Jim was REALLY excited to see me (and the camera), so he kind of rushed his dismount.
And all he wanted was to say hi. :(
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
The first time I tried to take pictures for yesterday's post...
Jim was REALLY excited to see me (and the camera), so he kind of rushed his dismount.
And all he wanted was to say hi. :(
Monday, October 15, 2012
He's on the right track.
Jim is not a quiet person to live with. He yells, and he screams (both happily and un-); he chases the cats, and he throws anything that will fit in his hands. But occasionally, everything will just fall silent for a suspiciously long period of time. And when that happens, you can generally find him like so:
Jim's favorite place.
This has been building up off and on. The first time it happened, I was washing dishes and realized I hadn't heard Jim for about three minutes. Naturally, I was certain he was dead. So I went off looking for him in a panic, and there he was, sitting in the corner of his room on his own little chair reading one of his picture books. Freakin' adorable, yes? Lately, he's been more suggestible about it. "Hey Jim, you should go sit in your chair and read a book," I say, and he looks like a cartoon light bulb just went off over his head before he races back to get his book out.
As you can see, he's already learning the value of healthy skepticism.
Usually he needs to be alone in his room for this to work (if he sees one of us, he wants us to read to him instead), but yesterday I got the bright idea of bringing his chair out to the living room. We had the life-changing experience (seriously, life-changing - I'm not even exaggerating) of all three of us sitting and reading books quietly in the same room for about half an hour. It was amazing. I remember doing that with my family when I was a kid, and I'm so excited about being able to do that with Jim. We still spend plenty (pleeeeenty) of time reading to him, but his new interest in looking quietly at his own books while we read grown-up books is an extremely welcome development.
The silence truly is great, but if you're really lucky, he may even make animal noises while reading.
Jim's favorite place.
This has been building up off and on. The first time it happened, I was washing dishes and realized I hadn't heard Jim for about three minutes. Naturally, I was certain he was dead. So I went off looking for him in a panic, and there he was, sitting in the corner of his room on his own little chair reading one of his picture books. Freakin' adorable, yes? Lately, he's been more suggestible about it. "Hey Jim, you should go sit in your chair and read a book," I say, and he looks like a cartoon light bulb just went off over his head before he races back to get his book out.
As you can see, he's already learning the value of healthy skepticism.
Usually he needs to be alone in his room for this to work (if he sees one of us, he wants us to read to him instead), but yesterday I got the bright idea of bringing his chair out to the living room. We had the life-changing experience (seriously, life-changing - I'm not even exaggerating) of all three of us sitting and reading books quietly in the same room for about half an hour. It was amazing. I remember doing that with my family when I was a kid, and I'm so excited about being able to do that with Jim. We still spend plenty (pleeeeenty) of time reading to him, but his new interest in looking quietly at his own books while we read grown-up books is an extremely welcome development.
The silence truly is great, but if you're really lucky, he may even make animal noises while reading.
Friday, October 12, 2012
The whole family, just not together.
Note Jim's hair being all float-y.
Post-shower. He loves being wrapped in a towel.
And he REALLY loves looking in the mirror. Budding narcissist, that one.
MySpace photo. Is that reference still usable?
Jim and I, we are of one mind.
And that, ladies and gents, is all of September. We're caught up! Huzzah!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Jim's doctor visit
This was pretty uneventful, so I'm just going to mark down the stats before I forget.
Jim is now 23lb 7oz, which is 25th percentile (up from 21lb and 22nd percentile at his 12-month appointment). He's 31 inches tall, which is 32nd percentile (up from 29.125" and 30th percentile last time). His head is 19.5 inches around, which is around 95th percentile (19 inches and 98th percentile last time). So, he's more or less maintaining his little-guy-with-a-giant-head status. He's probably going to need custom-made hats when he's grown up. But hey, that's no big deal. My brother needs gigantic hats too, as I recall, so he won't be alone.
He got a couple shots, which he handled with aplomb. Noah came along just in case, since he's a lot better than I am at comforting a hysterical Jim, but it turned out he wasn't needed for that task. There was no crying at all, just a rather betrayed howl and an angry face for a couple seconds after the burn-y one.
Other than that, there's not much to remark on. His speaking skills are, as I suspected, a bit behind - most babies apparently have 5-10 words at this age, and Jim doesn't have any except for the occasional dada. His comprehension is great, though, and he knows a lot of signs and can follow instructions, so there's no real need for concern, especially since boys are apparently usually much slower to speak than girls are. The doctor said he'd refer us to a speech development expert if we wanted, but he didn't see any reason to worry unless he's still not speaking at 24 months. Physically and intellectually, though, he's in the normal-to-awesome range.
Jim is now 23lb 7oz, which is 25th percentile (up from 21lb and 22nd percentile at his 12-month appointment). He's 31 inches tall, which is 32nd percentile (up from 29.125" and 30th percentile last time). His head is 19.5 inches around, which is around 95th percentile (19 inches and 98th percentile last time). So, he's more or less maintaining his little-guy-with-a-giant-head status. He's probably going to need custom-made hats when he's grown up. But hey, that's no big deal. My brother needs gigantic hats too, as I recall, so he won't be alone.
He got a couple shots, which he handled with aplomb. Noah came along just in case, since he's a lot better than I am at comforting a hysterical Jim, but it turned out he wasn't needed for that task. There was no crying at all, just a rather betrayed howl and an angry face for a couple seconds after the burn-y one.
