In mid-July, Silas got to go on his first plane ride as we headed out to Ontario to visit my (Jason’s) family. He did fairly well, even sleeping on our laps on the ride there. Shannon prepared some little packages including candy, ear-plugs, and a poem apologizing for our crying son to appease our fellow passengers in case Silas got carried away. They were quite well received!

Shannon handed these packages out to our fellow passengers.

The week and a half we spent in Ontario was a lot of fun. Rather than go camping or do any large, ambitious trips, we spent most of this time hanging around Jason’s parents’ house, enjoying the backyard pool, playing volleyball and soccer, walking around the neighbourhood, battling it out in board games like Settlers, reading, and playing music.

Silas didnt like the cold at first, but eventually got used to the water.

Jason’s parents and two youngest siblings had flown out to BC to visit after Silas was born, but some of his other siblings hadn’t met him yet. It was great fun to introduce him! All his aunts and uncles told us how cute he is, and having so many hands to hold him gave us a nice rest too. Although my niece and nephews are still fairly young, it was fun to begin to watch the cousins of the next generation interact.

All the cousins lined up for a photo shoot. Thats not an easy task!

The whole family together.

Every few months, Jason writes up a newsletter to send to people who are interested in his ministry at Power to Change. This newsletter includes ministry stories from Athletes in Action and TruthMedia, as well as some personal updates about what we’ve been up to this summer, and how life as parents is going. View the PDF here.

Silas just loves this form of communication, and he’s pretty good at it!

Silas has just recently started really laughing, and this afternoon, Shannon got him going good!

Shannon tried tossing Silas up in the air the other day, and he loved it! You can hear his laugh, too, which he’s just started recently.

We got a plot in the nearby community garden, so were quite excited to start planting some things in it. We’re trying green onions, garlic, carrots, purple carrots, broccoli, red peppers, green peppers, spinach, and mini tomatoes. We were supposed to start the tomatoes and peppers indoors a few weeks ago and then transplant them, but we were a little late starting and decided to just plant the seeds outside anyway and see what happens!

Silas is starting to make all sorts of fun noises, like cooing, screeching, squawking, etc. It’s great fun to watch, and to try talking to him and seeing him respond! When he’s in a good mood (especially after feeding, and often while lying on his change table, as he is here), he can be quite talkative.

Silas is a pretty active little boy, so we decided to try putting him in the jolly jumper when he was only 2 1/2 months old. He’s still working on the head support, and you can see he’s a little wobbly in the video (we made sure to be close by so we could catch him!), but he’s not too bad! It’ll be fun to watch him start to get the hang of it.

In the first few weeks after Silas was born, I put together a few video clips we had taken. Welcome to our family, Silas!

This week Jason goes away for 4 days for a work conference. WHAT WILL I DO? Oh boy. Makes me think a lot about single parents. How do they do it? It’s so nice to have someone else around to hold Silas for a bit so I can get things done, or just give my shoulder a break.