switched over!

So I have switched over to an all encompassing family blog where all posts from this blog are now located! Please go to Crayons to College for all future updates!

The inevitable!

The inevitable!
(May 2010)

Well it was inevitable....I just can't seem to keep up with two blogs while trying to run after an almost 3 year old and a 9 month old. So I will be taking some time off from "Being Jake".

That being said if there is a monumental accomplishment or something that needs to be shared I will be updating the blog and will still try and update at least once a month for the time being. My goal when I started this blog was to have weekly updates (first year), and weekly/bi-weekly updates from then on out documenting Jacob and how he is growing and achieving his milestones!

My baby book was written in for the first 9 months or so and then had some updates sporadically through my first three years......Jacob now has detailed documentation of his first almost 3 years!!! So I have achieved my goals!

Andrews blog will be updated weekly for his first year (through August), and then I will be creating a "combo" blog for the two boys where I will update for each of them without having two separate blogs that I feel need updated all the time! I have already created this blog and will begin phasing my "family" blog into it starting in September after Andrews birthday! This blog will be called "Crayons to College" and will follow the boys and our family throughout the upcoming years as I start homeschooling and they start sports, playgroups, and vacations!

I hope some of you who enjoyed reading "Being Jake" will come back and find us at "Crayons to College"

Thank you!

Another week....another doctors visit!

Another week....another doctors visit!
(April 30, 2010)

So what the heck is going on recently. Is there some sort of unspoken quota that needs to be met at doctors offices where every child must be seen a certain number of times before their 3rd birthdays?? I have gone from Jacob NEVER being sick EVER......to a rush into the ER last night with a very very swollen little boy.

So we knew that Jacob has bad seasonal allergies and we were starting to expect but couldn't confirm possible dog allergies. We don't have a dog and no one we know really has dogs either. Last night we were all over at the my brother-in-laws house just enjoying the nice weather. Jacob and his cousin Caity were playing in the yard and playing with their new dog (a beagle) everything seemed fine they played for awhile and then

WHAMO
Now the worst part of all of this is that the actual whites of his eye started swelling to the point where the iris was indented in the swollen white part. It was extremely scary and since neither Paul nor I had ever seen (or heard of ) someones whites of their eye swelling we immediately took him to the ER. Now before we left we gave him some benedryl, eye drops, washed his hands, face, and changed his clothes.....but BOY it must have been really uncomfortable because poor Jacob was really vocal with how much his eye was hurting him. Try keeping a 2.5 year old from rubbing his eyes...it isn't easy. The doctor did say that it could have been due to allergen overload since playing in cut grass with a dog could have overloaded him. He was also rubbing his eye after touching the dog which is key here, because he has been around this dog once or twice before with no problems.

We managed to get home by 11:30pm and got him to bed by midnight. By this morning the whites of his eye was back to normal but his outer eye was still swollen. We have him on some medicine and will continue to keep an eye out (no pun intended) on how he physically reacts to dogs. As I have said in a previous post....PLEASE NO MORE DOCTORS!!!!

The pink NIGHTMARE!!!

The pink NIGHTMARE!!!
(April 2010)

Well poor Jacob has had a heck of a time the past few weeks. I am proud to say that my son is pretty darn healthy. He has had (up until the past few weeks) only 2 fevers which were very low grade, no ear infections, only 1 flu, and a few not that big of a deal runny noses. Overall the visits to the doctor have only been 4 times in his entire 32 months.

I have heard from many other parents that he is very healthy and I have to agree. So I couldn't tell you what has happened the past few weeks. I can't blame it on playgroups because I only have 2 playgroups and each playgroup only has 4 other kids and I am friends with the other moms and we keep a very close eye on the spreading of germs. He isn't in preschool, or day care, and other than shopping carts (which he rarely ever rides in) there isn't anything different we have done over the past 4 weeks that we haven't been doing his whole life. I am a creature of habit so tend to do the same things and visit the same places all the time.

So right before we went to Disney Jacob got a serious case of croup with a 103.5 fever and he had to be placed on breathing treatments and a steroid to help the labored breathing he was having. He got over the croup but then got a big dose of allergies when we came back from Disney. Last year he had allergies (his Dad and I have bad allergies) but we dealt with them with benedryl and claritin. This year however those medicines aren't helping at all. My poor guy looks like he has been beat up with his puffy red eyes and the tons of snot!

THEN as if he wasn't feeling bad enough we all get a cold....the cold wasn't the problem though. He kept having this very very very low grade fever (99.7) for about 5 days. I finally took him into the doctor only to hear that he had a minor ear infection in one ear. Well he had NEVER had an ear infection at all so I thought, OK, lets get these antibiotics going and get on with a healthy spring/summer!

