9 months of wonder

Piper is now 9 months old and continues to light up our lives! We recently had her 9 month check up and even though she is definitely showing a stubborn streak she is in perfect health and growing more every day.

Her current stats are: Weight: 17.7 pounds (27th percentile)

Height: 25.5 inches (3rd percentile) yes, she is a shorty like her parents:)

These numbers make her look really small but her height to weight ratio puts her in the 89th percentile.

She has her 2 bottom teeth and the tops ones are working on coming in. She loves rolling all over the house and even manages to crawl around the room and over things. She is letting us know that her favorite color is blue and enjoys putting everything possible in her mouth.

When given a choice between something that is blue and any other color she always chooses the blue one. We were Christmas shopping the other day and I found a cute baby doll, one pink the other blue. I held both of the in front of her to choose and she went for the blue one. Then when shopping with Wes she did the same thing, we held a coat in front of her one blue and one pink again she wanted the blue one.

She also thoroughly enjoyed ripping off wrapping paper. She was able to open the majority of her gifts ripping off one piece at a time.

Happy Holidays from the Jones'

Okay so I tried to get a family update done before the holidays. Now here it is the 3rd of January, I go back to work in 2 days and I am trying again to get it done. We hope you all had a fabulous and memorable Holiday, I know we did.

This year has been one of firsts for this Jones Family.

January: we started teaching a new group of 12 year old kids in Sunday School. Our first time out side of the mission to teach the Gospel Fundamentals. I started working at the Technical college two nights a week. Interpreting for a deaf student taking Speech and Government.

February: we took our first birthing class and got a tour of Mountain View Hospital.

March: we welcomed our beautiful little girl to our family. This is when all the real fun began. I took the rest of the school year off for maternity leave, all though I only took 2 weeks from the college. In doing this Wes was left home alone with a two week old baby for 3 hours at a time.

Piper Ashtyn Jones born March 24, 2008 at 2:29 pm. Weigh 6.2 pounds Height 19 inches

April: I asked Wes if he had gottne a bonus or pay raise after one particular pay period. Wes called from work the next day to tell me he had been promoted to Member Service Representative Manager. Piper was blessed on April 13, and enjoyed her first bath in the bath tub that same morning.

May: We took our first family photos. Piper started teething.

June: I went to work interpreting 2 afternoons a week at the local technical college taking Piper to a friends house for the 3 hour class.

July: Piper slept through the night for the first time.

(That was a fluke that only lasted a few nights.)

August: Piper finally took a bottle after 4 grulling weeks of trying everything we could think of. Then 2 daqys later she took a pacifier. We took Piper camping for the first time at a family reunion where she slept through the night! I went back to work full time at the school district and to school as a part time pre-grad student. Piper officailly started day care.

September: Piper started sitting up on her own.

October:We celebrated our first of many Halloweens as a family of three.

November:Piper cut her first tooth and the second followed a week later. She also started crawling on the 24th. We hired someone to come in and tape/texture the bathroom and one bedroom in the basement.

December: The third bathroom is finished and fully functioning. We are celebrating our First Christmas with Piper.

our long lasting project

We have been working for the last month trying to get the bathroom and one bedroom finished. We worked over summer and fall and also last Christmas day hanging the drywall. After the last bedroom we decided to save up and hire someone else to come in to tape, mud, and texture the walls. The week after Thanksgiving we found a guy to come in and do the work for us. His work looks great and it only took 4 days to do it!

Then we had the plumber and the electricain come in to install the fixtures and put electricity into the bathroom. We had a finctioning bathroom with one small problem...

We did not have a door. That was just installed last night by Wes and I after Piper went to bed.

It took a bit longer to get the bedroom finished on account of size of the room getting it primed and painted. Although we did learn a trick to shorten the process a bit. We were told that if you primer the ceiling there is no need to paint it if you plan on leaving it white.

We had carpet put in last week and now are enoying some extra space for a guest bedroom and Pipers play room.

Now the goal is to get the family room and other bedroom done by next Christmas. We plan to put in a fireplace and install speaker wire for the suround sound system. Then on to hanging drywall and starting the whole process again.

Apples to Apples

Wes' mother and Mike have three very large trees in their back yard. When the apples ripened we got a phone call asking if we would like to pick them. We ofcourse knowing how much Piper loves anything apple we jumped on the chance for free home grown apples. We went over one day and picked 3 big baskets/totes full. Then my mother and younger siblings came up a week later to help finish cleaning off the trees. We estimated picking in total about 16 bushels of apples.

We do not have any pictures of the picking process but we did get some of our little doodle bug helping with the sorting. She of course wanted to eat every apples she picked up.

When I was pregnant I found the coolest thing to prevent babies from choking on their food. It is a mesh holder that attaches to a handle. It is designed to put any kind of solid food in it but I have heard not to put bananas in it due to the fact of how hard it is to get the mesh clean. So when ever Piper sees this contraption she gets very excited and chews of her apples until there is nearly nothing left of it. Then when I try to get it from her to put in another slice she screams until I hand it back.

Thank you so much to Mike and Ellen for the wonderful apples. We also made pie filling, apple sauce, and apple juice with many of them.

Preparing for the the Army???

Piper has grown so much in the last few months, and we are learning that she has her own style of doing things. One such example of this is how Piper has learned to crawl. She gets around pretty well, for such a little one. She hasn't mastered getting up on her knees, so when she crawls, she gets up on her hands, and pushes with her feet. So she crawls/slides around on her stomach. If she keeps this up, we will have recruiters calling her before she starts school. We shot a video of her getting around the family room today. Enjoy!!

Food

Piper has decided that she loves food. Her first experience with it was at the Waters reunion in Aug. She loved the sauce from baked beans and the whipping cream from a very delicious strawberry shortcake. Since that time she has enjoyed a few different flavors and seems to like most of them. The squash was the main food she refuses to eat, that was not really pushed since I do not like squash either. She loves apple sauce, eats it almost daily. She also enjoys knawing on a slice of apple. We found a cool little gadget that is made of mesh and had a child proof handle, I put in the peeled apple slice tighten the child proof cap and away she goes. She also likes carrots, is getting used to rice cereal, tried green beans, potatoes, and any other soft sauce from my dinner plate. She has devoured pudding and insisted that Daddy share his airhead with her. We thought you might enjoy some of the photos of her.

Piper has also got her first tooth. She has been teething since she was three months old with that darn tooth coming up and going back down. She has been sick off and on all month of Oct and in the midst of the virus, rash, fever, and cough that tooth finally made its semi permanent appearance. I say semi because as we all know she will lose it in a few years.

Privacy

So, we have been noticing that family and friends are going private. With this it has caused me to think about my own blog. For security purposes we will be going private as well. Thanks by the way to giving me the idea. If you desire to continue peeking in on our lives please leave a comment with your email address so that I can give you permission to join our family. We appreciate your comments and also enjoy looking into your family lives so please let us continue with our wonderful blogging relationship. We will most likely be going private by Thankgiving to feel free to let us know before this date for a smooth transition.