Aaah, young love!

I just took this one because I was experimenting with the B&W function on our digital camera, and you don't have to deal with red eye!
So I think I have mentioned before that Jacob has a girlfriend. Her name is Abby. They hang out together a couple of times a week, on average, when Abby comes to our house on Monday mornings and Jacob goes to her house on Friday afternoons. Jacob usually does not like other kids his age. He doesn't like them near him, and he certainly doesn't like them near his toys. But Abby is the exception. So far, she is the only other child that Jacob allows near him. Not only near him, they will give each other hugs and kisses. Here, you can see that Jacob is actually sharing cookies with her (unheard of). He also calls her by name. Just to give you some perspective, the only other names he knows are Mama, Dada, Pooh, Blue, Pablo, and Elmo (thanks to Abby). They are cute together. To give you some idea of the contrast, you can see there that Abby is very daintily holding her cookie with just her thumb and index finger, while Jacob has his whole hand clamped on his while cramming it into his mouth. In this picture, they are watching Fish Movie (aka Finding Nemo) together.

Jake's second halloween

So this was Jacob's third Halloween, and we didn't do anything for the first 2. So this year we thought we should do something. We were at Michael's one night getting things for making our Thanksgiving wreath (we decided last Christmas that we could make a Christmas wreath that we actually liked for cheaper than buying one that we only sort of liked, and thought we could do the same for Thanksgiving), and I put this hat on Jacob, and he wouldn't take it off. So we bought him a matching sword, and he was going around saying "Arrrrgggggh!" whenever I asked him what a pirate says. We took him to our church chili cook-off/trunk-or-treat on Saturday, and it didn't go so well. We had bought him his pumpkin for holding candy that day, and he immediately decided that it was the perfect container for his various cars he loves to play with. In fact, it was so perfect, he would not allow anything else in there. When we tried to put candy in it, he screamed. In addition, when we would try to get him to go up to a car to get candy (even when he knew the person), he screamed and tried to run off. So it didn't go as smoothly as planned.
Jacob got a "Cars" fork and spoon for his birthday, and he has been learning to use the fork (he already pretty much has the hang of a spoon). Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not. He hasn't learned yet to poke the fork into things. Lots of times he'll just pick the food up and place it on the fork. Oh well, he's learning.
Jake continues to grow and be more and more of a handful. He is every bit a 2-year old. He screams a lot more. He has recently decided he does not want to take naps at all, so he sits in his crib for 2 hours and talks to his stuffed animals (you can tell when he is talking with cookie monster because he starts growling, which he learned from me and my poor cookie monster imitation). Last night he discovered that he can pull his foot up to his nose and mouth. I'm sure his mother will love to see that!
We just finished painting our guest room. We had been wanting to do it for a while. Leigh Ann had to work several Saturdays last month, so I decided I would make myself useful while she was at work. Unfortunately, with a 2-year old, this meant that I could only work when Jacob was in his room, so that meant 2 hours during nap time and then late at night after he went to bed. I got almost all of it done over 2 Saturdays, and then last Saturday Leigh Ann came in and helped me with the rest, which included the border with the ceiling and along the base boards, as well as fixing some of my mistakes and touching up. We are happy with the results. We have now painted Jacob's room, the guest bathroom, the downstairs half bathroom, and the kitchen. The only other room we are considering painting is our bedroom, but we aren't quite ready to tackle that, and haven't even started thinking of colors.

0 . . . 1 . . . 2

Thought it might be nice to see the evolution of Jacob. Here are pictures at birth, his first birthday, and his second birthday. He has certainly changed a lot.

2 Years Old

Well, the little munchkin is now 2 years old. We had his birthday party on Saturday, and it went great. We had to do all of the decorations while he was down for his nap, so when he got up and saw everything, he started walking around in amazement, then started running around, excited. He loved seeing "coos" everywhere. The paw print cookies were a big success, and he loved the Blue that was stuck in the middle of his cake. He would not sit still for any pictures except when he was eating his cake (of which he liked the frosting the most!).
He loved all the gifts he received, as we can attest to, since they are strewn all over the living room floor. In particular, he loved the new cars and the car rug to drive them on, as well as the little train track he received (thanks Bevans), and is also now enjoying eating with the Cars spoon and fork that his Grandma and Grandpa Cate bought him.
Jacob's eating habits have changed a bit. The biggest change is that he is very picky, and other than french fries, you never know what he will and will not like. One new habit, though, is his hating having food on his hands. We attribute this to hanging out with Abby Bevan, who hates having dirty hands. So anyways, with his being new to using utensils, you can imagine what this is like. He will try to pick something up with his new fork, only to have it fall off. So he will then pick the food up, put it on the fork to eat it, and then cry out until you wipe off his now dirty hand. This can continue for the whole meal (as it did last night). We go through several paper towels at each meal, now.

