Far Above Pearls

I want to take some time to wish a Happy Father’s Day to my incredible husband Joe, who is also an amazing father!  Yesterday, we had a great time together as a family at the newly renovated YMCA near our home, where daddy and Justice got to have lots of fun in all the various play areas and in the pool!  It was great to watch them interact - Justice definitely loves his dad!  Sometimes I think Justice likes Joe more than me, which is actually totally fine with me, because I think it’s fantastic that they have such a great connection.  While Joe loves to wrestle and tickle and encourage Justice in his reckless adventures, he is also tender, cuddly, patient, and so incredibly loving towards his son.  They are a great pair and I am looking forward to observing Joe when our daughter arrives and how he interacts with his little girl!

I am also continuously thankful and grateful for Joe and what a tremendous help he is as a father and that he is absolutely hands-on and involved in all our parenting decisions and adventures.  He is right there cleaning the dirty diapers, feeding Justice meals, playing with him, giving him a bath, putting him down for the night, and everything in between.  We are 100% partners in this thing and I love that about my husband!  I think that recently though, the thing I appreciate most about him is his spiritual leadership in our family.  A couple weeks ago, Joe shared with me his desire to really make prayer for our family a priority and he lovingly encouraged me to join him by getting up early in the mornings to spend time praying together.  I am definitely not a morning person, so it was hard for me to agree to this arrangement, but I have already noticed that it has made such a difference when we start out our day connecting with God and asking for His help in our marriage and in raising our kids and whatever else is on our hearts to pray about.  I am so thankful that God gave me this man and for his leadership in our home - he is definitely the best husband and father EVER!

Well, Justice will be 15 months on June 4th and baby in the womb was 20 weeks on June 1st.  I completely failed to write about month 14 for Justice, so there’s a lot more to cover this time! 

We let Justice play downstairs in the basement for the first time, as Joe is working on doing renovations down there.  It’s been too disastrous down there & it’s still pretty chaotic, but it was good enough to let Justice explore a little and get dirty.  He totally loved playing with Joe’s tools and discovering this new part of our home.

But much more exciting than the basement, Justice got his first real taste of the Great Outdoors!  At first, he was a little cautious and didn’t want to leave the blanket I had laid out, but it didn’t take long for him to overcome his hesitations and now he LOVES being outside.  He especially loves gravel, dirt, rocks and sticks and putting them in his mouth. :)  He also loves to throw the gravel and rocks from their designated areas into the firepit or onto our lawn. :P (The picture of the two of us together is from Mother’s Day )

Justice also was introduced the grand world of babyproofing and was NOT too impressed.  From outlet covers to baby gates to drawer locks, it was quite a traumatic experience when his favorite troublemaking areas became inaccessible.  We, however, were delighted!

His climbing skills have also greatly advanced since my last post!  He is now easily able to crawl up onto any couch or chair and has actually managed to climb onto the toilet, filing cabinet, the top of the loveseat, and even onto our dining room table - scary!  He has also completely mastered the stairs and can easily climb up and down a full flight of stairs.

His greatest accomplishment in the last 2 months though has definitely been in the walking arena.  He started off just taking one or two tentative steps and mostly lunging towards his destination.  Then it wasn’t much longer before he started taking up to 4 or 5 steps in a row before falling.  He then gained confidence and coordination by learning to walk while holding onto a walker or by holding our hands.  The great breakthrough really occurred though when he learned how to stand up in the middle of a room without needing to hold onto anything.  Once he accomplished this feat of strength and balance, he became unstoppable and now he is pretty much walking constantly and has virtually left his crawling days behind!  He absolutely LOVES walking and especially in the beginning, he would get incredibly giddy with joy and excitement at his new skill and would be just giggling and smiling from ear to ear - it was so cute!  And once he discovered walking, it didn’t matter how many times he fell (which was often), he would always get right back up and want to try again, almost never crying when he fell.  Some evenings, he just seems to get a burst of energy and he wants to do is just walk and run around the house until he reaches the point of exhaustion - lol.  It has been incredibly fun for us to watch him learn and share in his joy.