Other than that, there's not much to remark on. His speaking skills are, as I suspected, a bit behind - most babies apparently have 5-10 words at this age, and Jim doesn't have any except for the occasional dada. His comprehension is great, though, and he knows a lot of signs and can follow instructions, so there's no real need for concern, especially since boys are apparently usually much slower to speak than girls are. The doctor said he'd refer us to a speech development expert if we wanted, but he didn't see any reason to worry unless he's still not speaking at 24 months. Physically and intellectually, though, he's in the normal-to-awesome range.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Jim looks generally adorable.
How's this to start your day?
Hey! Hey! Hey! I'm eating an apple! Hey! Wanna watch me eat my apple?
There, aren't you glad you watched?
I don't even know.
Oooh.
Told you he looks adorable.
PS - Jim has a doctor's appointment today. Look for an update on that tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Kitty cats!
Delilah/Doofy's favorite spot in the whole world. She is safe from Jim AND can keep an eye on the snake.
Poor beastie always looks mildly confused.
Bruce the Cat, majestically surveying his domain.
Such a tolerant animal. If this were Doof, Jim would already be bleeding from multiple puncture wounds.
Monday, October 8, 2012
We're totally grown-ups now.
As a kid, I always thought going to college would make me a grown-up. Alas, it didn't. Then I moved into my first apartment, and nothing changed. Getting a real grown-up job? Nope, still didn't feel like a grown-up. Getting married? Still felt like we were faking it. Buying a car, and paying off said car? No and more no. Having a baby? Just made us act even more juvenile. But now - now, we're seriously going to be real actual adult-type people. As most of you know, we're buying a house. If this doesn't work, I'm just going to give up on the whole adulthood thing.
Jim is living in a box-filled bedlam.
I'm not going to go into huge details about the place right now (except it's huge and has an awesome barn and Noah is going to have to devote the rest of his life to mowing the yard and we're going to have chickens and goats and pigs and llamas and giraffes and geese and muskoxen and a pear tree*), but it looks like we'll be closing in the first week of November and moving in shortly thereafter.
In an effort to cope with the trauma of packing, Jim has adopted this box to be his very own.
It's definitely going to require quite a bit of work. The place has been foreclosed on twice in a row, and it's been vacant for close to a year now. Everything is massively overgrown - you basically need a machete to get into the barn, which is, incidentally, also infested with hornets. The house itself is in decent shape, except that the previous owner apparently fancied himself quite the electrician and screwed up the wiring something fierce. All the lights technically work, but you have to flip the switches in the right order. The lights in what will be Jim's room, for example, go on just fine, as long as you already have the upstairs hall bathroom light on too.
Left: Observe, mortal! Right: You're clearly not observing, mortal.
This box provides him with literally minutes of fun at a time.
Still, our loan is a super-fancy FHA 203(k) loan, so it'll cover needed repairs, and we'll have contractors out to fix the major stuff in a hurry. The biggest thing I'm worried about is actually something really minor: the stairs have no bannister. This isn't problematic for us Real Grown-ups, since we have great stair-climbing skills, but it may prove to be an issue for a tiny little Jim. Every time we've visited the place, he has exhibited great interest in improving his stair-climbing skills, but they're still a little lacking, and I'm afraid he'll fall right off the stairs and crack his poor adorable noggin.
Pfft. Like I'd crack my noggin.
Anyway, expect to see many, many, MANY pictures of the new place come November, along with frequent and long-winded details about what we're doing with it.
Jim can hardly wait.
*You decide which ones I'm joking about.
Jim is living in a box-filled bedlam.
I'm not going to go into huge details about the place right now (except it's huge and has an awesome barn and Noah is going to have to devote the rest of his life to mowing the yard and we're going to have chickens and goats and pigs and llamas and giraffes and geese and muskoxen and a pear tree*), but it looks like we'll be closing in the first week of November and moving in shortly thereafter.
In an effort to cope with the trauma of packing, Jim has adopted this box to be his very own.
It's definitely going to require quite a bit of work. The place has been foreclosed on twice in a row, and it's been vacant for close to a year now. Everything is massively overgrown - you basically need a machete to get into the barn, which is, incidentally, also infested with hornets. The house itself is in decent shape, except that the previous owner apparently fancied himself quite the electrician and screwed up the wiring something fierce. All the lights technically work, but you have to flip the switches in the right order. The lights in what will be Jim's room, for example, go on just fine, as long as you already have the upstairs hall bathroom light on too.
Left: Observe, mortal! Right: You're clearly not observing, mortal.
This box provides him with literally minutes of fun at a time.
Still, our loan is a super-fancy FHA 203(k) loan, so it'll cover needed repairs, and we'll have contractors out to fix the major stuff in a hurry. The biggest thing I'm worried about is actually something really minor: the stairs have no bannister. This isn't problematic for us Real Grown-ups, since we have great stair-climbing skills, but it may prove to be an issue for a tiny little Jim. Every time we've visited the place, he has exhibited great interest in improving his stair-climbing skills, but they're still a little lacking, and I'm afraid he'll fall right off the stairs and crack his poor adorable noggin.
Pfft. Like I'd crack my noggin.
Anyway, expect to see many, many, MANY pictures of the new place come November, along with frequent and long-winded details about what we're doing with it.
Jim can hardly wait.
*You decide which ones I'm joking about.
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