Rice cereal anyone?

So Jared has been eating rice cereal for about 2 weeks now and seems to really like it. I think he especially likes it now because he has discovered that when he makes his cute noises with a mouthful of rice cereal it flies all over the place. I love hearing his little noises but don't particularly love rice cereal all over myself.

I love chunky baby thighs! Since its winter Jared always has pants on but his legs are so cute! This was after yesterday's laughing/sputtering while eating. We have to clean out many rice cereal boogers.

I realized yesterday that I hadn't taken any pictures of Jared and me since Christmas so today I decided to learn how to use the oh so convenient timer on our camera. I could just wait for Mark to get home and have him take them but this way I can take as many pictures as I want and not annoy Mark. I often have an image in my head of how I want the picture to look so I make Mark take the picture over and over and over and understandably this starts to get old. I feel like Mark and I actually have pretty decent communication skills I just haven't perfected how to explain the images to him so hopefully this will help.

Jared was being quite patient as well, such an all star! He does look kind of suspicious of the blinking light on the little black thing aka the camera.

* Do you see the cute wall hanging in the back by the door? (well, the bottom half of it) My sister Susanna made it for me and even though Valentines day (and February...) are over I might just leave it up because I love it! She is making me one for each month and I love them. Thanks Sister.

When your hands are full

You are more likely to leave your keys in the front door. Mark and I are both guilty of doing this. Since we have Jared and he is often in his car seat we normally walk up the stairs, set Jared down in front of the door (its really quite heavy to carry him in the car seat now) and then unlock the door. Then we grab Jared and go inside forgetting to take the keys out. There have been at least three times that we have left the keys in the door overnight! We have one of the remotes for the car doors so in the morning after leaving them out in freezing temperatures the remote doesn't work and neither does the key. I can't begin to explain how annoying it is to walk down to the car and then walk back up to get the other set of keys. We can't put all the blame on Jared though because we did it in Greeley and Egypt it just happens a lot more now. Fortunately for us we have always had nice neighbors who weren't interested in stealing our keys, making a copy and then breaking into our house or car. Lucky us!
So, about a week ago Mark's school had all the teachers attend a gang presentation at their staff meeting. Mark and I attended a similar presentation last year at my school in Greeley (where they really do have major problems with gangs). Part of the presentation highlights areas of town that are more prone to violence or gang problems, we do not live in one of these areas but the presenter asked the teachers where they thought similar issues could arise on this side of town. One of the teachers said "The Winfield", this is the apartment complex we currently live in.
This sort of made me laugh when Mark told me this because we live 2 minutes away from an elementary school and are surrounded by nice middle class homes. And nobody has stolen our keys! (To our knowledge) Now whenever we can't find our keys we look in the door first. It will be nice to have a garage one day.

Waiting

Jared and I headed over to the pediatricians office today to get his second round of shots. Our appointment was for 10:30 and I cheered for myself when I pulled into the parking spot at 10:28. I hate being late to things. All my life I have always had this deep drive to be on time. I am not really sure where it came from but I have it and it has not gone away since having Jared. I signed us in and sat down to wait. And wait I did. We got called back at 10:55 and then waited some more in the exam room. The nurse came in and did his measurements (15 pounds and 25.5 inches) and then we waited for the doctor. (I did not get home from the appointment until 11:54 and it is not far away). Today was the first time I met this doctor and while he was just fine I really miss Jared's first doctor. Since birth Jared has grown 5 inches and gained 7.5 pounds so he has doubled his birth weight. He handled the actual shots just fine but was not a happy camper come early evening. Poor little guy. But he is doing much better now. I am thinking that I might go ahead and start him on some rice cereal. This doctor asked if I had and I explained I had not and asked him what signs he looked for when starting solids and he said three things: Drooling, putting everything in his mouth and waking up at night. Jared has been sleeping 8-10 hours at a time since January and this past week he has started to wake up. First it was at 4:30 so just 2 hours before I would get him up but last night it was 2:00 and then 4:30. So it might just be a growth spurt but who really knows. I am not in a rush or anything I just want to make sure he is still getting enough to eat. He also seems pretty interested in what I am eating when I eat in front of him. Suggestions Anyone?

Overall Jared is doing great and he
makes us really happy.

Oh You Make Me Smile...

