Week 36 - Check out my pearly WHITES....I mean WHITE!

(Close up of the above image)

Week 36 - Check out my pearly WHITES .....I mean WHITE!

( 4/20/08 - 4/25/08)

I just have one word....FINALLY...................IT'S ABOUT TIME - wait that's three. Either way the child who has been teething for five months FINALLY has a tooth. Granted it is only one, but thank GOD he finally got that little thing through those gums of his. I have to say that it was one crazy ride, his poor gums got so swollen and his ears must have really hurt because he pulled on his ears, scratched his cheeks until they bled, and had a horrible runny nose (to the point where it was hard for him to breathe while he ate) for the whole week.

The picture above isn't great, but the tooth itself is completely through the gums and is now just growing bigger and bigger every day. Jake doesn't quite know what to do with it, the first day it was through the gums he basically spent all day with his hand in his mouth playing with his new tooth. It was amazing how the runny nose was instantly gone, his mood instantly changed, his appetite returned, and the ear pulling stopped the second that dang blasted tooth came in.

How many more teeth do I have to go through this with???? Please tell me that the symptoms just happen with the first one and that all the rest will be easy??? Please.....I BEG YOU!!!!

Unfortunately I think this tiny reprieve we are in now isn't going to last very long as the other bottom tooth is coming in. It is already a tad bit swollen so I am assuming I only have a little bit before hell week part 2 shows up to pay us a visit!!

It was a beautiful week this week, Jake and I went on a few walks, blew more bubbles, and went to visit some of my friends from work this week. Most of them hadn't seen Jake in about 2 months and he has changed so much. For one he has gotten a lot more hair (with red highlights might I add...my mom will be happy about that) and is more social than he was the last time they saw him. Overall he is a good kid to take out, I bought him a travel highchair that I use when we are out. He loves being up at the table with everyone and spent the entire lunch time listening to us talk, laugh, and have fun. He is a good kid to take out and I count my blessings!

I just have one more thing to say this week :
TOOTH FAIRY HERE WE COME!!!!

Week 35 - The week of almost!!

Week 35 - The week of ALMOST!

(4/13/08 - 4/19/08)

Well it was inevitable, eventually there had to be a week where milestones and funny things ALMOST happened, but didn't. I have been racking my brain for the past two days trying to figure out what to write about this week. Do I write about him ALMOST getting a tooth? How about him ALMOST pushing himself up into a crawling position, or ALMOST figuring out how to walk around in his new walker....etc....etc...etc....

Unfortunately this was a week of just Mommy and Jacob hanging out with no real earth shatteringly funny moments or "YES FINALLY" milestones. I do have to say though that this dang blasted tooth of his must be growing at 1/1000 of a millimeter a day cause I SWEAR it broke through the gums on Monday and it is now Saturday and you still can't see a tooth even though if you feel his gums you can clearly feel the scratchiness of the top of a tooth! Oh well maybe next week I can finally write about how my little guy is one step closer to the Tooth Fairy!

We got him a walker to hopefully help him figure out he has legs! He is 8 months old today, and if you try and put him on his legs he will occasionally put a little weight on them, but overall he is content to be carried everywhere and has no interest in putting any sort of weight on them. We got him the Chicco DJ Walker, I researched for a few days and found that this one was taller than most with three height selections. Thankfully I got it cause he is already on the middle height and could technically probably be at the highest now.

Well, that is about all for this week, sorry for the boring post. Let's hope many many things happen next week and that the long awaited tooth FINALLY shows its pearly white face into the world!!!

Week 34 - There's more than the living room floor??

Week 34 - There's more than the living room floor??

(4/6/08 - 4/12/08)

This week was very interesting to say the least. The weather was PHENOMENAL!! Three days this week it was over 72 degrees and sunny! I took Jacob outside on Wednesday for his first real day outside since he was born. Now he has obviously been outside, but since he was born on August 19th, his experiences with the outdoors were nothing more than walking outside to get in the car, or going out to rock on the porch and look at the trees, sky, and birds. Since he was too little to remember (or care) about any of this I don't consider it "enjoying the wild blue yonder". By the time Jake was more responsive we were in the cold part of Fall or in the bitterness of Winter.

So as his mother I felt obligated to do two things this week......
1) Put him down on the grass and see what happens
2) BLOW BUBBLES!!!!
Jake liked one of the two.....can you guess which one? The weather was nice enough that I got to put Jake in shorts and a t-shirt and no socks....I think the whole socks thing is what threw him off. He was soooooo fascinated about these adorable little pudgy wiggly things attached to him that he was more focused on them than on the outdoors. Once he got over that, he stared at the grass for awhile, ripped a few blades out (tried to eat them of course), looked over at me and.............WWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

I immediately realized that I needed to fix this scary horrible problem so I did what any mother would do with a crying 7 1/2 month old.......I BLEW BUBBLES!! Crisis averted!!

We also started walking this week, Paul and I got a jogging stroller to take advantage of the acres and acres of land that we have access to but weren't really able to use it. This week we went on three 2 mile walks (what do you expect, I am out of shape!!). Jake seemed to enjoy them and I liked getting out of the house and seeing the world!!

** New pictures have been added to the album, as well as a new video!

Week 33 - Rub A Dub Dub

Week 33 - Rub A Dub Dub

(3/30/08 - 4/05/08)

One of the more terrifying things that I have ever had to do in my life was give a 4 week old a bath. In some strange way I was more afraid of that then actually giving birth. Fortunately for me (and Paul), Jacob's belly button didn't fall off until he was almost a month old so I had a little more time to get used to a newborn before having to immerse him in water! I come from a very small family and the only two babies in my life were my cousin and my nephew. Since I was 10 when my cousin was born I didn't exactly get picked to hold and carry a newborn around the house. My nephew was born when I was 16, but he lived two hours away and by the time him and my sister moved close to us he was 2 which didn't exactly make for a frightening holding experience. Paul on the other hand has 30 nieces and nephews but still hasn't had a lot of "newborn time". Paul is the go-to guy for the kids once they are walking, talking, and he can goof around with them! So you can see why holding a newborn, bathing a newborn, playing with a newborn, etc....were all very scary things for Paul and I.

From the start Jacob has loved bath time, it has always relaxed him and he would just lay in the baby tub and let us wash him. The progression to the "big boy tub" started pretty early thanks to our extremely tall baby, plus once he decided he wanted to start sitting up all bets were off having him in the baby tub (unless we wanted to use it as a reason to mop our floors!). But as with all of mine and Paul's learning experiences we realized that although he was too big for the little baby tub, he wasn't old enough or sitting well enough for the big tub. We kept Jake in the little tub for as long as possible and then experimented with different ways we could bathe him. The best way was found one day when Jake was dirty from head to toe (the reason I now boycott teething biscuits) and we HAD to wash him. The Sink just wouldn't work, probably because I was behind on the dishes, and because Jake didn't like it, so the big whirlpool tub in our master bathroom was the only option. So Paul and I headed up for the first big bath! Swimming trunks went on Paul and in he took Jake for his first "big boy bath"! Surprisingly enough it worked GREAT!!!!

But as you can imagine it wasn't very practical and I couldn't give Jake a bath like this unless Paul and I both were available to help out. So I went on a mission to find something to help us with bath time. I went online and to a couple of stores until I found the seat above. It works great and allows Jake to splash around and sit without someone in the tub with him. I find that I still get just as wet as if I was in the tub with him, but I guess that is to be expected with a baby who LOVES water! I can't wait to get him in the pool this summer, I wonder if he will like cold water as much as he loves his warm bath water??