WHEW 12 & 13 months

Us at Universal Dr. Seuss world!
Jack and his new buddy Scout!

Jack on his rocking Tigger

HARRY POTTER!!!! Need I say more? (i am a big harry potter fan, nerdy i know)

Polar slider from Uncle Josh and Aunt Kristen

After a very long break from blogging we are back.

So the Thanksgiving pics were from right when Jack had his first birthday. We had a great time in Orlando and we got to go to Universal Studios, Jack did really well all day, we just took turns riding rides. It was so fun!!!

We celebrated with Uncle Josh and Aunt Kristen, then when we got back we celebrated with Grandma, Papa, and Great Grandma. He had carrot cake cupcakes with orange cream cheese icing. Daddy was in the field for Jack's actual birthday. And we didn't get him anything because he really didn't need anything, but he still received many presents from lots of people :)

At 12 months Jack was scooting very well, he was trying to pull himself up, but couldn't quite do it. He then did successfully pull himself up for the first time at Auntie Jessi's house around the 13th of Decmeber. Right before his one year appt!!! I was very excited to be able to tell the provider that he could pull himself up if he really wanted to.

He is ahead in many skills though. He can say mama, dada, papa, light, woof woof for doggies (always at the pictures in his books) and occasionally will respond when asked what a sheep says with raahhh!!! which is awesome. he can point to his nose most of the time. He also had started to point to things he wanted. Like food, toys, daddy, etc.

He can feed himself at all meals and he finally started sleeping throught the night when we got back from Thanksgiving. He consistently slept from 7:30-8 till 5:00 in the morning at least. He then gets some milk if he wakes up and stays in his crib either playing or sleeping again till about 7:30 or 8. some days he sleeps till 7:30 without waking up. (those are good days for mommy)

Before Christmas I was still nursing him at night and in the morning. We stopped the night nursing right after Christmas and then about a week later right after New Years stopped nursing altogether. The transistion was really smooth, no engorgement or issues, he was upset one morning when I wouldn't nurse him, but I gave him his milk cup and he happily went on with life. I think it was harder for me, but it is very freeing!

The transition to milk was slow at first, just a few onces at a time, but now he can drink 8 oz at once when he wants it. He still eats everything!! He hasn't turned down any foods yet. Which is great! At his 12 month appt he weighed 24 lbs 7 oz and was 29.5 inches long. He is a big boy! We love it. He is wearing 12-24 month clothes, but most pants are now 18-24 months.

Just last week he finally learned how to sit up on his own. He has been a good sitter since he was 6 months and the scooting, but he could never get himself from his belly to sitting up. Last week he started to crawl like a snow plow. He would use his face like a plow and use his arms and legs. That lasted for 1 day, on Tuesday last week, the 11th he actually crawled with his arms and legs and head up and then figured out he could sit up from there. Since then he has been sitting up all the time and he claps because he is soo excited!

The only down side to this development was the first couple of nights where he would wake up and decide he needed to sit up right away and then because he was sleepy he couldn't figure out how to lay back down and would then cry till we came in to lay him back down. That lasted for about 2 nights, then it was done. He is now able to sit up and has slept good the last couple of nights.

Today before his nap he was standing in his crib, so he is making good progress in his gross motor skills :)

He also now has 11 teeth. He cut his eye teeth on the top over Christmas/New Years and this week his first molar broke the surface. No fevers or break outs, just alot of chewing and some drool.

He is loving his toys! He loves to play and read books. He will sneak away from us and we find him in his room looking at books. Of course he also sneaks away and unrolls the toilet paper, takes books off the shelves, gets into the pens, and just the other day ate half of a crayon before I realized it.

He can scribble with a crayon and we are working on using the spoon and bowl, he is doing well with it and gets very upset when I take it away.

Discipline is still in place and he is beginning to really throw a fit when we take away something he wants, but we are learning along with him how to handle it. Tonight for example I would not let him have my phone, he screamed at me, I promptly left the room and he screamed a few more times then decided to follow me and calm down. It hasn't always been that easy though and I am learning to deal with the rearing of his independence and try to encourage it without giving him everything he wants :)

We want him to know his boundaries. He still does well with no touch and is generally still pretty laid back in attitude and happy.