A boy and his dog

Jacob continues to be fascinated with Blue. Every time he sees a paw print, he yells out "a coo, a coo." And he calls the show "Coos coos." I don't know why, because he can say "Blue." Just one of those things.
Well, this Saturday Jacob turns 2. Hard to believe that he is already 2 years old. Anybody who sees him, though, swears he is older. He is just such a big kid. Sometimes I think we expect more of him because he does look so much bigger than his age. Oh well.
We are throwing a "Blue's Clues" themed party for him this Saturday. We found cake toppers so he can have a Blue cake (not as easy as you might think). Everything is going to be blue. Somebody thought we should get a pinata shaped like Blue, but we thought Jacob might not take too well to people beating his absolute favorite character with a stick.
The weather is finally starting to change here, and it looks like Summer is on its way out. We have broken out the long pants for Jacob once again. That was no problem. The problem is that he has become quite fond of wearing sandals, and when we tried the other day to put socks and regular shoes on his feet, he threw a fit.
Jacob has definitely become more social. Originally we couldn't get him to stay in nursery, and were wondering if all our hopes of having a few peaceful hours at church would be dashed. But now he can't get in there fast enough. As soon as the closing prayer is over in Sacrament meeting and I stand up, Jacob grabs my hand and leads me to the Nursery room. He also absolutely loves the children's playroom at the YMCA where he gets to play while Leigh Ann and I work out. All you have to do is say, "Jacob, do you want to go to the gym?" and he is over at the door in a flash, ready to go.
It is amazing how many demands on your time you have as you get older. Leigh Ann and I have to plan certain activities, like shopping for Christmas gifts, over a month in advance, as Saturdays seem to get eaten up. If you don't carefully plan to get some time together, it is amazing how difficult it can be (and I'm sure Leigh Ann can attest to how bad I am more often than not at planning such time).

Quite the Chatterbox

Jacob has become even more vocal as of late, and is constantly "talking." Some of it is intelligible, some not, but he is definitely improving.
One of his favorite things to do now is sing the "ABC" song. Of course, he doesn't actually say the letters, and will substitute whatever sound he likes, but he is almost pitch perfect with the tune. And if you sing the last part to him, "Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with . . . " he will cheerfully sing "ME!"
His favorite show on now is Blue's Clues, and for anybody familiar with it, whenever Jacob sees the pawprint, he will yell out "coo," which, obviously, is him trying to say "Clue." In addition, he will carry out a whole conversation with himself, over and over, saying, "A coo, a coo . . . oh, a coo? . . . A coo!" It is hilarious as he will do this over and over. And sometimes I will draw a pawprint, and as soon as he sees it, he says "A coo."
Perhaps the funniest, though, is that in preparation for Halloween, we bought Jacob a pirate's hat and sword (he loves wearing the hat!), which, once he saw at Michael's, he had to have. On his previous favorite show, The Backyardigans, they had an episode where they all pretended to be pirates, and sang repeatedly, "A pirate says arrr!" So, after reminding Jacob of the song, every time you ask him what a pirate says, he lets out this very deep, growling, "arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!"
I need to post the pictures we took of him wearing the pirate's hat and holding his sword.

Fun In The Sun

As I said in our last post, we took a week off and spent part of the time at the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We were blessed with beautiful weather, and an amazing condo. This place was like a mansion, and I would consider moving there (marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, 3 BR, 3 BA, HDTVs in the living room and all 3 bedrooms, with DVD/VCR included). It was on the 7th floor, and we had an incredible view of the lagoon, and were right across the street from the ocean. Combine that with lots of good seafood, and we loved it. Jacob didn't think much of the water (the ocean or the swimming pool), but did love playing in the sand, after we washed the sand off of his face!
This was too cute to pass up. We wouldn't put on one of his shows (currently Blue's Clues is his favorite) in the living room, so Jacob went to join his Uncle Brian in his room to watch his TV.
Jacob didn't think much of the pool, but he absolutely loved the inflatable swimming ring we got him that was shaped like a dolphin. He has a walrus bath toy that he plays with, and apparently this dolphin looked like the walrus (to him), so he called it by the same name. He can't quite say walrus, and so the dolphin became his much beloved "Walry." He dragged "Walry" all around the pool, once in a while dipping "Walry" in and asking, "Wheresat Walry? Where is he?"

