Happy 1 1/2 Birthday Jacob!

Tiger says "growl"

Fun With Dad

25 things you may not have known about Jacob

At roughly 16.5 months, Jacob is doing lots of new things:

1. He answers questions, although the answer to everything is "no". Example, "Jacob are you hungry?" "No", "Jacob, do you want to go get ice cream?" "No", "Jacob, are you tired?" "No". It's good that he knows that you are asking a question and that "No" is a response to a question, but he has no idea what you or he is saying. It's kind of entertaining, actually.
2. His vocabulary is expanding, including: mama, dada, no, nose, uh oh, oooooo (elephant noise), ooo ooo ooo (monkey noise), growl (tiger or lion or polar bear noise), dog, go, hi, ball (sounds like "gall"), and a few others.
3. His sign language has really come together. While not very extensive, he's a signing fool when it comes to "more" (usually in reference to food, but also for things that he wants: toys mostly), "up" (to be picked up), and "all done" (he's done eating and wants to get out of his high chair to go cause terror).
4. He understands some commands, such as "Go hug Porter." So he knows things like hug, kiss, Porter & Tootsie (our dogs), shoes, "be nice" and a few others.
5. He definitely knows his name.
6. He can help clean up his toys. He's taken to walking around the house with a Swiffer floor cleaning thing on a long pole. He is fascinated by all the wonderful things in the dish washer.
7. He can locate his nose and other people's noses. He also knows where is belly and toes are.
8. He loves playing games like peak-a-boo and hide-and-seek.
9. He gives high fives (though he's done this for awhile, he's gotten much better)
10. His walking has advanced to a slight run/jog.
11. He's a climber. He climbs fences. He's recently advanced enough to climb up onto the couch.
12. He's beginning to figure out doors, so we had to child proof those, which has also made it difficult for the rest of us to get around the house...sadly.
13. He LOVES to be read to. He made me read/sing him an "Old McDonald" book 4 times in about 30 minutes the other night. Every night before bed we always read a story. Last night, he was running around the house before bedtime and grabbed a book and climbed up on the rocking chair that we always read in, as if to say that he was ready for his story now. He seems to enjoy books nearly as much as toys.
14. He's great with the dogs for the most part. The dogs are even better with him. They take a lot of abuse from him sometimes as he's learning what's acceptable. We try to stay on top of things. Everyone is getting along great so far though.
15. On the unfortunate side of things, he seems to like to eat dog food. It's a battle to try to feed the dogs and keep him away from it. He's also taken to sticking his entire face in their water bowl, which is probably beyond unsanitary. Proof #947 that really likes water.
16. We've had some problems with him biting other kids at daycare, which is not good and somewhat embarassing for us. He's also been on the bitten end a few times. This seems to be occuring slightly less frequently, but it's happening way more than anyone would like. We're told this is something he'll grow out of, but we're trying to make some efforts to make sure that happens ASAP.
17. He likes to say "hi" and wave to strangers. Sometimes he waves "bye" to kids at daycare as he leaves.
18. He holds up cell phones, phones, remote controls, etc up to the side of his head (as if he were on the phone) and says "hi". He's been doing this for months, but he doesn't seem to get tired of it.
19. He LOVES to laugh. I'm pretty sure he spends his whole day either laughing, sleeping, crying and/or eating. Most of the time he is very happy. You can get him to crack up endlessly by making a new noise he hasn't heard yet or an old noise that he finds hilarious. "Poop" seems to be a classic. His new noise is "Ow". As in, when dad hits his head on something and says "Ow"...endless laughter and he repeats: "Ow, ow, ow, ow..."
20. He copies EVERYTHING. Kids are quite the little sponges. Who would have thought? The other day we are driving in the car and he starts to get upset. I'm sitting in front of him in the passager seat. To entertain him, I put his cup on my head. He thinks this is hilarious, and proceeds to take the cup and put it on his head. There's probably 20 times a day (on the days where I get to see him a lot...weekends) where I don't even realize he's paying attention to me, only to do something and then hear him repeating it or mimicing my actions. Luckily, no swearing yet, but you really need to watch yourself around him.
21. He blows his nose. This started a few weeks ago. We'd wipe his face off with something and he'd blow raspberries into it. He didn't understand how to blow his nose, but knew that you put this tissue over your face and then made a similar noise. In just the past few days, he's started to actually figure out blowing.
22. He plays a recorder.
23. He's extremely ticklish.
24. He loves vegetables, fruits (especially berries), pretty much any kind of junk food and lots of other stuff, but oddly seems to not be a huge fan of meat. Given the choice of many things in front of him, he'll usually pick around the meat. If it's just meat (or hot dogs) he'll usually eat it, but not always. We hope he outgrows this.
25. He's the best thing ever.

Mike

Dancing

It's been way too long since we've posted anything. We've been up to so much since our last post.

Courtney had her first real Mother's Day with Jacob (she was in the hospital last year). We made our second trip with Jacob to upstate NY over Memorial Day to see my parents. I have set a goal to run one race per month while the weather is warm enough and so far I've done 5k's in April and May and a 3.5 mile run in June. I've got my July race this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. We went up to NYC for my summer office party in June. It was our third time up to NYC with Jacob and it was a great weekend. Counting spring training, we're up to 10 baseball games this year (9 with Jacob).

We had to replace our air conditioner in May (at no small expense), but the new one is SO much nicer and we've always known that the last one was on its last legs.

Everything seems to be going well with our jobs, thankfully. Hopefully that continues. We know way too many people out of work and are keenly aware of how tough things are out there.

Although it's been a long time since we've updated the blog, we have been fairly good about keeping up the website, so there are tons of pictures there and more details on the past couple months.

Hope everyone has a Happy 4th! Go out and celebrate the birth of your nation by blowing up a small part of it (with fireworks). USA! USA! USA!

Mike

PS- What prompted me to finally post was that we've been taking some good video of Jacob as he becomes such a funny, happy little boy. The video shown here was Jacob dancing...at least his version. He's better than he shows here, but this was the best we could get on video. I still think it's pretty funny.

Walking!

Jacob walks 11 steps!

Belated Easter post

Sorry for the delay in getting this up. Here's a short video of Jacob on his first Easter egg hunt a couple of weeks ago (4/12/09....Easter, obviously).