September Days

Jeremiah has been in school already for a month! Holy cow! He is really having a great 1st grade year so far. 

See how much he's grown?? :)

He seems to be making friends and tells me the different kids he plays with at recess. He has 11 kids in his class! He spends the morning in the 1st grade class and then 1st and 2nd are combined in the afternoon (which totals about 20ish kids I think). So he's making friends with kids in both classes, which is great!

A project for school :)

 We've also been enjoying getting accustomed to our new house, now that we've stayed put for a whole month!

We have a room added on the back of our house, which we use as the mudroom and playroom. Perfect place to cook in your heels!

Having our own fenced yard and driveway has been so awesome (I think we totally took that for granted at our house in Ankeny!)! J spends almost every afternoon after school playing in the backyard.

J loves having his own room without Hope's crib and baby stuff in there! Finally a place to call his own. My friend Natasha gifted us a Lego table they did not need, and J spends lots of time in there playing Legos without little sis bugging him. :)

We've been getting used to Adam's new work schedule, too, which is a LOT different than when we were in MI! There are definitely pros and cons to being in the restaurant business. One of the pros- he's home a lot in the mornings to get J off to school and also spend some quality time with Hope, too. :)

Last week there was an Open House and Back to School Night at J's school. He was so excited to show us everything!

Hope, of course, was all over the place and made herself right at home!

It has been quite the week for J- he lost his second tooth at school!

Apparently he almost fainted- yikes! Not sure if the blood threw him off, or what. Because the first tooth he lost barely bled at all and he pulled it out himself! I thought this one would be no problem, too. Guess I was wrong! Hopefully he gets used to it, because he has quite a few more teeth left to lose.

We have gotten started with some activities here, so we are definitely keeping busy! J has started going to Wednesday night church at the church we've been attending, and he really enjoys that. He also started up with flag football! So far he's only had practices, and  his first game is in a week. He's on a team with 1st and 2nd graders, so it's interesting to see the maturity differences in the boys. J is definitely less "serious" about it all- he does a lot of running around and yelling "woo-hoo!!" :) He's having fun and even has made some catches, so it's going well!

Such fun entertaining the little girl during J's hour-long practices!

H and I started Mommy and Me swimming lessons at the Y last week!

Future Katie Ledecky!

Hope did okay, but definitely would prefer to run the class herself. After 5 min she was saying "all done!" but then we moved on to something else, so then she was okay with it. So nice that she's easily distracted! :) She hates floating and kicking and "swimming," but splashing and jumping in are great fun and so is the last 5 min of class when the toys come out. :) We'll see how round 2 goes on Monday.

Today we had a bit of fun while Daddy worked. So often when we go back and forth to Fulton over the river, J says, "I wish someday I could walk across this bridge." So that's what we did! Figured it'd be best to do it while the weather is nice (and there is a sidewalk for walkers/bikers, so it was relatively safe). J walked for part and scootered at the end, and Hope was safely strapped in the stroller. :)

Then we picked up food for lunch and went and ate at the Lock and Dam in Fulton. No barges went through, unfortunately, but we did see some kayakers go through.

Hope is approximately a week and a month away from 2 YEARS OLD!!! Waaaah! I just can't believe it. 

But anyway, I've been terrible at capturing her cuteness and personality on video. So here are a few- maybe only the grandparents will care! But I'll enjoy having them here on the blog, too.

Video 1 -- from like a month and a half ago! :( She was just playing so nicely in her room.

Video 2 -- from today. You'll here a bit of "Jesus Loves Me" and a short medley from "Frozen."

Video 3 -- another singing one from today. 

I'd like to get better at posting videos of her, but she's so difficult! Now that she knows about selfies, she only ever wants to do pics and videos that way (where she can see herself.... which is what she's trying to tell me at the beginning of the third video). Kids these days!!

Oh, and football season is here. Go Hawkeyes!