Jace is 2!

I can't believe I have a 2 year old! I couldn't have asked for a more animated kid who makes me laugh every day. He is talking so much now, and like Matt and I predicted, once he started talking, he hasn't stopped. His communication is getting so great, which has lessened the whining and has made discipline so much more effective. It's been a blessing. Jace weighs around 28 lbs (65%) and is 34 inches tall (31%). He is finally growing into his belly, but still has a tiny waste and small legs. We are up to 24 month/2T shirts (depending on brand) and still in 18 month pants. He LOVES singing and dancing, and if a song comes on, he will dance for anyone who will watch. He currently loves farm animals and sings "Old McDonald Had a Farm" most of the time he plays with his farm animals, which is every day. He got a farm play set for Christmas from his Grammy and Papi and he has grown to love it! I hear him sing his version..."On the farm, e i e i o, moo moo here, moo moo there, on the farm, e i e i o…" all day. He also got a cape for Christmas, which is now the first thing he wants to put on every morning. His first words will be "Tape on" or "Cake On" (his words for cape) when he gets up in the morning. He also got a stuffed animal Mickey (Icky), Mini (Mimi), Donald (Onald), Goofy (Dukey), and Pluto (Upo) from my parents for his birthday. He opened them early, and they have to go everywhere with us. Walks, the store, nap time, etc. I will hear him say "Icky's turn"… "Mimi's turn too"…. and he will be giving them turns doing whatever he is doing. (We've been working on sharing lately… it's a new concept as it never used to be an issue! Glad to see he at least is understanding the concept of turns!") He loves watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and he plays along with whatever they ask him to do! ("Say Toodles!" and Jace yells "Toodles!!!!"). He is at such a fun age right now. He has a huge personality and loves to be center of attention and make people laugh. He is quite the character. :)

For Jace's Birthday, we went to Dutch Bros and he got a free smoothie.

 And we went to Firehouse Subs and got a free sub (which Matt and I ate. Haha).

 He got a new hat from Mom and Dad because he loves wearing hats, and a toddler bedding set which we will be hopefully using in the next couple months.

 We took Jace to the Zoo, which he absolutely loved. I thought Jace would enjoy it, but I didn't know he would enjoy it as much as he did. He had to bring Goofy with him, and he would show Goofy the animals we were looking at.

Jace loved the Giraffes. He asked about them all day while we were there.

 He really enjoyed the petting zoo. He was scared at first, but then he wanted to brush every.single.goat.we.saw. He would go from one to the next to the next without stopping. It was really cute.

We came home from the zoo so Jace could nap. We then picked up free Joe's BBQ and brought it to Liberty Market where we used his discount too and ate dinner. We ordered an ice cream sandwich for a special birthday treat. 

This was such a fun family day for us. It was just the 3 of us all day, which I intentionally wanted it to be. It's not very often that we have a day filled with fun events that only includes me, Matt, and Jace. These were such sweet memories.

We also want to take Jace back to the zoo soon. He keeps talking about the Camels, tigers, and giraffes that he saw. When I ask him if he fed the giraffes, he says, "yah… " and then makes a big chomping noise like he is eating. So before it gets too hot, we will try to go one more time! :) 

Good Night Gorilla

The first Tot School unit of the year was Good Night Gorilla, which we did the week of Jace's Birthday. I pretty much just took all my ideas from Kristin's blog, because they were so fun! Jace absolutely LOVES this book. He has read it every day for the past 2 weeks and I don't see an end in sight. Now that he is talking up a storm, HE reads it to Matt and I. He makes up his own story, but it is the cutest thing to listen to. We did a couple days of tot-school at night with Matt because we were busy during the day. It was fun to watch Matt join in on the fun!

 Jace practiced matching objects with their shadows. 

He also matched the colored key to the same colored cage to unlock the animals.

Reading the book with dad.

Practicing unlocking the lock with a key. He struggled with this the first day, but he would ask for "Jace's Key" during the week and he eventually got it by the end of the week.