As for talking, his vocabulary is growing, but very slowly.  He sort of stopped saying “Good” with great clarity, but will still sometimes say “Ga!” or “Gung!”, which I think is supposed to mean “Good”.  :)  He says “Hi” a lot (especially when playing with a phone) and what started as simply “What?” has advanced to “Whassat?” or “Whatdat?” or the occasional clear “What’s that?”, which he asks probably 100 times a day!  He has also learned to wave “Hi” and “Good-bye” and will say “Da-Dye!”  Another of his most common words is “Daddy” which is obviously in reference to Joe, but which he also seems to use for “doggy”, birds, or sometimes what seems to be just the outside world in general, as he often says it when looking out the window.  He’ll say “Mama” when prompted, but I still don’t think he knows that “Mama” is me.  :)  He also says “yucky” a lot, which we have been teaching him for all the gross stuff he’s always putting in his mouth and in reference to his diapers.  When we say “yucky!” he will actually sometimes take whatever he has put in his mouth and throw it away, repeating “yucky” after us, so at least he seems to be learning what that means!  After we pray at mealtime, he will sometimes say “Ba” or “Bam” after we say “Amen” and when he finishes drinking his bottle, he’ll say “Done!”  I think that’s all of his words at the moment. 

Other random things he does: fish lips, clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth, “tractor noises”, grinding his teeth (ewwwww!), throwing things (a very common expression of playfulness and/or frustration), turn the water on in the tub, watch movies (he seems to be enjoying Baby Einstein), eat some finger foods (he especially loves cheese), chew & drool on everything (four molars have come in this last month!), LAUGHS A LOT!!!  :)  He is definitely lots of fun to play with - especially tickling - because he laughs like crazy and has so many different laughs that are so funny - my favorites being the his growly laugh and his shrieking/screaming laugh. 

*********************SPOILER ALERT*******************

Here’s the latest baby bump picture, comparing this pregnancy with the last one - now is on the left, then is on the right.

As for baby #2, I had my 19 week ultrasound and it appears all is well.  But the most exciting part was obviously when we got to find out what our baby’s gender is…it appears that we will be having a ……..  GIRL!!!  We were totally pumped (that was for you Jacki, if you’re reading this), as we had both been feeling all along like it was going to be a girl and we only had a girl name picked out.  We also really love the name, which we feel God gave us especially for her, which is Rayah. 

Rayah comes from a Hebrew word in the Bible used only in the book of Song of Songs, which is usually translated as “my love” or “my darling” and which literally means “intimate companion”.  We feel like Rayah has a special invitation from the Lord for intimacy and friendship with Himself that we are excited to teach her about!  Of course, we all have this same invitation as the Bride of Christ, but at the same time, I believe it is her unique name and destiny in God to know and experience His love in deep ways.  The name Rayah is like a special term of endearment that Jesus calls His Bride and one that expresses His affection and His heart of adoration for her.  This name is used 9 times in Song of Songs, but here are a couple of my favorites…

Song of Songs 1:15 “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.”

Song of Songs 2:10 ”My lover spoke and said to me, ’Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.’”

So there you have it!  She’s lucky she’s a girl too, because when we were trying to find boy names that had a similar meaning, the best we could find was Theophilus and Jedidiah!

Well, baby #1 (Justice - not really a baby anymore) is now 13 months old (outside of the womb) and if you figured it out by the blog title, we’re pregnant with baby #2 who is now 12 weeks old (inside the womb)!!!  Yay!!!  We are very excited for this new addition to our family and wanted to give you all our wonderful news!  Again, for my RSS readers, there are several videos in this post, so you’ll have to come visit the site to view them (sorry!).

As for Justice, this last month has been one of growing in leaps and bounds, it seems!  He’s starting to stand on his own, but mostly by accident - lol.  He’ll get distracted for a moment and let go of whatever he’s holding onto and he’s quite good at balancing for a while, until he all of a sudden realizes what he’s doing & then he quickly goes to grab something again or sit down. He’s also getting very ambitious with climbing and just yesterday, he managed to climb up onto our loveseat in the office, which is a little lower than our living room couches, all by himself!  Oh, dear!  He’s also become a lot more energetic and rambunctious in his playing, loving to flail his body around and falling on purpose, etc.  This has led me to discover little scratches and bruises on him when I’m changing him, but apparently he’s pretty tough.  :)  He gets into quite goofy moods sometimes and is starting to really get a silly side to him & he’s often making me laugh with his antics.  He loves it if we throw/drop him on our couches, but this has its disadvantages, because he has no concept of the danger of falling off of things & would willingly dive off of couches, beds, etc. with no regard for his well-being!  He loves to throw things, will sometimes even “play fetch”, and will chase us and let us chase him.  In fact, he LOVES it when we chase him & “catch” him and tickle him like crazy - he will stop “running” away if he thinks we’re not catching up quickly enough.  :)  Here are a couple videos of him playing…

