welcome aboard the weather coaster

Our weather has been crazy lately.  Really, really crazy.  Today the sun shone brightly and the temperature was 72 degrees.  It's January.  Over the weekend, we got a couple inches of snow, last week the highs were in the high teens/low 20s, and the weekend before it was 60 and sunny. Tomorrow we're supposed to get thunderstorms and warm weather, and by Friday they're forecasting more snow.

So we take it day by day, and check the weather app on our phones before we go outside so see what fun awaits us.  When it is sunny and relatively warm, we take as much advantage of it as we can.  A few weekends ago (when it was 55 and sunny) Scott and I decided to take Jed to a park, to let him get out some energy before his afternoon nap.  I'd been planning on taking some official 1-year photos, but didn't want to make a big deal of it and especially didn't want to take him to a studio.  So I brought the camera and decided to take advantage of the play day at the park.

Jed loves the park.  He loves wandering around and exploring, climbing all the stairs, trying to get his head stuck between the bars, looking down from high places, swinging on the swings, and sliding down slides.  He had a blast, and with Scott usually close behind him, I got some cute pictures of the two of them (which are always my favourite pictures to get).

Last Thursday we had snow instead of sunshine.  I wanted to see what Jed thought about it, so I set about bundling him up to take him outside.  I fashioned a diaper out of a plastic bag by poking two holes for his legs, and tying it behind him.  I assumed he was going to spend some time sitting in the snow, so I wanted to keep him as dry as possible.  Jed was fascinated with the noise that the bag made as he walked around.

Then I put a second pair of pants over top of the bag diaper for warmth, and gave him shoes, a fleece vest, a coat, a hat, and mittens.  The whole process took about 20 minutes, and at the end he looked like the Michelin Man, ready to face the Alaskan tundra.

As I had expected, I spent more time getting him ready to go outside than we actually spent outside - it didn't take long for Jed to realize that the snow was COLD and not very much fun for a baby who can't build a snowman to play in.  And being so bundled up and forced to wear hard-soled shoes, it was rather difficult for him to walk - resulting in much tripping and falling.  He decided he had had enough of the snow when he face-planted in it:

I kept him outside for a few minutes longer, and got a few more pictures.  As predicted, he spent some time just sitting in the snow not knowing what to do.  I was glad I had gone to the trouble of wrapping his bum in a plastic bag.

When I finally relented and brought Jed inside, he appeared grateful.  I un-bundled him (he was dry, hooray!) and he immediately set about chasing the cat like it was any other day.  While he was occupied with his favourite feline friend, I sipped some hot chocolate and warmed up my fingers.  Someday he'll like the snow - though ideally, we won't live anywhere cold enough to get it on a regular basis.

retirement ceremony

Last Friday the 28th my dad had his retirement ceremony in the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon, and it was lovely.  (He won't actually stop working for the Army until next May, but that's a different story...)  We were worried about Jed disrupting the ceremony, and considered asking Scott's parents (who were visiting) to watch him, but he was pretty well-behaved and only made a few noises (all happy ones).  Friday morning a large group of friends and family gathered at the Pentagon, and my dad took us on a tour.  Scott's parents and brother's family were in town, and they joined us for the tour but left to visit other friends, who live in Bethesda, afterward.  Porter (9) thought the best part was learning that there are 17.5 miles of corridors and 284 bathrooms...and Penelope (6) enjoyed being in the lead by staying at the front of the group as much as possible (even though she wanted to stop at every water fountain she saw).  Jed took a short nap in the stroller.

At 1:30 my dad and his family gathered in his bosses office, 3-star General Lawrence.  She chatted with us, thanked us for supporting my father throughout his career, and gave us little tokens of appreciation.  She even gave one to Jed, who immediately began to chew on it.  That's how he shows that he likes something - so I hope she wasn't offended.  At 2pm the ceremony started, beginning with General Lawrence giving my father lots of awards for his service.  Debbie got 2 medals of appreciation as well - both for her support of my dad, and her own service in the army and as a civilian contractor.

