Better Late than Never

Finally getting around to blogging about J-Dub's birthday party.  I've been semi out of commission for a few days with a case of the funk, or strep throat, or something.  So far Jacob and Nancy have thankfully been able to avoid it.

Since most of you who read this blog (what, 2 or 3 of you?  who knows...no one ever leaves comments, which makes me cry myself to sleep every night) were probably there, I won't do a play-by-play, as exciting as that would be.  Despite a house full of people and crazy cousins and other assorted munchkins running around everywhere, Jacob had a great time and was a perfect angel.  We're very lucky and blessed that he is pretty happy most of the time, no matter the situation.  Unless you are eating and you don't give him some.

Thanks to everyone who made the trip (in some cases LONG trips) to help JKW celebrate, and for the far-too-generous gifts that were showered upon him.  The kid has so many toys that I seriously thought we were going to have to move.  Immediately.  Or rent a warehouse.

So because of the aforementioned plethora of toys, the first order of business after the party was to move our dining room table upstairs to the spare bedroom and turn our dining room into a one-year old's version of a man-cave.  Nancy bought some really cool foam flooring that fits together like a puzzle, and she spent a good long while putting it all together.  Then we moved all his toys into the new playroom and turned him loose.  All those toys... and the first thing he does is start pulling apart the floor Nancy worked so hard on.  So he can carry around the foam pieces, chew on them, and beat furniture, people and/or sleeping pets with them.  We shoulda thought that one through a little more.

He also had his 1 year doctor visit Monday, which did require a few vaccines, which apparently did not go too well.  I hear he put up a good fight.  He weighed in at 28 lbs 7 ounces, good for the 97th percentile, and he measured at 33 inches tall, which is in the 99th percentile.  Luckily, his body has caught up to his gargantuan noggin a little, because it only measured in the 91st percentile.

On Sunday, we were eating lunch at a local restaurant and my phone rang.  It said "Wife" and had Nancy's picture on it.  Since she was sitting 3 feet in front of me, I declined the call and informed my wife that she was butt-dialing me.  As she fidgeted around trying to figure out how she managed to do that, she soon realized she didn't even have her phone with her.  Well, that's curious.  It is not unlike her to accidentally leave her phone in the car, so my next thought was that some crackhead, probably the same one that broke into my clinic, had stolen her car and was now calling me to taunt us as he drove away to Mexico.  Just before I was about to go out in the parking lot and commandeer a vehicle, triangulate her cell phone signal, and chase down Nancy's car before it could make it to the border, she informed me that she had not had it in the car either.  Well, that's curious-er.

Then who was calling?  My crackhead theory was out the window (also because I looked out the window of the restaurant and could see her car out there, right where we had parked it).  About that time, I heard a little ding that tells me I have a voicemail.  Putting the pieces together, I shrewdly deduced that the voicemail may hold a clue as to where her phone might be.  The message, apparently left by Larry the Cable Guy's even more redneck brother, said, "My son found this phone on the trash can in Silver Ranch (our neighborhood), so I called the emergency contact number.  Call me if you get this message."

By this time, Nancy had pieced together the events of thirty minutes earlier enough to figure out what happened.  Sort of:  [Flashback] As we were leaving to go to lunch, she opened the door to the garage and left it open as she went to put Jacob's bag in the car and get his car seat ready.  Jacob, seeing the door wide open, went running from the kitchen to go out to his mama in the garage.  Since there is a big step from the kitchen to the garage, Nancy was afraid he would fall and crack his noggin on the concrete, so she ran back in to stop him from coming out.  She had her phone in her hand as she went running after him, so she set the phone down on the hood of her car.

With Jacob safe and his noggin still intact, I came in from outside in the backyard with Shelby, set the alarm, we strapped Jacob in, and off we went.  With her phone still on the hood of the car.  I didn't notice it when I walked by to get in the car, and she didn't see it because the inspection and registration sticker were in the way.  Somewhere shortly after leaving the house, it must have slid right off, into the street.  What we still don't know is how it got from the spot where it fell off, to the top of a trashcan in the neighborhood park.  Which is where voicemail guy's son supposedly found it.  Which is a good 400 yards from the nearest point on the route we drove to go to lunch.  When we stopped to pick it up at the guy's house, Nancy came back to the car pretty upset that her beloved iPhone was in ruins.  As you can see from the picture, we are lucky it still was able to make calls, or we may never have found it.  Then we would have unfairly blamed the crackheads.

That's all I got.  Here be some pictures:

JacobLand

Aerial view

Loves him some Cozy Coupe

Nancy and Molly



Nancy and her Mom did great on decorations



Speaking of...

Jacob and M

Amanda and Morgan

Pa and M with Jacob, trying to get him to sit still long enough to take a picture

Channeling his inner preacher

Grandma, mid-chew.  Pretty sure she will not be glad I posted this photo.  I had to, because somehow this is the only picture I have of Brooke from the party.

Interesting, they look so civilized in this picture

Laura and Carrie

Brandl and Grandpa (mid-bite also)

He LOVES the Happy Birthday song

Jacob's awesome cake

Kelsey, Debra, and Doris

Craig and Alexis (and Brynna)

Makinley and her baby

all the crazy kids

Tyler, Danielle and Brandl

Sarah and John

The Ocampo clan with Molly

all the cousins on my side

Carrie loves this picture and asked me to post it

eating ice cream, still looking deceptively calm

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