Jace ~ 23 Months

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 💓

First night of swim lessons!

THE lion slide!

My guys

Jace and his fan club...mostly Riggins:)

Jace and Trey busy with the cars/tractors

Snuggles with Holly

His buddy Jada

Can you tell we swim a lot???

Cuddles with "big Luke"

His buddy Jael

Trying to escape the group pic

Living his best life :)

Park time!

Visiting Murphy, Papa, and Gma

Jace discovered his loves ranch dip!

One of his lift the flap books

Hiking at Oxbow Park

Checking out the eagles at Oxbow 

Watching the otters swim

Helping Daddy plant a tree

Helping with dishes

Reading Easy Street with Uncle Greg

Enjoying a laptop toy from Riggins

Jace ~ 22 Months

The end as come to our entire family being home together during the pandemic. Brent started back to work in the office the last full week of June.  We're all adjusting to not having him around throughout the day when he could pop out of the office for a break.  It's strange to think of the fall when we could potentially all be going our separate ways every week day again.  We'll see what happens!  By then we'll also have a 2 year old Jace!

Jace continues to be very chatty and putting more words together into phrases.  A new one this past month was "oh my gosh".  He still does A LOT of talking that we cannot decipher.  Yesterday, Nora decided to create a language between her and Jace.  She talked jibber jabber back to him and it sounded like they were having a discussion in the back seat.  It was very cute:)  Jace has also mastered asking "help please" when he needs something and telling us when he's "all done" eating his meal.  We're still working on him asking for a pacifier instead of just whining.

Jace has mastered walking up and down the stairs on his feet while holding the railing or wall.  If there is nothing to hold on to, he will still use his hands/knees for support.  Brent started a new rule for him that he cannot take his pacifier outside.  He now knows that leaving his pacifier on the mudroom bench is part of the process for going to play outside.

Jace's new fascination has been the pool!  Thankfully the Stewartville pool opened at 50% capacity on June 15.  I've brought him a few times and man is it a work out!  I cannot take my eye off him for a moment or he will fall face first into the water, run away toward the slides that are too big for him, or jump off the edge into the pool.  Our pool has a zero-depth entry area for younger kids, a slide that is just his size, and a few areas that shower water down into the pool.  Jace loves them all!  He and I are starting swimming lessons tonight, but I believe that will be in the deeper pool so we'll see how well he does letting me hold him during class.  He's very independent!  I don't want this to sound like I'm complaining about his energy.  It's just very different than my bigger kids...and I'm older:)  I am honestly very grateful he's comfortable in the water and I hope he stays that way as he grows!  Jace also got to experience Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo for the first time and enjoyed seeing all of the animals up close.  He was very excited to watch the otters swim, the wolves pace around, and the bear roll around on his back.  I think the animal that made noise at him got his attention most though: the huge turkey!  It was funny to watch his expression each time it gobbled loudly:)

Jace continues to eat better and eats the same food we're eating for meals.  He's working on his spoon-to-mouth skills and especially loves getting a cup of yogurt all to himself.  He's still working on getting his 2 year molars pushed through.  As of last week, he had 3 broken through his gums.  Hopefully he'll get these all through by his birthday and we can work on making the pacifier for bedtime only (he's currently quite addicted).

Other than the pool, I'd say Jace's biggest adventure this month was a little escape trick he pulled on Brent.  They were in the garage and Brent was working one something when his phone rang.  He turned his back on Jace while talking and when he turned back Jace was gone.  Brent came into the house, where I was making dinner, asking if Jace had come in.  He had not, so we took to the yard to search for him.  We found him on the far side of our neighbor's house (where we couldn't see him from our yard) where he had climbed up the ladder and onto their giant trampoline.  He was quietly toddling around on the trampoline with no one around (the neighbors were not outside).  Whew!  We all breathed a sign of relief to find him!  He's a quick and quiet one when he wants to be!

Some family pictures from June on Shutterfly.

June Adventures with Jace:

Ice cream truck came again!

One of Jace's buddies: Erik

Tormenting big brother

Another day, another park:)

Riding Nora's toy horse

Slip N Slide fun

Sharing breakfast with Momma

Morning reading in his pjs

More acrobats with brother 

Adventurer

Always in the middle of the action -
assembling Nora's new bike

Oxbow with Emma and Luke

Reading in Jace's closet