Jonathan, 22 months

I think one of my favorite things about this age is how much Jonathan is able to communicate. I love having conversations like this one that frequently occurs when I go get him up from a nap:
Me: Hey, Jonno! How did you sleep?
Jonathan: Good.
Me: Do you want a snack?
Jonathan: No.
Me: Do you want some milk.
Jonathan: Yeah.
It may not seem like much, but it is a definite improvement over:
Me: Hey, Jonno! How did you sleep?
Jonathan: Waaaa!
Me: Do you want a snack?
Jonathan: Waaaaaa!
Me: Do you want some milk?
Jonathan: Waahaahaaaa!
Even though he has been able to sign for some things that he wants for quite a while, I love that he can actually say so many words to tell me what he wants. Sometimes it's not very convenient, like when he is crying for "monkey" when I am trying to put him down for a nap, meaning he wants to watch Curious George for the 658th time, but it's still so fun. The other night we were driving back from a temple open house with my parents and he kept asking my mom and me, who were sitting in the back with him, to sing to him. We would pick a primary song, and every time we started singing a new one he would look at me in wonder for several seconds, the sweetest smile lighting up his face. I think those are the moments you live for as a mom.

Some of Jonathan's favorite things right now are:


Being outside. Especially if it involves the sandbox or playing with "geegawgeegaw" meaning water. *Note: He actually is starting to say "wa-er" for water instead of "geegawgeegaw." Peter and I are debating whether to encourage the change or not. We just loved "geegawgeegaw" so much!


Playing with cousins. This is a picture of him at one of our weekly play groups with two of my sisters-in-law and their kids. He gets so excited when I ask if he wants to go play with his cousins. He thinks they are the coolest thing ever. Unless they are in his personal-space bubble. Then he tries to push them down.


Finally, grandpa. Jonathan loves both of his grandpas so much. This is one of him with my dad. I think Jonathan would happily be grandpa's shadow 24 hours a day if I let him. I feel so blessed that we have lived close enough for him to get to know them both so well. And really, what better role-models could you ask for?

Catching Up on Summer

I'm not sure why I'm so bad at updating this blog. I think with my baking blog the posts are pretty straight-forward. You show a picture of some food, talk about it for a little bit, then post the recipe. For this blog, though, I think I just have a hard time figuring out how to sum-up all the stuff that has been going on in our lives. For instance, how do I describe Jonathan's excitement when we tell him that we're going to feed the ducks or the pure joy in his voice as he repeats "baby duck" over and over on the way to the pond? I really can't, so I just need to content myself with giving little peeks into our lives in hopes that years from now when I look back on my blogs as a journal of my life in 2009 I'll remember it for more than food.
To start what I hope will be consistent posting from here on out, here are a few highlights from some of our summer adventures so far:

Disneyland: Peter and I went to Disneyland at the end of April. I love Disneyland. I hadn't been in 10 years. It was magical, enough said.

Captain Peter Sparrow:


Me knocking on the white rabbit's door:


Me again, fulfilling my lifelong dream to sail on the ship Colombia:


Peter and me. The Tom Sawyer Island natives apparently wanted to have us for dinner:


Mr. Clean attempts to pull the sword from the stone. Sorry it's so blurry:


Me with the appetizing snacks in the Monsters, Inc. vending machine:


And one last shot of Peter, because he's cute:


Shortly after Disneyland we went camping with our friends Eva and Jeremy and their baby, Mariah, at Flaming Gorge. It was beautiful and fun. However, we probably won't be taking Jonathan camping again until he's ten, considering the fact that we ended up sleeping in the car and driving him around every two hours to get him to sleep.

The family Geilman:


Jonathan helped blow up the air mattress:


And then ate a snack of a marshmallow squished in some tongs:


Maybe my legs aren't so big after all:


The whole group:


A dinosaur bone still in the ground. How cool is that?


And finally, some cute ones of Jonno:




Man, I love my boys. And boy do I love summer.

