Week 46

Jan 20-26

I'm not sure if I have written about this yet, but Jack now takes his baths in the real bath tub as opposed to his baby bath which is much smaller. He finally got to the point that he barely fit into the baby bath and also he is so much more active that his splashes could not be contained and he would soak down the entire kitchen to include my TV and iPod stereo I have on the counter. Not cool.

We've been giving him baths in the big boy tub since we came home from Christmas vacation, but I hadn't gotten around to getting some pictures until the other night. I was giving Jack his bath and thought about it so I yelled for Ed to bring up the camera. Here are some of the shots. He got some bath toys for Christmas from Grandma, but we left those at her house so he can play with them next time (really b/c we couldn't fit one more thing into our car). Jack got a toy for Christmas that he already had so we decided to trade it for some new bath toys. We went to the store and got this cute boat and had enough to go ahead and get two sets of the matching accessories. He has ALL kinds of bath toys now and he LOVES them!! :)

On another note, Jack is very sad because I locked up his favorite cabinet. When we baby-proofed I put locks on all of the "unsafe" cabinets like the cleaning supplies and things that could hurt him. I left one cabinet for him to explore, it mostly had tupperware and things that wouldn't hurt him and he liked to take everything out. Well it really started to get on my nerves because he would literally only play with this stuff instead of his toys. Also, every time I turned around he would drag out every piece onto the kitchen floor and although it used to be put away very nicely, I admit I got into the habit of literally throwing things back in there so I could pick up quickly, as you can see in the picture.

Finally, I just couldn't take it anymore. I would wash everything every time he would take it out b/c it bugged me that it was all over the floor. I couldn't stand stuff strewn about my kitchen every single time he was awake and playing. I locked them. Jack is soooo disappointed it's not even funny. Maybe I will open them on special occasions, but for now they will stay locked.

On a happier note, the table that we ordered weeks ago FINALLY got delivered to the house!! This table can go from circle to oval. In this picture it is an oval because that is how they set it up when they delivered it. :) We are very happy with them.

Week 45

Jan 13-19

This week isn't over yet, but since I have the time right now I figure I will go ahead and fill in a blog for now and if anything else happens that I feel I need to add...I will add it later! So far this weekend has been AWESOME! Usually I work weekends but when we don't have kids to take care of, our unit closes. I worked part of the day Friday with Denise. We discharged everybody home and closed up around 4:00. I thought it was great to come home a little early. Whenever the unit is closed and it is your scheduled day to work, you are "on-call" for the hospital. Usually when we close it doesn't last very long and you just kind of sit around and wait to be called back. Well yesterday (Saturday) I ended up being on-call all day and then today (Sunday) so far I have not been called in and it is already 2:00 pm.

I kind of got an unexpected free weekend. Although it is always nice to get a big, fat paycheck...every once in awhile it's nice to give up the money and have a weekend with my boys. Yesterday we hit up a couple of parks and also the beach. We are scoping out places to have Jack's 1st birthday party. We live a block from the beach and along A1A there are parks every 1/4 of a mile right on the beach. Some of them have playgrounds, volleyball courts, covered awnings with grills, etc. I thought it would be fun to have Jack's party at one of them since March is such a nice time of year here to be outside. It's usually in the 70's and sunny most days.

Jack LOVED the parks! It was the first time he really "played" at the park. Usually he just swings on the baby swing. He climbed up the stairs and reached the different levels of platforms, then he went down the slide. Of course we were right there with him since he is still so little. He had a great time though. He cried when we left.

We also went ahead and hit up the beach since it was right there and we hadn't been there in awhile. We thought we would see if Jack would walk on the sand in his shoes. He did a great job!!

Week 44

Jan 6-12

This week we stuck to our usual schedule. I worked Fri, Sat, Sun and Ed worked his normal hours. It was quite the busy weekend at the hospital so I didn't really see much of the boys over the weekend. Here is a picture of what they do while I am at work all day.

