Merry Christmas!

Here is a little 2011 update on the Johnson Family. Last March, we found out we were expecting our second baby. About a week later, Matt found out that he got a new job. He now works at Visual Logic Group in downtown Waterloo, designing things like touch screens in tractors. They do a lot of work with John Deere. He also gets to travel more, often making trips to Des Moines. He also got to go to Florida. He still does some web designing as well.

In May, our niece Ella Jean was born, and we've enjoyed getting to watch her grow. In June we found out baby #2 was going to be a boy! We got a fence put up in the backyard this summer, and Avery and my daycare kids spent a lot of time outside. Avery got a sandbox for an early birthday present, and had a lot of fun playing there. She also really loved the kiddie pool this year. 

September brought Avery's second birthday. We had lots of friends and family over for her party. She really got into it this year, and had a blast opening and playing with all her gifts. 

September also brought some sadness with the passing of our dog, Puddy. She was 18 years old, and was Matt's family dog when he was growing up. 

At the end of September, we decided that I would quit doing my in-home daycare. Avery and I enjoyed some one-on-one time for the last few weeks before her brother arrived. We did lots of playing outside, going to the park, and painting.

We took Avery trick-or-treating for the first time this year. We went to the "Western Town" at my parents' church, where she had fun running around with one of her little friends. We also went on Halloween and took her around our block. She figured the whole trick-or-treating business out pretty quickly. :) 

Sawyer Allen Johnson was born on November 7 at 4:36pm. He weighed 8 pounds, 7 ounces, and was 20 inches long. He had quite a bit of hair, too! (Most of which is now gone on the top!) Matt was able to be home with us for 3 weeks after Sawyer was born. Mommy greatly appreciated the help. :) We have loved getting to know our little boy, and adjusting to being a family of four. Avery has been a great big sister. She always wants to help, whether it be getting Sawyer a blanket, his pacifier, or trying to calm him down. She often says "Stop crying, little brother. It'll be okay." :) She has been so sweet with him. 

Avery had her Christmas program at church, and in typical two-year-old fashion, wandered all over the stage and pulled Kleenex out of a box while the other kids sang. We got a good laugh out of it. It's been so much fun watching her grow. We feel very blessed to have two healthy, happy children.

Merry Christmas to you all, and a Happy New Year!

Love,

Matt, Jess, Avery & Sawyer

Avery on her second birthday.

Always in motion. 

A little peek into her personality. :)

She loves her daddy.

Sawyer at just a couple days old, in the hospital.

One of the few moments when he's wide awake!

Our two little cuties wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Wordless Wednesday

A Day at the Farm

We went out to visit Grandpa & Grandma on Saturday. My dad was pretty excited to steal Avery for a bit and take her on a four-wheeler ride. She LOVED it! I think they rode together for almost 45 minutes! She must like having the wind blowing through her hair. :)

She also liked "feeding" the fish with Grandpa. (She only tried to eat the fish food once!)


And splashing in the water.


Checking out Grandpa's flowers.


Silly girl. She looks like she's floating. :)

We have a crawler!

Avery's been working on crawling for a few weeks now, but in the past couple days, she's finally figured it out! It's so weird that my baby's actually mobile now! I've been spoiled over the past 10 months in that she'd be in the same general spot when I'd come back into a room as when I'd left. It's so fun to see her crawl and explore her space. She's never really been able to do that before. She never really rolled around; she'd only just roll over. She never really scooted much. A little here and there, but not really moving much more than a foot or two away. But now she can move. And she thinks she's pretty big stuff. :) She also likes to stop and do this every once in a while:

... and thinks it's hilarious to see Mommy or Daddy upside-down. :) Silly girl.

My Almost-Ten-Month-Old

Can you believe my baby girl is going to be 10 months old on Sunday? We'll be planning a birthday party before we know it! Some of the things she's been doing lately are:

She's recently figured out how to put the rings on.

She laughs when other people laugh.

She claps her hands and gets very excited.

Dances when the Casey's commercials come on tv. :)

She loves to sit there with a link to chew on, just like this!

Starting to eat chopped foods, as opposed to pureed. (But I sure do love my immersion blender!)

She learned how to get from her belly to a sitting position. Yay! No more crabby baby because she's stuck on her tummy. She hates to be on her tummy.

She's thinking seriously hard about crawling. She doesn't start out on her belly like a normal baby might. She goes from sitting to the crawling position. Then she sometimes pushes herself backwards.

She also scoots backwards sitting on her bottom.

Have you noticed this little girl does a lot of things backwards? :)

She also loves standing at her activity table to play. Now if only she could figure out a better way to get down than crying for help or falling... :)

Current "favorite" foods include blueberries (big fave!), peas, rice & broccoli & chicken casserole, yogurt, peaches, nectarines, mangoes, squash, pears, applesauce, bananas, & sweet potatoes.

Major dislike: carrots!

She also loves "flying", and when Daddy kisses her feet. :)

These have been the fastest, most amazing almost ten months! We love our sweet little Avery. :)

Sit-N-Scoot

That would be Avery's newest form of transportation. Sitting on her bottom and scooting. She thinks it's quite hilarious when she does it. But she is also getting even closer to crawling. But not when she's on her belly. She greatly dislikes that. She can just about get to the crawling position from sitting. She just has one foot that gets stuck, and once she figures out what to do with it, she will be off!

Cute as a button...

Spending some QT with Daddy after his week long trip to New York. She was very excited to see him. She missed her Daddy (and Mommy did too.)


If you'll look closely, you'll see what that Daddy did to my hair.

Avery has some Fuzzi Bunz :)

Okay, so I can't get these pictures to flip the right way, but you can still see her cuteness. :)

We've recently decided to make the switch from disposable diapers to cloth. In the above pictures, Avery is modeling her new Fuzzi Bunz cloth diapers. So far, I'm in love. I have become ridiculously excited about cloth diapering. We've been doing it for not quite a week yet (part time), and I just got some more ordered so we should be cloth diapering full time by next week! I'm even so crazy that we're switching to cloth wipes, too. Cloth wipes do SUCH a better job then disposable wipes. It was really surprising to me, but I figured I'd give it a try. And if I'm having to wash the diapers, then what's a few wipes, too?

So why did we switch? Yes, it's good for the environment and whatnot, but we mostly did it because we wanted to save some money on diapers. Yes, we had to drop a chunk of change up front, but we'll save several hundred dollars on disposables before she's potty trained. And that's not even mentioning the money we'll save on disposables for any other blessings God may choose to give us, because we'll be able to reuse these diapers. :)

And this shouldn't really surprise you. Not really. Because you already knew I was kind of crazy. :)