Another major step he’s taken is learning to mimic us.  The first thing he learned was to clap his hands whenever we said, “Good job!”, which I mentioned in my last post, but now we’re also teaching him to lift his hands above his head when we say, “Praise the Lord!” :)  He also tries to mimic how we use the phone and lately he’s actually started to mimic the sounds and words we say!  It’s quite fun getting him to do things - lol.  I’d say his first official word was “What?” which was followed by his second word, “Good!” and recently “Hi”.  At least, those are the words we can actually understand.  :)  He may have many more that we just can’t interpret yet.  I’m also trying to teach him to say “milk”, and he really tries hard, but mostly just says, “ma!”  Here’s a bunch of videos to demonstrate…

Lately, Justice has also developed a very strong attachment to his daddy.  Me and him get along really well & have lots of fun together during the day, but as soon as daddy comes home, it’s like mommy no longer exists!  lol.  Every morning when Joe leaves for work, we have to try to distract him, otherwise he breaks down in tears.  This also happens if Joe goes to the bathroom and closes the door (not always a give-in at our house) and Justice will paw at the door like a puppy and cry for Joe to come out - lol.  He follows Joe wherever he goes and just simply adores his daddy - it’s quite cute.

As for Baby #2, we had a lot of fun telling our friends and family, using Justice’s birthday as a coverup for our plan.  We gave Justice a birthday present at his parties with the positive pregnancy test inside and here’s a video of how it turned out when my family came over to celebrate.  My favorite quotes from the night…

“You Peed on that!”
“I thought it was a thermometer!”
“I was completely clueless!”
“Is that a little toothbrush?”

So, Baby #2 is due around October 19th, which will make Justice and his sibling roughly 19 1/2 months apart in age!  It should be interesting!  So far, the pregnancy has been really good, although I was experiencing a lot more nausea this time around then I had with Justice.  As usual, I’ve also been SUPER tired, but it appears that as I’m finishing up this first trimester that the nausea has almost gone away and that I’m getting a little bit more energy - yay!  At 12 weeks, I’ve got a definite baby bump showing and since there was some confusion about my due date, I got to go for an early ultrasound and see the baby, which was super cool!  I love the fact that you can actually see their little heart beating inside their chest and seeing their arms and legs flailing around.  I also got to see the baby’s “yolk”, which if you didn’t know, is kinda like an egg yolk that is in the uterus to feed the baby until the placenta is formed - I just think it’s so amazing how God takes care of all those little details!  Anyways, to wrap up, here’s a picture, just for fun, comparing my baby bump with my last pregnancy (the left is now, the right was then).

I can hardly believe it, but my little baby turned 1 year old on March 4th!  It has been an amazing year and I love him more and more very day!  He seriously just gets cuter and cuter all the time and I am completely enthralled with observing him grow and learn new things.  The last month is a bit of a blur in my mind, but I will try to remember the key fascinating and exciting things I can share with you as well as his birthday celebrations.  (**Again - if you’re reading this via RSS feed, I don’t think the videos work for some reason, so you’ll have to visit my blog directly to view them**)

1.  He has completely mastered the conventional crawl and will now crawl at lightning speeds to his destination!  :)  It’s quite funny watching him sometimes and trying to understand his thought process, as he can be a little indecisive and crawl somewhere, then come back, or look like he’s going in one direction and then make a sudden course change.  He sort of crawl like a bull-dog, in my brother’s words, with his hands pointed slightly inwards, but I think it’s super cute! 

2.  He’s getting really good at walking while holding onto things.  His favorite thing to do is walk while pushing our dining room chairs or especially the office chairs that have wheels and walking with them.  He will also walk along any piece of furniture or object that’s an appropriate height.  The funny thing though is that if you try to take his hands and walk with him, he’ll just go limp and collapse to the floor.  I guess he only wants to walk on his terms! 

3.  He finally kicked the yeast infection that was plaguing him for almost 2 months - yay!!  His bum is clean and clear!

4.  He’s showing off his smarts these days - he got a bunch of new toys for his birthday that require him to use more of his mental capacities and problem solving skills.  He still needs a lot of encouragement and help in order to figure things out, but we are very proud of him when he does!  I just figured out today that he now associates the phrase “Good job!!” with clapping, because we say that and clap our hands every time he does something - lol.  So now, if we say “Good job!!” he will clap his hands. :)  He looks quite pleased with himself too when he accomplishes something and totally looks up at us for approval and affirmation - very sweet!

5.  No new words really, but he’s definitely talking a lot & is very vocal.  His sounds are also very guttural and manly - think “Tim the Toolman Taylor” (if you’re old enough to know who that is). 

