Happy Birthday, Jacob!

J-Dub killed a ginormous cupcake, then downed 98% of his bottle right afterwards.  That's how he rolls.

I can't believe it has been a year already.  Seems like just yesterday I was watching Jacob get sliced right out of Nancy's bloody uterus.  Ahhh, memories.

Saturday is the big Par-Tay, so I will throw down a little more blog action afterwards. Until then, enjoy some pictures of Jacob eating cake. Nancy won't let me post his official one year portraits yet, because she wants everyone to see them at the party.  So here is his official-but-not-professional one year picture.

Can you believe it has been a year?

This year has flown by.  A year ago, J-Dub was still a fetus, and now he is walking around wreaking havoc on anything that is within reach (he walks 90% of the time now...only crawling when he needs to get somewhere fast...like Shelby's water bowl to splash in it before Mom picks it up).  At some point he stopped being a baby and became a little boy.  A blonde little boy.  Seriously, what is up with this kid's hair?  Never in the history of mankind has hair gone from that dark to that light that quickly, without the aid of some serious bleach action.  We look at his early pictures and it doesn't even look like the same kid.

EXHIBIT A

Jacob's Pa has kind of a tradition in our family of getting all the grandkids a wagon for their first birthday. So when they were in town last weekend, he brought Jacob's. It is no ordinary wagon. It is a covered wagon, and in a pinch you could actually use it to migrate west across the prairie. Seriously. It is pretty large and we need a bigger garage to house it, but Jacob absolutely freakin' loves it. We've made the loop around the neighborhood a couple of times, and he kicks back with his sippy cup and enjoys the ride. When we push him in the stroller, he does nothing but play with the seat belt the whole time, paying no attention to the scenery. We joke that we could just strap him in and put him the back yard and he would have just as much fun. But with the wagon, there are no seatbelts, straps, or other distractions. So he just sits on his little blanket and grins ear to ear. If we stop, even briefly, he starts rocking back and forth trying to get it moving again. But while we are moving, he sits perfectly still...which, if you have been around him more than 5 minutes, you know that he NEVER does. On today's walk, we decided to remove the cover so he could see more and so we could get some good pictures. Here are a few.

 

 

Pa pulling him on his first ride

This kid has so many toys it's not even funny.  And he even plays with them every once in a while.  But on his list of favorite toys, there are very few actual toys on it.  The favorites, in no particular order, are:  Shelby's water bowl, belts, plastic containers and the cabinet they are kept in, a bottle of Italian dressing that is on the bottom shelf of the fridge that he grabs every time the door is open, iPhones, remote controls, cords, a tube of Boudreaux's Butt Paste, any door, the power button on the DVR, and, oh yeah, a turtle bath toy.  So if you are looking for that perfect birthday gift, the housewares department or the condiments aisle are your best bets.

With his favorite bottle of dressing

Pa and Logan at the Astros game

Nancy and Jacob at the fish tank in Bass Pro Shop.

Walking?

Jacob is VERY close to being a full-time biped.  He can take 10 or so steps and then gives up and crawls, but he rarely falls anymore...which is good since he likes to walk on hard floors more than carpet.  We have been trying for a week to get a video of him walking.  He will practically jog around the house likes he's been doing it for years...then as soon as we turn on the camera, he can somehow manage only one step without falling down.  But we finally got a semi-decent video today, although it is still not nearly as impressive as what he does when there is no camera.

M and Pa and Logan came down today so we could take Logan to his first major league baseball game.  A specialty clinic that I refer a lot of patients to gave me four tickets right behind the dugout, so Nancy and I took Jacob, Logan, and Pa to the game.  Jacob was pretty good, although he has the attention span of an 11-month-old, so there was a lot of passing him back and forth, stuffing his face, and other distraction techniques.  Logan had lots of fun, and got to stuff his face with junk food since his mom is 200 miles away.  He ate 1 and 1/2 Jumbo pretzels, a large soda, popcorn, a sno-cone, and cotton candy.  he had a stomach ache when we got home.  I'm not sure why.