I don't know how common this is, and I am sure that if Jacob was old enough to read he would be mortified by me putting this on his blog, buuuuutttttttt.....

This crazy pink stuff turned my boys insides into acid and by the 4th dose (two doses a day, so less than 48 hours after starting) he was having extreme diarrhea 3 times a day and his poor little bootie was raw!!! He was having stomach/intestine cramps and would just lay on the floor and cry!!! Needless to say I took him off immediately and started to try and feed him yogurt with probiotics. I called the doc and told him what happened and he wants to see him next week. He said that his infection was so minor that 4 doses might have cleared it up so we might not have to continue the course of medicine. I don't know, I just can't believe the reaction he had. I remember being on it as a kid and it didn't bother me. Paul's family have very sensitive guts and are allergic to a lot of stuff so this is probably just another allergy I can add to Jacob's list!!

So no more pink stuff for Jacob!!!

Easter festivities!

Easter Festivities!
(April 2010)

I know that it has been over a week since Easter, but we seemed to have gotten a dose of allergies as our "Welcome to Spring" gift this year so my mind has been a little foggy!!!

This year was a pretty cool year for Easter, of course we got back from Disney World on Good Friday and then the weather was soooo phenomenal we FINALLY got to have an Easter egg hunt without having to bundle up in coats and hats! Since Jacob is 2.5 this year he was visited by the Easter bunny. With us being away though the week prior we didn't actually talk to him about the yearly visitor so the look of surprise when he came downstairs and saw his basket of goodies was priceless.
Dinner this year was great, and almost every plate/bowl was licked clean! Then the real party began with the Easter egg hunt. The way we work it in our family is that every child participating brings 5 eggs filled with money/candy/small toy and then the adults hide the eggs outside. Each child that brought eggs are allowed to hunt for eggs and they can each get 5....so essentially you are taking home the same amount that you brought.


We also got a great family picture this year under the blooming cherry trees!!

Disney World!!!

Disney World!
(3/28/10 - 4/2/10)

Well we did it! We not only survived taking a 2.5 year old and a 7 month old to Disney World but we actually did it during Spring Break (aka the BUSIEST DANG TIME OF THE YEAR!!!). So for those of you wondering "Why on earth would you go to Disney during Spring Break?" the answer is quite simple....Paul had a business conference in Orlando for this week, and since everything revolving around him (hotel, food, and flight) was being paid for we figured that the savings in money would justify going during this busy season.

Wellllll....... it is true that it was a nice trip and I would go again if the opportunity presented itself, I would however do things a little different. We tried to go to parks most of the days and to give you an idea of how that went all I can say is that one day they actually closed down the park to new people at 11:30 in the morning! They reached capacity 2 1/2 hours after opening!!! AAAAAHHHHH

The park tickets are VERY expensive so we could have just done parks two days and done other things the other days, but we had already bought the tickets so felt like we needed to go and try and have fun. We did have fun, but only rode 5 rides and saw 4 shows in 4 days!!! YEP you read that right!! SIGH!!

But you know what, we tried to keep positive, and Jacob didn't seem to mind the crowds (too young to understand) so overall I still call the trip a success! We plan on going again in about 5 years, and during the off season!!!

I uploaded pics and there is a link up top on the left!!!

Getting prepared!

Getting Prepared!
(March 2010)


Well we are heading out to Disney World in 4 days, and Jacob has started getting excited (at least as excited as you can get for not understanding much about what we are doing!). We have had to explain things to him in "Toddler Terms" which means that since he watches "Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse" on the Disney Channel, we have been telling him that we are going to go see Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie, and Pluto at the Clubhouse! In fact we told him that we were going to go swimming at "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and that we needed to try on last years swim gear and he was all for it, in fact he is sooooo for it that he has been wearing his swim suit for the past three days. The first day it was nice out so it was just like shorts and shirt, the second and third days however have been chilly, but no fear, we just put them on overtop of his clothes!

He wore that outfit to our playgroup, to Target, the grocery store, and of course the following day while we decorated Easter eggs! Gotta love those Toddlers! I wish I could throw fashion out the window and go out in public thinking that my bright orange and blue swim trunks were THE BOMB!!!

Wish us luck in Disney, we are heading out with a 2.5 year old and a 7 month old!! But hey if you can't find something for kids to do in Disney, you probably shouldn't have kids...right???

St. Patricks Day Crafts!!

St. Patricks Day Crafts!!!
(March 2010)

This week I decided to still work on teaching Jacob his colors, but to try and incorporate some St. Patty's day crafts in the mix! Here is what we worked on!