Mark got home from work today and was holding Jared and I noticed that they were dressed very similarly so I went to take their picture and it reminded me of one of my most favorite songs. "Oh You Make Me Smile" Its actually been one of my favorites for awhile and it always makes me smile as do Mark and Jared. I love these boys!

Jared is so strong. He holds his head up for good amounts of time but just isn't into rolling over although he did it again yesterday after not having done it for like a week and a half.

Hope you all are smiling now!

Lately...

I have not felt much like writing on here. Things are going really well no real complaints. Everything has just been very routine so I haven't felt like I had too much to write. I could of course post lots of cute pictures of Jared but I like to try to have some things to report as well. So here is what has been going on.

House Hunting:
Mark and I have been looking online at houses since last fall and have started going to look at some. Our biggest problem with this is timing. With the tax credit ending April 30th we know if we are going to buy a house we need to get on it. We are excited about buying a home but it is really overwhelming and stressful too. Mark feels very secure that he will have his job at Skyview next year so that helps us narrow down the areas we want to look at. The problem is that we have a very low price range and all the houses right by his school are out of our range by about 15,000 dollars so it would have to be quite a deal but there are some houses nearby that are good options. Its not like we are buying or even looking for our dream home now, just a simple starter home. So we are going to go look at some houses this afternoon. Another issue with the timing of the tax credit is our apartment lease. The lease is up in July and when I asked the manager what happens when you leave early she said you have to pay until the lease is up. Mark doesn't really believe they can make you do it but I am not so sure. So ideally we would find a house in April get under contract and move the beginning of July but that seems pretty far fetched. But we are looking and maybe we will find the perfect opportunity. If not oh well at least we tried and we still like out apartment.

Jared:

Is such an all star. This kid is amazing. He rolled over for the first time last Thursday from his tummy to his back. He did it twice for me and twice for Mark but he hasn't done it since then. He is really good at holding his head up and smiles and talks all the time. He is really into his toys and is reaching and grabbing at things all the time. He does great sleeping at night, we put him down at about 9:10 and he sleeps until 6:00 - 6:30 am. He is so good to us. I love that he can put himself to sleep in his crib after we put him down and if we wakes up too early he can self soothe himself. He is really not interested in a pacifier which is fine and occasionally we do catch him sucking on his thumb. He was weighted Tuesday and came in at 14.9 pounds and looks nice and healthy. This is probably the one time in his life when he will have chubby cheeks and chunky thighs. (At least if he takes after Mark)I was talking to my sister last week and she mentioned her older daughter was watching some old home videos and it occurred to me that I should probably take some videos of Jared so I did but I can't get it to come onto the computer from the camera. I will work on it. We are just so happy to have him with us!!

Skyview:
This is the middle school that Mark works at and he is having a great quarter with his students so far. They were really annoying last quarter because they had a 2 week break in October, some snow days, a week off for Thanksgiving and then 2 weeks off for Christmas so they never got into a good routine. But now things are going smoothly. Mark completed a 2 Saturday, all day, training course this past month that will qualify for him for mentoring a new teacher if they need someone too (he is the only Social Studies teacher in 6th grade who has taken it, can we say job security?) and he signed up to take the SMART board training. Its really smart of him to take these now when:
A we only have Jared (the sweetest kid ever so its easy for me to watch him) and he is still so little that he doesn't require as much energy on my part and
B: it makes him more valuable to his school because he is trained to do these things.
He is really enjoying 6th grade and would prefer to stay at this school so its great he can take these trainings and that he is enjoying his job.

Primary:
So last year Mark and I taught the 9/10 year-olds and they were not the funnest group of kids. This year we have the 8/9 year-olds and they are great so we are enjoying it way more. Its very nice to not dread 2 of the 3 hours at church. Hopefully they will stay sweet. We have 12 kids which I think is way too many but when you have 90+ kids in primary you are bound to have big classes right?

January 22nd:
Mark and I celebrated the 6th anniversary of out first kiss. Mark got me some beautiful flowers and some Hershey kisses so I of course made Peanut Butter Blossoms and we are enjoying them. I love these cookies and I love to bake. Next week Valentine sugar cookies.

So life is great but very routine. I wish I could figure out how to do the video because its of Jared talking and is really fun. Here are some regular pictures until then.



In the video you can hear him talking and see him reaching for the toys.



His eyes look more green with the chair background. Mark has the nicest green eyes and mine are fairly green too I hope Jared gets green eyes! We'll find out in about 8 months I guess!