Before the game, I got him a baseball and we went autograph hunting.  We managed to get Michael Bourn's signature, and Logan is very proud of it.  He says he is going to sell it and make some money.  He also got another baseball, a hat, and some baseball cards.  Man, that kid is rotten.  It's a LOT easier to do when his mom is not keeping tabs on us.  Especially when she is not even in the same city.

Photo Shoot

One day this week, Nancy decided to do a 4th of July photo shoot and she got some really good pictures.  She is a master with our DSLR camera, while I can barely use my iphone camera.  Here ya go:

Step by Step

I went with this blog title for two reasons:

#1...because my wife and her friends went to a New Kids on the Block concert on Saturday. 
and B...because J-Dub took his first "steps" today.  Sort of.  Well, he took a few short steps on his own this weekend, but I was the only one who saw them and we had no luck recreating the moment.  So today, he actually took three full steps on his own.  Of course, when we then grabbed the camera, he refused to cooperate.  We did get him to take a few steps a couple of times, but none were as good as the first ones.  We did manage to get a little video of him "walking".  His problem is that he won't even try if his "goal" (i.e. my drink, my protein bar, his mom) are too far away.  And when his goal is close enough for him to try, he takes two quick steps and then dives into whatever he is aiming for.  Nonetheless, it was exciting.  Couple that with him learning to clap this weekend, and it has been a whirlwind couple of days.  The party never stops around this house!

Here are the best videos we could get:

So, I don't know that we can officially call him a toddler, but I think we're getting close.

Last weekend, we went to Austin to meet Molly, and for Jacob to see his Aunt Laura, Uncle Scottie, and cousin Makinley.  Molly is a beautiful, precious, tiny little girl.  And I can tell Makinley is very excited to have a little sister.  Jacob had all kinds of fun with Makinley, not the least of which was Makinley challenging Jacob to a crawling race.  Not one to back down from a challenge, J-Dub bowed up like a man and accepted.  We managed to catch the race on video.  There is definitely a Tortoise and the Hare thing going on here, as Jacob lets Makinley get far out ahead of him, even temporarily stopping, and when she stops confidently just short of the finish line, he speeds past her to win the race.

We decided to make a little weekend of it, so we got a hotel room and took Jacob swimming, which he of course, loved.  On the way home, we passed some signs for the Capital of Texas Zoo.  Having never heard of it before, we googled it and decided to stop, since Jacob has never been to a zoo.  And he likes animals, or at least Shelby.  Sometimes.  Anyway, we decided to stop.  Now this is not a zoo like any you have ever been to.  No paved walkways.  Precious little between you and 1000 pound carnivores other than some chicken wire.  The entrance is a little shack with a kid working the desk that could not have been older than 11.  But we had fun.  They actually had some cool animals, like a bear, lion, tiger, zebra, lemur, peacocks, snakes, the whole nine yards...and you could get very close to most of them.  They also had a petting zoo where you could feed the animals.  The whole thing felt more like someone who has a bunch of exotic animals in their back yard, and they let you pay to go look at them.  It took less than an hour to walk through the whole thing, which was perfect.  Because Jacob has the attention span of a ten-month-old, it was 128 degrees, and we were ready to get home.

And just an update on the clinic break-in:  the Houston PD is hot on the case, and I am fully expecting to be called down to the precinct any day now to identify the perp in a lineup.  Can't wait to get those DNA results back.  Oh wait, I haven't heard a peep from the police since it happened.  And I probably never will.

A few pics:

Nancy and Molly

What the hell is that?

