Funny Mommy

Jack loves to play peek-a-boo and the other day he really thought his mommy was funny...


And this video is kind of long (2 minutes), but he tries to pull himself up on his basketball hoop and actually gets his toush off the ground - big guy! The video also showcases the mohawk he's sporting since I took it from slightly above him.

6 Months Old!

Jack celebrated his 1/2 birthday Wednesday - hard to believe it's already been 6 months! He had his check-up Friday and weighs 22 lbs., 10 oz. (98.6th percentile), is 27.5" long (between the 75th and 90th percentile) and his head is 17 3/4" (between 75th and 90th). The doctor said everything looks good and asked a lot of questions about his progress. Jack is right on schedule with sitting up, grabbing things with his hands, passing things from one hand to the other, babbling, recognizing his name, etc. He had two shots and an oral immunization. He was not a fan of anything this visit - hated being measured, hated being weighed, hated having his ears looked at, refused to have his mouth looked at and, of course, hated having both thighs stuck (who can blame the poor guy). It was a rough one!

I think Jack is starting to get a touch of separation anxiety. Wednesday he went to day care so Daddy could work and when I dropped him off he cried and looked at me with these horribly sad eyes as I walked out of the room. I almost quit my job right then and there.

We also had his 6 month pictures taken yesterday at Portrait Innovations. Just like his 3 month pictures, we had to wait quite a while, but the pictures turned out GREAT! He was such a little ham even though he had only a short morning nap and was getting hungry. They took 73 pictures - it was so hard to narrow it down to only 6 poses to buy!! Luckily, we got the CD too so I can always get more printed if I have buyer's remorse. :)

Here is a sampling of my favorites:

Babies Everywhere!

The Ashers had people over last night and there were literally babies everywhere...and a few big kids too. Of course we had to take some pictures! Little Nathan was feeling under the weather, so Jack was the only boy.

Jack and his harem:
Oldest to youngest: Addison, Maggie, Jack, Zoey and Reghan:Love this - notice Addi and Jack checking each other out:And....they're going in for the smooch:All the mommies holding each other's babies (Kate w/Addison Asher; Jill w/Reghan Lade; Chrissy w/Jack; Melissa w/Maggie Neu and me w/Zoey Kuehler):
Asher family photo (Greg, Melissa, Addi):Family Neu (Aidan, Bobby, Connor, Jill and Maggie):Jack was having trouble falling asleep over there, so he and I came home. He kept getting really mad in his crib, and when I'd go in to check on him, he'd be on his belly (he's never done that in bed before). He did that 4 times!! Finally I had to rock the poor little guy to sleep at 9:00 (WAY past his bedtime!).

Also, another mini accomplishment...for weeks now he's been grabbing his pacifier and trying to put it in his mouth, but I've never seen him do it successfully. Yesterday when I picked him up from Grandma's house, he spit it out on the way home, and a few minutes later, I looked in my mirror and he was happily sucking away again. Big boy. It would be great if he'd start finding it when he spits it out in his crib too!!

Happy Guy

Here are a couple videos from last night - Jack was almost giddy he was so happy. We had a lot of fun.

Not only is this one cute because he's so giggly, but I also love the jealous Maggie trying to get in on the playtime - starting right at the beginning when she put her toy on Jason's back. Funny.

In other news, Jack attended his first Superbowl party on Sunday. Well, he attended for a bit - he and I came home before the first half was even over because it was bedtime. BUT, our little gambler won $25 for having the winning square for the score at the end of the first half! Lucky little guy. I told him he can buy some Legos or matchbox cars when he gets a little older. For now, it'll just be in his piggy bank.

Day 3 of school went very well today. I think we're both getting used to it.

Peas

Jack has moved on to green veggies. Today he had peas and loved them. Actually he loved them so much that, although Grandma was on hand with the video camera to capture the sour face, there was no such face. He didn't even flinch. Just went right on eating like he's been eating peas all his life.

Peas were just as easy to make as all the other veggies - I used one bag of frozen peas and it made 31 ounces of food!

