What's New With You?

We hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend :) Ours was spent with friends, at the zoo and at the park...what more could we ask for?



I figured I'd do a quick post with some Jake updates...sometimes I'm just amazed at what a little sponge he is. Even though he only has a few words that he says, he understands so much of what we say to him.

*His words are ball, bird (though I've only heard this 2 or 3 times), duck, dog, NO, mama, dada, whoa, uh-oh, wow

*Anything that's round is a ball...we were in Sams Club recently and he was going nuts in the cart, pointing & frantically saying "ball" over & over again. I finally realized that he was pointing to the gigantic stack of cantaloupes...we had to exit the produce section pretty quickly.



*Signs he knows are more, all done, eat, milk, please (and he made up his own for wash hands)

*He's starting to point to body parts...so far he knows teeth (he loves to point to mine for some reason), hair, head, feet, belly and hands

*If you say "where did it go?" or "what happened?" he shrugs his shoulder & puts his hands in there air, as if to answer "I dunno!"

*He loves to be outside...it's always the end of the world when we have to come back in the house (or even worse-leave the playground!!)



*He's starting to repeat a lot of sounds....if we say "Jake can you roar like a lion? ROAR!" he does his own little roar back :) (we've only got as far as a lion & a monkey so far)

Bromance

We were lucky enough to have a few close friends in town for the weekend...and with our friends came their babies!



Aren't our little boys so handsome?? The dads would probably kill me for naming this post "Bromance" but really, I think it's an acceptable term to use these days. It's either that or BFF, I guess they can choose later :)

Here's a mommy shot (Jen, Melissa, Me)



After dinner, we booted the boys into the house to play Wii while we hung outside in the gazebo & caught up on girl talk. It was such a fun night....we ate too much food, drank too much wine and stayed up way too late (I can't remember the last time I saw 1am) but it was well worth it. We had a big old sleepover, so the boys were able to play together for awhile in the morning too.



We miss you guys already!! :(

Jake's 1st Haircut (or-"why are you coming at my head with that buzzy thing??")

Before
(not the best pics, he was a bit squirmy waiting for the cut, but please note the rat-tail and baby combover)



Getting Ready:



The very first snip:



All was well until she pulled out the clippers to trim around his ears....



After!



Since the clippers didn't go so well, she just trimmed his ears up the old fashioned way :)

Quick update on the rash (which you can probably see is still on him)....turns out that it wasn't from the MMR shot, it's just a bizarre rash that some children get called Papular Acrodermatitis (or Gianotti-Crosti Syndrome) The doctor said it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to clear up (weeks???) Fortunately, it seems to be clearing up for Jake, yay!

Is that a line?? Do you see a line??

That is what I was frantically asking Brian 2 years ago today after taking a pregnancy test...at 6am, trying to wake him out of a dead sleep to examine the test. I'll spare you the pic of the actual test...but obviously you can take my word for it that there was indeed a line. We were beyond excited and the next few months were a whirlwind of morning sickness, nursery decorating, baby showers and all of that fun stuff. Before we knew it, I was waddling around with a big belly getting ready to give birth :)

Here is Jake one year ago this week:

And here he is this year:

Hard to believe that 2 years ago he was just a teeny, microscopic thing that we lovingly referred to as "Peanut" for so many months, anxiously awaiting his arrival. And now he's our loveable, funny and adorable little boy.

Shout out to my mama :)

Happy Mothers Day, Mom, I love you!! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day was full of flowers, good food and...rashes. Wait, what?? Let's start with the good stuff.

We had a great Mother's Day...after sleeping in (is it sad that 8am is now "sleeping in" to me??) I was spoiled rotten with a beautiful Clementis plant and a gift certificate to a day of pampering at the spa (I can't wait to use this!) Jake made me this beautiful card at school:



As well as this lovely surprise treat bag that was contained a muffin and orange juice for breakfast in bed :)



Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the day was also full of rashes. On Wednesday night, Jake started running a fever and after a visit to the pediatrician the next day, it was determined that it was a reaction to the MMR shot he had the week before. She also warned us that the fever is also sometimes followed by a rash...ok, no biggie, we've dealt with rashes before. We were not prepared for what we were about to see starting on Saturday!



So....the poor little guy has been really itchy and uncomfortable for two days now. After calling the pediatrician today to see if I could give him some Benydryl or something, she told me to go ahead and try that to see if we can ease the itchiness for now and call the office in the morning. That's where we stand for now, keep your fingers crossed that he gets better soon!!