6.  Justice learned to eat some finger foods by himself!  He has held and eaten portions of an apple slice, a cracker, and a baby cookie so far.  But after a few bites, he usually gets bored with it and throws it or just crushes it and makes a mess with it. 

7.  Sleeping is mostly the same.  Usually 8pm - 6am or 6:30am if we’re lucky.  He seems to usually wake up once during the night and need some help going back to sleep, but mostly we get to sleep through the night, which is fabulous! 

8.  Two more teeth have come in on the bottom this last month, so we are now at a total of 8 teeth!  Here’s a video of him mowing down on his shirt to try and alleviate his teething discomfort - haha.

9.  Along with standing and walking, Justice is learning to climb!  He will often climb over us if we’re playing with him on the floor or try to climb over things we put in his way to block him from stuff we don’t want him getting into (see video below).  Just this weekend, he actually climbed the stairs from our basement to our main floor all by himself!  I was there of course, encouraging him and providing some incentive, but he did it all on his own - I was so proud of him!

10.  Justice had his first haircut at an actual children’s salon.  He was a perfect angel and just did great! I think he was pretty consumed with the movie playing & the new surroundings, because he didn’t break a smile the entire time - lol.  He got a faux hawk and looks SOOOO adorable!  It definitely made him look older though - not my little shaggy baby anymore.

11.  He LOVES emptying all our cupboards, drawers, shelves - anything he can get into and reach!

Finally, for his birthday, we had two celebrations - one with our friends from Sanctuary House of Prayer and another one with my immediate family.  For the SHOP party, I made chocolate trifle - one for all the kids that looked like dirt and was in Justice’s dump trucks - complete with gummy worms & spiders, and then another traditional one for the adults.  Sadly, Justice didn’t really get too dirty and wasn’t too impressed by the trifle - I think because it was too cold and he didn’t like the feel of it on his hands.  :)  Then with my family, he got a sweet haul of gifts of clothing and toys & we had a great time playing and celebrating our little man.  Here are pictures and videos of all the activities.

Well, we have had several financial miracles and blessings from God recently, that I simply must share!

First, in October of last year, Joe and I were really desiring to go on a family vacation down to the International House of Prayer, but we didn’t have the money.  We figured we would need about $1000 to drive down and stay for a week, so Joe started praying and asking God about it.  We really wanted to go the week of Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day in the States) because Joe only had 4 vacation days left and it would work best to be able to go on a week with a holiday in it.  Time was running short and we had basically resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be going.  Now, at Joe’s work they have an incentive program where the employees can submit ideas to improve their work stations or procedures in order to help them work more efficiently.  If your idea is approved and implemented, your idea goes into a draw for prizes that are drawn each quarter. If multiple people came up with the idea, the prize money is split up between them all.  There are 3 prizes and Joe had his name on 4 different ballots in the coming draw, but only one of them was his idea alone.  As you may be guessing already, when it came time for the draw, Joe’s idea was picked out for the first prize of….you guessed it - $1000!  And it was $1000 AFTER taxes!  :)  God had totally heard our prayer and knew what we needed and answered it exactly, with just enough time for us to make all our travel plans!  As you may have read when I blogged about our trip, we had an awesome time and it was a total blessing and gift from the Lord.

Now, for the second story, we were still a little strapped for cash and Joe began asking the Lord for another $1000, since we found out he’d be missing a bunch of work around Christmas, because his place of work was shutting down the factory for several days.  As Joe prayed, he thought about our financial situation and then altered his request slightly, asking the Lord for $1000 plus some. :)  I, however, did not know that Joe was praying for this, so when one day I received a totally random phone call from someone we barely knew at all and this person asked if we had been praying about any sort of need, I was at a loss!  I figured this person wanted to bless us financially and a number of things went through my head that I could say, but I knew I had to be honest, because I hadn’t been specifically praying for anything.  After that phone call, I figured I had blown it - lol.  I told Joe about it when he came home from work & that’s when he told me that he had been praying for the $1000 plus some.  Not long after that we received another phone call from the same person telling us to go check our mail box.  When Joe opened the envelope, there was a cheque written for $1000 plus $400 in cash!!!!  Ha!  It was totally like the Lord to answer Joe’s request so specifically that He caused the person to separate the $1000 from the rest - it was very cool!

