This morning the three of us walked to the main street of Multnomah Village for the annual street fair. I'm embarrassed to say that I've been living in this area for 6 years and have never gone. That had to change, and so we went this year and enjoyed it!
Leaving our house...
Our street was full of parked cars for the fair.
We arrived in time to see some of the parade. Silly man on bicycle.
Old fashioned fire truck.
It was long!
Tractor... pretty cool.
Posing with a dragon. Jake thought it was interesting!
This was Jake's favorite part -- getting to see and pet the horse. He loved it! He kept pointing and signing "horse".
At the fair I got to meet Renee and Heather, the authors of the
Enviromom blog! As I've emailed them and left comments on their blog before, they knew who I was, and have read this blog. Very cool. They had a booth down at the fair and were encouraging education on safer cleaners in the home. I wish I had gotten a picture of them and their booth but oh well.
After the fair we went to
Powell's bookstore and all three of us picked out some new books. We had a gift certificate to use for that, so that was fun. Jake feel asleep on the way home so we parked the car in the garage and worked on it more. Back in the early springtime I set a goal for us to have the garage completely organized by the end of August. We are well on our way to meeting that goal! I am thrilled. Earlier in this week I had this cool shelfing unit installed in the garage. It is 4 by 8 feet and holds up to 600 pounds of your junk! This is what it looks like with only our winter tires on it.
Here it is with lots of stuff on it (I actually added a few more items after I took this picture).
This space is better than it ever has been before. Yahoo! The final steps are to buy a workbench kit and set that up so Mike has a place for his tools and do to work. We also want to buy a pegboard and put that on the wall to hang garden tools such as the rake. We'll get hooks to hang our 10 foot ladder on one wall, and below that put more hooks for coats such as Mike's work coat and coats that are soaking wet from the rain, etc. I also need to get a bench of some sort so I can set the recycling bins on top of it and have space below for Mike's work boots and our hiking boots, etc. After that, the garage should be pretty much set!
What's cool also is that if we end up needing more storage space (and I imagine we will as Jake grows older and we add to our family), we can have more of those ceiling storage systems installed for more space. Give me a holler if you want the name/phone of the company, it is some seriously wicked storage space!
Today I was playing with this scarf and he thought the texture and the sheerness was fun. It was a new take on peekaboo since he could still see me through the fabric.
Where's Jake? He's hiding from Mama. I can't see him. I'm looking for him...
There he is!!
Yesterday Grandma came over. Poor Jake is in teething hell right now with 3 molars coming in, one on the top left, one on the top right, and the third on the bottom right. Ouch. So this cork apparently felt really good on his teeth. Or maybe it was the wine.
Then after having wine from the cork, he has fun dancing with Aunt Amy, who is visiting from NYC.
Today he got to do his favorite activity -- play on a slide set! And of course he was surrounded by cute girls.
What did I do to deserve this?
This was the first time that Jake got to see Ruby since the beginning of the summer picnic! It is so much fun to look at the pictures and see how much they have grown.
Jake says hi Ruby, so glad to see you again, and could I please have some water from your water bottle?
I'll even share!
Ruby says, that's okay, but let's put the water bottle away for now.
Then Jake leans over and KISSES Ruby!!!
Afterwards he is in need of a cold drink...
Ruby smiles at her new boyfriend while Jake pretends he's more interested in the water bottle...
Humm how long can I nurse this water bottle before she thinks it's weird?
Then Jake decides to show off his walking skills...
After that was finished, we had lunch on the deck. Jake explored.
Yay, water! His favorite!
He was pushing a little car along the top of the rail.
The walker is one of his favorite things, both here and at home!
So cute. He zoomed along the deck, with one of us constantly staying with him trying to prevent him from crashing into wherever he was headed, and turning him around. The walker at home actually has a bumper added to it made from foam insulation for pipes. I'll have to get a picture of that.
We all enjoyed the nice day.
Mike and I are really enjoying that his communication skills have just taken off. He knows soooo many signs now and picks them up after you show them to him once or twice. I estimate he can sign at least 30 different signs and understands much more. Some of the signs he knows are cat, dog, food/eat, Daddy, milk, hot, close (as in closing a door), water, frog, bear, shark, sorry (he said that to me for the first time today), music, fan, ball, shoe, smoothie, book, shower, brush teeth, rain, moon, and more. He is also speaking as well, but I honestly don't know how many words he knows. He does like to say "side" when he means "outside". People have caught him saying random words like socks.
He is coming so close to being able to walk. He practically runs now when pushing the toy walker, and insists on going up the stairs himself either by crawling up or having us hold his hands and walking up. He's worked on going down a few times, but isn't too into that right now. I am hoping he'll be walking by September 13th -- I signed him up for a fun toddler gym class that is for "Walkers to 24 months". I'm not sure what would happen if we show up on the first day and he isn't quite walking on his own yet.
Austin says "oof!" (but enjoys it).
Sister Kaitlyn had a good time, too.
Mike was being silly -- his baseball mitt is on his head.
Our street was full of parked cars for the fair.
We arrived in time to see some of the parade. Silly man on bicycle.
Old fashioned fire truck.
It was long!
Tractor... pretty cool.
Posing with a dragon. Jake thought it was interesting!
This was Jake's favorite part -- getting to see and pet the horse. He loved it! He kept pointing and signing "horse".
At the fair I got to meet Renee and Heather, the authors of the Enviromom blog! As I've emailed them and left comments on their blog before, they knew who I was, and have read this blog. Very cool. They had a booth down at the fair and were encouraging education on safer cleaners in the home. I wish I had gotten a picture of them and their booth but oh well.
Here it is with lots of stuff on it (I actually added a few more items after I took this picture).
This space is better than it ever has been before. Yahoo! The final steps are to buy a workbench kit and set that up so Mike has a place for his tools and do to work. We also want to buy a pegboard and put that on the wall to hang garden tools such as the rake. We'll get hooks to hang our 10 foot ladder on one wall, and below that put more hooks for coats such as Mike's work coat and coats that are soaking wet from the rain, etc. I also need to get a bench of some sort so I can set the recycling bins on top of it and have space below for Mike's work boots and our hiking boots, etc. After that, the garage should be pretty much set!