362 Oakland Avenue

That was the address of my apartment in college....sure, the windows were practically useless (one time it snowed IN my room), the door to our section of the house was a piece of plywood and nothing had been replaced since roughly the 1940s, but we LOVED it.

Earlier this week, I played hooky from work to hang out with my BFF Melissa & her son Ben, who were visiting from VA. She begged to make it a day of fun in Oakland and she certainly didn't have to twist my arm. We figured the earlier we could get the boys exposed to Pitt, the better chance we have of them falling in love with it.

Here are the boys posing at 362 Oakland Avenue....if you look carefully, you can see a door sign that says "You Are My Sunshine"; we left that there when we moved out (5 years ago) and it's been up since. So either everyone really loves it, or they just don't care enough to take it down. Either way, it warms my heart to see it there every time.



Of course, the obligatory posing in front of the Panther statue:





Jake: Come on, fist bump kid...this place is awesome!

Ben: Dude, we gotta go over there...see where I'm pointing? Check out those hot chicks...I wonder if they're into younger men??

And just for fun, here we are in the same spot on our wedding day:

15 month check up

Time is just flying by, I felt like we were just at the Dr's office for his 12 month check up! But there we were again last night for his 15 month appointment. Here are the stats:

Weight: 22 lbs, 7 oz (20th percentile)
Height: 31 inches (50th percentile)

So in 3 months, he gained just about a pound and 1 inch. The doctor that he's right on track for everything, which is always reassuring to hear. Unfortunately, we did find out that he has his first ear infection :( The doctor said it looked new, so at least we caught it in the beginning (and saved ourselves a separate trip to the office!) I felt bad that I didn't realize he even had one, but he really hasn't been out of sorts lately or running a fever or anything like that, I guess sometimes these things just sneak up on you. He's on antibiotics, so hopefully we'll get it cleared up soon.

From The Mouths of Yinzers

Over the weekend, Brian went to our local children's consignment shop while he was out running errands, they were having a 40% off sale (40% off!!) While in there, he overheard this statement:

"Yinz guys need to hurry up! Why do we need to buy all of these clothes for her? Little boys are so much easier to buy for....you buy them a pair of jeans & a few wife beater shirts and they're set".

Perhaps it was the guy we saw at the Steelers tailgate a few months ago with the word "Yinzer" tattooed across the back of his neck?

Now, before wife beater wearing people everywhere start coming at me with torches, let me just say that I don't have a problem with wife beaters. I myself, own some (are they called husband beaters in that case?) My little brother is quite fond of them and sports them around quite frequently (prompting some jokes from me about our family getting ready to appear on an episode of "Cops" with the way he's dressed....just so he doesn't yell at me, he is normally sporting them around doing yardwork or something, not as everyday attire) There's nothing wrong with little boys in wife beaters...in fact, sometimes they can be quite cute, trying to look grown up like daddy. It just struck me as a funny statement that this man seemed to think that they were the only clothes that boys would ever need to own....

Baby, It's a Wild World

One of our Christmas presents from my parents was a zoo membership to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium, which we used for the first time over the weekend. Of course, we decided to use it on a day that was almost 90 degrees (even in the morning hours!) but we still had a great time. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

The wagon worked out really well, we were able to get him in & out easily when he needed to be lifted up to see the animals...and as you can see, sometimes he wanted to walk & push the wagon (as he should, it was filled with all of his crap anyway!) :)

Jake definitely enjoyed the Monkey House and the Aquarium the best. While looking at the lemur display, one of the little buggers decided to jump right in front of the glass that Jake was standing in front of...he came out of nowhere & poor little man jumped about a foot off the ground and reached out to grab onto me. (he fared better than the little boy standing next to him who burst into hysterical tears)

There was a sting ray tunnel to crawl through...he made it out alive, phew!

I think trying to do the whole zoo in one morning when it was so hot out was a bit much to take on for our first time...we didn't end up making it to Kids Kingdom, so we'll be hitting that first during our next visit. Someone had a slight meltdown after we ate lunch, was a tired, sweaty mess and fell asleep as soon as he was buckled into his carseat :)

Cheap Thrills

Nice Weather + $5 baby pool = Happy Little Man



Bag of Marshmallows: $2
Graham Crackers: $3
Hershey Candy Bar: 50 cents
Enjoying your first S'More: Priceless