We watched the animated version of the book on you-tube. He asked for "Ew Ew Ah Ah" (that's what he would call the Gorilla, even though he can say Gorilla) all week. We watched this many times.

We colored a Coloring sheet of the zoo keeper and monkey. 

Here is our edible zoo. Green jello, cheerios, shredded coconut, mini chocolate chips in smashed Annie's chocolate cookies. All things we had in the pantry minus the jello. :) 

We ended the week at the zoo (his birthday!). He LOVED the zoo. I'll write more about it in another post. 

This was such a fun unit! Next week we will be starting Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

Christmas Eve/Christmas Day

For Christmas Eve, we started the day off with a walk with the Ross's to the Fry's that is less than a mile away because they have a Starbucks inside! We all got coffees and walked home. It was nice to be able to see them that morning! We then went to our church's first ever Christmas Eve service. After that, we went to the Pagel house where  we had our first ever appetizer competition. Each couple brought an appetizer to share and we voted on the best. It was a lot of fun and very yummy. We then decorated cookies and opened gifts. Each person draws someone else's name for gifts, so we have to accurately guess who had us before opening our gift. It's a fun tradition we started last year. We ended the night with Barb and Denny opening a box of blue balloons that revealed baby's gender. Denny was pulling for a boy this whole time so he was stoked! Barb was as well.

Kisses for Koko!

Christmas morning was spent at my parent's house. My parents have always done a paper chase for us since we were kids. So this year Matt and I sent my parents on a paper chase and the last clue let them know that the box they opened would reveal baby's gender. They were so excited and both guessed girl before opening it. Haha. Surprise… 4th grandson is on the way. They are both thrilled. Boys are fun! ;)  We hung out there until early evening. We went home for a couple hours and then to the Ross house where we met some of our friends for appetizers and wine/beer tasting (water for me!). It was a nice day! 

 Riding around his new car from Papa and Gigi.

It's a… BOY!

We surprised our families by finding out the gender of baby Pagel on the 23rd! Our families didn't know (except Jenn, who helped me get the ultrasound for free!) so we thought it would be fun to surprise them. I'm so glad we did.

Matt and I went to the appointment and as soon as the tech placed the wand by baby's legs it was very obvious that we are expecting our second boy!!! I fell in love instantly. She said he looks healthy, which is a praise! He is measuring a couple days ahead, and has an above average sized head already… just like his big brother did. Oh boy… hoping that it isn't as big otherwise my hopes for a VBAC may be getting smaller already…

Baby Boy has a name for now, but we are keeping it a secret this time. Gives us the freedom to change it any point! I've already almost slipped up a couple times and it's been less than a week.

Here are some pics of baby boy (16 weeks+3 days):

Here are some pics we took with some blue balloons!

When I ask Jace where the baby is, he always lifts up my shirt to look at my belly. 

The Snowy Day

We did one Tot school unit in December. I was so excited about this unit, and still didn't get to all of the activities that I wanted to do, but it was still a lot of fun. The Snowy Day was the perfect book for around Christmas (we did this the week before Christmas!). I wish we lived in snow because the things we could have done for this unit could have been so much better. But that's alright. We still had fun!

We made a snowman with shapes as it's body. Jace already knows his letters and numbers, so I am starting to work on shapes with him. He was so excited to learn them. Oval and circle, and square and rectangle look very similar to him, so we have future tot school units to continue to practice shapes. 

In the book, Peter makes tracks with his feet and then with a stick. So we used pretzel sticks and whipped cream snow to make tracks like Peter.

 Jace's favorite part was dipping the pretzels into the whipped cream and eating them.

Since we didn't have snow to make footprints in, we used water and paper and made footprint tracks. :)

We had a snow man lunch!

We played with glittery snow slime! 

We painted a snowman!

We cut out snowflakes (well, I did and he watched!) He calls them "o-fakes".

We talked about how when things are really cold they turn to ice, but that warm things can melt the cold things. So I froze his dump truck in some ice and we used hot water to melt the ice away. (just like how the hot sun melts cold snow).

We practiced counting!

That was our unit. So many other things I wanted to do, but just ran out of time! :)