Houston, we have a walker!

Amelia is walking! Yay! She still does the "Frankenstein" walk right now, but she's getting better every day. Now, when she falls down, she gets right back up to walking, instead of crawling the rest of the way. Pretty exciting new steps in her life (pun intended).
She also knows how to go down the stairs, which is nice because no more baby gate! The other night while I was doing the dishes and Jonathan was busy, she went downstairs, got her favorite stick of chapstick, and came right back up! How funny.


We've also been working on her signs. It's pretty cute that all day every day she signs bath time, because she SO loves her baths. Even though she only gets one every other day, she'll sign it while we're driving and stuff. Haha. Maybe when it gets colder we'll take more.


Remember when she had tons of hair, and as she got older everything started to fall out except the middle mowhawk?? Well, we finally put it in a ponytail, and look how long it is!


If those videos don't work, could someone please tell me how to upload videos so they do work?! Thanks :)

The Many Adventures Of Patrick Jacobs

As I mentioned in my last blog, Kirsta and Joe came down to stay with us this past weekend for Labor Day. Unfortunately, Jonathan doesn't get Labor Day off work so we had to cram all the fun into one day. First, we went to the Colorado State Fair and checked out lots of animals:

Goats

Sheep

Bunnies

And cows


After that we came home and ate dinner, then headed out to City Park, which has rides going every night during the summer from 5-9 pm for only 50 cents! Sadly, we discovered these rides about a week after Kirsta and Joe had left last time, so I was DYING for Patrick to come back before they were closed. There's a train and a carousal that adults can ride with the kids, but all the other rides are kids only and they have to be at least 2 years old, which excludes Amelia from doing anything fun. So, Patrick was my go-to guy!

On the train

Ferris Wheel

These little cars just went around and around

More car rides

The carousal

I went on the roller coaster with him, and afterwards he said, "That was NOT a fun ride!" Lol.


As always, we had a great time with the Jacobs!

Messes

As Amelia gets older, she is figuring out how to get into stuff. I mean, REALLY get into stuff. We used to be OK if things were in their boxes, but now she knows how to open the box and get into whatever is in there. I thought I would share a few examples:

She has a yeast infection right now, so the Doctor told us to get women's Monistat cream and use it on her like diaper rash cream. Well, women's yeast infection treatment kits come with injection tubes, which we of course are not using on her, but they still came in the box.. She found them:



The only thing in the kitchen that we put baby locks on were the cupboards under the sink because there are some chemicals under there. I didn't want locks on the rest of them because when I am cooking dinner she likes to be in there with me but I'd rather have her playing with stuff than whining at me to pick her up. Well, until now. She learned how to get into boxes of food, such as:

Cornstarch!


Today she found the bag of straws:


We bought her a set of fridge magnets so she could have something to entertain herself, and she absolutely loves to "rake" them all on to the floor, which then just leaves me with another mess. So, what's the verdict? Do I baby proof and listen to the whining, or just keep myself busy picking up a lot of messes??

Wonderful weekend

We had a GREAT weekend around here. Eric called last week and said he needed to take a class here in Pueblo so he was going to come stay a night with us. In the 2 1/2 years we've lived here he had never seen our house! He got here Friday afternoon and then had class that night and again on Saturday morning. Amelia and I met up with him (he?) and Jonathan for the Saturday Taco Bell lunch ritual. After that I got in touch with Chrystal (from Grand Junction) who was in town for the Colorado State Fair. We met up at 1:30 to walk around the Fair, which was a really bad idea becuase it was 95 degrees out and lugging a baby around in that kind of heat is not my idea of fun. But, she invited me back that night to go to the Blake Shelton concert with her family because they happened to have an extra ticket. I got to go back that night babyless, in the cool night air. Wonderful. The next morning we met up with her family for a Cracker Barrell breakfast, went to church, and then got our house ready to have a BBQ for the Bed Bath and Beyond management. That lasted from about 4-8:30 on Sunday night and the weekend was over! Whew. This week I have something planned with friends every day, including Kirsta and Joe coming to stay for Labor Day weekend on Friday! The fun just never stops around here... Until it gets cold again and I become a shut-in. :)

August

First, my apologizes for not blogging in so long. It's not that I forget, and actually my guilt for not blogging grows with each passing day. It just seems to me that 99% of my readers are at any activity worth blogging about, and then I just feel like I'm being redundant. I think what I need to do is start writing about the "small" things in life, and trying to capture more day-to-day things on camera.


