Jon and Amber

Jeremy is almost 18 months old now, and chattering up a storm in his own unique toddler language. He has been especially verbal in the last few days, and seems a lot more interested in trying to say real words. This weekend my parents were visiting us and my mom and I were sharing an apple with Jeremy at snacktime. I was trying to get him to show her how he uses his sign language to sign “apple” but instead of signing it, he said APPLE! We were very impressed and he kept saying it several times, very clearly.

I think all our excitement is backfiring now, though. Jeremy seemed to notice we were very excited about him saying that word, and now he’s been calling EVERYTHING “apple” (although his pronunciation has degraded a little  bit and now it sounds more like “ab-boh”. Jeremy wants to read a book? He brings it to you and says “ab-boh.”) Jeremy pets the kitty? “Ab-boh!” Jeremy likes playing with his truck? “Ab-boh!” Part of me wishes he would move past the whole apple thing and say some other words, but it’s cute and once in a while he’s actually referring to an apple, so he does get it right sometimes!

Our daycare just sent a bunch of pictures home with us yesterday, and most of them are pretty bad, as usual. (Deer-in-the-headlights, blank-faced gaping-mouthed baby, slightly out of focus). But this one, ohhhh this one! I just about died! The face he’s making! That shirt! His oh-so-casual position in the swing! Too perfect!

And for a little comparison, here’s Jeremy sitting in that same swing LAST summer – good grief, look how he has grown!

Oh, and here’s an unrelated picture of Jeremy eating sand at daycare. This is how we end up with gritty poops in the diaper. Lovely.

Happy 4th of July! We had steaks on the grill w/ Kate & Lars here in Forest Lake, and then walked down to the lake with the babies to watch fireworks! Their little girl was asleep the entire time, but Jeremy stayed up and loved it! He clapped for the fireworks, oooh’ed and aaah’ed and said “boom” and “eetee” which I hope means “pretty”! It was a real fun time, and the weather was perfect.

Also, we had a great day at the Eurowerks car show last weekend – Jon won THREE awards (two for his tricycle and one for the car)! I will let him post more about that when he gets a chance, since he’s got all the details. There were several good DJs at the car show playing lots of great music the whole day, and Jeremy had a lot of fun dancing, so I grabbed some video of him getting down. Enjoy!

I guess I should probably post some of these pictures that my Dad took while Jeremy and I were visiting North Dakota during the Memorial Day weekend. This was during Jon’s business trip to Hawaii.

Before we left Fargo to go to the farm, Jeremy got to meet his second-cousin Molly for the 2nd time. When they last met, it was Thanksgiving; she was 7 days old and he was 7 months old. This time was much different. Jeremy was 13 months old, and Molly was 6 months old. Molly squeaked a lot and wanted to touch Jeremy’s face, but Jeremy was more interested in trying to get away from us to play with Molly’s toys!

I just liked this picture of Jeremy in the glass door at my aunt & uncle’s house.

Here we are at the farm. My aunt Connie and I are showing Jeremy the barnyard. (This was before we went inside the fence.)

Connie and Jeremy in the barnyard, inside the fence. We did not realize there was a bull in there yet! WHOOPS!

Jeremy really bonded with my uncle Eric

Aunt Lydia loved cuddling Jeremy! (This is my GRANDPA’S aunt, Jeremy’s great-great-great aunt. She looks great! I hope I age as well as her. I think a lot of it has to do with her wonderful attitude towards life.)

At one point I was lying on the floor and Jeremy decided to crawl on my back and start bouncing on me like I was a horse, and generally just hammed it up. I was laughing SO HARD, and so was everyone else in the room!

This was cute – Connie was giving a biscuit to her dog Tucker (the black and white one on the far left) and my mom’s poodle Belle and my mutt Bonzo came over to see what was being handed out. Then Jeremy followed suit! If there are treats being distributed, he doesn’t want to be left out! LMAO

(Belle pretty much spends about a third of her time on her hind legs like that. My mom calls her Circus Dog.)

My mom loves her grandbaby!

We showed Jeremy the cows out in the pastures

We were closer to some of them but there don’t seem to be any pictures of that.

He loved the tractor, especially honking the horn, and seeing the front-end loader go up!

My mom dug out an old farm toy-set that my brothers and I used to play with when we were little. It’s at our house now. His favorite part is the tractor, of course.

My mom and dad have this little old car that Jeremy loved driving and pushing around the yard when we got back to Fargo. He just had a little trouble figuring how to get out of it at first! LOL

He stayed in that position for several minutes, totally content. It was very funny.