I took this picture last night! It was too cute to pass up. I even got Jacob to smile (it was actually because he had just pulled his Blue out of the wastebasket and was cheering). Jacob was great on the whole trip, and did extremely well considering the amount of time he spent in his car seat (30 hours, along with incidental traveling around town).
All in all we loved the trip. Jacob had a blast. We all got sick of watching (over and over) the Blue's Clues DVDs, which is currently Jacob's favorite show, but it was a small price to pay for him behaving so well on the trip. If anybody else is considering a trip to Gulf Shores, we would highly recommend going just a week or two after the peak season, like we did, and you will get great rates while the weather is still good. And I can recommend an excellent condo!
Now we have to settle back into the normal routine, until our next vacation! My family is making the trip out here in November for Thanksgiving, and we are all really excited. Richard is coming out from Utah, David from Korea, and my mom and Clyde from California.

Weird Eating Habits

Jacob has been a bit frustrating as of late with his ever changing eating likes and dislikes. The only constants seem to be ketchup, french fries, grilled cheese, and fruit loops. Everything else is completely hit and miss, and can change from one day to the next.
So imagine our surprise at some of the odd things that he has developed a real taste for. For one, he loves dill pickles. We tried this at one of our local BBQ places, and he just gobbled down the dill pickle slices (almost as surprising as the fact that their is halfway decent BBQ this far north of the Mason-Dixon).
He likes my Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits. In general he likes most crackers, but I thought for sure that the high pepper content in these would be a turn off. Not really, though. The little boy mooches off of me whenever I have these out.
Finally, and this was the biggest surprise, Jacob loves salsa. We went out to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant last week, and Jacob normally will munch on the tortilla chips. He kept pointing at the bowl of salsa (we assume because it looked so much like his beloved ketchup), so we pushed the bowl to him. We thought for sure he would start crying once the salsa hit his lips. This is by no means a super hot salsa - I would say mild-medium - but imagine our surprise when, rather than crying out, he proceeded to redip his chip in the salsa. For the rest of our meal, he continued to eat the salsa - not just dipping the chip to wet it, but actually scooping out the chunks and everything. Who knew?
We are heading down for a week to spend time with Leigh Ann's family. We are planning to take a couple of days and head down to the gulf coast (Gulf Shores, AL) for some sun, sand, and surf. Unfortunately, we may end up getting rain, wind, and indoor pools. Cross your fingers for us.
For Labor Day, we were daring and staged a large grill out at our humble home. In total we had 10 adults and 5 children, and our kitchen and living room were packed to capacity. It went well, though, and we had plenty of food and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. A new family that we have met through church came as well with their 3 children, along with our friends the Bevans, and a few others. Jacob played the role of the troll under the bridge, challenging all that tried to pass by his chair as he was eating. Actually, what he would do was kick (lightly) one of the other children everytime she passed by his chair.
Jacob is exactly one month away from hitting 2 years old. He continues to grow and learn. His vocabulary is increasing, and he is getting better at letting us know what he wants, but there is still a lot of gibberish mixed in with real words.
Leigh Ann just had her schedule changed at work, so she now goes in later to work, and we find that we no longer have to have a regular babysitter for Jacob, as we can now trade him off on the days that she works. This means Leigh Ann gets more time with him (we will wait to see how she survives that!). Our friends the Bevans will watch him on Fridays for a few hours, but Jacob seems to love going to their house. Their little girl comes over on Mondays, so Jacob gets to see his girlfriend twice a week. Quite the ladies' man.

Calling All Cars

As I said, one of Jacob's favorite games is to hide his cars, then turn to you and ask, "Wheresat cah?" He loves these little cars, because they are particularly easy to hide.