Third story.  A couple weeks ago, there was another draw at Joe’s work where everybody’s names were in for a prize and you guessed it again…Joe won!  So, this time we weren’t asking for anything, but God decided to bless us with a trip to Phoenix, Arizona!  Joe’s company is paying for 2 flight tickets and 2 nights accommodations at a hotel with the option for us to choose to extend our stay and pay for the extra nights.  All that Joe has to do is take a tour of one of their plants there.  So, this just felt like another kiss from the Lord to tell us that He likes us.  :) 

Last story.  Joe has tried to sell his truck multiple times in the past with no luck.  He recently asked my dad if he could maybe try to sell it for him, since he didn’t have the time to do it himself.  Also, the truck has a few minor things wrong with it, that we were concerned may need to be fixed on the front end before we’d be able to sell it.  However, completely unexpectedly, when Joe’s parents came to visit us from Alberta a couple weeks ago, Joe mentioned his truck and they said that they’d be interested in buying it!  But even better than that, they are going to take care of the repairs and the cost of transporting the truck back to Alberta!  It couldn’t have been any easier or stress-free for us and was another incredible blessing from God.

So, this has just been really encouraging for us and a testimony that God will take care of our needs and even our desires when we trust Him completely with our finances.  It is our desire to continue to grow in our ability to trust Him and to surrender our finances to Him to be used as He desires, to learn to sow more generously that we may also reap generously.  We want to give out of love and then be “wooed and wowed” (as Mike Bickle says it) when God in turn blesses us beyond what we could imagine.  More and more we are discovering the joy and excitement of partnering with God with our money!

So, I recently read about this idea for a “Love Jar” on Rachel Meier’s Blog, which she described like this…

Here’s what it is: Couples individually write out an agreed upon number of “requests” or “ideas” that would make them feel loved or special. Put them somewhere (a jar perhaps?) and then once a week each spouse draws from the other spouses ideas and does it sometime that week. 

This could require some restrictions like as to how much money can be spent, or the length of request. (Paint the whole house may be a bit much)

So, when I told Joe about this idea, he was totally all for it & insisted that we have a craft project and make our own little love boxes.  Here is how they turned out…

I love how our self-decorated boxes totally reveal our different personalities - lol! We had fun making them and I have already benefited from it by receiving a couple very wonderful head massages!

Okay, so this post is over a week late, but on February 4th, Justice turned 11 months old!  Only one more month until his first birthday - it’s so hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly!  This last month was a big one for hitting milestones… (**Note: If you are reading this via RSS Feed, the videos may not show up & you may need to visit the blog directly to view them)

1.  He learned to get up into a kneeling-standing position.  As a result of learning to get up on his knees, he fell out of his crib one night!  We promptly lowered the mattress after that and now all is well.

2.  He learned how to pull himself up to standing and now he does it ALL the time.  As a result of learning to stand, he has also both fallen out of and into the bathtub - lol.  His favorite thing to do is stand at the tub and knock everything on the ledges either into or out of the tub, depending on which side he’s on.

3.  He’s learning to walk on his own while holding onto something.  Again, he does this a lot at the tub, starting at one end and walking along the side to the other end, knocking things down as he goes.  He can manuveur quite well between objects that are close together and at a good height for him to hold onto while standing, but he doesn’t seem to like to try walking as much if you hold his hands - then he just hangs like dead weight or tries to jump up and down.

4.  He’s getting better at the conventional crawl.  He will still resort to the belly-crawl-drag when he wants to get somewhere quickly, but he’s improving a lot at crawling up on his knees, mostly only going short distances using this method.

5.  He’s getting better at playing with his toys and he especially loves his hockey stick, which he is actually quite good at using to hit around a ball.  Joe is praying Justice does not become a hockey player and is vowing to retrain him to shoot hoops as soon as possible!

6.  As for talking, there haven’t really been any advancements.  He seems to be pretty content with his favorite words, “da”, “mama”, and “gah” combined with many assortments of grunts, growls, groans, and gurgles.  At the same time, he has definitely become more vocal and loud, as the folks who come to the prayer meeting on Monday mornings can attest to. :)  He can be rather distracting when he starts to chatter and make all his noises.

7.  Right on his 11-month birthday, his top teeth next to the middle two FINALLY broke through. It feels like those have been coming in forever, but they are now actually showing.  There was some blood and tears, but the worst appears to be over.  It seems like he is constantly teething though & he’s ALWAYS trying to bite me and always has his fingers in his mouth.  His latest favorite thing is to chew on a wet cloth or pull his shirts up into his mouth to chew on.

8.  Justice’s Grandma and Grandpa Engbrecht came for a visit and he totally loved them in no time at all!  It’s been kind of hard being so far from all of Joe’s family, so it was really great that they came out and go in some good bonding time with Justice.  He totally had a wonderful time with them, which was awesome.

