Some of my favorite things

There is definitely truth to what everyone says about babies' favorite "toys" being cheap household items. Jack has recently discovered some of my cooking utensils, as you can see here. Sometimes he gets really excited and bangs his spoon like he's playing the drums, but he wouldn't cooperate and do it while I was trying to film him. He also loves plastic containers. We're trying to introduce a sippy cup, and he'll drink from it if we hold it for him, but once it's in his hands, it becomes a fascinating toy for him to shake. Louie is also one of Jack's favorite things. Jack usually starts laughing whenever Louie runs around or makes noise. One other thing that Jack really likes is a commercial on TV--it's a Toyota ad with a song that goes "Save by zero..." Whenever that commercial comes on, Jack will stop whatever he's doing and stare at the TV and smile.

Happy Birthday to Grampy Jarvis tomorrow, and to Great-Grampy Jarvis on Friday!

8 Months Old!

Hey there, it's me Jack. I'm 8 months old today! That's me in the picture up there with my truck that my Great-Grampy Jarvis made for me. He also made me a rattle, which I really like, and now I'm starting to notice the truck more. Mom says Great-Grampy went into the hospital yesterday, so we all hope he's feeling better soon.

Here's a picture of me standing on the couch. Mom and Dad like to prop me up like that, but I'm not really sure what they want me to do, so I just stand there for a while and look around. I don't think it's really that interesting, but they seem to get a kick out of it so I usually humor them for a little while.


Sometimes they ask me when I'm going to start crawling. I thought about it, but come on, really--what's the point? When I'm sitting down Mom and Dad play with me and give me toys. Why would I want to move around?

But even though I don't crawl, I'm still very strong. You should see me when my nanny takes me to class. I can sit up by myself and play longer than any of the other babies. The teacher usually sits next to me because I'm such a good example for the others.

I'm starting to see why Mom and Dad like to eat food. I used to not be that intested in eating, but lately I've tried some things that actually taste pretty good. My favorite is bananas, and I also like Cheerios. But I like Cheerios mainly because they're fun to play with. I try to smash them, or sometimes pick them up. It's also really fun to throw them on the floor. My dog Louie usually sits next to my highchair now when I'm eating. Mom says she doesn't mind because he helps to clean up.

Mom says I need to wish my cousin Tyler a happy birthday today! She lives in London, wherever that is. Mom says London is pretty cool, but I don't think any place could be cooler than where I live.

Here's a couple more pictures of me playing with my truck. Mom said something about me giving her the "evil eye" in the last one, but I don't know what she's talking about.

Splish, splash

I've been meaning to get a video of this for a while, and I just kept forgetting. For the longest time, Jack was not a big fan of baths or getting water in his face. But then a couple months ago, he finally discovered splashing and started having fun. We moved him from his sink bathtub into this inflatable one after we got tired of him soaking us at bathtime.



I also wanted to congratulate Andy and myself on our two-year wedding anniversary, which was yesterday! Quite a bit has changed over the past two years, but all for the better. Ahh, just to think two years ago today we were laizing in the sun on our honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas...

It's been an interesting day here in Chicago with the election. The downtown area is essentially shutting down tonight for Barack Obama's rally later. I didn't work at our downtown office today, and it's probably a good thing I didn't, since they locked the building up after 2:00 this afternoon. We live just to the west of the downtown loop area, so hopefully at home we won't be affected too much by crowds or traffic. Unfortunately I expect we'll still hear a lot of the noise. Last night at 9:00 planes and helicopters kept flying over us, which was really annoying. I'm sure it will be much worse tonight. Oh well, at least it's interesting being in the midst of such a big event. History in the making.

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...