The kitchen

A few weeks ago I got a bee in my bonnet to get Jonathan a kitchen. Since he loves to help me so much I thought just maybe it would be something that he would actually play with. After searching around online I discovered the one that I really liked the best was from pottery barn. Super cute but not really in the budget. So I thought how hard can it be to make one. After googling how to make a kitchen I found one that seemed super easy using closet storage shelves. I talked Thomas into going to Home Depot to get the shelves and get started (since I would be able to do most of the work). WELLLLLL Home Depot and Wal Mart did not have the shelves so Thomas ever so willingly bought some sheets of wood to do it all himself. Through the process of making our own kitchen we realized how expensive it CAN be to do it all yourself. While the DIY website made their kitchen for about 40 dollars ours was a bit more. BUT I LOVE IT. :0)
Making the base


Nearly finished... the kitchen is painted red like mine... the black oven is appliance paint from when we thought it would be a good idea to paint our white fridge black... the fridge is white like our baseboard paint... the counter top is leftover tile board from our shower at 12th st... the knobs and burners are painted wood from Michaels.... towel bar and sink faucet are new cheapies from Home Depot... curtain from my kitchen windows and 12 th st, the puppet theater curtains in kindergarten...

All done... I painted the little window with an apple pie in it, the rug is a place mat from Wal Mart.

Play food from Costco... have some Juice momma. :0)

Enjoy your kitchen JT it was a labor of love! And you better PLAY with it (although Thomas and I said the whole time he probably wouldn't!)

18 months!

Jonathan Bean is now 18 months. That is a year and a half. WOW. He are the things he is up to lately.



Sleeping - He sleeps between 12-13 hours each night. He usually goes to bed somewhere around 7ish and wakes up around 7ish. He only takes one nap and it is usually 1hr and a half.... sometimes a little more or less... He almost always sleeps longer when it it cool and cloudy outside.



Eating - As always he loves to eat but I do notice he has some days where he is more hungry than others. He doesn't really like meat too much. He LOVES fruit. He pretty much eats anything that we eat which is REALLY nice! :0) He likes to help me cook and sample along with me as we go. One of his favs is drinking a little bit of buttermilk after I make pancakes (ew!).

At his Dr.s Appointment he had finally gained some weight and was up to 24 pounds. He moved up to the 25th percentile out of the 5th.

Words - He is mimicing more and more words lately and the list is growing all the time.

• Momma/ Dadde/ Ma (sometimes with a little grunt) for grandma/ Pa (for Grandpa)/ M (for thier dog Emma)/ Jay (sounds a little like day) everyonce in a while we get a lys (for Alyssa) and a BIG fat smile for Kaitlyn (but he won't say it) He says dg (dog for Duncan and Roxy or he just says no no and shakes a finger at them)



• Milk/ Juice/ cracker/ cookie/ canne (candy - I have him thinking fruit snacks are candy but he does love him some candy!)/ bi (bite) mo (more) and the funny thing is when I ask him to say please he does the baby sign for more. He also puts his hands together and up to his eyes to "pray" when he wants to eat. When we were at the zoo he sat down at one of the kid's tables and started to pray... soooo cute!



• No and no no. He also shakes his head no. ALOT. Sometimes I get a yea out of him but he usually does this little grunt instead (like a little caveman)



• Ni Ni (for night night)/ Bath/ Boat (he says it everytime he sees one)/ grass/ boop (poop)/trash (he LOVES to pick up and throw away trash) /Blue /bi (bike)



• Lots of animal sounds (my favs are the snake ssss or bunny - he scrunches his nose and sniffs)



• Out/ on/ off /outside (mosty all /o/)

He loves to play outside and one of is new things is playdough. He loves to do crafts (like painting or coloring). He love to help me bake and cook things.

He is a climber he is constantly climbling on somthing. He is still not that in to toys and likes to play with real things like the vaccum, i pod, remote, Thomas' blackberry....

He is a joy and a little love!

Blue Playdough

The other day at the library's children's program Jonathan was "accidentally" introduced to playdough. My mom and I usually stay away from the playdough table whenever we take him because we know that it would probably get eaten and become a huge mess. Well I was there with him and we were sitting at the table during the story time and when the story was over the playdough came out and there we were. He of course put it straight to his mouth and would not listen to his momma telling him not to eat it but he would listen to Miss Nancy telling him to leave it on the table (I can't believe that he already listens to a "teacher" better than me! sigh. ) and he had a blast so yesterday we made some playdough. It was way easier to make one batch than the 6 batches I used to make for the kindergarteners!
He helped mix all the ingredients.

I let him pick the color and he picked blue.

Then I cooked it on the stove. You may be able to see him in the background trying to feed his pumpkin (that he carries all over the place and ocasionally chews on) to Duncan.

All set to play outside. I didn't want to clean up to playdough inside. Not one piece went in his mouth! He actually played for about 5 minutes! so fun.

Cookies!

It has been feeling more and more like fall around here. I decided to tie on my apron and put Jonathan in one of his own ( a dish towel) and bake some cookies. He had a great time dumping in all of the ingredients. And eating some of the flour that we spilled. Once we got the cookies one the cookie sheet he couldn't resist. I guess he knew the final product wasn't going to turn out. Our poor cookies totally fell apart. I tried putting some carmel bits in them that I had in my pantry but they melted to the pan and would not come off easily. So basically we ended up making cookie crumbs but we still had fun!

Reading in the Train

The other morning I got a couple of pictures of Jonathan reading books in his train. I finally cleaned out the guest bedroom the day before and found his train stashed in there. He was happy to play with it again (sometimes I think I need to rotate his toys a little more). He also LOVES books. Good thing I love children's books too. :0) It was so fun to hear him reading in there.

A box from Grandma!

A couple of weeks ago a package came in the mail for Jonathan from Grandma Utah... Jonathan had been a little crabby so I made a big deal out of it and we came in the house and opened it right up. Inside was a little tube of Butt Paste. He was pretty ticked at me when I wouldn't let him play with it and make a mess all over his room. He cried. It was sad. Grandma wanted to make it up to him so she put together the most fun box for him. He pretty much carried the box all the way from the mail box.


He loved discovering all of the cool stuff that was inside.
His FAVORITE part was his very own box of alphabits cereal. You would think that he died and went to heaven!

Thanks Grandma for the cool box of treats! :0)

Updates

It's been a while... but I have started back to work so things got pretty busy around here. For those of you who don't know I got a shared teaching contract this year. I am only working part time and I LOVE it so far. I really love teaching and staying home with Jonathan so this lets me do both!

My first day of work poor bubby had his first real fever. He was definitely not himself. He got his back top molars and he had a cold as well. I felt so bad for him but he was back to his cheerful self within a couple of days.

We decided to beat the heat and go up to lake Arrowhead. We had a great time walking around and playing at the little park there.
Jonathan was trying to feed the ducks from his hand... none of them decided to fly up the six feet and take a stale cheerio from him.

Jonathan got to have his first happy meal. He ate half a chicken nugget, one fry (that he repeatedly dipped in ketchup) and a little bit of my cheeseburger. I don't really think he is a fan and I don't blame him! His favorite part was getting to have his own milk with a straw.

Last week there was a big fire in the mountains by our house. Here's a picture from over our neighbor's houses.

Jonathan loves to help clean. The other day I was using some clorox wipes to clean the kitchen and he desperately wanted one. I found a container of baby wipes that was mostly dried out (grr I hate when that happens) so I gave him one of those and he went to town.
the floor.

the barn.

the dog.

glad to know everything around here is clean and baby fresh! :0)