9.  Justice has started to eat some big-people food - in other words, at supper time, I’ve started putting what I’ve made for Joe and I into the food-processor and feeding that to Justice.  So far he has liked most things we’ve given him, as long as they’re not too spicy or too chunky.

10.  Justice was officially weaned this last month!  This was a wonderful celebration and came just in time for Joe and I to have a whole day and night to ourselves to celebrate our anniversary while Justice hung out with Grandma and Grandpa Thiessen.  Weaning went really smoothly and he is loving his bottle!

11.  He is developing a strong will - oh dear!  Since becoming more mobile, Justice has developed a mind of his own and definitely knows what he wants and when he wants it!  Diaper change time has become quite challenging, as he is determined to try to roll over and crawl away as fast as he can.  Diaper change time used to be the “happiest place in the world” but now it has become a battle of wills and usually involves many tears.  He also has started to throw little “tantrums” when you take him away from something he wants or take away an object that he was playing with.  For example, he LOVES the mop and will totally freak out if you take it away from him.  *Sigh*  Not exactly sure how to deal with this new stage in life, as he still seems too young to understand discipline or even what “No” means!

12.  Sleeping habits have been so-so this month.  He goes to sleep pretty good, as long as you are there with him.  We’ve still been getting up multiple times in the night to give him his soother back, so hopefully we can figure out a better system soon, since this is not allowing us to get very good sleeps at night.  He also was waking up at 5am for several mornings in a row, so we moved his bed-time a little later to try and get him to at least sleep until 6am, which is when Joe gets up anyways.  So far this has been working pretty good, but Justice is quite reliable and prompt to wake up at exactly 6am - no sleeping in around here!  Thankfully Joe gets up with him and lets me sleep until 7am when he leaves for work. However, Justice is so adorable when he’s sleeping that I took many pictures of him this month - you can see that he has a favorite corner in his crib.

13.  With his new ability to kneel and stand up and get around, Justice has definitely become a bit of a trouble-maker.  He LOVES to get into stuff that he shouldn’t be getting into and is quite curious and adventurous.  This caused us to finally do some baby-proofing in the kitchen and bathroom, as well as get outlet protectors.  But there are still several things he likes to get into, like the pans & pot lids drawer, the tupperware drawer, my art supplies box, etc.

14.  He got a really bad yeast infection/diaper rash on his bum this month that STILL hasn’t gone away. (Hence all the naked pictures above, since it’s supposed to help dry out the infection)  I feel so bad for him, as it obviously causes him pain and discomfort, but so far all the many things I’ve been trying haven’t seemed to help.  If you think of him, you can pray for a quick healing!

15.  Justice learned to point this month and is now often pointing at things or holding his arms up like an orchestra conductor.  It seems like he’s trying to communicate something to me at times, but I usually can’t tell what he’s pointing at or what he might mean by his gestures?  It’s quite cute though.

16. Justice learned how to clap by himself!

17.  Random - just a couple more pictures from this month, plus a link to a Facebook album of “Justice’s Favorite Things” and a couple videos…

Justice plays with a door-stopper…

Justice helps daddy mop the floor…

Justice goes crazy splashing in the bathtub…

So, Justice turned 10 months old on January 4th and it has been a really FUN month!  He’s such a funny kid and it is so much fun watching him learn new things and grow up into such a cute little man.  Here are some of the highlights: 

1.  It would appear that Justice will not crawl in the conventional manner, since he has mastered the art of what we like to call “Crawl-dragging”.  He uses his little arms to drag himself around with remarkable speed and strength - he’s going to have some serious biceps!  It is super cute watching him plant his hands on the floor and pull himself forward, up and over obstacles, through complex tunnels, etc. in order to get to his desired destination.  What is especially endearing though is that he has now started to follow us if we leave the room and he’ll get really excited when he finds us and will make a beeline towards us with a huge grin on his face! :)  He has also become more adventurous and will explore on his own, getting into trouble and always going for the places where he shouldn’t!  He’s terribly curious about anything new that he hasn’t yet encountered and he tends to love to go after all the things he shouldn’t - like electrical cords, garbage cans, Joe’s guitar, etc.  His new mobility has definitely made life more interesting, challenging and more fun!