We got this free printable from freekidscrafts.com and we used more of our fruit ring cereal to work on our colors and to make the rainbow at the pot of gold for St. Patricks Day. This craft had to be done over two days though, because the reality of the situation is that Jacob is only 2.5 and he has the attention span of a .....well.....2.5 year old!!! So he didn't want to finish it all in one sitting. It got done eventually and we talked about the colors as we glued them!

We got this idea from here, and this blog is great and has tons of ideas! Jacob loved doing the suncatchers for Valentines Day so this one was a no brainer for this week! I just found an image online of a cauldron and cut it to work for this suncatcher!! 

Learning my colors is YUMMY!!!

Learning my colors is YUMMY!!!
(March 2010)

We are still working on our colors this week, but I decided that learning can be YUMMY too!!! What better way to work on our colors and shapes then by using fruit ring cereal!!! Here are a few things that we worked on today!

I got this idea from KidsSoup.com it is a great website for ideas and crafts/lessons for teaching pre-school aged children. Jacob loved it because for every fruit ring he glued he got to eat two or three! We talked about each color as we glued it onto the butterfly!

This next craft we did was more about shapes than colors, but could be used for colors as well. I got an image and printed it twice, once in black and white and once in color. I then cut out the shapes from the colored one and Jacob got to find the shapes in the image and then glue them down. The only problem I had with this craft is that Jacob is very particular and if he couldn't get the shape glues EXACTLY where it needed to be he would throw a fit....oh well!! He will learn!

My favorite color is GREEEEENNNNN!!!

My favorite color is GREEEEEENNNNN!!!
(March 2010)

Now that I have started focusing on Jacob's schooling/learning I have been finding some great blogs and websites that offer free or for a very cheap yearly price lesson plans, printables, songs, crafts, etc....

I have been working with Jacob on his colors and we are finding it a little difficult, probably because he is only 2.5 years old. He knows all of the words that are colors, but what usually happens is that when you ask him "What color is this??" he ALWAYS responds GREEEENNNN, when you say no then he says YEEELLLOOWW, then red, then blue, brown....etc.....

However if you ask him to "go get the red ball" he will get the red ball....hhhhmmmm...interesting...

Here are some of the lessons we are doing to help Jacob get his colors down.

 

Magformers Multi Colored Magnetic 3d Building Set 30 Pieces

These Magformers are pretty cool for a number of reasons, first they are magnetic and Jacob is going through a phase right now where he loves magnets. They are also triangles and squares and come in expander sets with other shapes too. So as we are working with our colors we are also talking about shapes. These magnetic shapes stack up small enough to take with you and we had a very nice sit down lunch in a restaurant the other day and kept a 2.5 year old entertained the WHOLE TIME! Which you know is a feat of itself! Some of the games I have been playing with these blocks are:
1) stack them up according to shape
2) stack them up according to color
3) As I am building something with them I ask Jacob to give me a specific shape/color.

This is a quick thing that I started doing after reading this post at Tired, Need Sleep. Now hers are obviously cooler than mine, but my guy is a little younger and I am still working at a basic level with color recognition. I would ask Jacob to show me where "yellow" is and if he did that correctly he would get the yellow sticky foam circle to put on the caterpillar. Again I worked with colors and shapes with this craft!

Lastly this week we worked on our fine motor skills as well as matching and colors. I got this idea online (can't remember where), but you take a simple $1.99 pack of 50 clothes pins and some markers and a paper plate and you make a color wheel. Jacob simple would match the clothes pin to the same color and if I was around when he did it I would reinforce what color it was when he did it. I also worked with him and asked him to give me a specific clothes pin and I would attach it to the plate.

I have more color projects/lessons that we will be doing this week and some of them even involve St. Patricks Day!

Oh the wonderful things you can make with......

Oh the wonderful things you can make with......
(February 2010)


This week we continued our homemade crafts! I got the coolest video from our local library called "50 Greatest Kid Concoctions". If you haven't rented or seen this video and you have a toddler you need to really go out right now and get it! We picked some of the coolest crafts to make this week, and will be continuing the homemade concoctions in the weeks to come! These are a few of our favorites (and very easiest) crafts!

Oh the wonderful things you can make with.....

KOOL-AID!!!

As any parent of a toddler might know, they love lip balm....my little guy seems to think that his lips are always chapped and that to apply this savior of lip moisture he must take his finger and dig out the tasty treat and slather it all over his lips/mouth/face! This although cute, can become expensive! So why not homemade lip balm! Here is the recipe!

Drink Mix Lip Balm
2 TBS of vegetable shortening, melted
stir in one package of any flavor kool-aid!
Pour into a small container and allow to harden!

Awesome lip balm!!!


The next thing we made with kool-aid was fruity play dough.
My little guy loves play dough and although it isn't expensive and I don't really have to make it at home, I thought this would be a great change in our play routine, plus Jacob loves to help me in the kitchen! Here is the recipe!