This is Jack's 1st "fort" that Daddy built him. Ed said he LOVED it! Ed took all of the pillows off the couches and made a fort with them and a blanket over the top. He made a little door so Jack could go in and out. He said it lasted for quite awhile with Jack crawling in and out and playing inside of it. :)

One exciting thing that happened over the weekend while I worked is that Jack went from kind of walking if you stood him up and coaxed him....to walking all the time. He hardly crawls anymore. It's like everything clicked in his head and he realizes how much more he can do if he walks around. He's hilarious when he walks...kind of looks like E.T. He holds his arms up to balance and it is soooo cute!! He is getting very good at walking in his shoes!

Week 43

Dec 30-Jan 5

Happy New Year! Unfortunately as far as New Year's celebrations go we don't really have any exciting things to report. I had to work that whole weekend and get up at 0445 so I wasn't about to stay up super late. Ed went over to Tyson's house and hung out for awhile. We had a busy rest of the week though...

I guess you could say we overhauled our house. The aftermath of Jack's first Christmas was literally taking over every room in our downstairs. We have been trying to think of a way to give Jack a "playroom" or at least some way of storing his toys nicely so that he had access to them, but also so they weren't the main focus of the living room or dining room. Our solution...

Clear out the storage "closet" underneath the stairs and make Jack a playroom. We LOVE it and so does he!! I bought some shelving at Lowe's. Now we can display his toys so he can just walk up and pick which one he wants instead of trying to rifle through the big toy basket we used to have. We made the big basket a "blanket basket" for the living room.

In order to make room for the things that were stored in the closet and also the Christmas decorations we would have to put away I bought all new Christmas storage bins at Lowe's. I also bought some more shelving for the garage. We put everything away and now we have one whole wall of shelving in the garage which is nice to pick up all of those miscellaneous things we're not sure where to put. This house is terrible as far as storage goes.

With all the rearranging and changing we decided it was really time for a new dining room table. The one we have now is fine, but there were no chairs after it survived Ed's old bachelor pad. A few years ago I bought some chairs at a thrift store and Holly graciously helped me paint them and recover them...but they are also starting to fall apart. We decided we weren't going for a full-fledged fancy dining room set, but more of a casual set that will go in our "breakfast nook" area when we buy a house. We wanted something that was solid and would last through kids. I preferred solid chairs instead of cloth because I'm thinking eventually the kids will spill things all over them. We got a round table, dark wood, with four chairs. We special ordered it so it will take 6-8 weeks for it to come in. I will post pics as soon as that happens!!

While we were at it we decided to give our living room a "mini-makeover." This house has never been comfortable to us, we hate the layout and the rules. We were told when we first moved in that we aren't allowed to put up any curtains. Well we have noticed in the past year of living here that almost everyone else has curtains so we decided we were going to put some up. When we bought our couch a few years back it was a chocolate brown with pillows that had turquoise accents. It was all the rage back then. We never really found pictures that matched the turquoise...it's just not really us. We decided to get new pillows and use some pictures we already had that we liked and change our living room accent colors to a deep red with a gold. We got curtains, pillows, lampshades, and a picture. The rest of the accents were ours that we already had. We were quite proud of ourselves.

Week 42

Dec 23-29

Outside of Grandma's house

As you all know the Storch family traveled home to South Carolina for Christmas with our families this year. This was a special Christmas...Baby's 1st! :) We had planned on leaving sunny FL at 3:00 am to make the 7-8 hour drive to SC. Jack decided that he was way too excited and he woke up at 1:00 am. We figured we might as well take advantage of the extra time so we quickly fed him and packed up the rest of the car. We made pretty good time and got to Grandma's house early that morning. On our first day we went ahead and started our usual holiday traditions...we baked cream cheese cookies so we could decorate them. It's kind of funny because our holiday traditions are usually celebrated way after Christmas, we just have to pretend like it's the holidays since Ed is out to sea, or I have to work at the hospital. So this was fun because it really was the holidays. Our cookie decorating gets pretty intense. We go the extra mile and add ridiculous details. Harvin judges them. Ed was the reigning champion, but I stole his thunder with my beautiful choo-choo train cookie. :) I knew Harvin loved trains and he would have to go for mine. Here is a picture of Jack "helping" bake the cookies by licking the mixer. He went to town on it!