Sometimes eating can be so tedious, don't you think? In an effort to not be the world's worst parents when it comes to what we feed our child, we have begun to make whole meals out of vegetables. Jacob still is fond of some types of food that are green, such as peas. But sometimes, it just isn't quite as exciting as macaroni and cheese, or a grilled cheese sandwich (are you catching a common theme for his favorite foods?).
He has added quite a bit to his vocabulary as of late. Maybe it is from hanging out with his girlfriend, Abby, who is quite the accomplished speaker, and is a few months younger than Jake. He now can say car (cah), cup (cuh), shoe (soo), ball (bah), block (blah), Winnie the Pooh (Pooh), no (NO!), mommy (mommy or Mom!), daddy (dada), cheese (sounds kind of like shee, but we are confident it is cheese, because he holds up a piece of cheese when he says it). I may be leaving out a few things, but that is a pretty good list. He also understands toes, even if he will not say it, because if you ask him where his toes are, he will reach down and grab them. He can also correctly identify his bath toys, which are boats, a walrus, a shark, an octopus, and a lobster, and if you ask for each one, he will pick them out of the water and toss them at you!
Finally, what collection of children's pictures would be complete without one of your child walking around in your shoes. Jacob now enjoys taking my shoes and putting them on. It has been fairly difficult to catch him in the act with a camera, but Leigh Ann was finally successful.
Not a lot of news to report. August has been a mixed bag, weather-wise. We had a week where it was miserable, both hot and humid, but we seem to have kicked the humidity, which makes it a little more pleasant. Leigh Ann has been battling a dual bacterial and viral infection, and has temporarily lost her voice. Ever the active one, having to spend a couple days at home with nothing to do is almost worse than the illness itself. I come home to find her bored out of her mind.

A month of Potter

The month of July ended up being dominated by Harry Potter. Leigh Ann and I were able to go see the newest movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the day after it opened. We saw it on the IMAX screen, with the 20 minute action scene near the end in 3-D. This ended up not being quite as good as we had hoped, as the action got very jumpy and hard to follow.
On the 21st, then, our copy of the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, arrived in the mail, and Leigh Ann began at once to read it. She was done within a week, and I then quickly read it. So now he have the whole story. On the whole we both enjoyed it. Leigh Ann has now decided to reread all of the books, while I have decided to go back to my old favorite, J. R. R. Tolkien. I've started reading the Hobbit (I don't know how many times this makes for me).
Jacob's vocabulary continues to grow. He enjoys pointing out cah (car), cuh (cup), stih (stick), and ball (which he uses interchangeably for both balls and rocks) wherever we go. Of course, his favorite word is "no." He has lately taken up saying it 2-3 times whenever he says it. Thus, when you ask him if he wants to go to bed, he will usually reply, "No . . . no . . . no!" I can't imagine how he has picked up this word.
We continue to believe our son has been blessed with an overactive sense of humor. While he can now say both "Mommy" and "Dada," he seems to enjoy switching them. While with me, he will call to me, saying Dada, and whenever he hears the phone ring, he will look at me and ask "Mommy?" However, when Leigh Ann appears, instead of calling out "Mommy," he will yell out "Dada." We are convinced he does it, not because he doesn't know the difference, but because he knows it will get a good laugh.
He currently has a few favorite games. One is to throw the ball around and chase after it. Another is to take some object, usually a ball or one of his cars, hide it, and then go up to you and ask "Where'sit?" This is great fun for him, and he gets a huge grin when you discover his hiding place (which is usually always the same place). His final game is hide-and-go-seek, which he especially enjoys playing with his friend, Abby. He will hide around a corner, and then shriek with delight when she comes around the corner and finds him. Jacob really loves playing with Abby, and loves it when he goes to her house to be babysat (I usually have to drag him out to the car, with him kicking and screaming because he doesn't want to leave). From time to time, though, he can get pushy with her, and we are trying to teach him not to push other children.
Otherwise we are continuing on as usual. Summer hot weather has hit us here in Columbus, although we have had quite a few days thus far where the weather was really pleasant.

