Today Jack is...52 weeks old.

You know what 52 weeks means? One year old! Woo-hoo! I can't believe my little baby is a year old. Nor can I really believe that I've done 52 of these weekly posts. I don't know if I'll keep them up. I mean, I hadn't planned on it because who in their right mind keeps track of a 65 week old toddler? But, at the same time, I like posting all my pictures from the week. So we'll see.

The pic above is Jack playing with his new toy guitar. He loves John's real guitar so much that I thought he'd like a toy one. And, guess what? He does. He's so cute.

This week our little guy further explored the magical world of toilets. He loves flushing the toilet and now is amazed by the swirling water and has a tendency to stick his hand in there to play with it. Yeah, pretty gross but the joy he gets out of it is pretty adorable.

There was another zoo trip this week where Jack ignored the giant 400 pound tortoises and instead focused on the cool wooden fence.

This week we tried to teach Jack about sharing and, shockingly, he sort of started giving stuff to me and John when we asked. He would pass it to us (and then take it back...but I don't worry about that.) Here he is sharing his Cheerio with daddy.

Of course, when his friends came over for his play group, he didn't exactly continue his sharing trend with his toys. But I'm hoping he'll learn in the next...4 or 5 years.

Anyways, his big birthday is tomorrow and John and I are excited to celebrate with him. There will be pictures of the celebration next week when I get back into town. Until then, more pics from the week!

Can you believe how tall he's gotten? He used to have to stand on his tip toes to reach the piano but no more!

Rocking out!




Playing with a birthday present from Aunt Julie




Sporting a pretty sweet cap for his rainy trip to Target


Me and my birthday boy

And because you have never have too many giggling videos...

Five for Friday: Essentials for Jack's first year

5. Baby Bjorn - This help me survive a lot of months when Jack hated his stroller, car seat, and couldn't ride in a shopping cart

4. White noise - Any sleep aid is a good thing

3. Fisher Price Laugh n' Learn table - Out of all of his toys, this is the one he's played with most

2. Upholstered recliner/glider - I've spent many many hours napping with the boy in this chair

1. Exercise Ball - I don't want to tell you how many hours I've logged on the evil ball

John on: "Boys Day Out"

On Sunday I headed to San Diego to go to my dear friend Leigh's bridal shower. I left at 8am and got home at 9pm. It was the longest John has had to watch Jack. I knew my husband would handle it with ease, but I was still sad to leave my boys for a whole day. So while my pictures from the day comprised of this...

...what was John doing with our son? I'll let him tell you.

Where the Hell is Mommy?

Well, Jack didn’t quite understand that Mommy had a party to go to in a magical place called La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya, he didn’t get that either. Yeah, one of many things in the future I won’t be able to explain to him.)

Lisa left early in the morning to head south so she could spend some time with her folks before the afternoon wedding shower for Auntie Leigh. This left me with the boy for a solid full day. Something I’ve never tackled solo before. Luckily, Sunday morning meant Studio City Farmers Market, which is a solid Jack outing. I got him prepped, dressed him in solid earth-tones and a sweet hoodie. And then I added a flair with the red socks. A sharp look:

I don’t have any pics from the Farmers Market, because I didn’t want to take any chances without backup. I wasn’t into the idea of juggling fresh strawberries, cauliflower, and Pink Lady apples along with an unhappy Jack. (Mind you, Jack’s been really pissy lately due to his molars coming in. It doesn’t take much to set him off.) I gave him a bag of Clementines to play with and moved swiftly from stand to stand. Didn’t have time to see if Angelina Jolie was showing up that day with her brood. Didn’t even have time for banter with the large-chested Gypsy girl who “sells” us the amazing Bolani bread every week. (I put “sells” in quotes, because it verges on “swindles,” because we can’t walk away from that stand without dropping 20-30 bucks. On bread. She’s that good.)

Little boy did me the courtesy of falling asleep on the ride home, which made for an easy morning nap. I held him and watched the Lakers game while he slept. That worked out well.

Knowing how Jack operates I knew I was going to have to venture out to a park after lunch. We went to one I hadn’t been but once and surprise, surprise, it was crowded on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Jack crawled all over the place, and I tried to do as little “heli-parenting” as I could stomach. I’m a little quicker to jump to Jack’s aid when he really doesn’t need it than Lisa. But I tried my best to walk the thin line of letting the boy be the boy, and letting Jack split his face open on the day Daddy’s on watch. It was tough. Then, just in case I wasn’t sure he was all little boy, he got as dirty as he possibly could in the span of 10 seconds, which resulted in my favorite pic of the day:

Passed out again on the ride home. (Amazing for a kid who constantly seemed like he was going to spontaneously combust in his first few months in the car.) The nap thing I have down.

At the end of the day, Jack was more into entertaining himself. From the piano to the hamper to his basket of puzzles, which he scattered across his room. We got to dinner pretty easily. It was from dinner on that began the series of missteps.