“Bye Bye!”

(These were just a few of the pix from that weekend. All my dad’s posted Memorial Day pictures are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/philbonpete/sets/72157619383336439/ if you wanna see them all.)

Jeremy had tubes put in his ears this morning. We had to get up at 4:45 so that we could be on the other side of the Twin Cities by 6:00am for his surgery. The procedure went well, and the ENT surgeon told me that Jeremy’s middle ears had both been jam-packed full of thick mucous, which he suctioned out before putting the tubes in. He said that Jeremy will be feeling an immediate relief of pressure and pain, and his hearing is going to be much clearer now. He’s probably also going to be ear-infection free finally, which will be nice. He’s had chronic, almost constant ear infections for the last 9 months or so. He hasn’t been cranky or fussy about them, but I’m sure it’s not pleasant, and it does interrupt his sleep, which keeps us awake too.

After Jeremy woke up from the surgery, he fussed a little bit as the grogginess from the gas wore off, then he nursed for about two minutes and was then back to his normal bubbly self, charming all the nurses and other parents waiting for their kids! I was happy that he bounced back so easily. He’s such an easy-going guy!

By the time we had driven back home, the early morning hours had caught up with Jeremy and he had fallen fast asleep with his stuffed puppy in his lap.

He woke up when we went inside, but his mid-morning nap was a long one, so he must have still been exhausted! He was in great spirits all day though, and I was able to run a few errands with him and then we got to go to the park down by the lake! Jeremy enjoyed swinging on the swingset and calling out to all the other park-goers we saw.

Tomorrow morning, Jeremy and I hit the road to go to Fargo and see my parents. Then on Saturday, we are driving with them out to my grandparents’ ranch! It’s going to be a fun weekend, and I think Jeremy will have a great time. Jon is not going with us, because he’s on a business trip in HAWAII, that lucky dude! He’s doing some network setup or something for a company out there. I don’t know the details, but I’ll see if I can have him write something about it when he gets back, hopefully with pictures! He got a new underwater camera recently and is really excited to try it out on this trip.

Jeremy turns 13 months old today. And out of nowhere, he just started walking this morning. He has never been a fan of standing on his own, so this was a total surprise for us!

We had just gotten up for the morning, and I was getting Jeremy dressed. I was kneeling on the living room floor and had him on my lap so I could finish fastening his overalls. Then I stood up and let him slide off my knees, but instead of slipping down to sit on the floor, he stayed on his feet and walked over to where Jon was sitting! We had him walk back towards me, and then got out the video camera.

Remember, we had JUST gotten up, so please pardon my bed-head, pajamas, and generally unkempt appearance!

Then we called Jon’s mom on the webcam, and put the computer right behind the video camera. Jeremy was REALLY excited about walking towards the video of Grandma! (You will notice him gettin’ nursey in the first 30 seconds of the clip. A little goofy I guess, but hey, it’s part of life with Jeremy so we left it in. It’s actually kind of cute in that “Cave Baby” way!)

Before the party started, he played with the Cookie Jar toy with Dad, and put some shapes through the holes. YAY!

Then he got to open the toy farm set we gave him – he was very interested in it!

A cool toy caterpillar from Grandma Huber:

He tore the paper off this present Very. Very. Slowly. In several small bits. It almost got boring, LOL

It was a ribbiting frog puppet from Grandma and Grandpa Peterson! (Trust me, even though he looks somber in that picture, he loves this thing – it really gets him laughing!)

I just like this picture. I think it looks like I’m gazing off to dream of the future, and meanwhile Jeremy is sneaking off to eat toilet paper or something mischievous like that, LOL

Here I am demonstrating the crown I made for Jeremy. He is amused.

CAVE BABY WANT MILK NOW. Nuff said.

After Jeremy took a nap, we had Sloppy Joes for lunch, but he was more excited about his Italian mixed vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, zucchini, beans) Yummy!

“Wut’s dat?”

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

Grandma Huber gave Jeremy a tiny taste of chocolate cake. He didn’t like it.

“What the heck was that garbage? I wanted more cauliflower!”

Although he did decide to taste it a bit more, but not much. This is about as messy as he got. He’s much more into vegetables, thank goodness!

And the rest of the pictures are available here

Jeremy turned 11 months old last week (on St. Patrick’s Day!) We took a few minutes of video that day – nothing special, just the three of us hanging out at home. But I thought it’d be nice to post this for friends and relatives who don’t get to see us very often. Can you believe how big Jeremy is getting?! We are so proud.