Thursday, June 28, 2012

Big brother

Jacob has an announcement...



Jacob will be a big brother in January!

My actual due date is January 28th (Jacob's 2 1/2 birthday) but due to a repeat c section, I would not go past January 21st. Everyone seems to ask how I feel. Of course, I'm very excited and grateful but am experiencing some morning sickness (usually at night). I never had this with Jacob. It has really only stopped me from eating 3 times. It's usually just annoying. And, I'm extremely tired. I'm sure that is from pregnancy and keeping up with a very active 2 year old, but I usually can't wait to nap when Jacob naps. Other than that, I feel great!

Jacob is so excited...see?



He even had to dance about it...





And, of course, Randy and I had a hard time choosing out of the 400 ish pictures we took, so here are a few more.









He's also 23 months old today (Wow) but I'm sleepy and need a nap. So, I'll blog about that later!

~Nancy

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Very RANDOM post

Since there really isn't anything exciting going on, I haven't been blogging. However, I noticed today that I have lots of pictures to share, so I'll do that.

First, a lesson on Instagram. I don't use it a lot or really follow people on it, but my mom was asking me about it. Basically, I use it to edit pictures. Here is a random shot of Jacob before Instagram...



And, now, the same shot after some quick editing...



That was exciting, huh?

A few weekends ago, we went to Austin for sweet Molly's 1st birthday party. Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures (exactly ONE) because I was laughing at her too hard. When she was given her smash cake, she took it very seriously and destroyed it like I've never seen any 1 year old do. It was awesome! Here is the only picture I took...before the "smashing".



The next day we went to Fan Fest at U of H. We met Jackie Sherrill. He signed a football and his book for Jacob. However, Jacob was not excited about it and refused to act normal for a picture.
Proof:










As you know, Jacob loves to play outside with his water table. His newest obsession is drinking from the water hose and attempting to sweep the porch. I got (more) pictures of him playing the other night, but this time, we left his clothes on.






He always claps for himself...for, pretty much, doing nothing.








He feels the need to fill the over flowing water table.








There is a really cute baby that he always sees in the glass door. He LOVES looking at him.


The child normally hates taking pictures, but decided to ham it up. So, I took advantage.





When we came inside after this, I immediately gave him a bath (he was already soaked). However, Dad came home with the absolute yummiest chocolate chunk cookies from Chic fil A (seriously, have you tried them?) and Jacob made a mess.






That's all I've got for now. Hopefully, I'll blog again sooner than I did this time!

~Nancy

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Monkey Joe's

Before I even start this post, let me just say that Jacob has more than one shirt. He has a ton of clothes actually. But for some reason, he seems to be wearing this same polo shirt in a lot of his pictures lately. I guess I really like it. :o)

Anyway, last Saturday we took Jacob to Monkey Joe's. There are 3 different inflatable places to go jump at in Katy, but we have never taken him to any of them. Until recently, he didn't even LOVE the inflatable air track at Little Gym. But, he has figured out how to jump on it (and the couch and the bed, etc). So, we figured he would like this place (and it was air conditioned on a hot Saturday afternoon). We were right!

Here is where we started. It's the toddler zone and everything is a much smaller scale than the rest of the place. This allowed him to get comfortable with the inflatables.


Yep, he's figuring out the jumping!


This is the slide in the toddler zone. He loved it!


Just trying to figure out where to go next!


He decided on the medium size slide. Unfortunately, he needed Dad's help to get inside. But he was good to go after that...


I know this picture is blurry, but he was going really fast on this slide, and I thought it was cute!


He kept getting braver and braver and here he is entering one of the big kid zones!


And, finally, he needed a break from jumping and went to drive the Flintstones car.


I think we really wore him out on Saturday at Monkey Joe's because Sunday he woke up with a horrible fever and has been sick as can be ever since. We went to the doctor yesterday and heard my least favorite words, "It's a virus...could take 5-7 days". Ugh... The upside is that he wants to cuddle a lot!


~ Nancy

Memorial Day weekend...a little late

We made the decision to make a quick trip (just one night of the long weekend) to the Kemah Boardwalk. We got a room right on the Boardwalk at The Boardwalk Inn. This is a very cute hotel where every room has a balcony. We ended up in a suite and actually had 3 balconies. Here are some views of the boardwalk from one of our balconies.









Once we got checked in on Saturday, we headed down to find some rides that Jacob would enjoy. It didn't take long for us to realize that it was too hot out there, so we headed back to our room to change into our swimsuits. We swam for a while to cool off and then went back for rides. We didn't do a lot, but Jacob had a great time running around and watching us chase him! We did ride the tall, sightseeing thing (I call it the space needle because that is what it was called at Astroworld) and, of course, rode the train. Jacob really liked both of those. Here are some train pictures.

Waiting to get going...


We took 10 pictures like this to try and get one with his mouth closed. But, I had flipped the camera on my iphone so he could see himself. And, apparently, that means open your mouth. He looked exactly the same in all 10 of them!



Once the train got going, he loved looking around.



Then, the train movement got him really tired (plus his nap was short that day).



Back in the room, Jacob's absolute favorite thing to do was talk on the phone. He loves doing this at home too (with play cell phones, remotes, blocks, you name it), but he's never really been around a corded phone before. Randy and I were surprised he even realized that was a phone too!