2.  This month Justice got to celebrate his first Christmas!  He sort of got into opening the presents, with some encouragement and assistance, and he discovered the joys of Christmas tree decorations!  He has really enjoyed the gifts he got and it was a lot of fun watching him play with them.  We had a great time at my parents’ place for about 5 days and just enjoyed being with them and relaxing, playing games, watching Star Trek movies - lol - and seeing their renovations continue to take shape.  Justice especially enjoyed the cardboard paper my dad used to protect the flooring & trying to get his hands on their tools! :)  He also discovered their dishwasher and a love for remote controls!

3.  One more tooth is starting to come in on the top, so his 4 middle teeth are all through and then the next 2 on top are still trying to push their way through.  Unfortunately, one of his top teeth is having some troubles & we took Justice to the dentist just to make sure everything was okay.  It’s totally fine, but it looks all bluish around his tooth, which is apparently blood vessels that have burst around there or something & apparently this is normal, but it looks pretty nasty.  I’m hoping it doesn’t cause him too much discomfort or pain when that tooth finally breaks through.

4.  This month I have really allowed Justice to try a lot of new foods.  He has had several meats (chicken, beef, ham, egg yolk), pasta, rice, puffed wheat, and other little things from our plates.  He usually takes anything we give him and will sometimes make a funny face if the flavor or texture is strange to him, but he’ll still take more of it from you. :) 

5.  No more swaddle!  We finally weaned him from being swaddled for naps and sleeping at night & the transition went great!  He was already getting out of most of the time anyway, but we’ve been able to figure out other little tricks to help him settle down for sleeping.  I’d say the biggest challenge now is when he wakes up in the night needing his soother, since he still doesn’t know how to find it and put it back in his mouth.  If anything, he’ll hold his soother and just talk to it and get angry - lol.  The other thing he’s started doing, is that when he’s upset and crying in his crib, he’ll pull down the bumper pads to look out & try to see us.  As a result, since he often has his soother in his hand, since he has plucked it out, he ends up throwing his soother out of his crib!  So, I would really like to not have to get up several times at night just to give him his soother back, but we have yet to figure out a different solution.

6.  He’s drinking from both a sippy-cup and a bottle!!!  This was a HUGE challenge and I was becoming very frustrated and despondent, thinking it was never going to happen!  But finally, after praying and asking the Holy Spirit for help, I was able to figure out that the big problem wasn’t the sippy-cup, but the fact that Justice really didn’t like the formula I was trying to give him!  And I don’t blame him one bit, because I tasted it & it’s NASTY stuff!!  So then we were able to get him to drink apple juice from the sippy-cup & once he conquered that, we tried giving him whole milk.  At first, he didn’t like that either, so then I tried putting some apple juice in with the milk & then we had success!!  So I slowly increased the milk to juice ratio & then also tried the bottle again & he now loves it!!  While he could drink fairly well from the sippy-cup, it was quite messy & the bottle has turned out to be a lot neater.  He will currently drink an 8-ounce bottle of milk that has 1 ounce of apple juice in it.  I’ve tried a couple times to take the juice out entirely, but he hasn’t gone for it yet.  :)  But for the last couple days, he has had a bottle throughout the entire day & I have only breastfed him at night before bed, so it won’t be much longer and he will be weaned!!

7.  He’s becoming more independent.  Along with his new adventures in exploring the house on his own, he has also become really good at playing on his own.  He is very fun to watch as he plays with all his new toys and travels around the room to different objects and talks to himself or his toys.  It is also very freeing for me, as I am more able to get things done while he plays at my feet - it’s great!

Well, Justice is rapidly approaching the weight and length restrictions for his rear-facing car seat, so Joe and I have just started looking at getting a new one for this next stage of his life.  We went to Toys ‘R Us last weekend and there were MANY different options and brands to choose from!  But it wasn’t long before we realized that the only logical way to go was to get a car seat that is flexible and will be able to “grow” with our kids.  It just doesn’t make sense to have to continue to buy multiple car seats as your kids grow, so we were definitely attracted to the ones that can be used for both infants, toddlers and even preschoolers.  At the same time, they are quite expensive, so I couldn’t help but get lured in my this great giveaway at www.5minutes4giveaways.com of an Evenflo Symphony All In One Car Seat - this is exactly what we would love to get!!

So, Justice turned 9 months old on Dec. 4th!! I can’t believe he’s already 3/4 of a year old - crazy! That also means that I only have 3 precious months of maternity leave left. But I can’t complain - these 9 months have been amazing and I am so thankful for this time with my little prince. Now, to update you on the many exciting adventures of the last month in Justice’s life, I have uploaded MANY videos for your viewing pleasure. There is no pressure to watch them all, as I’m sure they are mostly entertaining for only us, but I hope you’ll find some of them fun! Sadly, YouTube decreases the quality of several of them a lot, but there’s not much I can do about that. Enjoy!

