Bookworm

It is fair to say that Nathan and I are both bookworms, and have been since we were little. I used to carry around a little bag with books, cassete tapes and a tape recorder so I could listen to them wherever I went, and Nathan's favorite book was the Sesame Street Dictionary.

Jack seems to be following in our footsteps in the books category. His new favorite thing to do in the car is read books. We went to Liberty today to look at houses and he looked at the same book for the entire 30-minute car trip.

Another funny book incident happened one evening this week while Nathan was supposed to be reading books to Jack. I was cleaning up the kitchen and realized I didn't hear Nathan's voice. This was what I walked out to find.

Both of them -- as happy as could be, just reading their books together.

Snow Day

Even though we've had quite a bit of snow this winter, we hadn't taken Jack out in it to play until today. He has the perfect snowsuit, thanks to my mom and dad. He didn't care much about the snow, good or bad. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but he did like looking at it out the window during dinner.

He's changing so much lately. He's currently getting his 12th tooth, becoming much more confident walking and trying lots of new foods. He seems to like spicy foods. So far his favorite grown up foods are taco and fajita meat, chili and baked beans.

New Favorite Pictures

Today Jack learned how to say "cheese" when he's getting his picture taken. His discovery resulted in some pretty cute pictures, or at least I think so! Two of them are almost exactly the same, he's just showing more teeth in the last one.

Big News!

Considering our typically infrequent posting schedule, two posts in one day must mean something huge has happened. See for yourself!

Birthday Boy

Jack turned one on Saturday. He had quite the exciting day, with lots of family coming to celebrate with him. He enjoyed playing with his new toys and going to our neighborhood St. Patrick's Day parade. Much to our disappointment, he wasn't impressed with his birthday cupcake. He did stick his fingers in it and rub chocolate frosting on his face, but he would have no part of eating it.

Here are a couple of pictures from his big day. This first one is Jack opening presents with Aunt Lindsay. He was really excited about waving the wrapping paper as fast as he could.

Brownies and Milk

Well, I don't know if life can get much better for Jack. Tonight he got to try brownies for the first time. First, Nathan tried to feed him a little piece, but Jack would have none of it. Instead, he wanted to bite his own piece off of Nathan's bigger brownie. And he took quite a big bite. As you can see, eating brownies is lots of fun when you're 11 months old.

Since he was eating brownines, he then needed some milk. I introduced whole milk this week and he likes it okay, but he really liked it after his brownies. Drinking milk, however, is much more serious than eating brownies -- especially when you flip the straw and get it all over your face.

Yes He Can

I hope you'll find this amusing, no matter where you may fall on the political spectrum.

"Ladies and Gentlemen...the next President of the United States..."

P.S. If you want to make your own, here's the link

Why I love my swiffer

Jack discovered a great new toy today -- my swiffer! He played with it for 30 minutes. His interest in this new found toy let me dust the entire upstairs and pack away a ton of his baby clothes that are too little.

Other news in Jack world is that he learned how to throw. He doesn't know, however, that we only throw balls. So he throws his books, his car, or whatever else is laying around. He claps for himself every time after he throws something.

He also discovered today he can point to his mouth when I ask him where it is. And I think he is just figuring out that he can touch his head. I know, that sounds weird, but he keeps putting things up to his head and looking amazed. To be 11 months old -- which he will be tomorrow!

Laundry and Urgent Care

This week, Jack and I both learned new things. He discovered it's really fun to take laundry out of the basket. I discovered it's not fun to go to urgent care, especially when the cause is blood coming from Jack's mouth.

First, the cute stuff -- here are some pictures of Jack playing with the laundry. This kept him busy for about 20 minutes; that's an eternity in Jack-time.



Next, the urgent care visit. I put him down for his nap on Monday about 1:30. He cried a little bit, nothing out of the ordinary, and then got quiet. About 10 minutes later he started crying again so I went up to check on him. I walked in to his nursery to find blood all over his sheets. This was a lot of blood. There were two main spots and they were each about the size of a soccer ball. So, I freaked out, got him up and could not figure out where the blood had come from. I called our pediatrician's office and the nurse I spoke with wasn't too concerned about it. She said it was probably a bloody nose and to call her back if it happened again.

45 minutes later it happened again. This time I was changing his diaper and he was chewing on a toy. I looked at his mouth and there was blood everywhere. It stopped after a few minutes, but I still didn't know why his mouth was bleeding. Even though it stopped I decided to take him to our pediatrician's walk-in/urgent care to see what was happening.

It turns out he somehow cut the little piece of skin that is right under your upper lip that connects to your gums. He's fine and wasn't bothered at all by the whole incident, except he did want to crawl around all over the doctor's office and I wouldn't let him.

So, we have our first urgent care visit under our belt. Unfortunately, I can see more in our future with such an active and curious little boy.

Cars

Well, Jack's interest in cars continues. Today when we picked him up from the church nursery the volunteer asked us if we knew he could say car. He conned her in to walking him around outside the nursery and looking out the window at cars.

When we got home I remembered we have a little plastic car that we have never showed him. So I found it and gave it to him, and he loves it. Here are a few pictures of him playing with his car. I probably took 20 and got only one where he would actually look at me. He was really concentrating. Cars are a very serious business.

On a non-car note, my grandma and grandpa came to visit on Friday. Jack really loves his great-grandpa, as you can see.