Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Here are the pictures I promised of Jack in his Winnie-the-Pooh costume. Most of these were taken Wednesday night at a local Halloween event hosted by the park district. Fortunately the event was inside (at a high school gym), since it was pretty cold that night. This is a frontal view of the costume, and also about the closest Jack came to smiling the whole night. He was not a big fan of getting dressed up, apparently.


And, much to Jack's future embarrassment, here's a side view. (Though to give him some credit, that's not all him--the outfit has some belly padding.)


Here's Jack with a friend. This is Sam, the son of our friends Sammy and Shannon. Sam is just a couple weeks older than Jack. Their older son Luke was also at the event, but he was busy playing and running around so unfortunately I didn't get a picture of all 3 of them together.


Here's Jack with Dad:


And here's Jack with Mom:


This picture was taken yesterday by our nanny. She takes Jack to a tots class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this was at class yesterday.

Blah, blah, blah

I unexpectedly got a little bit of everything in this video clip--talking, clapping, and rolling. He's just saying "ba-ba-ba" here, but much to my delight, he's also increased his verbal repertoire to include "ma-ma-ma" sounds! It'll probably take me a while to get that on camera.

I haven't had a chance to upload the pictures yet, but tonight Jack tried out his Winnie-the-Pooh costume for the first time! There's a park right across the street from our house, and the park district hosted a tots Halloween party. We took Jack, along with our friend Sammy and Shannon, and their kids Luke and Sam. Jack didn't seem too impressed by the whole thing, but at least he did look super cute in his outfit. I'll try to get the pictures up Thursday or Friday!

Weekend visitors

This weekend some of my friends from grad school at UNC were in town for a conference, and they came over one night to visit. Fortunately Jack was able to stay up long enough until they arrived so he could meet everyone.

Here's Jack with Gretchen--they've actually met before, when he was just 3 weeks old. I posted a picture from their first visit under this picture. Jack's changed just a little bit since then!



Here's Jack with our friend Tiffany.


And, last but not least, here's Jack with our friend Jeannette.

Being silly

Congratulations to our friends Mary and Eric whose baby girl, Hannah Grace, was born a couple days ago!!!

Here are a couple videos of Jack doing some tricks. The videos are very short--it's always real hard to predict when he'll do things. Plus as you can see in the second video, once I start filming he stops what he's doing and just stares at me like I'm an idiot.

He's in his "excersaucer," which helps us out a lot by keeping him entertained for a while. The first video shows what Jack does when he gets excited. He waves his arms around and yells. Usually he does it for longer, but in this case he got distracted by the TV.

I've had the hardest time getting Jack to clap for the camera. This video clip isn't great, but he at least cooperated for a few seconds.

He's also starting to "talk" more and more. I know he's not consciously forming words yet, but he babbles a lot saying "ba-ba-ba" or "da-da-da." I've got to start training him on how to pronounce the "ma" sound...

Birthday party and sleeping

Yesterday I took Jack to Chuck E. Cheese, where a friend of mine's daughter was having her 2-year birthday party. That's the birthday girl, Diana, in the picture above with my friend Lily. If Jack could have stopped sucking on his shirt for 2 seconds it would have been a great picture. This was actually the first time I had ever been to a Chuck E. Cheese, since back in my day it was Showbiz Pizza. Not much has changed--still an overwhelming chaos of loud noises, flashing lights, and those creepy singing mechanical animals.

We've done some work this past week on adjusting Jack's sleep schedule, and so far it seems to be working. We had been having trouble over the past couple months; he would wake up sometimes 4-5 times per night and often wouldn't stay down very long once we put him to bed. I did some reading and figured out that we'd been putting him to bed too late at night, which wound up with him being too wired to stay asleep for very long. Plus I was also getting up with him every single time he cried, and he wasn't learning to go back to sleep on his own.

We backed up his bedtime a couple hours, and now he goes down around 7-7:30 pm (so for anyone calling our house phone--please call before 7:00!) We had some crying at first, but now he entertains himself until falling asleep if he's not already asleep when I put him in the crib. We also let him cry through some of his wake-ups when I knew he didn't need to be fed, and now he's not waking up nearly as much in the night. The past few nights he's slept all the way through until about 4 am, taken a quick feeding, and then gone back to bed until 7 am. So now all of us are starting to feel more rested :)  

I feel bad because looking back, I realize that many evenings when I thought Jack was just being cranky, he was actually tired and should have been put to bed! Oh well. We'll just chalk this up to another learning experience as first time parents!

Funny face

Jack has been making a new face for a few days now, and I've been struggling to get a shot of it on video. We can't predict when he'll do it, and as always he doesn't like to perform for the camera. But this morning I did manage to record him for a few seconds.  He screws up his face and kind of makes snorting noises. I remember my brother John used to do this a lot when he was an older baby.  Pretty cute and funny.

Bye Grandma and Grandpa!

Thursday night we said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Nold, as they've now gone to Florida for the winter. We'll miss seeing them so much, but at least we'll get to visit when they come back to Chicago for the holidays. We hope they're having a great time in sunny Marco Island, and we'll try to not be too jealous in a couple months when it's snowy and freezing up here!

Jack was his usual chaming self during their visit Thursday night, and he showed Grandma and Grandpa how well he can sit up and play now. Louie was jealous of all the attention Jack was getting, so he crept over to lay beside him. Here's Jack petting him (actually he's probably pinching him).



We've had a sports-filled day today. Unfortunately one sporting event didn't go well--we just watched the Bears blow what would have been a great comeback against the Falcons. I know that makes all the Georgia relatives happy, but we're feeling a little irritated up here.

At least this morning we were in a better mood, when Jack got to watch his first Chicago marathon. The marathon course runs right through our neighborhood, so it's very convenient for us to see it. We're by mile 14, so we got to watch people at a little more than halfway through the race. Here's a picture of the elite men as they ran by:


And here's the women. The woman in the tan-colored outfit was the Olympic gold medalist this year, but she didn't win today.



Here's a couple shots of Jack with mom and dad




And finally, Jack seems to have been worn out just by watching the race!