The Picker Family: July 2020

We're at the end of July and nearly 5 months into COVID-19 pandemic life...it has certainly been a strange year! We've been grateful for so many things in the midst of this abnormal year, but the highest on our list is extra time with our kids.

Jace is 23 months today and he is such a joy!

July brought lots of fun to our house. Our "friends from Maryland", the Ericksons, came to visit for a week early in the month. The kids and parents had a lot of fun together and it was hard to see them head home. Jace especially loved having so many new faces to play with! We also celebrated Nora's birthday with family and friends, ice cream treats, and swimming at the Stewartville Pool. The pool has been one of Jace's favorite places this summer. We finished up our parent/child swim class last week. He learned to blow bubbles and I learned he doesn't enjoy being on his back in the water. He had no trouble with retrieving objects, jumping in, and dunking his head! I truly hope his love of the water persists. It can be tricky in our climate since our access to swimming pools is sporadic for half of the year.

Jace continues to chat more and more. "Oh my", "Oh man", "faci flower" or just "faci" (aka pacifier), bulldozer, and dump truck are probably what we hear the most. He often repeats the last words of our sentences back to us and gets a big grin of pride for doing it. He's counting quite well...he starts getting lost in the teens though:) He's also identifying more colors accurately. He loves to point out the colors of vehicles we see while we're on walks. He imitates parts of the alphabet but has a long way to go pulling it all together. It's really just lots of fun being able to communicate with him. He can express his needs/wants much better and he understands most everything we're telling him.

We were able to make another trip to Oxbow Zoo with Jace and he really loves the small zoo where we can get good views of the animals. He has had many animal sounds mastered for a while, so we does a lot of "talking" with the animals:) His other favorites include playing with cars and tractors, shooting hoops (inside or outside), and riding anything with wheels he can get his hands on in our garage. Just yesterday, he made his first basket on the tallest hoop in our basement (one that hangs over the top of the door). It's taken him LOTS of shots to finally reach that height! He also likes to work on his dribbling in the driveway. I nearly forgot about his love of books! He has one of his favorite books nearly memorized: Easy Street. I had to tape up some of the pages recently because he's nearly worn out the book from reading it so much. He also loves some lift the flap board books we have and he's getting really good at identifying shapes and colors in them. Jace's other accomplishment this month has been his height and reach. Do I actually know how tall he is? No. But, I can tell you he's tall enough to turn on the light switches and open the fridge door. We often find him standing in front of an open fridge perusing his options. As you can tell...this boy is learning, growing, and developing every day!

I truly just love the toddler/preschool years. It's in my wheels house to sing silly songs, read books, play at the playground, and enjoy all of the discovery...while also knowing we'll get a break for nap time and early bedtime:) Jace brings energy, laughter, and lots of fun to our days with his great facial expressions, his chatter, and his adorable pudginess 💓