More Easter Pictures

Jacks first Easter

Baby Jack had his first Easter with an egg hunt and a basket. We had a busy day visiting all of the family, but he hung in there with a 25 minute nap lasting him the whole day. We hadn't seen everyone in awhile and we had a lot to show off. Not only is Jack jibber jabbering more and more each day, taking steps on his own occasionally, he has two more teeth on top coming in. Because one tooth isn't enough to handle at once we are lucky to get TWO! He has been taking it pretty well, a little clingy and not too hungry these past couple of days.
We have been busy little travelers too. We started off our Spring Break going to Palm Springs with Aunt Meredith and Tia Cristina for the weekend. We had a lot of fun laying out at the pool, doing a little swimming, making friends with Dolce (a little white, fluffy dog), and shopping at the outlets of course. We were home for less then 24hrs. unpacked, packed again and were off to Santa Barbara for 3 days. Jack met his cousin Matthew and his mommy and daddy Jamie and Jason. We went to the zoo and played with Matthews choo-choos. Jack really liked to play with the trains, especially pulling them off of the track after we had worked so hard to get all the cars together. We had a lot of fun visiting them!
Now we are home and getting back to our normal schedule. Jack is happy to be out of the car for hours at a time and roaming all over the house. His little language has changed in the last week. He's saying things that sound like teeckleteeckle and goudagouda. He's trying his hardest to talk to us, maybe we should start baby sign with him. He is such a love and loves to give hugs, especially to his mommy. Any day now we will be walking. He gets brave and takes a step or two here and there.
For some reason I got this crazy hair and decided that we had created a really bad habit. I've known for awhile that we had started a bad thing, but loved every minute of it. At night when it was time for Jack to go to bed we would lay in our bed, all three of us, sometimes four with Kona of course. Jack would have his bottle and we would lay there until he fell asleep. In the beginning it was easy, he would fall asleep immediately. As he learned to crawl and roll over he would be almost asleep and then start rolling all over the bed. It started to take longer and longer and I would even fall asleep with him and then big Jack would have to put him in his crib. I decided this was going to end and we were going to try the "crying it out" method. It sounds awful and it is awful to be living in a house when this is going on. So Thursday night, I gave him his bottle, he was tired which is perfect, put him in his bed, walked out and let him cry and cry. After five minutes I went in tucked him in, laid him back down, told him good night and I loved him. The crying continued for 35 minutes that night. The whole time Jack and I are sitting on the couch watching him in the monitor as I tell him it will be okay he will go to sleep. The whole time I was hoping the baby experts were right and that he would fall asleep. Friday night was better, Saturday night wasn't so good and tonight took ten minutes. Hopefully it will be better each night, that's what the experts say, whoever these "experts" are anyways. I'll keep you updated on the sleep thing.
So now that I have written a novel here is a pick of Jack today! Isn't he so cute and so big!

10 months old

Yes it is true our little man is 10 months old today. We can hardly believe it either. Now that he is such a big boy he is trying to do big boy things. Today while I was putting his laundry away, Jack was playing with him in the room and he was trying to stand on his own. He'll hold on to things, forget that he can't quite stand on his own yet, let go, and stand for a couple seconds before plonking down on his butt.

Now that he is moving around everywhere he is sleeping better. He's taking longer naps and sleeping for longer periods of time through the night (Well, some times he is).

We had our 3rd swimming lesson today and it went SO well. There were no tears, a lot of splashing and even some jibber jabber. We are making some great improvements with this swimming stuff. Before you know it we'll have the next Michael Phelps! (right!)

At his last Dr. appointment he was doing great. Jack had to take him to this one b/c I was at home dying with the flu. He got away easy, no shots! He weighed 19.8 lbs. and 28 in. long. He's still a little on the slender side but nothing to be concerned about. The kid eats I promise. He'll have his next check up the day after his 1st birthday.

We'll update the next time something big happens... like walking!

Love you!

Moni and Jacks

Swimming lessons & another chomper

Hello!

Jack and I have started baby swim classes. We had our second lesson on Saturday. So far he's not liking them too much. He cried the entire first class with a little screaming here and there. He didn't like going underwater or floating on his back. I didn't like the singing. You would think with being a teacher I would be over the public singing, but I'm not. So far he is the only baby that has cried. All the other kids go with the flow; splash around, swim when their supposed to and are excited to jump back into the water. I'm hoping he will get used to it soon. So far it has been an experience. We're going to try and bring his favorite bath toy, the pink squirting starfish this weekend to make it a little bit more comfortable for him.

