Ezra John: 11 months

I can't believe next month will be a birthday post! How did that go so fast?! Ezra is growing so much every day, and it's so fun watching him learn and explore his world, and watch his personality emerge. He is such a fun, happy little guy.

This months big accomplishment was finally learning to crawl! He has been semi mobile for a while, but just couldn't quite get the moving forward on hands and knees bit. This new discovery has him cruising around from room to room and following us around like an adorable little chubby puppy. :)

                                                   

Ezra loves food, his very favorite is super rice, a family recipe which is basically a rice and chicken stew. He also like his breakfast oatmeal and finger foods such as veggie puffs, cheerios, and bits of veggies and fruits.

Who knew water in a bowl could be this much fun? :)

He's about the same size as last month. We've been fighting off a couple different colds and he is just getting over a nasty cough, but is thankfully back to sleeping 10+ hours a night and 3-6 hours a day. He likes to sleep, and I love the breaks. ;)

Such a goof! He can always make me smile. :)

We were able to get up north to visit my parents a couple times last month, and we enjoyed wonderful Thanksgiving dinners from both sides of the family, as well as lots of visiting. Ezra isn't a fan of the loud games we like to play, so Jacob, being the great dad he is, spent a lot of time soothing him so I could visit.

Wagner family, 2013 

Ezra John: 10 months

  Ezra is a busy little guy this month! Not quite crawling properly yet, but he sure gets around! Using a combination  of scooting and cruising on his belly, he gets around and into things pretty quickly!
It is so fun to watch his personality emerge, he is such a fun curious boy! He loves anything he can touch and poke, textures are fascinating. Anything with buttons provides hours of entertainment. We've given him an old phone as a car toy and he will sit and chatter to himself and poke the buttons for a good while.

   Tipping the scales at 25 lbs, 30.5 inches, he's obviously not wasting away. ;) We love his chubbiness and round cheeks! His favorite foods lately are Cheerios, soups and hotdishes, and rice rusks. He still eats his veggie purees as long as I don't mix anything in. He gets a lot of finger foods and he loves pears and other soft fruits.

  Another exciting happening of this month was our first snow! I am not a snow lover by any means, but it was a lot more fun having a child to play in it with! :) We had a great time tromping around and getting all wet and cold!

Ezra's 10 months lands on my birthday. :) So blessed to be his mama!

 

  We have been able to make a couple trips up north to visit my parents this month, and are planning to up again as a family for Thanksgiving. Ezra loves visiting with everyone up there, and it was great to see my sister Sarah and my little niece Eleanor again.

Laughing and laughing!

Visiting with uncles Josiah, Samuel, and Abram and aunt Ellie.

Earrrllyyy morning. yawn.

Play time with Grandpa Paul and cousin Eleanor!

 

Craft Room Organization

My craft area was in desperate need of an overhaul. Like, bad. Yikes.
Each time I went to start or finish a project or even find a pair of scissors it was mass chaos digging through the piles.

 

Target had the bookshelf on sale for $18, and I grabbed some fabric bins and jars at the dollar store.

 

The metal silverware lazy susan I found at JoAnn's on clearance, and it works excellently for holding pens, ribbon, and scissors.

Love these little "candy" jars. I used them to sort my ribbon scraps and buttons.

I moved all my paint up higher and out of the reach of children, added the second bar on the ribbon organizer, and hung these little Target dollar bin cans full of misc items.

 

These things have never had a home and are constantly being tossed around the table. I finally came up with a good storage solution. This way I'll always know where they are. Excellent.

Old Barn Window? Picture Frame. :)

I picked this up at a yard sale for a couple of dollars. I am always on the lookout for these, I love the look and what you can do with them!
This was the second barn window I have redone, I also did one with our wedding pictures for the mantel in the great room.

This project was super simple, and cost less then $20! I ordered four 8 x 10's from WalMart, which were about $10, grabbed a thick poster board for $1.50, and that and some duct and double stick tape were all I needed.

 

Before. The backing was just this poster sized picture that was taped on, so I removed that.

 

Since it had no backing I added this poster board, cut down a bit, and duct taped it on. So professional. ;)

Once that was done I attached the pictures to the inside of the poster board. I also added some claw hangers on the back since I had removed the flimsy wire from the top that it used to hang from. I didn't trust it. :P

 

Here it is in Ezra's new room! :) I <3 it!

Don't Throw Out that Wipes Container!

"Wipes" Pull-Out Activity Toy

Ezra loves to pull tissues or wipes out of the box, he gets so happy and excited its hard for me to take them away before he wastes them all!

I had just emptied a wipes container, and since I always have tons of fabric scraps, I thought why not, let's see if this will work. :)

Ezra John: 9 months

Look at me, doing this on time! ;) Yay me! Ha.

Ezra... Ezra is joy. Laughter, smiles, toothy grins. Cuddles. Kisses. Ezra is a beautiful, precious blessing. He made me a mother. I am a MOM. Amazing.