Me and Molly

CSI: Houston

Tuesday morning, I was awakended by a phone call from my receptionist who opens the clinic at 7 am.  I get those calls from time to time, and they are never good news.  Never.  This time was no exception.  Some fine upstanding citizan had decided to break my front window with a rock, shimmy his ignorant ass through the tiny, jagged hole, and help himself to some things that were not his.  This is the scene my receptionist walked up on when I got the call:

The genius crawled through that hole, slicing his flesh in the process, instead of just kicking the rest of the window out.  He then proceeded to put my laptop, digital camera and $200 in cash in his backpack and head on back to the crackhouse to get a fresh supply.  Did my alarm go off?  Nope.  The damn motion detector went off a few months ago when a cat got loose in the clinic, but a grown man waltzes in and trashes my front desk without so much as a peep from the excellent security system I pay $300 a month for.  Of course, my "night vision" camera also malfunctioned, leaving me with a black screen, a little light through one of the windows, and 3 minutes of the light from a flashlight going through all my stuff.  Very helpful.  My outdoor camera was only slightly more helpful, revealing enough to narrow the list of perps down to everyone within a 5 mile radius of the clinic.  He was a black male with white tennis shoes and a backpack.  Be on the lookout.

The Houston Police Department is hot on the case, though.  Fingerprints?  There aren't any, according to the ever-so-thorough representative from the Houston Police Department.  He was good.  He could tell that just by glancing at the broken window from across the room.  The blood all over the glass from when the jackass cut himself shimmying through the broken window?  It's too bad they don't have a way to match blood to individuals.  That would have been useful.  I understand that they aren't going to form a posse and shut down the city to hunt down some small-time crackhead who made off with $1700 worth of stuff.  I get it.  But he could have at least acted like he gave a shit.  That might at least deter a few of these low-lifes if they thought they might get caught.  Columbo this guy was not.

Anyway, it could have been much worse, and for that I am thankful.  They didn't harm any of the animals, they didn't find the drugs, and no one (besides the crackhead asshole) was hurt.  Considering the alarm didn't go off, he could have cleaned me out.  Hopefully, my strongly worded phone call to ADT, and the technician who showed up shortly thereafter, have solved my security holes.

A couple of weekends back, the three of us, Nancy's parents, and her brother and his family all rented a condo in Port Aransas.  We had a blast, and it was great to get away for a little while.  Jacob had fun at the beach and in the pool, and Brooke and Tyler had a lot of fun, too.  The only downside was the funk that I brought everyone.  I call it the gift that keeps on giving.  See, JKW had a little upset stomach earlier in the week, but it didn't seem too bad.  Then the morning we left for Port A, I thought I was going to die.  Literally.  I was weak, and feverish and nauseous, and achy.  The ride down was miserable for me, but also for Nancy because all I did was complain and was absolutely no help with Jacob or navigating the Charlie Foxtrot that is the Port A Highway system.  I went straight to bed upon arrival and pretty much didn't move for the next 18 hours.  I felt better by the next day.  Then that night, Nancy and her mom were miserably sick, barfing profusely and, I'm sure, cursing my name.  Then Nancy's Dad joined in the fun the night after we left.  A fun time was had by all.  Sorry about that.  I blame Jacob, since he can't defend himself.

Here are a few pics, strategically shot between barfing episodes:

Unofficial retirement partAY

Brookie with her Grandma

On the beach in Port A

Jacob and his Grandparents

J-Dub driving the golf cart

He doesn't look guilty at all

Hanging with grandpa

His first brewsky (not really)

First order of business: eat sand

Tyler flying his kite

The studly men with Brooke

This past weekend we took Jacob to the neighborhood pool and splash pad, which he, of course, loved.  The kid loves water.  Loves.

The pimpin' bulldozer float

duuuuuude

he tried to eat the water (surprise)

Seriously, this float is sweet

Molly Elizabeth Bigham

EDIT:  Nancy thinks that you are going to think we had another kid.  This is Molly Elizabeth Bigham, born yesterday morning to my sister Laura and her husband Scott.

Welcome to our crazy family, Molly.