Naps: he just started taking 1 nap a day, which I was not ready for, but he was. He now naps from about 1-4. Some days we still take 2 if he had a bad night, or got up really early, but it is nice for me when I have Bible study or MOPS to know he can make it till 12 without a nap and not meltdown :)

WHEW, time flies I will blog more about Christmas, New Years and my new job soon, but wanted to get this update before he gets any bigger. He is such a joy to us, and we are soo thankful that the Lord blessed us with such a wonderful little man.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

We are in Orlando with Jake's brother Josh and his wife Kristen. We had and are having a great time!

We had a wonderful family meal, Jack has been really good, besides waking up at 5:37 on Thanksgiving morning, I guess he was just excited to see his Aunt and Uncle :)

We had some professional pictures taken on Friday, they turned out soo well. Since Jack will be the big 1 year old in 2 days we are counting them as his 12 month pics.

Here are 5 of my favorites, more to come, but we don't want to spoil the Christmas card.

Freaky 4 miler

On Saturday we went up to Durham for a Freaky 4 miler fun run, it was a costume contest too. We entered Jack, he took 3rd place, (there were more than 4 people entered) these were the top 4.

The race was put on by a running shoe store that our friend Holly works at, here are daddy and jack ready for the race.

Dave and Jake and Jack

In the Bob ready to go.

Mommy and Jack, I pushed jack, it was a very nice smooth running trail, very stroller friendly. Jake ran really fast, and I had a good run too, it was a great day!

11 months

Jack is now just one month away from the big 1st birthday! I think in this picture you can really see that he is getting bigger and more like a little boy.

As you can see he made his way under the table. He moves the chairs and then scooted his way under there. He was very proud. He is not crawling, but he is very mobile. He scoots using his arms and knees, just sitting straight up. It's really funny to watch. He is getting all over the house though.

He is also starting to learn discipline. He now knows what no means, and listens most of the time. We are just working on what to touch and what not to touch because we don't plan on moving every possible thing out of his reach, he will learn what is okay and what is not. Of course we have made it safe, nothing dangerous that he can get into. He is getting bigger and bigger, he is very tall and I think he is really lengthening out, his legs are still very thick, but his top half is getting thinner. He is soo verbal, Always talking and telling us something. He is eating everything, He is nursing 4 times a day 5, 8, 2, and I am feeding him real food at 10 and then at 6 or 6:30. He feeds himself very well and can use his sippy cup. He is napping well still, twice a day about 11 and 4. He goes to bed at 8, and is sleeping well till 5 am usually and then back to bed until 8 or 8:30. His sleeping has become much more predictable. If he wakes up earlier at night now it is usually because he is not feeling good. His molars are starting to come in, so his hand is almost constantly in his mouth.

We aren't having constipation issues anymore. He is also doing really well with childcare options. He does well at MOPS, PWOC, and anywhere we leave him with people. He is fine until we walk back in the room, then he starts talking and yelling at us :)

He is still the happiest guy. He loves his toys and books, he does really well with reading time and loves to eat his books. He still also does very well with alone play time. We may have to pull out the pack and play now that he so mobile to use as a play pen.

Next month we'll have new stats for height and weight. And I'm going to try to get video of him scooting.

Halloween

This year for Jack's first Halloween we did a few fun things. Here he is in his incredible hulk costume. It's a costume for 18 month olds... but it fits him perfectly. We love it.

Not sure about this

Eating his pumpkin
Hmmmm...

Our church had a Trunk or treat where people decorate their cars and hand out candy from the church, they had bouncy houses, a dunk tank, it was great!!! We brought Jack for his first experience. Here he is with ET, an awesome costume for candy giver, Jack was terrified....

Jake and Jack giving Elvis lip

Family shot

So this is one of the first times Jack has been very very scared, he was very interested in the dinosaur, but once sitting on him, not so good.

See, very interested....what can you do?

Happy Hulk

Jack and his buddy Titus from church, Ti is a ninja, LOVE it!

Daddy reading to Jack after the scares.

Our pumpkins!!!! mine is a cyclops

You wouldn't like me when i'm angry face!

Family shot with the pumpkins, at our friends the McConnell's house for Halloween.

10 months old

I can't believe that Jack is 10 months old! I know that I say that every month, but now that it is October he will soon be a year old. To me that means weaning, walking, Christmas, how time has flown by... So Jack is now almost always a belly sleeper, here he is sacked out after church on Sunday. He has been taking much better naps. Usually 2 naps a day, for about 1.5-2 hours each! So that has been nice.