Jake is learning to eat with a spoon now, and it has been interesting. He is doing really well for being at it for less than a week. We have tried with cereal and yogurt. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes not. His biggest problem is that he can scoop up the food and bring it to his face with all of the food still on it, but then has the tendency of turning the spoon upside down to put it in his mouth (I guess he thinks that it should lay with the bowl of the spoon on his tongue, as it seems to fit better that way), and spilling most of the cereal and milk onto his tummy. We have typically been stripping him down to his diaper to do this, so we don't go through too many outfits a day.
He has definitely gotten more picky in his eating, and will change his tastes from day to day. One thing that he still loves, though, is french fries. He especially loves them with ketchup. Ever since a recent trip to Wendy's, he also prefers to have his ketchup in a little cup, so he can dip the fries in the ketchup. Sometimes he just prefers the ketchup, and will dunk the fry, lick the ketchup off, then put the fry down and do it again with a fresh fry (you see, the old one is now used).
Leigh Ann and I went to see the newest Harry Potter movie last week, and we loved it. While the book was not our favorite, we really enjoyed the movie. We saw it in IMAX, with the 20 minutes of action near the end in 3-D. We would have preferred seeing it on the normal screen. Maybe it was because we were too close to the screen, but with all the action taking place, the 3-D was too jerky, and the image didn't always match up, so it wasn't a great experience. Oh well, live and learn. We have already pre-ordered the last book, and are supposed to have it delivered to the house on Saturday. I'll have to suppress my natural impatience while Leigh Ann reads it. That is why I recently went to the library and got some books I thought would occupy me for a while. If not, I'll probably just reread the 6th book.

More Fun With Friends

We're hoping our friends, the Bevans, don't get too sick of us. After staying at their house until 11pm on the 4th of July, we were there until almost midnight celebrating Maury's birthday (hope I spelled it right!) on Saturday. Jacob wasn't quite as happy this time around, until we determined that he was hungry. You would think that sooner or later we would catch on to his various signs. Maybe one of these days he'll just actually tell us that he is hungry.
We had burgers and sausage, again grilled outside, and enjoyed the sunny evening (wishing that the 4th could have had that good of weather).
Jacob and Abby again played together, and their budding romance continues to blossom. Yesterday at church, Jacob was acting up (we are not big fans of church from 1-4 pm, since Jacob doesn't get his proper nap, and so is really cranky at times), but when Abby came up and put her head on his shoulder, he became silent and looked at me as if to say, "What's this all about?" It was really cute. We watched Abby for a couple hours yesterday evening as well, and they took turns laying their heads on each other's shoulders. In addition, they had great fun climbing up and down the stairs and playing hide-and-go-seek.
Leigh Ann and I are excited for this week, because I have already ordered our tickets for the IMAX showing of the new Harry Potter movie. We're going to see it on Thursday. We have mixed emotions about this movie. It is Leigh Ann's least favorite of all the books, and made her so upset when she read it, that she had to throw it across the room a couple of times when things got so frustrating.
Here are a couple new pics of Jake. He enjoys putting a little wicker wastebasket on his head and walking around the living room. Every once in a while he will do it, and I finally got a picture of it. So . . . enjoy!

4th of July

We had a thoroughly enjoyable 4th of July. We didn't see any fireworks, but we still had fun. Both Leigh Ann and I had the day off. We took the morning to do some shopping and get out of the house. Unlike California, we weren't in a short supply of rain, and we made sure we had our umbrella ready in case we were caught away from the car when the next storm would hit.
Jacob decided to not take a nap, and instead spent about an hour in his room tugging on the curtains from his crib and talking to himself.
We headed off to spend the evening with our friends, the Bevans, where we had a great dinner grilled in their backyard (of which we are jealous, as Jacob loved playing in their backyard). We feasted on burgers (provided by the Bevans) and bratwurst and knockwurst (from our favorite, or at least my favorite, German restaurant, Schmidt's), along with various side dishes. Their daughter Abby (who is adorable, and we are thinking of planning an arranged marriage between her and Jacob when they get older) obeyed her parents and went to bed at a decent hour, but Jacob, in keeping with his refusing to take a nap earlier, refused again to go to sleep at their house. So for the rest of the evening, he alternated between sitting on their bean bag watching "Cars" and playing with toys. We were really surprised how well he behaved, and let us play two full games, one of Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit, and one of a new game (for us) called Time's Up (at least I think that is what it was called). We finally got home by a little after 11pm, with a very tired little boy who tried to pretend that he was awake as I carried him from the car to his crib.
So although we didn't see any fireworks, we had a really good time. I hope the rest of you enjoyed your holiday.

Ball!