Anyway~ the month of August has had it's ups and downs around here. On the 4th Amelia turned 1!! I of course knew that it was coming, but on that day I finally realized that I am the Mom of a 1 year old! Seriously, where did the time go?? I feel like it was yesterday when my mom was here visiting and she told me to just make it through the first 6 weeks and then it would get better. Well, 6 weeks have passed, and then another 46 weeks! Wow. We had a BBQ at our house for our Pueblo/Springs friends and family on her birthday, and then that weekend we went to Denver for a celebration with the Gustavson side (and Joe's Mom) at Water World and Kirsta's house.

This is the cake I made her This is the new swimsuit we bought her for Water World That was a great week/weekend. The following Wednesday was her 1 year Dr. appointment. She woke up that morning with a fever, so we found it pretty handy that we were on our way to the Dr. When we got there they checked her all out and couldn't find anything wrong, assumed it was just teething and we decided to give her her shots. I wouldn't say that giving her shots that day was a mistake, but the teething combined with a stomach bug (which we found out later that night, which is what was causing the fever), combined with the shots, whose effects didn't show up for 7-10 days, has made this a LONG week and a half for us. There's been high fevers, low fevers, never-ending fevers, throwing up, crying (on both our parts after the throw up:) ), LOTS of whining and therefore lots of Tylenol, skin rashes and the worst diaper rash I've seen, and many sleepless nights. I guess these are the joys of parenthood.

Today seems to be the start of things looking up. The fever is gone and she seems to be getting back to her normal, happy self. Please cross your fingers for me that she stays this way, at least until her next tooth. :)

On a happier note, Amelia LOVES fruit. Such as:
Watermelon And peaches, fresh off our tree! She also signed "all done" for about a week and now she just wants to say it. Any time of the day you say it to her, this is what she does: Mostly it just sounds like "Aaaaaaa daaaa."


I guess that's all for today. :)

My favorite Bear Lake memories

Since everyone was there, and I believe we all have the same pictures, I'm just going to post a few of my favorites.

Amelia eating cookies

Ba and Na-Na
Food for the birds!
A walk along the beach
Sam, Haley and Jonathan catching some air
By far the most funny play I have Ever seen! I wish they would've had it on DVD.
World's largest pizza
What a doll

This one makes me laugh because it looks like she is thinking, "HOT!"

Family photo

I love this picture of Mom
Aw, Gee.
What a wonderful vacation! If I could wake up every morning to that view, it would be a wonderful world. Can't wait until next year!

The bathroom so far...

I know you are all DYING to see pictures of how the bathroom is coming along. :) Although we are trucking right along, we laugh at ourselves for thinking this was going to be a weekend project. We are SOOO grateful that Joe was able to come help Jonathan with the hard stuff, like re-wiring the lights and building new walls, and it has been really fun for me to be able to get in there and help with the not-to-hard stuff like painting. This past weekend Jonathan's Aunt Rhonda volunteered to come help us lay the tile, so things are starting to really fall into place and look amazing. I will start the pictures in order from the VERY beginning of the bathroom, even though I think most of you have seen the bathroom in person. Just a refresher.

This is standing outside the door to the whole room. The chunk that's missing out of the wall was from when Jonathan moved our couches downstairs. Oops.

How the washer and dryer were placed

Standing at the washer/dryer looking at the bathroom door

How the toilet looked


The old floor


Starting over..

After lots of demo, Joe lays concrete for the new shower base.


Floor is gone, toilet is gone, lots of tools.

Joe built 2 new small walls to install bi-fold doors, (as seen on the middle right) and they installed "green-board" drywall, which is mold resistant, for the ceiling, along with new can lights and a fan.

After lots and lots of drywall patches and mudding, there was a small hang-up when we realized that you have to texture new drywall. We cleared the place out, Jonathan textured and we painted!

This is the new room for the washer and dryer, which will be closed off by bi-fold doors.

On to tiling..

Laying it down.. these were about the only full tiles that were laid. The rest had be cut.. poor Rhonda having to measure and cut them all! I got the easy job of laying them down :)

All done setting the tiles

Grouting

Here I am, grouting away

The tile as it looks right this very minute.. I'm going to clean it off a few more times and then we're going to seal it.


There it is folks! I hope you can even understand what is going on in these pictures. Definitely more to come. I'll even do a fun Before and After blog of all the different key elements. Ta ta for now!