Some of the many cookies we decorated.

The next day was Christmas Eve and we traveled out to Lexington, SC to visit Uncle Ryan & Aunt Amanda. Amanda had sinus surgery a few days before and was unable to leave the house. We decided to bring Christmas to them! We did experience some minor flaws in our plan...

First I missed the turn to their house and while attempting to make a u-turn using someone's driveway, I failed to mistake a patch of grass for a hole and ended up getting the Highlander stuck. It's funny now looking back, but as it was happening I was absolutely mortified. Here is a picture. The other incident that day was that Honey Baked Ham failed to deliver the ham that Grandma had ordered for Ryan & Amanda, but they did deliver the side dishes. Luckily Grandma had ordered a ham for her house too, so she had a spare and was kind enough to share.

To make a long story short we made it safe and sound, the Highlander ended up being fine, just needed a little assistance pulling it out. We all made it inside and opened presents, visited with Ryan, Amanda, Amanda's dad, and Willow (the dog). Jack had a great time at their house!

Here is a picture of him opening his present with Willow watching in the background.

After our visit we drove back to Sumter to get ready for Mass that night. I was a little nervous because Jack hasn't been to church in awhile and I thought the Christmas Eve service would be long. I knew it would also be very crowded and I didn't want Jack to ruin it for anyone. Here we are before church taking pictures in front of the tree. Jack wore his little reindeer sweater vest.

Jack and Grandma!

Storch Family Christmas Eve 2009

After church we came home and relaxed for awhile and eventually went to bed because Santa was coming that night! :)

Jack Christmas morning!

Underneath the Christmas tree was a platform built by Grandpa Harvin to fit the train, the manger, and the village! How fun is that??

Jack among some of his presents. Poor kid is so deprived...

Daddy helping Jack open presents.

Mommy helping Jack open presents.

Jack sitting on his airplane Grandma got him...LOVES it!

Jack and Grandma

Here are some pictures of everyone opening presents after Jack went down for his nap.

Ed opening his new food processor!! He LOVES it!

Grandma opening her beautiful new luggage for her trips that Grandpa Harvin got her. New Year's in Chicago and a tropical cruise in February!!

Here is Grandpa Harvin opening his new tool chest! He is so surprised!!

This is me opening my new sewing machine! :)

After opening presents we had a lovely Christmas morning brunch on Grandma's snowman plates. We all pitched in and cooked up eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, biscuits, ham, orange juice, coffee, and anything else you could possibly want for brunch. It was DELICIOUS! Jack especially enjoyed eating scrambled eggs.

After brunch we showered and got dressed so we could drive over to Columbia to open presents with my family. Jack stopped at both my parents houses for Christmas all over again. Here he is opening presents with Aunt Caroline, Uncle Will, and Uncle Andy. He liked all the tissue paper. He's wearing his new red Polo sweater vest and button down shirt from Grandpa Harvin. Quite dapper!

We had to take a break to feed Jack again. I am surprised he actually ate that day with all the people, presents, and excitement going on. We tried our best to keep him on his regular schedule, and for the most part he pretty much stayed true to his usual activity. We scheduled his naps around when we would be driving. I really don't like him to "nap" in his carseat or stroller, but it was our only option if we wanted to make all of our stops. He did very well and wasn't cranky. He even still went to bed right on time pretty much every night we were away. Thank goodness Grandma has a crib at her house, I don't know what we would have done. I can't imagine him sleeping in a playpen...I feel like he would jump right out of it.

After we got back from Columbia we got to open presents up with Lucius! Jack was really starting to get the hang of it at this point. :) We opened more presents, and then got ready for Christmas dinner. Grandma made a DELICIOUS Christmas dinner and we all sat down in the formal dining room and had a wonderful meal together. I wish I had gotten some pictures of dinner, but I forgot. :(

Christmas at Grandma's house was so much fun!! It was so nice to actually travel back home for the holidays. Ed and I rarely get time off together so it was very special to celebrate Jack's first Christmas as a family. Thank you to everyone who made it possible!!!!