Life with Sneezy, the cutest dwarf

     We should have seen this coming. Since he was a newborn, Rod and I have always said "bless you!" whenever Jace would sneeze. Since he was a baby, and considering the cuteness of these little sneezes, this was always said very enthusiastically. After a couple of months, we noticed that he had interpreted this to be a good thing. It became clear that he believed sneezing was a good thing to do, since it always seemed that he was getting praised for doing so. Well, as he's gotten older, this idea has perpetuated until now, he's figured out how to fake sneeze. If you catch him doing it, he acts quite proud of himself, since he's doing something so good. His fake sneezes involve a gasp of air followed by something like a cough although his tongue sticks out so he blows a quick raspberry which sounds a lot like an actual sneeze. Because of the whole blowing raspberry bit, this activity is even more fun to do while, say, eating bananas.... :P He will happily sit there making several fake sneezes in quick succession. It works as an attention getter too, since a parent hearing their child sneeze several times will quickly  assume an oncoming cold, he can often get some attention from this too. Definitely a new favorite activity, and it's awfully hard not to laugh when you catch him doing it, he's so darn cute! I wonder if this will result in the firm belief that sneezing is good for you...
    The other talent he's developed recently is related to eating. It's something we call chipmunking. When Jace has decided he's done eating or that he doesn't like what you're giving him, he will continue to put it in his mouth but refuse to swallow. This results in pockets of peas, or olives, or whatever else he doesn't want, being stored in his cheeks. Because he has chubby baby cheeks, it's not always easy to tell when he's doing this, until his mouth gets really full and he's forced to swallow. Then he'll just swallow until he's comfortable again. Not necessarily until all of the food is gone. He's become so proficient at this that one day, after feeding him peas, I fed him an entire banana which he ate without swallowing the peas. Those came out later, after I put him down to play. I found 8-10 peas on the floor where he was playing. Yesterday he was chipmunking while Rod fed him olives. Once Jace smiled, Rod caught him at it, seeing a mouth full of black olives. Rod showed me and Jace, funnily, looked guilty for getting caught. Today, he was doing it, which I discovered when I took him out of his high chair and held him up over me to play with him... instead I got a carrot shower as he grinned. :)

  Life continues to get more fun and interesting as Jace becomes more capable :)