Week 25

Aug 25-Sept 1

The first thing I want to report is....DADDY IS HOME!!  YAY!  Daddy arrived home Sunday morning at 2:00am.  I'm not complaining about that though, b/c at least he was available the next day to watch Jack while I went to work.  Thank you, thank you to Jessa for watching Jack while he was gone.  For those of you who don't know, Jessa is one of our neighbors and her husband Paul works with Ed.  Yay for military family to be there when your family is far away.  I don't know what I would have done without her.  Honestly I can't imagine dropping him off at daycare.  Now I know a lot of you probably use daycare and yours is probably fabulous and wonderful.  Maybe we are spoiled, but I just can't seem to let myself put him in daycare. 

We are very lucky that I do work weekends and Ed pretty much watches him the whole weekend.  We have a new babysitter, Rachel who is going to be watching Jack on Friday mornings for us until Ed gets home from work.  I'm sure she is going to be fantastic. 

So we do have some firsts to report for this week.  Jack has now progressed from "tripod sitting" (where he would sit up, but grab his feet to balance) to sitting up and playing.  He prefers to sit up and play with his toys and if you try to put him on his stomach he gets mad.  He can balance just fine and grabs things with both hands to play with them.  We also retired the wonderful "hammock" piece to the bath that we have used since he was born to "big boy" baths where he sits up.  I had some toys that Amanda put on my "diaper cake" when I had my Wolfson Hospital baby shower and I pulled those out for him to play with during bathtime.  He LOVES them!! 

Another new skill that he just started the other day is getting up on all fours.  Ed is convinced that Jack is so advanced he will start crawling way before most other babies.  He helps him get on all fours and at first I just kind of laughed at the idea, but Jack supports himself and also rocks.  It's like he knows it's something new and he tries to take off.  Maybe Ed is right...we are already preparing to babyproof the house.  Jack has so much energy, he is going to be a handful when he becomes mobile. 

Other random growth/development milestones.  Jack is still eating baby foods and has pretty much mastered all of the Stage 1's.  He especially loves fruit, but he does eat his vegetables.  Ed refuses to feed him peas though, b/c he is convinced that he hates them.  I volunteer to be the mean one and I make him eat them.  He really doesn't mind them that much, just not as eager as when he has apples or bananas.  He does make the funniest faces...

He loves to eat (can you tell by the pictures?), and has a pretty solid eating schedule for the day.  He has his 3 main meals a day and then takes bottles in between.  Wakes up-6 oz. bottle, breakfast-6 oz. bottle + cereal + 1/2 jar fruit, lunch-6 oz. bottle + cereal + 1/2 jar of fruit, afternoon-6 oz. bottle, dinner-6 oz. bottle + cereal + 1/2 jar of veggies, late evening-6 oz. bottle.  That's pretty much his daily food intake.  He has been sleeping 8-9 hours through the night.  He's an early riser.  He goes to bed around 7:30-8:00 and sleeps until around 4:30-5:00 where he will wake up and take his early bottle and then go back to sleep until around 7:00.  It is quite nice compared to those early months.

We are really settling in as a family.  It is easy again to go through our days.  Ed and I pretty much fight over who gets to go get Jack when he wakes from a nap.  We play with him constantly, but also let him have some time to be independent.  Since one of us has him while the other works, we each get 1 on 1 time with him.  The times we actually get to be together as a family we really cherish, since we're both always working.  I think that going back to work was somewhat of a blessing b/c it gives the boys a chance to hang out together and it also gives me a break.  Whenever I get my 4 days off for the week I can't wait to play with Jack.

Well after a ton of rambling I am done with this post.  I wanted to get it in tonight b/c I have the next 4 days in a row of work.  For those of you who are thinking "big deal, she works 3 days a week"....they are 14+ hour days so they are a little bit exhausting.  I am not complaining though, b/c I am grateful to continue my career and contribute to the income.  :) 

Here is another picture.  Ed thought it was funny to put a Darth Vador helmet on Jack.  I can't believe I am even putting this up on the internet.  I did think it was cute b/c Ed is giving the "thumbs up" and it looks like Jack is too.  Here you go!