First, at dinner, he was successfully eating his healthier baby food and some strawberries, when he pointed to the area where we have the bread. Obviously indicating he wanted some cheesy bread, I immediately jumped to, abandoning the healthier alternative for the cheesy bread. So when I went back to the fruit et al, he was disinterested. Because there was cheesy bread. Then he decided the cheesy bread was better for throwing. And since the fruit ship had sailed, so had dinner along with it. Took my lumps and retreated to bath time.

Looking back, the secret to bathtime/bedtime is to be a step or even two ahead of Jack. I was instead a step off. I began undressing him before I had his PJs out or his sleep sack laid out. Which resulted in me having to change gears in the middle of battling him to remove his clothes. He let me know that he didn’t approve, and from there, I allowed Jack to dictate the tempo instead of taking the lead. The book progression went out the window. Half way through “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb” I remembered I hadn’t added Jack’s bath song to my iPhone. Another misstep. So I ended up singing “Under Pressure” to him a cappella. I almost forgot his towel. I was getting by. Barely. My hope was the bath would calm him down.

And it did. Temporarily. But once he was done, he was done quick. When I tag team bath time with Lisa, I pull Jack from the water and “shake, shake, shake” as we call it. Then hand the boy to Lisa who has Jack’s towel in receiving formation, swooshes it around him, and whisks him away to bedtime. So I did part one swiftly, only to realize part two wasn’t standing there. So I’m holding a wet, pissed off kid and grabbing for a towel even though my clothes had ultimately done most of the work for the towel. Got him dry and, as he fought me through getting dressed, I thought to myself, Lisa must be really, really good at this.

heart,
john

Our first family Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day was quite different than the ones in our past. Turns out that the little guy kind of changes things when it comes to romantic holidays.

We decided to head to one of Jack's favorite places, the zoo. And at the end of a long outing, Jack gave me one of the cutest Valentine's Day photo opportunities I had ever seen.

Later that night we attempted to go to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. It was fairly successful, though he was pretty squirmy and cranky at times. I had to pull him out of the high chair and read him a book to calm him down.

We capped off the night with an "About a Boy" screening. All in all, a great Valentine's Day. Hope you had a good one as well!

Who's a big boy now?!

Hi there. Notice anything different? That's right. Jack got his first haircut! Man, what a big boy he is now. He looks so cute. We decided to go to a special kids hair salon for his first haircut because I didn't think he'd sit still for very long and I thought the professionals could handle him. I was right. They were used to it and handled his squirmy-ness just fine.

The nice lady threw a hair apron on him and I tried to distract him with a book while she wet his hair.





As the haircut took shape, I saw just how adorable he looked. And it aged him like a whole year!





Once the stylist was done, she indulged the silly new parents and daddy with a camera by doing some funny hairstyles.





When it was all done they gave us a cute little certificate to commemorate his first haircut with a Polaroid pic and a lock of hair.



When we got home I was pretty pleased. He is one handsome dude.

Photo Challenge Week 22 - Love

Next week...Signs.

Today Jack is...51 weeks old.

This week Jack was mostly busy with his two young house guests. It was interesting to see him interact with kids in our house. Obviously he has his play group but having kids in the house when he woke up and went to bed was different. He took it as well as any only child would I suppose. Most of time he was smiley and intrigued by the girls. And a few times he just seemed to want them away from his toys and out of his house. But I thought he did pretty well.

He really seems to learn more and understand more every week. This week John got him to "give" him object after object to practice sharing. It was pretty neat. And one of Jack's favorite new games is to empty out his clothes hamper and then put each item of clothing back in, one at a time.

His obsession with laundry apparently knows no bounds though because he loves diving into the laundry basket. Hasn't quite figured out how to get out, but still....

Since John was home and the weather was gorgeous, we decided to take another trip to the zoo. Jack loved seeing the giraffe up close and personal.

This was as up close and personal as he could get to the gorillas.

For some reason he really wanted to hold his daddy's hand for part of the trip. It was pretty darn cute.

This week for the very first time, we had to give Jack some Infant Tyenol. It's really quite a miracle that he made it to almost a year without getting sick, but it was still hard to see the little guy in pain. He had a fever but I'm not sure if it was from teething or if he had a cold and cough. Anyways, all the aches and pains meant that he was quite cuddly. And needed something to gnaw on.

And now, more pics from the week!

Riding the chipmunk at the park

Playing daddy's guitar

Flying an airplane

Showing off his eating skills

Playing with Delilah's princess wand. He'd never seen such a thing.

Five for Friday: Ways to De-stress

My top 5 ways to de-stress:

5. Play scrabble on my iPhone

4. Take a drive (provided there is no traffic) with the windows down and the music turned up

3. Curl up with a big frozen yogurt on the couch

2. Take a hot (very hot) and long shower

1. Indulge in a massage at the local spa