Week 21

July 29-Aug 4

This week we hit a bunch of milestones. On Friday we left Jack for the first time overnight since he was born. Well, technically. Maybe I should backtrack and explain. We have a wonderful babysitter Devin who has been working with us since I went back to work after Jack was born. She is amazing and absolutely loves him, but we are sad because she has to go back to PA for school in a few weeks. She offered to watch Jack while we went out on a much needed date so we took her up on it. We were going to go away for a night, but at the last minute realized we really just wanted the chance to go out and experience some of the night life fun that we have heard about since we moved here. We decided to explore Historic Downtown Melbourne. It's basically a cute little street with restaurants, bars, shoppes, etc. We had a nice dinner and walked around for awhile, went to a few bars and had drinks, then met up with friends around 9:30 and drank some more. It was a lot of fun to just let loose and not worry about getting up all night to feed a baby. We had dinner at a place called the Casbah. The food was decent, but the best part was the dessert. Here is a picture of it in all of its delicious glory...

Here we are at one of the bars. Apparently this used to be a wine bar and it had a very mellow atmosphere. It had couches and little tables with candles all around and one side was completely open to the outside and there was kind of a garden-like zen atmosphere out there. Very fun. We had a lot of fun. After all of our drinking we walked over to Bizarro's for some pizza to go and we called our cab home. Devin was gracious enough to offer to stay until 10:00 am so we could sleep in, but I was up at like 7:00 b/c I missed Jack and wanted to play with him. Thank you Devin for our night out!!

The next day (Saturday) we decided to have a family day and went to the zoo. We've been wanting to get an annual zoo pass for awhile now, but we were kind of waiting for Jack to get old enough to appreciate it a little bit. I really didn't think he would even notice the animals, but when we got there he was looking around everywhere. He is so much more aware of his surroundings now. I am really glad we got the zoo pass. It pretty much pays for itself in 3 trips and there are so many nice perks that come with it.

First of all, you get free admission to pretty much any zoo in the U.S. so we can go when we visit Columbia or Pittsburgh. We get in 30 minutes before the zoo opens to the public so we can go early in the morning before it gets too hot and too crowded. Also, since we have a pass we don't have the pressure of staying all day to get our money's worth...we can just go for an hour if we want. I'm very excited about the zoo pass. Ed can't wait to start taking Jack on the weekends when I'm working so they have something to do. The Brevard Zoo isn't the most fantastic zoo ever, but it is mostly shaded and it has a train! :)

The day we went to the zoo it ended up being packed b/c it was "free school supply" day or something so we kind of just breezed through a part of it and decided we would come back later. Since we still had the whole day to ourselves, we decided to take a trip to Toys R Us. It was Jack's first time going and we thought it should be celebrated. As you know Jack loves his jumperoo, but Ed decided he had mastered all of the activities on it. He can spin all the spinning things, turn the toys, grab the birds, you get the idea. Ed was concerned that Jack needed a new challenge so we went looking for something fun and new.

Jack loved going to the toy store. Of course there were bright lights and colors everywhere. We let him play with the different toys. His favorite are ones that have neat sounds.

We picked him out an "exersaucer" activity thing. It's kind of like the jumperoo, but it doesn't really jump it kind of bounces and it has a million things to play with. By the time we got home from our long day it was time to feed Jack and put him down for the night. After he was asleep Ed and I went to tackle putting this thing together. I think it probably took us around an hour, but it was kind of fun to work as a team and it did look neat. We couldn't wait until the next day when Jack woke up so we could put him in it.

He loves it, there are so many things to look at and so many things to do. :) This week another milestone we hit was starting baby foods!!! We first tried peas for 3 days, then carrots for 3 days, and now he's up to sweet potatoes. Here is one of his funny faces...
Last but not least, we went to Jack's 4 month check-up, which was late b/c we had to reschedule it when we went to the beach. Jack now weighs 17 lbs 5 oz and he is 26 in. He has more than doubled his birthweight (which he is supposed to do at 6 months) already. He is sooo big and so much fun! He can now tripod sit by himself for a few minutes at a time without falling over (a 6 month old task). Tripod sitting is when babies grab their feet and sit up. If he loses hold of his feet he will tip over. The pediatrician said he is very healthy and accomplishing all of the things he should be.