More teeth... Yes after a couple long days and nights of a very fussy baby the darn thing came through. He didn't want to eat, he cried for no reason, wanted to be held, wanted to be put down, wanted to sit in the high chair, wanted to get out. The only thing that made him happy was Kona. We woke up on Thursday and there it was, his second bottom tooth. The first one is growing in and he's starting to look like such a big boy. I'll try to take a picture of them, it's hard since he doesn't stay still for long.

Thats all with us right now! We'll fill you in after his Dr. appt on Thursday.

Monica

Most recent Baby Jack Pics

Here are some pictures of Jack from this morning. I tried to get one with the tooth, but it didn't work. He was definitely hamming it up for the camera. He just started making these new faces on Friday where he closes his eyes and smiles big. I got it a bit in some of these.
I forgot to tell you he is waving hi and bye and claps when you say YAY! He claps for himself a lot when he thinks he's done something good. We're working on mama b/c he's got the dadada down really good. He just doesn't use it towards Jack, its part of his rambling.
Look how big he is, 8 1/2 months!

There's a tooth!

That's right! We discovered last week that Jack has his first tooth. It is the lower right if you are looking at him. I only noticed it b/c I stuck my finger in his mouth and it hurt when he bit down. He didn't seem to be fussy at all with this one so we got off lucky. It would be great if all of them came in this easy.
He's at the age where he supposed to be trying different finger foods. You would think Cheerios are a good one to start with. He hates them! He likes playing with them and feeding them to the dog. It amazes me how smart they can be at such a young age. He'll put his hands over the o's so they'll stick to his hand, lean over the side of his high chair and move his fingers till they fall off. When they're all off and Kona has eaten them he'll go back and do it again. I try and put them in his mouth and he seals his lips shut. I've gotten a couple in during breakfast and he uses his tongue to push them right back out.
Baby proofing!!! Now that we are crawling full speed, crawling up and down our step with no problem and now starting to stand things have got to move. I feel like I need to put padding on every corner and edge. He really likes the cable box and surround sound b/c of all the pretty lights. He will occasionally turn off the volume to the tv and not even know what he's doing. He opens the dvd player and reaches in for all the dvds. That's one of his favorites. Baby gates are up everywhere! Kona gets so confused with all of them, she doesn't know where to go. Both her and the baby will be standing at one crying.
We're having a lot of fun, he's keeping us on our toes. At times it is a race to get him to bed so we can go to bed too. When was the last time you went to bed at 8pm 3 nights in a row?

We're Crawling!!!

Yes that is right, Baby Jack is crawling! He's still working on getting it to look like what you would typically call crawling. Right now he looks like a seal moving across the sand. He's gotten really fast at it too. On Tuesday he started to get the knee and cross hand crawl down a little. He gets frustrated b/c he can't go as fast and returns to the seal crawl.

For Christmas we got a little video camera to document all of his upcoming milestones. For those of you that know me well, this is a big accomplishment. I extremely DISLIKE being on camera! (We don't say hate in my class) I don't like hearing my voice so I stay away from them. Of course while I was video taping Jack crawl after Kona he managed to get his first bruise, smacked his cheek against the coffee table. You guys wont be seeing that video. As soon as I figure out how the get the videos on the computer I will be getting them on. (baby steps here)

Since I was home for a couple of weeks we were able to spend a lot of time together. It is amazing how much every month gets better and better. Each month I keep saying I love this age the best so far, but I really have only experienced 7 months. I know the time ahead is going to keep getting better.

Jack has such a cute personality. He loves to laugh, and pretty much anything makes him laugh. I look at him while he's eating and he cracks up. Kona walks by and he thinks it's hilarious. She licks his hands and face and he is rolling over on the ground. Rissa got him to laugh so much one night just by rolling an apple on the counter, and he was rolling it back. I will definitely have to get that video on for you.

Aunt Casey took some amazing pictures of us as a family and a couple of our little man on his own. If you saw our X-mas card you have seen one of her many great works of art. Here are a couple more.

Enjoy the pics! We love you!