Also, an update on school - Jack went for day #2 on Thursday and it went great. They wrote on his chart that he had a good day and only fussed at nap time. When I picked him up he was all smiles. Our happy little guy. Also I moved offices on Thursday, so I watched out my window for S.O.S. signals from him. He didn't send any, so I guess he had fun.

Day Care and Parents as Teachers

Well, we survived our first day of day care, or "school," as I think we're going to call it for Jack. The day started off great - Jack was all smiles for his teacher Miss Mary when I dropped him off and I didn't even shed a tear! Then I called to check in on him at 10:45 and he was sleeping, but Miss Mary said he had a rough morning. They couldn't get him to take his first nap and ended up just putting him in a bouncy chair fussing because they had to feed the other children. Eek. Of course after that I was tempted to call back to check in every 30 minutes, but I exercised some serious self-control and didn't call at all.

That is, of course, until I came out of a meeting at 4:15 to a message from the day care. I called back and they said Jack had taken his second bottle with his lunch (instead of at 2:00 or 2:30 like I had spelled out on his schedule), so they had tried to get in touch with me to see what to feed him because he was hungry again. When they couldn't reach me, they gave him the formula I was forced to bring for back-up purposes only. I was crushed when they told me. I freaked out and told them it wasn't OK because he's NEVER had formula, then I called Jason balling. Poor Jason was worried at first because when I said "they gave him formula" he heard "bla bla bla bla" in my frantic tearful voice. He was able to calm me down and bring me back to reality.

I can't really explain why it upset me so much - I think it's a combination of multiple things. 1) I don't like to not be the first to do something with him, 2) I have taken pride in saying that he has been strictly breastfed for these first 5 1/2 months of his life, 3) I would be completely devastated if he decided he didn't want to nurse anymore (I realize this is unlikely after just one bottle of formula, but I was concerned nonetheless) and 4) they didn't follow the schedule I had spelled out. He only took 5 oz of the 7 oz bottle I had prepared for him. If they hadn't given it to him right after his cereal and veggie, he'd have likely eaten the whole thing.

When I went to pick him up, the assistant director stopped me and apologized profusely, told me to bring in some frozen breast milk for future issues, etc. By then I was OK with it - if the choices were to starve my son or give him formula, of course I choose the latter - they didn't have another option without being able to reach me. When I got into his classroom though, I apologized to the teacher for getting short with her and then, much to my dismay, (you guessed it) I started crying. Ugh! So embarrassing. Tomorrow I will see Miss Mary for the first time since the incident (she was already gone when I picked him up), so hopefully it goes well.

The director and the teacher that was there at the end of the day (Gail) both said what a happy little guy Jack is, so I know he had a great afternoon there. Each day will get better and better. I will be bringing a back-up supply of milk today, and will ask them to call my cell phone instead of my desk phone if they need to reach me so we won't have that issue again. This is certainly going to be a learning process as we all get used to each other and Jack adjusts to sharing attention with several other babies, sleeping in a brighter and noisier room, etc. But for now, we have one day under our belts!

Yesterday our Parents as Teachers representative came over again. She did a 6-month assessment on Jack (a couple weeks early) and he passed with flying colors. The assessment was checking his communication, large motor skills, fine motor skills, problem solving, etc. Jack also put on a great show for the teacher - when she asked if he was sitting up, I said, "he is so close!" and set him in the sitting position. He sat there for the rest of the meeting (probably 20 minutes) and only started to topple over 3 times. The teacher said "Um, he's sitting." Mark that one down in baby's first calendar! It's official.

Amanda came over to visit us last night (she's in town from Texas for work) and Jack showed off his sitting skills for her too. Big boy.

We've started giving Jack prune juice because the cereal is starting to stop him up a bit. Tuesday I gave him a sippy cup for the first time and he figured out how to drink from it very quickly. He also grabbed it from me and held it up to his mouth. He hasn't figured out that he needs to tilt his head back to drink so I still assist him, but I thought that was a pretty good start for the first introduction.