Is this thing still on?

Oops...so it's been quite awhile.  I've missed blogging but at the same time I've forgotten about it because I was more present in my daily life/not so absorbed by electronics, so it's been good.  I still need to do a post on our lake powell/cedar city mini vacay complete with pics but I'll get to that eventually.

What I want to talk about is the AMAZING effects of taking time for yourself and your marriage-like how it effects what kind of mommy/parent you are.  It's crazy.  I mean, it's not like I was feeling particularly burnt out/or bored with my mommy role before our trip, but after getting back from the trip and seeing the difference in myself/energy/patience/attitude...it's pretty cool.  I don't know what happened, but all of the sudden I am LOVING my time with Jake during the day-not that I wasnt loving it before the trip/but I'm THAT much more into it now.  I dunno....but it's cool, and I can totally tell a difference in Jake's response to me too.  Before, don't get me wrong-he loved me/would want me to hold him, but would prefer Code.  Now, he sometimes prefers ME when Code is an option-it's kinda weird but a really good weird obviously.

This was the first trip we took that was away from Jake since he was born that was longer than a day.  (We were gone 4 days).  It was glorious.  It prolly sounds weird, but I LOVE opportunities where I get to miss Jake.  As a stay at home mom-I never get to miss him/be apart from him really.  It's funny, but I feel like time apart from someone is JUST AS important as time together-it's healthy/mixes things up/keeps things from getting stale etc.  And now I appreciate my time with Jake that much more.

Jake in the past few weeks has really blossomed into a lil boy.  (He's just over 14 mo- will be 15 mo on the 23rd).  Maybe it's just seeing him in lil sweaters/fall clothes-don't ask me why, but babies/toddlers in fall clothes are THE cutest- but his personality has come out WAY more.  He has this lil shake of the head with a grunting sound when he clearly doesn't want something that cracks me up.  Sometimes I'll just offer him stuff to see/hear him do it-it's just so decided/love that he has an opinion.

He still mainly crawls, but he's started standing up with out support for long periods of time, and he's taken a few steps here and there-usually it's 3 or 4 til he biffs it/crouches down to crawl, but today he walked 11 steps and seemed WAY steadier so maybe we're on the verge of a break through.

We're down to 1 nap.  He took to it pretty quickly-staying up past his 1st nap time was never really a problem/likes being up, but getting him to sleep decently in the afternoon took a few days (it's been a looong time since he slept well in the afternoon-would always sleep 2 hrs in the morning and then 30 min in the afternoon).  Now he's rockin a one 2 hr nap after lunch and of course still sleeps through the night.  He will soon be down to one bedtime bottle since he drinks most of his milk from his sippy throughout the day-just keeping the afternoon bottle before nap in place til he gets used to his new nap time.

He still LOVES to be read to, pulling pillows off our couch and falling on them, any sort of blanket/fort type thing, and going for walks.  He loves to wave hi to things but not always people.  When I get him up in the morning he waves at the animals on his curtains/the wall/ the light....as far as I can tell he waves to the bush outside our front room window...but maybe that's his way of saying hi to the horses across the street?.  you get it, he waves a lot.  He's the happiest/sweetest kid, and it's way fun to see him growing and developing.  He still only says mama, dada, mi-mi (milk), mo-mo (more), but he understands a lot more-knows ball, book, bottle, we're working on body parts/pointing to nose etc now.  He babbles a TON in his own lil lingo so once he picks up more words he is gonna be a chatter box, and he's super expressive with his intonation/inflection of his voice-so funny.

My favorite thing of all that he does is this lil "force choke hold".  He holds out his arms/hands and tenses them up and makes this grunting/straining sound and his face turns all red.  At first I called it his Hulk Hogan, but trying to use the force is much funnier.  If only there were an emperor costume for babies....but anywho.  We do it back to him and he does it even more/loves to make us laugh.


This next week we will take him to his first BYU football game-hopefully it goes well....it's not like we're near an aisle so it'll be awful if he's crying/screaming etc.

Highlights of the week:
saw Imagine Dragons live for free at the Vivint year end party-they were awesome, BYU killed Utah State, General Conference and family in town made it a great week.

Looking Ahead: currently planning a baby shower for my sister-in-law that'll be way cute (more on that later) and we sort of bought a house but we're not moving til the end of the year....yeah, ok, i'll write a separate post on that later.... :)