jacob jay: 11 months

another month has flown by! yikes. just crazy. here's what's going on in j's life:

+ we moved into our home! YAY! it's the fourth place he has lived in his short little life. we are thankful to finally have some stability for the little man. 

+we love the grocery store! j loves riding around in the cart and flirting with any girl/lady that talks to him (which is pretty much anyone we walk by). some of the people at wegmans are even starting to remember him, which is fun.

+j loves taking any item and putting them into his little bucket...and then dumping the bucket. we repeat this over and over all day long.

+little man CRUISES. wow he is moving fast these days. i can't remember if he started for real crawling this month or last....but he is fast. and he walks along the furniture faster and faster each day.

+j LOVES his daddy. it is so fun to see his face light up and hear his squeals when he walks in the door. 

+j is desperate for beans to be his best friend. he loves giving beans his toys and giving beans treats. it's way too cute. beans, however, is not so desperate to be bffs. in time, beans, in time.

+we had our first trip to the zoo!

(little man NEEDS a hair cut. i just don't wannaaaaaa....)

+the playground is a HUGE hit.

we love this little man so much and we are so thankful for him and the joy he brings to us and to others. 

the weekend in a few pictures.

+ ryan stepped on a nail. at 10 pm on friday night. he fought getting a tetanus shot, but he figured that since it includes the pertussis vaccine, he'd get it to protect j. whatever works, right? we waited until saturday to get the shot since it took that long to convince him...and j was already asleep when he stepped on the nail. j thought he'd help and take a look and make sure everything was okay:

+ the lilacs are in full bloom! they make the living room smell DEEEELISH. what am i going to do when there's no more fresh flowers in our yard and everything is just trees?! (side note - i've never realized HOW beautiful rochester is in the spring...hello, flower city, you certainly live up to your name!)

+ saturday might have been the hardest day to date for ry. there were two piles of brush that we thought would take a couple trips to the town dump days....well....it took seven trips and about four hours of lots of hard work from him and my dad. yikes...my father has gotten himself into a lot of work these days - wonder if he wishes we didn't move five minutes down the road! :)

+sunday was mother's day. it was low key. jacob treated me to some rare snuggles. that was a treat in itself (for some reason these pictures got a little distorted...)

coming soon on the blog: window replacement and shelves in the pantry! YAY!

this weekend's project...

this weekend ryan had to tackle replacing the garage door opener. we had to replace the one that was already installed for multiple reasons. for one...it looked like this:

ancient.

for two, check out the box to open the door. it requires both buttons to be pressed to open it:

and for three, there were no sensor eyes with the old opener, so if there was something in the way of it going down, it wouldn't reverse. dangerous with child and dog. so off to sears ry went to pick out an opener. it was my father's housewarming present to us. little did my father know what he was getting himself into. you see, installing a garage door opener takes more than one person, so my father ended up coming and working with ry to get everything up and installed. it was a process to say the least.

don't worry, beanies helped. and by helped, i mean he decided to walk right into the old opener once it was down and get grease ALL OVER himself. nice.

anyways, after three to four hours over two days, they were able to get it up and working. YAY! we now have a safe and secure opener.

 oh and it was an absolute gorgeous weekend here. we were able to set up j's easter present from his gramma and tuffy - a water table. so much fun! our little man is growing up so darn fast. and yes, his shorts look like capris because we only have 12 month summer stuff and our little peanut of a child is in nine month stuff still. he's still as precious as can be :)

we're in (and a room before and after!)

last weekend was the final push so that we could finally get moved into this house. my stepdad and my mom came from baltimore for the weekend to help with j and help with the house. mike worked alongside ry to get all the final paint on the walls, outlets switched out, trim work painted, etc. there were many hours put in over the weekend so that we could finally move in -- about a week and a half later than we had hoped, but in none the less. YAY! there's so much left to do, but we did set up the living room so that there is one comfortable room to be in whenever we need a break from all the crazy, not to mention j needed somewhere to crawl around and be j. 

BEFORE:

AND AFTER:

took those pictures with my phone. it's hard to really tell the color on the wall. it looks more blue in this picture, but it's more on the gray side of things. it's so warm and cozy. we bought a new rug that i love. eventually there will be white built in bookshelves surrounding the tv. where there the tv is there might be a fireplace with the tv mounted up above it, but that piece is a few years down the road.  we will be replacing the two windows in a week or so. we need some new lighting, too. the list is so long, but even so, it's just a cozy space that we hope to fill up with lots of friends, family, laughter and memories.

we are so thankful to ALL of our parents and my brother who put in many hours to get us in here.