Jace turns ONE!!!

I can't believe how fast this year has gone, our baby turned one last week! It is such a bittersweet moment, that first birthday, so nice to be mostly beyond the difficult baby stages but sad to miss those newborn moments. Jace has been such a different baby from Sara and certainly does his best to keep us on our toes. He is a very busy little boy and never stops moving from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed at night. He is just now starting to sleep at night, just up once in the early morning to nurse and then back to sleep for a couple hours. He is already starting to throw fits when he doesn't get his way and giving us a glance in to what toddlerhood is going to look like with him! Yet he is so sweet and has an amazing smile that just melts your heart. He has certainly been an amazing addition to our family and a huge blessing. Happy birthday sweet baby boy!

Murphy's Law....

J can be home for months on end and everything goes smoothly. Then he has to be gone for work for a couple weeks and everything falls apart at home! I took Sara ice skating a week and a half ago with a friend just to discover that her little friend was sick and has been exposed to RSV by a cousin the weekend before. I called J that night and predicted what would come around here. Sure enough, exactly 3 days later Sara was up in the middle of the night with a fever and cough. This was the start of our sickie rollercoaster. I ended up taking her to the dr. and then to urgent care a few days later. She had a fever of 103 for 6 straight days and didn't sleep pretty much that entire time because of all the coughing! About 5 days in to her illness, Jace started sneezing. I ended up in the pediatrician's office with him yesterday and left with a diagnosis of RSV and bronchiolitis. He is one sick little baby but such a little trooper. They sent me home with a nebulizer and I'm giving him breathing treatments every 4-6 hrs. The goal is to keep him eating at this point. He sounds awful, wheezy and a nasty cough but so far we are hanging in there. The dr. said things will get worse before they getter better so we are bracing ourselves. Of course, we couldn't get through all this without me getting it also, so we are a house full of sickies. On top of all this our dog Dakotah is sick. She is suffering with some pancreas issues and once we have healthy kids again we will need to do further testing to figure out what is going on with her.......

I got these couple cute pics of Jace before he got sick. There are no new ones of Sara as she wasn't feeling very photogenic!

First Snow

We had our first snow of the year, a little bittersweet for me. I am a summer person, I love the hot weather! I am really trying hard to embrace winter and find some things to do in the winter that we will enjoy. So after it had been snowing awhile we all bundled up and went outside to build a snowman! Sara had a blast and also enjoyed making some snow angels. I think her favorite part of the snow is eating it! We've had to talk about the rules of eating snow though, no yellow snow! I guess this means that winter is officially on its way.....

Christmas in November...

I don't like to get too excited about Christmas too early but this year we had to. J was getting ready to leave for 3 weeks so right after Thanksgiving off we went to get our Christmas tree. I don't think we've ever put one up this early. It was really debateable about whether or not to even put one up with a very busy baby around the house but Sara would have been devastated so we had to get one. We headed off to a local Christmas tree farm, nothing like Christmas tree hunting in Montana though, to pick one out. Uncle Steve was here to go along! We decided on a nice little one just in case Jace decides to pull it over on himself! Sara was so excited and it turned out to be a nice little tree.

Jace in the bath

Isn't he cute??

Ice skating adventures....

There is a local indoor ice skating rink that has a preschool drop off program where they can go skate for an hour and get help from a coach during some of that time. We just started going this week and Sara loves it! She uses a bar that she holds on to help get the feel of the skates and to help learn the basics and then she will slowly be able to wean herself off of using the bar. I expect she will be skating on her own in a couple weeks! Kids at this age learn so fast. As soon as we get snow we plan to get her on skis also. Four is a really fun age because they are able to do so many new things! She is also suddenly really excited about learning at school and is constantly wanting to write and loves math! It is so fun watching her learn!