1. Those top three teeth came in and he has now developed the lovely ability to grind his top and bottom teeth together! *Shiver* The noise just gives me the willies!

2. Justice went on his first long distance road trip and his first vacation outside of the country!! He was an absolute angel on the 14-hour drive to and from Kansas City, Missouri where we visited the International House of Prayer.

3. Justice is getting STRONG! This boy has an iron-grip when he’s got a hold of something and can easily hold & move large, heavy objects such as chairs, pots, shampoo bottles, tables, etc.

4. Justice discovered the joy and frustration of trying to open cupboard doors and drawers - lol. I am amazed at his curiosity and ability to figure things out! Combined with the aforementioned strength, it appears this boy is going to get into lots of trouble.

5. He’s learning how to stand!

6. Still working on crawling. Not too much progress to report here. He can lift his belly off the floor now & definitely gets up on his hands and knees and has even moved forward a handful of times, but he mostly continues to move backwards. But he can definitely travel remarkable distances, regardless of his inability to conquer the conventional crawl as of yet!

7. He had his first trip to the swimming pool and LOVED it! It took about a half hour for him to get comfortable with his surroundings - he’s usually very sober and serious when somewhere new - but he never cried and it didn’t take long before he was splashing away and having a great time! He definitely loves the water and it didn’t even bother him when he got it in his face. We had such a fun time there with him and with our friend Jacki and her son Joshua, who’s just 2 months older than Justice.

8. This kid is developing a voracious appetite! Lately, he has started to cry miserably when we stop feeding him or even if we just take too long between spoonfuls - lol. He is a hungry little man and it makes me a little nervous as to how we will keep this boy’s growing appetite satisfied! Some new things he has tried this month are chicken (not a big fan of this yet), shredded cheese, and cottage cheese. Here’s a video of him reacting a bit unpleasantly to some store-bought squash…

9. He’s a lot of fun! When he isn’t grouchy from teething (which he seems to be doing a lot of lately), he is a very happy kid and makes me smile a lot! Here he is having fun in his highchair…

10. He’s learning to say more sounds. He’s started to say “mamamama” again (yay!), but he has also added “dadada” to his vocabulary! I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually associate either word with either of us, but it’s fun to pretend. His other favorite “words” are “ga”, “gung”, “ba”, “bum”, “mum”, “da”, “day”, “dee”, “hmmm”, “brrrrrrmmm”, “na”, “nay”, “wah”, etc. These are usually all strung together into long continuous sentences. In this video, you’ll want to skip to about 1:25, since I don’t have any decent video editing software to cut out the boring parts.

11. His face is very expressive! I love watching all the facial expressions he can make - my favorites definitely being what he can all do with his eyebrows - lol. He has developed a very good furrowed brow and I especially love the little dimples that show in his eyebrows when he lifts them up - so cute!

12. He discovered gravity! One of his favorite things to do now is to drop things from his highchair and then lean over and look down at them. I have spent many minutes (hours?) of my days picking up the things he drops.

13. He loves banging and smashing. I have mentioned his love for the drum in the past, and I think I’ve probably mentioned the piano as well (he will literally SLAM his little hands down on those keys with all his might!), but his most recent pleasure has been the computer keyboard we let him play with, as well as an old phone. Anything with buttons to press (hit) is a lot of fun!

14. Sleeping at night is still a bit of a hit-and-miss. Depending on the night, he can sleep for large chunks of time without any disruptions, while other nights he seems to need us to come give him his soother or stroke his head every hour! We have continued to swaddle him, which helps for putting him down initially, and then he usually gets out of the wrap at some point in the night and is fine to sleep unswaddled from then on. I’ve been needing to feed him at 5am every morning and then he’ll usually go back to sleep until 6:30 or 7:00am. I would like him to be able to sleep until 7am before needing to eat, but so far this is what works for us.

15. We’ve been trying to get him to take a bottle with no luck and so lately we’ve been trying a sippy cup, which we’ve had a small amount of success with. He will drink some formula from the sippy cup without the valve in it, which allows the liquid to just flow out without requiring him to suck it by his own power. He has managed to suck some out with the valve in a few times, but mostly he’ll just bite on it. I’m thinking it definitely would’ve been better to have given him a bottle a few times a week all along, just to keep him used to it, since he did actually take one when he was younger, but I guess now we know for next time!

I think that’s all for now. I will end with some adorable pictures taken of him when we were in Kansas City…