When my father got up to speak, he began by giving Debbie and I flowers to thank us for always being there for him.  He then spoke about his career, and how he ended up where he was - with an inspirational tribute to his father - and pondered what he might do next.  He mentioned that his foremost duty was being a good grandfather to Jed, and told everyone that he planned on teaching Jed how to ride a horse before Jed learned to walk.

Immediately following the ceremony, a group of about 8 people gathered around Jed to ooh and ahh over him, because he was the only baby in the room.  I stood him up and let go - he remained standing, to my slight surprise - I walked around him, knelt down a few feet away, and beckoned for him to walk to me.  And he walked!  He had taken "falling" steps before, but we consider these his first official solo steps because he started from standing still.  My dad refuses to believe that it happened... :)

Some of the group gathered at my dad's house for dinner, and Jed kept everyone pretty entertained by crawling around, taking faltering steps, and shrieking with exhausted, loopy delight.  My Uncle Charles carried him around like this, for some unknown reason:

By the end of the night, poor Jed was the tiredest baby I'd ever seen.  As soon as his pajamas were on, he grabbed his Pooh bear, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and laid down on the floor.

But it was a fun day and totally worth it.  Congratulations, Daddy! I love you.

11-month update

As Jed closes in on the big 1-year mark, he continues to make us laugh and is our greatest joy.

The first bit of news is that he can walk!  He took his first solo steps last week, and has been practicing and getting better since then.  His biggest obstacle is confidence - rather, when there is a lack of it.  He stands for longer and walks further when he's not paying close attention to what he is doing, but is quickly realizing that he has the ability to walk on his own.  It's really fun to see his eyes sparkle when he takes 7 or 8 steps (which is about his max right now) and is clearly pleased with himself.  He usually needs help getting started (someone to stand him in the middle of the floor and let go) and encouragement (someone a few feet away to beckon to him), but occasionally he will voluntarily let go of the couch or coffee table and walk to something that he wants with no prompting whatsoever.  What he does NOT do is go from sitting to standing without the aid of something to pull himself up on.

He climbs into/onto everything he can with very little fear.  Yesterday I took the cushions off the couch to make him a pile of fluffiness to play in (and so I could throw him onto it, which he LOVES), and he spent much of the day climbing on and off the couch's cushion-less skeleton (on is easy.  Off is a little harder, but he figured it out).  He'd have climbed right over the back of the couch if he'd been able.

Other places he likes to get into:

But sometimes his climbing gets him into trouble and he gets stuck:

Stuck in the pot - Scott had to pick him up
and dump him out on the couch to free him!

Trying to escape the futon frame.

Resigned to being stuck
in the futon frame.

He has recently been obsessed with a box that housed a Christmas present for Scott - it was a BIG box and had a LOT of packing peanuts.  He climbs in and out of it, reads in it, eats in it, stands in it, "splashes" in the packing peanuts, and sometimes wiggles down until he is mostly covered.  Today I dumped all the packing peanuts out and turned the box into a tunnel, which was an instant hit.  Jed liked it so much that I was hardly able to finish taping it together - he crawled back and forth through it for about 30 minutes, giggling delightedly.  I love that all it takes is slightly altering something he already has to create so much excitement.

Other things about Jed:

-He's too big for his infant car seat.  He has been for a couple of months now, but I've been putting off getting him a new one.  I hate convertible car seats and would rather wait until he can face forward so I can get a high-back booster, but I don't think I'll be able to hold out that long.  :(

-He has had his first haircut (that was more than a trim around his ears).  It took both Scott and I to do it, but together we conquered the baby and cut his hair.

-Jed eats anything we give him (so far).  He has a special fondness for bananas though, and would eat an entire banana for every meal if I let him.  He likes picking up the pieces off the table, but prefers to take bites straight off the banana (and tries to shove it as far down his throat as he can, while I pull it back and convince him to bite down on what he already has).  Other favourite foods,which he probably likes partly because he can feed them to himself: chicken, cheese, broccoli, beans.  He loves anything flavoured with herbs or spices.

-As much as he loves climbing, Jed also loves books and will sit for several minutes at a time by himself flipping through his board books and talking to them, occasionally pulling one up REALLY close to his face (to get a better look?  You know how tiny the print is on these baby books - and Jed can't always find his bifocals).  Someday he will read books like books, but for now they are pretty much just toys.