Ezra has grown another two inches and gained two pounds in the last month, bringing him to 30 inches long, 24 lbs. He has two adorable pearly white toothies. Every day he gets closer to crawling. He scoots slowly across the room on his behind now, and can turn himself in a full circle. He's also getting the hang of getting his foot behind him, so I don't think crawling is far off.

Current favorite toy continues to be the exersaucer, and new favorites include a bead toy for church, blocks, and a rocking car. He loves to rock! He has put himself to sleep a more times in the exersaucer and rocks like crazy in his car.

He flips the little bugs around by their wings for the longest time.

We finally moved Ezra out of our room to the office. He has a new room upstairs as well (post about that to come!), but we will probably keep him downstairs through the winter since the upstairs isn't heated and I want to make sure he's consistent in sleeping through the night.
The office is just around the corner from our room, and it is working SO well. He was waking 3-5 times a night and staying awake at 4 am, which is a lot little too early for this mama! Since he moved he has progressively improved, and in less then a week he has gone to going to bed at 8 and not waking until 6:30-7, with no waking or crying! So exciting for us! We are enjoying having our own space back, and he seems to enjoy the solitude. :)

 He loves his daddy! Whenever he sees him he just lights up, especially when Jacob gets home from work. He gets so excited and grins really big! Jacob is such an awesome dad, he willingly watches Ezra whenever he can and does so well with him. I am so blessed! It's been so fun to watch their relationship grow.

Toothy grin!

Handsome little guy all ready for church!

Telling me about his toys. :)

Ezra John: 7 & 8 Months

So much for keeping up with these! Summer has been crazy, mixed with a sad teething baby and lots of activity, everything seems behind. So, in light of that, I am combining the last two months in hopes of actually getting his nine month update out in a timely fashion. :)

Ezra finally cut his first tooth at 8.5 months! That is our newest and most exciting accomplishment. :) He sits up really well now, and is good at leaning to the side and forward to reach for toys, but has yet to make any efforts to crawl or scoot. I'm okay with that, I'm not really looking forward to having to chase him around our huge house, and am just enjoying this fun stage!

 

                                                              Ezra at 7 months

At 22 lbs, 26 inches long, he's sure getting big. Just in the last two weeks he skipped from 6 mo clothes to growing out of 12 month! He seems to finally be getting some length and is seeming less chubby. He's so much more active, which is burning his chub away!


I have recently joined a MOPS group, as well as the MomTime group at our church, so Ezra has had some experience being left in the nursery. Over all he does pretty well, he has been teething so that doesn't help. Since he's almost always with me, I'm hoping the experience of being left will be good for him. :) I know I enjoy the break! ;)

One of his favorite activities right now is rocking in his exersaucer. He spins around to the cup holder, grabs hold, and rocks rather violently back and forth. We tease he's running in his mind. ;) He has also rocked himself to sleep a couple times in there, so cute to find him like that! He also loves blocks and balls, and chews on everything he gets a hold of!

We were able to visit with my family a couple times this year, and Ezra got to spend some time with his aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousin on my side.

Uncle Samuel has always been so excited to see and hold Ezra!

Eleanor and Ezra, cousins! Gotta love baby photography. ;)

Samuel and Abram (9 and 7), playing with Ezra.

Jacob is so good with babies!

Earlier this month we took our fall camping trip, and we had such a blast! It was Ezra's first time camping, and he got to experience camp fires, sleeping in the tent, biking, hiking, canoeing, and an all night rain storm. Ha.We headed up to Sakatah State Park for the weekend, and got SO many pictures, but I'll spare you most of those. ;)

Campfire time with daddy!

Ready for a day of adventures!

All strapped into the bike trailer! They had really nice bike trails there.

Learning about leaves...

And flowers.

He's so big! :(

Love this little guy!

Enjoying some cuddle time while it poured rain.

He was so amused by batting at the tent!

Ezra John: 6 Months

It's hard to believe that I have been a full time mother for the last six months. It seems like the blink of an eye, yet the longest six months of my life. So much has changed, so many new memories. So much joy and happiness a baby brings! My husband and I often make comments about how we can't imagine life with Ezra. It's crazy how someone so small can be such a huge part of your life!

At six months, Ezra is a happy, healthy, very chubby little guy! He is 21 lbs, 5 oz and 25 inches long. Short and chubby. ;) He still hasn't cut a tooth, but continues to teethe. It doesn't seem to bother him much, and besides a lot of drool and constantly chewing, he doesn't react much to it.

 

We started on solids right around six months, and he has had sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, squash, applesauce, pears, watermelon, grapes, and bananas, as well as many other tastes of food! His favorites so far are sweet potatoes and pears. He also really likes Plum Organics veggie puffs and rice rusks.

Ezra is sitting very well now, and he often sits and plays with toys for long periods of time without tipping over. He also rolls from his tummy to his back and occasionally his back to his tummy. He almost always sleeps on his side now.

He has a pretty consistent schedule for sleeping these days, which is a blessing for all of us! He goes to bed at right about eight every evening, sleeps until four, nurses, and goes back down until between six and seven. He still takes at least one long, 2 + hour nap a day and a couple other short naps.

He still plays a lot with his favorite toys, links, his elephant and teething toys, and really enjoys being in the exersaucer.