Fruity Play Dough
2 1/4 cups flour
4 TBS cooking oil
2 TBS kool-aid (about 2 packets)
1 cup salt
1 cup water
(you will need some extra dusting flour to knead after mixing all ingredients, I also added a little food coloring to make my colors more vibrant)



the final project we made with kool-aid was scratch and sniff paints! This one is really great because it makes a paint that is the consistency of water colors, but when it drys it smells nice, Jacob loved this one! Here is the recipe!

Scratch and Sniff Paint
1 TBS warm water
1 TBS kool-aid (about one package)
mix together, and that is it!!! Pretty simple!!!


Next week we will be making...."Oh the wonderful things you can make with....."

GLUE!!!

Seriously, those are AWESOME....just wait and see!!!

Snow coma!

Snow coma!!
(2/16/10)


Well we are two weeks since the two blizzards of 2010 and we are still digging out! Unfortunately we live in the boonies back a 2 mile DIRT road and we had a few days of strong winds that decided to blow 4 and 6 ft snow drifts over our road and yard. So what do you do when you have 6ft snow drifts you may ask???? Well you make a SNOW FORT!!!! Jacobs cousins came over and they even ate their lunch and drank hot cocoa out in the fort. It was too windy for a roof (we had a tarp but couldn't secure it good enough). The last picture is Jacob succumbing to the snow coma after getting some food and warm cocoa in his tummy! We had to wake him up and take him inside for a very loooonnnngggg nap!

We finally got out a few days ago and have been out every day since!!!! I can't stand anymore days at home so all of our crafts and projects have been put on hold until I can stand staying in my house again!!!

By the way, this is how we finally got out of our house!!!! We had to call in the big guns, the plow on the family tractor just couldn't make a dent in all the snow and the drifts! So luckily a neighbor farmer had a tractor with an 8ft snow blower on it!







In addition to this post, check to the right under blog archive and read all of the "Snow" posts. Titles "Enough Already", "Enough Already - AGAIN!", "SNOW-Mageddeon", "How to survive cabin fever with a toddler" and finally "How to survive cabin fever with a toddler - Part 2".

Cabin fever with a toddler - Part 2!

Cabin Fever with a toddler - Part 2!!!
(2/12/10)

Well we have been stuck in the house for exactly 7 days now (one week) and I have to say that I am about to go insane. In one week we got 43" of snow....now to put that into perspective for everyone the average counter top height in a kitchen is 36" so go stand next to your counter and imagine the snow being 7" taller than that!!!!! Add to that the gusting winds and 6ft+ snow drifts and the fact that I live in the boonies down a 2 mile DIRT road that the state seems to always forget about I don't think I will be getting out into civilization until at least Sunday!

Luckily I stocked up on craft supplies before the snow, so Jacob and I have been able to make a few things. Some of the crafts are from the "The Toddler Busy Book" and some are from my head, and then of course some are from other blogs that I read. Here are a few of the successes that we have found!

The snow is waaaay too high for Jacob to play in so why not bring the snow indoors! He played for an hour and a half with this snow, and is currently playing with another batch of "sink snow" while I sit here and type this post!



Jacob just loved the contact paper craft we did a few days ago so thought of something new! I took a paper plate and cut a heart shape out of the middle of it. I then took a square of contact paper and stuck it to the underside of the plate so that the sticky part was facing up. Then Jacob took red/white colored sugar and red/white sprinkles and put them on the sticky contact paper. Once he was done, he colored the outside edges with his paint pens and then I put another square of contact paper over the exposed sprinkles so that they wouldn't fall off. It makes for a great suncatcher!!
This next idea is a combo of two or three different ideas that I have gotten from all over the place including the book mentioned above and from other blogs. This is Jacobs treasure box. I went to the local warehouse shopping center and bought a 10lb bag of rice, went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of small "treasures" and voila!! You have yourself a treasure box. Now please keep in mind if you do this to put this box on a sheet or something to catch the mess! I turned this into a learning game as well. We are working on our colors so the other day I made a piece of paper with the color purple on it and it was Jacob's goal to find all of the purple balls and put them on the paper! It worked pretty good, and I bought these balls in 5 different colors so will be able to do this color paper project many more times!


Finally I got this idea from another blog (and for the life of me can't find the link for it, sorry!) but this was done using a pack of $.99 cent wooden beads and a $.99 heart ice cube tray from Target. Jacob uses a big spoon to scoop the balls from the bowl into each of the openings in the tray. It took him awhile to get the hang of it, but it is building his patience and fine motor skills!

Last but not least, does any toddler NOT love a box fort! Need I say more???