I have been a bit delinquent with my postings, and I am sorry.
Jake has been growing and getting into even more mischief (if that is possible). His favorite pasttime continues to be playing with balls. He has also learned to climb up and down stairs, which makes it a lot easier not having to climb over a gate anymore to go up the stairs. I don't know how many times I have banged my knee trying to get over that stupid thing. Just in time, as well, as Jake, with all of his hanging on the gate, yanked one of the bolts for the gate out of the wall, so it hasn't closed right ever since.
Summer is upon us here in Ohio. While it has gotten pretty hot in the last couple of weeks, today it is actually fairly pleasant.
We had to deal with a pretty sick little boy last week. With fevers in the low 100's and a lack of appetite, Jake was not a happy camper. Before the fever subsided, he also developed some congestion, which means he also wasn't sleeping well at night, so there were a couple of times we were awakened in the middle of the night. But he is back to his hungry self, and all is now forgotten.
Life continues on here in Columbus. This month we are awaiting the arrival of the newest Harry Potter book and the newest Harry Potter movie. Leigh Ann got me hooked on the books, and I have to admit that they are really entertaining reading. I still cling jealously to my love of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but that will never change.

June 11

I know, I know, what an imaginative title for this post. To be honest, not a whole lot of new stuff has happened, but I felt an obligation to put something up. I haven't taken any new pics of Jake since the last ones I posted, so I can't fill up space with those, so you'll have to be content with my ramblings.
Jacob continues to entertain and frustrate us, all at the same time. As his skills increase, so does the level of mischief that he can cause. Lately he has discovered climbing, and has even attempted to climb the book shelves on either side of our TV (much to his mother's dismay!). Right now he has discovered a wonderful invention - balls. He has at least 6 that he is fond of, but each morning he arises he calls out "ball" looking for one very specific one. It is a rubber bouncing ball that has a plastic eyeball in it. It bounces the best of all of them, so it is his favorite. If he can't find it right away, he'll look at you and ask "Wheresit?" The search will continue until he finally obtains it, at which point he will yell out triumphantly, "ball!"
His vocabulary and speaking skills are increasing as well. Unfortunately, he has now successfully learned how to say no. Just last night Leigh Ann asked him if he wanted to go to bed, and he looked at her and said no.
My brother Richard moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan back to Salt Lake City last week, so now our nearest relatives are Leigh Ann's family about 8 hours away in Chattanooga. We did get an opportunity to go up and visit Richard once while he lived in Michigan, and we were able to drive over to see Lake Michigan (you can see it in the background of the picture of the three of us on the side of the blog). Unfortunately, Jacob developed two ear infections and a sinus infection, staying up all night crying and forcing us to head home early so we could get him in to see his doctor.
Summer seems to have finally come to stay, and we have been enjoying the sunny days. We try to cook on the grill at least once a week, and Jacob loves going outside to the point that you have to drag him kicking and screaming back into the house (literally).
Otherwise, life goes on. We are still working, still working hard to keep up with the exercise and diets, and still constantly searching for new ways to entertain ourselves.

Fun With Food

Not that he has ever been the cleanest little boy when it comes to eating, but I thought I would show some of his dirtier moments when it comes to eating. The worst is usually when he has macaroni and cheese, or sweet potatoes. In fact, mac and cheese is the regularly scheduled meal on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which also happen to be his bath days. So far we have refrained from taking any bath blackmail pictures.
While he is not yet the biggest speaker, he is starting to make more sense. He now says dada regularly, but unfortunately uses it for both mommy and daddy. His other favorite word is ball, and it usually refers to one specific ball that is currently his favorite toy. When he can't find it right away, he will usually turn to one of us and ask, "Where is it?" And then, if you call for him, he'll usually turn to you and ask, "What?"
He particularly gets cracked up when you fake a really big sneeze. Just tonight, he started doing them himself. He would get himself all worked up, and then do his biggest sneeze, which mainly consisted of him spitting, but it was hilarious. This is what typically passes for entertainment now that 24 and Lost are done for the season.