We did a little photo shoot on his 10 month birthday, it was very rainy here for his birthday so we stayed inside to play.

He has been doing really well this month. He is sooo close to crawling. He still scoots to things and rolls all over the carpeted room and the bed, he can aim his rolls he will turn his body and roll towards what he wants. He is also now proficient at going from sitting to being on his belly. He can do backward motion well and he can do forward motion on his belly, but it's more like a low crawl or body drag. But he is definitely mobile. He has started pulling up on things, but hasn't quite gotten himself all the way up.

He loves balls this month, he has figured out how to release them and watch them roll away, sometimes he will "play ball" with us, we roll it to him and he releases it back to us, he gets very tickled. He still loves toys and playing, we do independent play time in the mornings and he will usually play for 45 minutes. In this picture is his cool book from the zoo about shoes. he likes all the shoe strings.

You can see how far he reaches his body for things, those feet just get in the way. Eating this month has become much more consistent. I nurse him about 4 times a day, a normal day looks like this

5-6 jack wakes up to eat

6-8:30 jack plays/sleeps more in crib

8:30-up, dressed, nurse

8:30-10 play time

10-breakfast food (fruit, yogurt, cereal or granola, i use baby food at this feeding he likes the cereal and fruits)

11:00- nap time depending when he got up we try to go 2 or 2.5 hours from when he got up out of his crib usually naps have been 1.5-2 hours lately, so he might get up at 12:30 or 1. then we play or go to the store.

2:00-nurse, then play time until next nap

4:00-5:30 nap time

6:30- dinner usually meat, vegetables, sweet potatoes

then we play with daddy, and have family play time

7:30-nurse, then bath, reading time, and bed

8:00 bed

Here he is so close to pulling himself up! those feet just get in the way.

Saying "hi guys" look at me

standing up like a big boy.

So our schedule has been pretty good, sleeping has been hit or miss at night. last month i really stopped feeding him in the middle of the night. I won't usually feed him until 5 am. so if he wakes up at night we try to comfort him, medicate him is he needs it, but i haven't been feeding him. which led to a few rough nights, but has been okay, we just had a good 5 night stretch where he slept from 8-5 or later. but he seems to have a string of good nights followed by a few bad nights...no real rhyme or reason.

What am i doing???

He really is a very happy little guy! I have been taking him to PWOC a Bible study I go to once a week and he stays in the childcare there for 2.5 hours and they always say he does very well. Also we started going to MOPS this last month and I have taken him to hourly care so that I can get in a few long bike rides in training for my race. He does very well in that setting and they all comment on how pleasant he is.

He has started to show us things he has or does, like here he is showing me how good he is at holding this ball. He is also kind of sharing he holds things out to us and we take them and say thank you, which he doesn't always like, but we give it back and he gets very excited and does it again. He may not be crawling, but he is very very verbal. He puts all kinds of sounds together like a sentence and we respond like we understand and he talks again. We love it! As soon as he really can speak, there won't be any stopping him. He definitely says daddy, hi, and yeah, other sounds are discernable, but not as specific.

almost crawling

He did have his first sickness this month, double ear infections. he was actually very pleasant through most of it, he woke up more at night (and i did feed him if he wanted it because he was sick and it is comforting to him) and he took very very long naps and wanted to cuddle alot (which we really enjoyed because usually he want to play much more than he wants to cuddle)

Serious face

He did have an appointment at 9 months and I don't think I ever posted the weight, he was 22lbs 2 oz he is still growing very well and very healthy!

kind of giving the elvis lip and looking concerned, he was done with the pictures...

Well, until next month!

Date Night

Over our long weekend we got to go on a date. We went to a Tom Petty and ZZ Top concert. Our wonderful friends Megan and Ian watched Baby Jack so we could go for dinner and the concert. It was a great concert!

It was definitely a cultural experience for me. I can't tell you how many redneck jokes came true at the concert for me. I laughed out loud multiple times at just the absurdity of the situations. There was a girl fight, many bandanas, heckling, hippies, tie-dye, and lots of smoking. That all added to the experience. Here is an acciental picture of the people in front of us while I was trying to take a picture of the stage.

Ahh, date night, we tried to go to dinner but it's been a really long time since we went for dinner on a Saturday night. We didn't leave any time to go anywhere accounting for the wait on a Saturday night at 6:30. So we ended up at a truly authentic Mexican restaurant. It was good, but also a cultural experience. So overall a great night!