Thanksgiving

We have so much to be grateful for.  We were grateful to have Rob's family come out and spend Thanksgiving together.  The food was great and we had a fun time seeing everyone.  Jacob loved the attention he got and still talks about the fun time he had with everyone.  

Getting ready to enjoy the feast.

Yum.

There's always room for dessert.

Boys on cleanup duty

 Playing catch with his aunt and cousin

He caught it!  I like it when Jacob says, "good job" or "almost" (if he doesn't catch it) when he is playing. 

 Yea Jacob!  He had so much fun with them.

 Good job!

 He's ready for more

 

Little Lion

Here are a few pictures from Halloween.  Better late than never I suppose.  Jacob looked so cute in his costume.  After a little candy to bribe him to wear it, he was sold on the whole costume wearing, candy collecting concept.  Perhaps a little too much so as you will see in some pictures below.  I'll let the pictures do the talking.

pumpkin patch 

playing in the hay

Rob trying to convince Jacob to put his costume on.

It's on!

At the high school fair

Trick or treating with friends.  Jacob going in for some candy

He is happy with the candy he got, but his friend is not so pleases.

Thinking about getting more, but decides against it.  Good idea,  his other friend is ready to defend her stash.

Look mom!  (he was not too happy a minute later when he had to give it back)  But he recovered quickly after his bag started filling up.

Fun times trick or treating.  

At a trunk or treat. 

Love this picture of my little lion

Riding the train.  He was so excited and focused.

Holidays are so fun with little ones.  We had a great Halloween with Jacob this year.

Future Big Brother

I always love seeing how much Jacob loves babies.  It is interesting to me how much he really likes them.

One day he noticed a figurine we have that has a dad and a mom holding a little baby.  From then on, every morning Jacob would ask to hold it, and give it a hug and a kiss.

Shortly after that one of his friends became a big brother and so Jacob would talk about this friend but then also include his baby sister in the conversation.  He loves tickling babies toes and mimicking their cries.  He will say, "baby cry, waaa".  It is pretty funny.  He loves holding his friend's baby sister and getting toys for her to play with as well.  Also, and during a time when I was having a hard time getting Jacob in his stroller, I was out with my friend and once he heard he could hold the baby when he got in in stroller, he couldn't get into it fast enough.

Sharing toys

I love how happy he is to be holding her.

I have loved watching him when he looks at and holds the baby Jesus in our nativity sets at home.  When we brought out the Christmas decorations for the first time and he saw the baby Jesus figurine he immediately started carrying it around.  I love this picture I snapped of him getting ready to read him a story.

Another time after we watched a little video about the Christmas, we went to look at the baby Jesus in our nativity and he had Mary hold the baby Jesus for awhile.

 He also prefers the horse and camel on top of the nativity roof rather than the angel.  :)

Jacob is such a fun, kind, and sweet little boy and I think our future children will feel lucky to have him as their brother.

Summer Fun

It has been a fun summer.  We have tried to stay cool and have fun.  With everyone heading back to school, I realized it had been quite awhile since I posted pictures, so I thought I would share a bit of what we have been up to this summer.

Jacob loves running through water and enjoyed the fountains and kid water play areas around town.   We had fun spending time with family.  We went to CA and spent some time at the beach.  It was funny to see Jacob's reaction to the sand.  We have been to the beach before, but this time, he didn't like the texture and feeling of the squishy sand on his feet.  He tried to stay on his towel but eventually his desire to play with a ball that was out of reach and on the sand helped him come to terms with walking on the sand.  The ocean water was too cold for Jacob, but Rob and I had fun playing in the waves with our brothers.

While in CA we also saw some of Jacob's cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  We had fun going to an aquarium, eating treats, playing at the park, and playing with cars and trucks.

Back home, Jacob spent time running through water fountains and going up and down the slide and teeter totter at the park.  He is saying a lot of words now.  I love them all, but a few favorites are: happy, catch, truck, apple, walk, hot, bye bye, and night night.

Toddlerhood is a fun stage.  Jacob loves to laugh.  He laughs a lot when I pretend to stumble or fall down, or when he throws a ball up in the air and it ends up bonking him on the head.  Jacob is such a good little boy and I feel so blessed to be his mom.

Here are a few pictures of our summer activities.

Jacob loves to line things up or stack things on top of each other. 

I love my little family

My happy little boy

Spending time as a family.

Enjoying the 4th of July with his grandma.

Out on a walk

Uncles are so fun.

Avoiding the sand

Safe on his towel

Fun times at the aquarium

Lining up and counting the spices after he removed all of them from his grandma's cupboard.

Eating his apple and petting the bunny.  

Enjoying the park with cousins.

Driving a truck

Joining in the competition to see who could last the longest on the ground while it rained and win an icecream treat.

Enjoying the splash park

Summer fun with cousins and grandparents.

Playing catch with his cousin

Summer fun

Hanging out in the lego box

Laughing and enjoying having his stuffed animal stuffed up his shirt.

Playing guitars with Daddy

Playing tennis as best he can.

As you can see, we had a great summer.  Hope you did too. 

Music

Last weekend, Rob and I went to a Coldplay concert.  It was awesome.  I loved all of the music they played.  A few times during the concert I would stop, close my eyes and take notice of the amazing sound that surrounded me.  It was cool.  The song Paradise will always remind me of Jacob.  Jacob loves dancing to that song.  He has a few funny moves.  Some of his favorite dance moves are: squatting, spinning, and getting in the yoga downward dog pose and kicking one leg up in the air.

I love how music and specific songs can remind us of different times or memories in our lives.  It is almost like songs can be a time machine.  

Last week I also heard a song that I had heard around the time when we had found out about little Jacob.  At the time we hardly knew anything about him, but the lyrics in the song perfectly described how I felt and how I was already in love with this little baby.  Even now as I type this I can feel that same happiness and excitement I felt that day.  

It is fun to see how much Jacob likes music.  Rob plays the guitar and most nights he will play Jacob a song before bed.  Jacob likes to sit on his lap when he has the guitar and help him play.  Even if Rob doesn't play the guitar at night, we will still sing a song.  And I usually always sing him a song before nap time as well.  Anyhow, a month or two ago when I picked him up to hold him before we had our family prayer and sang a song, he immediately snuggled with me and then started singing.  You couldn't make out any words, but you could kind of decipher the tune he was trying to sing.  It was so cute.  It made me so happy that he also enjoyed this little bedtime routine we had, and that he doesn't seem to mind that I sing out of tune to him.  

We sing various songs before bed.  Sometimes it is the "Itsy bitsy spider", sometimes a religious song like "I am a child of God".  Tonight it was "Row, row, row your boat".  We didn't realize how much Jacob liked that one, but the last few times he has sung the word "row" throughout the whole song.  It is pretty funny.

Dance party to "Paradise" by Coldplay

Fathers

I think Rob had a good Father's day yesterday.  He is such a great dad and I hope he knows how much Jacob and I love him.  Jacob and I decorated a foam finger that said #1 Dad, and in the morning when Rob went to get Jacob out of his crib I had him wearing it.  It was fun.  We gave him a few other fun gifts and made him some yummy food and just enjoyed spending the day together.  It was a nice day.

Yesterday I also thought about Jacob's birth father and what a good person he is.  With adoption, it is not always the case that you know about or meet the birth father of your child, so we feel lucky to have been able to do that.  We have great respect for Jacob's birth father and are glad he is a part of our lives.

Rob and Jacob