Riding the front of the shopping cart at Kohl's

Making friends at church

When I put my shoes on, Jed climbs in his car seat.

Poor Jed is going to grow up and not know what he looked like as a baby.

As you can tell, nobody EVER takes any pictures of him.

He is a very sad, unloved child.

Christmas

Jed spent his first Christmas (outside my belly - though he was full-term last year) at my father's house.  We drove down to Woodbridge, VA in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and realized once we got there that we had forgotten to pack diapers.  So after Scott set up the pack 'n' play, he ran out to get some and I attempted to put Jed down for a nap.  He SCREAMED.  After a little while I went in to check on him, and as soon as I opened the door he reached for me desperately and whined, snot running down his face and his eyes puffy and red.  He rarely gets so upset about anything - it was like I was torturing him.  I hugged and kissed him, sang him a quick song, and laid him back down.  He cried more - especially when my uncle's dog got yelled at for eating the cat food - but eventually quieted down and went to sleep.  Unfortunately, he didn't sleep for very long, but I wasn't worried about it since he sleeps so well at night.  I figured we would just put him down a little early and that would be that.  We hung out the rest of the afternoon - I helped Debbie with various Christmas-y things around the house, and others watched football or did other housework.  Julie and Ayme arrived later that evening, and shortly afterward most of us left to go to the midnight service at a church near my dad's house (it started at 10:30 but ended at midnight).  Scott and Jed stayed home, since Jed was asleep.  If I'd known what kind of night we were about to have, I probably would have opted to stay home as well and gone to bed early.

When Scott went to bed at 11-something, Jed woke up - we were sharing a room with him that night - and had just quieted down just after 12 when the rest of us returned home.  I put a few things in stockings, talked with people for about 10 minutes, and went to bed myself.  Debbie went to bed at the same time as I did, but everyone else was still awake.  When I walked in the room, Jed stood up and stared at me.  When I didn't pick him up, but instead crawled under the covers, he started to cry.  I laid him back down but he stood up again and kept crying.  I ignored him.  He eventually calmed down again, but just as I was starting to drift off he cried again.  And then calmed down.  And then cried again.  This pattern continued every 20-30 minutes until 3am, when Scott and I sat up in bed, pulled Jed into bed with us, and attempted to calm him that way so he wouldn't wake up the rest of the house.  When that didn't work, we changed him.  We fed him.  We rocked him.  We sang to him.  Nothing worked, so Scott put him in the car seat and drove him around the neighborhood for an hour so the rest of the house could have some peace and quiet and I could get some rest.  We also hoped Jed would fall asleep and stay that way.  Unfortunately, Jed did fall asleep but did NOT stay that way for more than 15 minutes at a time.  Scott gave up and came home, and let Jed play quietly with some toys for a while.  After 45 minutes, Scott took Jed for a drive again.  They came home at 7, but hadn't been any more successful than the first time.  Jed finally went to sleep at 9am (his usual morning nap time), and shortly afterward we all started opening presents & stockings.  Jed missed the whole thing.  He opened his presents later, after he woke up (which was sooner than I'd hoped), and he didn't know the difference.

 Jed, of course, had way more fun with the wrapping paper than the presents. and a few hours after we had picked all the paper up and put it in bags for recycling, he spread it back out and sat in the middle of it, looking very pleased with himself.  I had a hard time getting a picture where his hands weren't blurry, because he was waving the ribbon around so enthusiastically.

Christmas dinner was simple but absolutely DELICIOUS - ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli with STC, bread, and egg nog.  There is really no need for anything fancy or complicated when just a few things are so good!

And we had pie, of course!

After dinner we drove home, opened some presents we had left there, and enjoyed a quiet evening.  Jed especially liked a magnetic barn his cousin Taylor gave him, and a fun "quiet book" made by his Granny!

Jed was very very glad to be home, and spent 20 minutes crawling around squealing with delight at Sofie, and every room he saw.  He enjoyed time at my dad's house (except the overnight part!), but it was obvious that he liked being home where he was comfortable.