When Jake was about 7-8 months old I really wanted him to learn baby signs so I worked with him a lot. He didn't get it though, so for a while I just stopped doing signs all the time and just did them every once in a while when I remembered. Then all of the sudden one day he just started doing them! He's gotten really good. He just started doing the sign for "more" and it's one of his favorites. He also does the sign for milk and eat.
He's been doing the sign "done" for a long time. When Jake stayed with Nana and Papa and they would feed him they thought that he was just saying "touchdown!" It was pretty funny when they told us about how during mealtimes he just kept doing "touchdown" and they just would just give him more and more food! They thought he just had football in his blood! We laughed pretty hard on that one.
Besides the "signs" he also waves goodbye (I obviously tried to get him to wave goodbye in the previous video but he wouldn't do it until I turned off the camera). He also shakes his head for yes and no and claps.
Jake is also starting to say words. As you heard in the video, he says "duh" for done (sometimes he says "ah duh" for all done). He also of course does his usual constant babbling, and every once in a while I think that he might have said something (like the other day I said, "Do you want juice?" and he said "due due due" so is that juice?) but then he just babbles so much that I never know. He says "mama" when he's mad (why????) and says "dada" all the time for everything, but especially when he sees Joseph. He also says "hi" which sounds more like "eye". It's an exciting time to watch and listen to him learn all these new words and we can't wait to see what he'll come up with next!
Joseph ate more at dinner than I can even comprehend. He ordered a full pound of prime rib, baked potato, and salad and ate the entire thing. Not to mention the rolls that they give you before you dinner even starts. Then he ate the free ice cream they gave him for being his birthday and then he ate cake and ice cream again when we got home! It's amazing I ever keep this man fed! :) After dinner we all came back to our house for cake and ice cream and games. A good time was had by all. 
Jake found Jessica's shades...cool dude.
After we were done at the park I made a green dinner for everyone. We had pesto chicken pasta with brocolli, jello, and green kool-aid. 
We hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day!! 
This is HIGH up. The building is about 13 stories high, and all this equipment is about 6 stories up. Here is Joseph standing in front of just some of the equipment. Yes, that is a real airplane up there. 
He made it up!
I'm climbing through a giant wire tube...not the same one that Joseph went through. This was about 9 stories high.
This was a giant fish they made out of old junkie wire. You can climb all up and inside it.
Like I said, the museum used to be an old shoe factory, and inside they let you slide down the 9-story high winding shute that they used to send the shoes down. It was extremely steep and dark and scary. Don't worry, I got it on video. This is how high we were (what looks like he bottom in this picture isn't actually the bottom...it's a tarp. It goes even further down than that. 
This is Joseph coming down at the bottom:
There was a place at the museum where you could roast marshmallows! Have you ever been to a museum with a firepit to make smores? Like I said, this place was amazing... Here we are roasting our mallows:
Inside the City Museum was an aquarium. There were all kinds of weird looking fish and turtles and other rainforest animals. The first thing that we saw when we walked in was this bird. Joseph wanted to pet it, but I was too chicken so I just took his picture. 
Then we saw a big fish tank with these giant, disgusting catfish. I was grossed out.
Here is Joseph in front of the same tank. Are the fish freaking you out too?
Next to the tank of the giant, disgusting fish was a small tank of "doctor fish" that eat the dead skin off of your fingers. Again, Joseph thought that was really cool. I was grossed out.
We found Nemo in one of the tanks.
Here is a sloth. It moved REALLY slow and slept a lot. Pretty good life, eh?
Joseph with the sloth:
After a long and exciting day at the City Museum, Joseph and I took it easy that Sunday. We went to church and I showed him my old stomping grounds in St. Charles (a suburb of St. Louis where I was born).
After spending a relaxing Sunday together, on Monday Joseph and I went back to downtown St. Louis to visit the Arch! 
At the top of the arch:
The cool view from the top. You can see the shadow of the arch.
At the end of the trip we went back to St. Charles. I wanted to surprise one of my favorite teachers in the whole world, my Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Aul. We were going to surprise her in her classroom, so we stopped by Becky-David Elementary school only to find that they were on break! I was so sad, and Jill, you have a note on the door to your classroom from me when you get back!
Finally, the last piece of business that we had was to visit my brother, Justin's, grave and clean it off and put flowers in it. Since my family isn't in St. Charles anymore, it had been a long time since there had been flowers at the gravesite, so it was especially nice for us to be able to do that for my parents. It was a beautiful sunny day, so in order to get a decent picture Joseph had to cast his shadow over the grave marker. The place looks really nice and I know that my mom and dad would be pleased. 
Although we had a great trip, it was so nice to come back to Jake. It was the first time that we had ever left him overnight and he did great! We are so proud of him and grateful to Nana and Papa for taking him for this much-needed retreat.
