding him on top of furniture everytime I turn around... he think it's pretty funny to surprise us by sitting quietly on one of our chairs or the futon. When we look at him he bursts out laughing because he's so proud of himself for getting up there. The other day I heard him laughing in the living room and he was standing on top of the gliding ottoman that was moving back and forth. Wild child! He'll also climb into anything he gets near, whether its a cupboard, a toy box, or a roasting pan.

Jace has learned to love the song "If You're Happy and You Know It"... his favorite part is stomping his feet. I can tell he really understands most things that I say to him now. The only times he doesn't is when he's chosing to have selective hearing! I asked him the other day how he was doing and he shocked me by simply responding "good!". While we were at Buffalo Wild Wings yesterday for the game, he was loving all of the commotion and cheering. He kept yelling and clapping when everyone else did, and when people would get mad and be yelling "What's going on!? What kind of call was that??" Jace would shrug his shoulders and stick out his hands to say "I don't know!". Pretty soon he was making friends with all of the tables around us that loved all of his expressions. He ate before we headed to the restaurant but we ended up being there a little longer than we expected and he was begging for our food instead of his snacks. He ended up loving the onion rings we let him try. What 14 month old likes onions?? I guess when they're deep fried in batter it's different. :)

He has become such a great eater lately. No more picky eating, thankfully. It seems that he goes through picky stages when his teeth are bothering him, and thankfully two of his molars are already through so we seem to be getting a bit of a break from teething for a while. He's been trying all sorts of new foods lately since he eats whatever we're eating. At our favorite mexican restaurant the other day (yes, we already have a favorite here) he ate half of my huge buritto, and all of my beans and rice. Tate and I got to talking about a time when we were out at a Mexican restaurant when I was pregnant and a young boy was eating chips and salsa and tacos with his parents and we both said that we hoped we would have a mexican-loving kid too. Looks like we got our wish!

Lately he's been eating a ton of food, I think it must be a growth spurt on the horizon. Most mornings he will eat a peice or two of fruit, toast with jelly, and cereal. Then he'll eat a sandwich and veggies for lunch, and usually chicken, veggies and whatever we're eating on top of that for dinner. Even with snacks in between those meals, he's always begging for whatever he sees us eating. The other day I gave him a taste of a chocolate covered pretzel and I think I created a monster. No more eating those in front of him!

Now that we're getting more settled into the house we're ready to tackle some projects on our to-do list. We went out and bought wood cleaner and stain for our patio furniture and we're going to re-stain that this weekend. We also looked at storm and screen doors for both the front door and the sliding door. The previous owners must have ripped the original screen door and just taken it down, because we no longer have one. In another month we're going to be really wanting to have our doors open to let in a nice breeze, so we'll be installing those doors soon. It will especially help to have a storm door in the front because there are no windows on that side of our entry area or living room right now. While we were at the store we also picked out a paint color for Jace's bedroom. It's from the Behr Disney line. It's called Buzz Blast Off Blue or something like that. It's a really fun big boy color, so hopefully the owners approve it so we can go ahead and get rid of his pink walls asap! The other rooms I really can't stand the colors of are the hall bath and our master bedroom, but I go back and forth on whether I want to paint our master because of all the space, crown molding, and windows and doors in that room... seems like alot of work for a rental. We'll see.

We've gotten pretty organized and went up in to our attic the other day to check out how much storage space we would have in there. It looks like we'll have a good amount, so our garage will be wide open soon. Even though, no one here parks their cars in the garage, we would like to! There are lots of differences in the way people deal with cars here though... for example I'm starting to doubt ANYONE here has working blinkers. ;)

Ok, I'm rambling about nothing now. I'll try to be better about keeping more up to date about blogging, so I don't end up with a really random blog of useless information in the future. Here are some pictures from this week... :)