First Haircut

We finally decided that Jacob's hair had just gotten too shaggy, so we broke down and took him to get his first haircut. Not that we didn't think that his bushy mop top wasn't cute, but it was just sticking up in every direction all the time and was starting to hang over his ears and into his eyes. So we got him an appointment at Cookie Cutters, a place that specializes in little kids' haircuts.
They get to sit in a little car that can be raised and lowered, and there are TVs for them to watch some movie. Jacob enjoyed watching "Cars" while he got his hair cut. At first he wasn't too excited about it all, but when the girl that was cutting his hair brought him a sucker, he decided maybe it wouldn't be so sad after all.
Below are a series of pictures from what he looked like before the haircut, a couple during the haircut (including my favorite with his hair put up in a mohawk), and the final product at the place, as well as a picture with him all cleaned up at home afterwards.
Jacob did remarkably well and did not complain at all during the whole ordeal. All in all, it was a pretty good experience, and he looks like a cute little boy again, not some homeless child.





Not much else new has come our way since I posted last. Work continues. Leigh Ann is starting day one of her three working days which will include Memorial Day. Such is the life of one who works in the healthcare industry. Sometimes you have to work a holiday. I am taking the opportunity to get caught up on John Wayne films (May 26 would have been the Duke's 100th birthday, so they have been showing a lot of his movies on AMC and TCM).

Candid shots

Well, sometimes you do whatever it takes to calm the beast down. Jacob has not been feeling well for the last couple of days, so we have been doing everything we can think of to get him to settle down. After breakfast, he was pitching a fit, so I turned the computer camera on him so that he could see himself, and I snapped a couple of pictures in the process. They aren't as high of quality as with our digital camera, but they're not bad.
Later in the day, to get him to calm down I gave him some apple Pedialyte, which he loves. That calmed him down enough that he was in better spirits, and then he really got lively when he learned how funny it is to pelt the cat with one of his balls. That got him hysterical, until the cat decided he had had enough, so he jumped the gate at the bottom of the stairs and fled under Jacob's crib.
Jacob got sick early Friday morning, or late Thursday night. We're not sure exactly when. All we know is that when Leigh Ann went to get him out of bed at 9am, his crib looked like something out of a horror movie, and you could see everything he had eaten the previous day. After washing him thoroughly and airing out the room, he finally looked like a little boy again.
Anyways, here are the pictures.

More Easter Pics

Here are some more pictures, including Jacob's first ride on a carousel.

Easter Fun

Easter was a mixed bag this year. Unfortunately, while Children's Hospital considers Christmas a holiday, they don't do the same for Easter. And since it was Leigh Ann's usual weekend to work, she spent Easter at work with the dinner I had made the night before. Jacob and I had a bachelor's Easter dinner with our friend Adam, whose wife and daughter were out of town for a wedding. We didn't get any Easter pictures taken, because Columbus is looking more like Christmas than Easter.
On Monday, we made the trek down to Chattanooga, TN, to spend the week with Leigh Ann's parents in their new house, sandwiched between Red Bank and Signal Mountain in the north-western section of the city. Leigh Ann is having to adjust to a new house, after spending most of her life in their old house.
We went out and took pictures of Jacob at a park along the Tennessee river, even though the weather has not been the best here in Tennessee. It has been fairly windy, and there has been a bit of rain. Jacob also got his first ride on a carousel at the park. He thoroughly enjoyed riding around on a frog, but got even more enjoyment out of running around in the large field afterwards. It was a chore to try and get him to go back to the car in the end.
Both Leigh Ann and I have caught some kind of bug which has tried to dampen our stay, but we are still enjoying having a week off of work. We are not looking forward to the drive back to Columbus tomorrow. Jacob does well on the drive, but the last half hour always seems to be a little too much for him. Having a DVD player in the van has been a lifesaver.
While here in Chattanooga, we always take the opportunity to head down to Birmingham to see friends. We stopped in to see my old boss at UAB, who was ecstatic to see me again. He tried to convince me to come back and do a postdoc with him. Needless to say I turned down his offer. We then went and met our friends Andy and Rheanna Stevens and had dinner at my favorite BBQ place, Dreamland. Anybody who ever gets to Alabama has to try this place. For you westerners, it will give you an education in the true meaning of BBQ. BBQ is not a verb. What we call BBQ is really just grilling. BBQ is a noun, and is a specialty of the south. I have vowed many times that I would die with a Dreamland rib lodged in an artery.

Here's what you've been waiting for

That's right, here they are. The latest pictures of Jacob. Still a rascal, but don't let these pictures into fooling you that he is a very serious kid. In all reality, he is almost never serious. He is more often than not playing and smiling. He just won't ever smile when he knows the camera is on him.