jacob jay: six months

it has been a half of a year since we welcomed our jbaby into this world - and what a crazy six months it has been.

highlights this month include:

+ mastering the art of sucking on his toe. verrrrrry talented i tell you.

+ sitting on his own

+ giggles galore

+ first solid food - homemade rice cereal - the goal is to make all of j's baby food. so much fun! next up is banana or sweet potato.

+ first christmas

((peering into the new toy box daddy made him for christmas!))

we are enjoying j more and more every day. he is becoming such an explorer. he loves being on the floor and using his arms to swivel around so that he can get to different things around him. my guess is that he will be crawling any day now. he is constantly covered in drool, but still has yet to cut any teeth. he looks like such a little boy to me with every passing day. i want to slow down time, but it is so fun to watch him change and learn new things. he is fascinated by his daddy. when ryan walks in the room, j lights up and flails his arms. watching the two of them play together makes my heart happy. this baby boy has brought so much joy into our lives and we are so thankful for the blessing that he is.

christmas with the dumi.

i am loving the christmas season this year. loving it. on thanksgiving morning my wonderful husband asked me if we actually had to wait until the next day to start the christmas music. obviously the answer to that question was a resounding NO! so on the music went and two days later we were off to get our christmas tree and other materials for the crafts i had in mind to decorate. last year we were not in our own space, so this year i was rather excited to cozy up our home with fun things (side note - why can't we have lit up trees all winter - does it not make a home more cozy?!).

first, i have to include this picture because it makes my heart smile - my matching guys on tree cutting down day :

and here's christmas at the dumi house through my iphone. a lot of which was inspired by pinterest.

here is our christmas corner:

+ stockings hung on our trunk. we were really excited to pick out j's stocking and found one at pottery barn kids that we loved! worth the investment since it will be used for many years.

+we picked out our tree two days after thanksgiving - yikes she's not hanging on too well, but hopefully she'll have some needles still on christmas. we call her evelyn. i'm not sure why. we almost lost evelyn on the way home from the tree farm - she fell off the roof. hysterical now...not so much when it happened in 20 degrees and whipping wind.

+above our "mantle" is the advent calendar i made. i love christmas because of what christmas is about, so i really wanted our advent calendar to go through the story of the birth of jesus. i found a 24 day break out of luke's account on pinterest and i mounted it on scrapbook paper and strung it up with twine and clothespins. i love how it turned out and we are enjoying reading a card a day! 

here are closer pictures:

here's an instragram look at the little and simple decorations we put elsewhere: 

+ i LOVE mason jars, and my creative husband thought it'd be fun to make the coffee table a bit more festive by adding some candy canes in a mason. thumbs up, ry.

+ we also made a "wreath" for our front door out of a picture frame and hanging ornaments (this idea was exclusively from pinterest).

we are doing some other things to usher in the christmas season as a family, as well. we downloaded a christmas devotional by john piper and we go through that every night as a family. we know j doesn't pay attention, but we want to start now with doing things like that. ry and i have found a church that we like and the pastor is going through a mini series for the four weeks before christmas. it's been really good so far. i love church at christmastime. i love learning about all that the Lord did with and through the birth of Christ. it's just awesome.

but when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. - galatians 4:4-5

and last but not least, who can resist a picture of j in his christmas jammies: