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.

3 Years

As of last Monday, Leigh Ann and I have now been married for 3 years. 3 years she's been able to put up with me! We went out to celebrate on Saturday, since she had to work on Monday. After shipping Jake off to stay with some friends, we went out for an excellent Italian dinner. We found the best Italian restaurant here in Columbus in a small strip mall tucked away in one of the suburbs here. It came highly recommended by a friend here at work, and it was well worth it. While it was too pricey to completely replace Olive Garden for us, it was a nice change.

Afterwords, because we are such crazy, wild people, we went to see a movie. We saw "Amazing Grace," the story of William Wilberforce, the British member of Parliament in the late 18th and early 19th centuries who fought to end the slave trade in England. It was an excellent movie. I highly recommend it to anyone, especially those of you who, like me, think that a good movie is becoming an endangered species in this day and age. You come away feeling good, and not just like the standard sports movie.

Colds in the cold

We are having to battle the cold from both without and within. After the temperature climbing up to 72 degrees early last week, we once again plunged to below freezing, with some light snowfall. While it was nowhere near as cold as it had been a few weeks ago, it was still slightly depressing that we had gotten a small glimpse at spring, only to have it yanked away.

The entire family has also been fighting off the cold. Jacob came down with it last Sunday, and you know mom and dad were soon to follow. We have been trying to deal with a sick baby, while being sick ourselves, and also meeting our work obligations. It has been a little tricky, but we are surviving.

Jacob continues to develop. He is more independent each day, and strenuously objects to anyone having to help him with his meals any more than setting the food in front of him. He is just learning to use the spoon, and doesn't actually get much onto it and into his mouth, so it takes a while. But he wants to learn. He has also starting working on his ability to climb. He enjoys climbing onto the couch to search for the remote controls we hide on top of it. That has forced us to have to find new places to guard them. He continues to make life anything but boring.

Latest News

I suppose I should be more dilligent in updating the blog. But it turns out I am as good at that as keeping in touch by email (ironically, I created this blog so I wouldn't have to email as much).
Our lives continue to continue. Not a whole lot of exciting stuff is occurring. We had the opportunity last weekend to meet Leigh Ann's parents in Lexington for a relaxing couple of days. Lexington is the largest city between us and her parents that, while not exactly halfway between Chattanooga, TN, and Columbus, at least offers things to do and places to eat. We enjoyed the more pleasant temperatures in Kentucky that weekend over the sub-arctic temperatures we've been experiencing here in Ohio. While it is clear now, it still remains bitterly cold (although, thankfully, not as cold as it has been).
Leigh Ann and I continue to work. My project is beginning to pick up speed, so I am having more work to do in the lab. Unfortunately, I am dependent on others for receiving samples for my experiments, which led to my working late the other night. Thankfully, we have a great person watching Jacob now, and she was more than happy to watch him a little while longer, as I was late in picking him up. This would never have been possible when we were taking him to a daycare center.
Leigh Ann continues to do her part helping out the children of Columbus working in the Children's Hospital radiology department. As if she didn't get enough opportunities working with children at work and at home, she also spends a great deal of time working in Primary at church. You'd think that with all of this working with children, she should get an honorary doctorate in early childhood development.
Jacob remains as crazy as ever. As he continues to grow, he becomes even more independent. He is resisting more and more any food that is fed to him on a spoon, as he wants to feed himself. Unfortunately, he does not yet know how to use a spoon, so that limits what you can feed him, and increases the frustration as he refuses to eat it if you have to spoon-feed him. According to the babysitter, Jacob has started talking, and has said such things to her as, "Close the door," and "What's that?" Sadly, he has not yet chosen to speak to us in anything other than baby babble. So he seems to be holding out on his parents. In addition, he has discovered that it is fun to spin in circles until he is dizzy, then try to walk. This resulted in him knocking his head into a lamp table. After a few minutes of crying, he was right back up doing it again. One day he'll learn!

Latest Pics

This is the family on our cruise back in October. We are on Martha's Vineyard in this picture.

So I'll admit it, one of the major reasons for this blog is for people to keep up to date with the most interesting person in the family. I have been negligent in getting more recent pics of Jacob available for people to see. These were taken from November to this month. The top one, with the cheerio stuck to his nose, was from November (13 months), as was the one below with him showing you his belly button. The next one, where he is daring me to take his mac and cheese (one of his favorite meals), was from December (14 months). Finally, the one of him sitting on the couch was taken this morning (currently 16 months), holding his Winnie the Pooh ball as he was watching Pooh's Heffalump movie. We're glad he will watch something other than the Backyardigans, which get old after watching them the millionth time.

We are still trying to survive this ridiculously cold weather. Not a lot changes from day to day for us. Leigh Ann is working this weekend, so I am taking this time while Jacob naps to get caught up on organizing all of my pictures of the munchkin and getting some of them posted.

Too Freakin' Cold

So after this last week, Leigh Ann is questioning why I have brought her to this arctic wasteland. In the wake of an arctic cold front moving across our state and further east, we have been hit with frigid temps. It is regularly dropping down to single digit temperatures, and when you add in the wind (there is always wind here, with no hills or mountains to block it), we have had wind chills below zero. Last night it got down to -15. A few nights ago we got a lot of snow, and, combined with the ridiculously low temps, it made for a miserable experience. It was too cold for the salt on the roads to work properly, so traffic was averaging 5-10 mph.

Aside from our new daily ritual of going to the gym (we conveniently have a YMCA just a stone's throw from our front doorstep, making it a little easier to keep up our New Year's resolution to exercise more), we have been staying indoors, trying to keep warm. Our end unit condo, which originally seemed so attractive, is difficult to keep warm downstairs. As a result, to keep it comfortable downstairs, the upstairs becomes an oven (the thermostat is downstairs), so you are too warm when you go to bed.

Otherwise, life goes on. Jacob continues to refuse to talk. We have been putting a lot of effort into trying to get him to speak in English, but only get babble. Our biggest success is to get him to say "two" as we count from one to four. His growth seems to have slowed down a bit. He's been in the same size of diapers for quite a while now, and ditto for clothes. He still continues to be adorable, even when he is getting into trouble, or misbehaving (which is not an uncommon event).