Later that night, there was a live band playing on the Boardwalk. It was so crowded down there that we didn't really feel like going down to listen. But, our hotel had a private outdoor pavilion on the 4th floor that overlooked the area where the band was playing. We went out there and were the only people out there. Jacob LOVED hearing the loud music and danced like crazy (you may have seen the videos that Randy put on Facebook). It really didn't matter that it was an hour past Jacob's bedtime, he was having a blast!

Sunday morning, we got up and went to play in the fountains. Jacob is still unsure about splash parks and fountains, but he did get soaked. We just couldn't tell if he liked it or not!




We headed home after that so Randy could get some relaxation time before heading back to work on Tuesday.

~ Nancy

Thursday, May 31, 2012

22 months

Last Monday, Jacob turned 22 months old. His monthly pictures are DEFINITELY getting harder and harder to take. This time, not only did he not want to sit still, he acted like the sticker was hurting him if attached to his shirt for even a second. So, although he is not looking at the camera OR smiling, here is the best of the pictures we took...



(By the way, Randy had to photoshop the 22 month sticker on this picture...it was THAT bad!)

At 22 months, here is what he is doing...

~ His vocabulary has really picked up this month. He can say so many things, somewhat knows the meaning behind a few things, and mimics something new almost every day. He is now saying or can say ball, block, night night, M (Randy's mom), Pa (Randy's dad), bye bye, cookie, bubble, oops, stop, eat, baby, no way (his current favorite), i don't know, me and puppy plus all of the stuff he has said in the past. I have a feeling this is the last month I'll be listing his new words because, hopefully, by next month there will be too many to list! And for all of those words I listed, he says them pretty well. You don't have to have a vivid imagination to understand what he is saying. However, he also says open (he likes toys that open/close but sometimes needs me to open them) but it sounds NOTHING like open. For some reason, he says "ah ma".

~ He can sort of use a fork by himself. We have been giving him the chance and when he does stab some food and pick it up with his fork, he gets the happiest look on his face! He loves using it so much, that when he thinks he is finished with a meal, but we don't think he has eaten enough, we can trick him into eating at least 10 more bites by letting him use a fork.

~ He is also learning to drink out of a cup by himself. I'm not brave enough to even let him try, but Randy has been letting him and he can do it all by himself! If the level is too low, he has a hard time judging how much he should tilt it, but otherwise does really well. And, of course, when he is successful, he gets a huge smile.









~ As many of you have seen from recent videos, the boy likes to dance. He will dance to almost any song on a cartoon on tv, or really, just about any song at all. He will even dance (at least do the arm moves) when you ask him to dance now.

~ He will freeze. It something that we do in Little Gym, and one random Thursday at gym, he really picked up on it. It's very cute to see because he has to spread his legs and bend down (like Ms. Pat does at the gym) but he doesn't stay in that position very long.

~ He weighs 34 pounds, 14.5 ounces. On second thought, maybe we should quit doing the fork trick!

~ We are back in swim lessons and he is doing well. We did not have them this week because of Memorial Day on Monday, so next week will probably be a little bit of a struggle again. But really, by the 3rd time we went in 3 weeks, he was really doing great.

~ He loves to brush his teeth and does it multiple times a day. However, I am NOT allowed to brush them for him any more. That's why I let him do it multiple times. I'm sure he doesn't do a very good job so we are going for quantity over quality.

~ He has his first major boo boo this past month. We were outside playing with sidewalk chalk and he was holding one in his right hand. He tripped and did not let go of the chalk and somehow managed to rip almost his whole fingernail off of one nail. Although he barely cried when it happened, the worst part (for me at least) was the next day. It looked terrible, but the main thing was that he forgot it was hurt and would go on playing and climbing like normal. Then he would hurt it on something and would cry. It was really sad! By the second day, it was as if he forgot what happened. Every once in a while, he would look at it and make a sad face, but you could tell that it didn't really hurt him anymore. Right now (2 weeks later) it's growing back nicely and just looks like a real short nail. Here is a picture from the night it happened, he will not sit still long enough for me to get a picture now!



~ He got a shape sorter for Christmas last year and played with it a lot when he first got it. However, we had to basically show him where to put the shapes, and when it didn't go in the first time, he would get frustrated and throw the piece. Well, that toy went to the bottom of his toy box and we have not touched it in months. The other day, he got it out and brought it to me as I was going through a week's worth of mail. So, I took the six shapes out and put them with the sorter on the ground next to me. Next thing I knew, all six were back in the toy. So, I did it again and watched him. He knew how to do it perfectly! You can even watch him study the color and look for the matching color on the sorter. And he's ever so patient about getting it in the hole the right way as opposed to getting frustrated!

That about all I can think of for his new "tricks". :o)

Here is some other random stuff...

Although he didn't like a splash pad when we went with some friends, he loved playing with the hose, naked, in our back yard. Mostly, he liked drinking the water from the hose.



He's trying to get prepared to go fishing with Grandma and Grandpa, so we play our magnetic fishing game at home.




I still need to blog about our quick trip to Kemah for Memorial Day...hopefully I'll do that tomorrow!

~ Nancy