Merry Christmas

Well it's about time I finally post some season's greetings now that it's New Year's Eve and we're about done with them. I hope you have all had a happy Thanksgiving, a merry Christmas, and that your New Year will be wonderful. Mine have been filled with family and friends and have been great. The picture above is from one of my favorite things I did this Christmas season. Some of you may not know that my friends Mary Ann, Megan, and I go around every month and sing at about four different nursing homes, and we have been doing it for about 3 1/2 years. Our Christmas programs are always our favorites to do, and this year we decided to spice it up a little by making carolers' costumes a la Charles Dickens to wear. Aside from the fact that none of us are the greatest sewers and that the costumes took about three times as long as we expected to make, I think they turned out rather well, and we got a great response to them everywhere we went*. We really love to sing to these sweet people. They are always so appreciative and gracious, and they really made it feel like Christmas to me.
We also had our annual "L.L. Bean Christmas Party" so named for the traditional, cheesy Christmas goodness we try to recreate for our party. Everyone is supposed to wear a festive sweater and we do Christmassy stuff like decorating sugar cookies, having a white elephant gift exchange, and usually playing Christmas carols on chimes, but we ran out of time for that last one this year because of a marathon game of Curses. Seriously, we only had about five cards left before we decided to stop, we had been playing it so long. I love that game. So much more has happened, but my brain is feeling very dull right now and I won't subject you to its ramblings. Happy New Year!

*O.k., so we didn't get a great response to our costumes everywhere we went. All the nursing homes liked them, but when we wore them and went to Kneaders with Mary Ann's husband, we got a couple of strange looks and later when we were sitting around the table with our bonnets and capes off, we realized we looked like a bunch of polygamists. We laughed pretty hard about it and called each other "wife one," "wife two," etc. for the rest of the time we were there. Tee hee.

Short

Sorry this is kind of a short, lame, post, but I've had a lot of requests, especially from Peter's family, for my oatmeal pancake recipe. This is just to say that I've posted it and my recipe for buttermilk syrup on my recipe blog. Happy pancaking!

Happy Halloween

Last Halloween Jonathan was a little tiny pumpkin that was just learning to smile. This year he was a gun-toting, candy-begging cowboy. We found a perfectly sized cowboy hat for him at Savers along with a button-up shirt. After a good cleaning and adding gun holster, jeans, and a bandanna, his costume was set. Peter and I were invited to a sweet "paparazzi" Halloween party where everyone had to come dressed either as a celebrity or a movie character. Peter was Yul Brynner in the King and I, and I was Audrey Hepburn. Here's the picture:



The party was so fun with a photo scavenger hunt, a game of "The Price is Right" on DVD (which confirmed my suspicions that I would be no good at that game show), way too much candy, and a great group of people.
For our ward party, Jonathan was also a cowboy, and Peter made a shirt with the Mr. Clean logo on it, "Bic-ed" his head, and made fake muscles to go under the shirt. I wanted something that would go with Mr. Clean so I went as a haggard housewife, complete with messed-up hair under a scarf, a mu mu, slippers, and a mop. We don't have pictures of that one, so I'll have to post them later once I get my hands on some.
The day after Halloween we went to another fun party. Peter and Jonathan reprised their Yul Brynner and cowboy costumes, but this time I dressed as Hermione from Harry Potter. It was fun--especially the pumpkin bowling in the kitchen. I'm still amazed their kitchen cabinets survived my terrible aim.
Jonathan had way too much sugar this Halloween. If there are cupcakes or candy in his sight, it's so hard to get him to eat anything else. At the Halloween party he kept grabbing candy out of the candy bowl and bringing it to me in hopes that I'd unwrap it and feed him some. Fortunately, he doesn't know how big a candy bar is supposed to be, so I could sometimes trick him by just giving him the tiniest corner and then eating the rest myself. Yes, I was willing to triple my recommended daily caloric intake to save my son from too much sugar. Selfless of me, I know.
All in all, it was a great Halloween. How could it not be with three parties?! I hope you all had a great one too!

Introducing. . .

. . .my new baking blog, Baking Becca. Just so you know, this is not because I consider myself an amazing cook or anything, I just really love to bake, I have some really great recipes that I have inherited from family members who really are amazing cooks, and because I think people can learn as much from my kitchen disasters as they can from the kitchen triumphs that abound in other cooking and baking blogs. Also I wanted to use that cute cupcake background that I found on the same site where I found this background. Go ahead and give it a look. Enjoy!

First Birthday

Since Jonathan is taking a really long nap, I have time to post! Yay! We had his first birthday celebration last week, and it completely blows my mind that he's been with us for an entire year. I can't believe so much has happened since last September because the time has gone so quickly. To celebrate I made him his own cake, which he wasn't sure about at first. After some patting it and testing it with his fingers, he began to squash it all over his tray and then fling his hands around which meant cake bits got all over the bookcase, the floor (even the parts we hadn't covered with plastic), the trashcan, the chair, etc. Here's a picture of the aftermath:

After that we had to bathe him before he could open presents. We probably should have thought of that before hand and had him do presents first.


He then got to open presents.

And what baby doesn't like playing with the box more than the actual present?

We had fun even though it is a little bitter-sweet that my baby is growing up so fast!