Family Boat Ride

The weather last weekend was warm, though windy, so we decided it was finally time for Jackson's first boat ride!!!!

Our first family photo on the boat:


Both the Eubanks and Trimbles joined us for the boat ride. We shared pizzas and brownies. Nobody did any wakeboarding due to the windy weather, but we all still had a wonderful evening!


Julia having an absolute blast helping Daddy drive the boat:




Jackson, on the other hand, did NOT seem to understand why anyone thought the boat ride was fun. In each picture of him, he seems to wordlessly plead, "Help me!!" Granted we went in the late afternoon (his hungriest time of day) and it was hard to feed him given the bright sun, windy weather, cumbersome life jacket, and distractions. But the life jacket simply was swallowing him. I guess most "normal" families don't take infants on a boat, but not us. These are the smallest life jackets they make, but apparently still not small enough...

Julia wanted to dip her feet in the water. She thought it was super fun despite the fact the water was still really, really cold...

Fishin' time with Poppy!...

FREEDOM!!!!! Jackson was simply not happy, so we finally took off his life jacket (illegal) and gave him a breather. He was MUCH happier after that...



Julia, it thrills both of us how much you truly enjoy the boat and the lake. Jackson, we know you will warm up to the idea...you kinda don't have a choice in this family, buddy! But we promise we'll make it as fun as possible for you. Summer 2011 here we come!

Carnival

Last Friday (March 18), we went to a carnival at the Richardson YMCA.

They had several basic carnival-style games inside. But first we started with some face painting:



She loved the simple heart, so we went back later and got a bunny rabbit too (she is obsessed with bunny rabbits):




Indoor bounce house:


Ring Toss:


Cupcake walk. They just happened to pick the number Julia froze on when the music stopped...hmm, wonder how she got so lucky?!



Later we went to do some outside games, and here she is loving the inflatable obstacle course:

She sticks her tongue out when she jumps...just call her Michael Jordan:






Jackson's serious face:


He likes it when he gets lifted up in the air:




Kisses from daddy:

Jackson 5 Months

Sweet Jackson,

You are 5 months old today. How on earth is that possible? Our little baby is getting so big!

At your 4-month well visit a few weeks ago, your pediatrician gave us the green light to start you on cereal. But no, no! To me, that means you are officially growing up and I'm not ready to lose my baby yet. We'll start you on food soon enough, but for now you are doing just fine! I will admit that your nap schedule is difficult and I long for the scheduling freedom that comes with an older baby, but other than that, I would love to keep you my little baby for as long as possible.

Your smiles absolutely light up our world.

You love to be snuggled and we gladly cater to that need! You enjoy holding our fingers, so we "hold hands" as much as possible. And I love to watch you and pray over you when you're peacefully asleep, as I admire every one of your precious features:

Some things about you at 5 months:

• For the entire month of March, you have taken 3 naps per day. You typically like to be awake only about 1.5 hours before you're ready to go to sleep again.


• Despite that one book saying that your routine should be "eat, play, sleep" you are actually a play-eat-sleep baby. Your soothing-to-sleep routine consists of us taking you to your room where it's dark and quiet, giving you a bottle by the light of a dim lamp while rocking you subtly, and then putting you down in your crib. Every once in a while, we still let you fall asleep in our arms before we put you down.


• Your naps are often only 45 minutes long. On most days, you'll give us one nap that's a little bit longer, but we are delighted on the rare occasions when you sleep two hours!


• Because you aren't napping for longer lengths of time, you are often ready for bed by 6:30 in the evening. Some days it's earlier, and other nights we can push you longer.


• You are generally happy if we have to keep you awake past your ideal nap time/bed time so long as we are out and about, but we often pay the price later. Just the other day you were awake several hours in the morning and seemed pretty happy, but once I finally tried to get you to sleep, you screamed for a solid hour before putting yourself to sleep. So, as much as I dislike the schedule, it's less stressful on this mommy when I strive to keep our outings short and get you back home in time for a nap.


• You wear a Size 2 diaper and 3-6 month clothes.


• The comments you receive most often are "What beautiful blue eyes!" and "He is so long and lean!" It's true: your eyes are even bluer than your sister's or your daddy's, and your stats showed that you are 90% in height and 25% in weight.


• You give us delightful belly laughs when we give you zerberts on your bare belly and underarms.


• Your constipation issues are gone, thanks to a combination of sensitive formula and daily Miralax.


• You still fight tummy time when it's on the floor or a Boppy pillow. Thanks to a friend's suggestion, we now sit cross-legged (Indian style) and lay you across our leg and knee. You'll sit like this for several minutes before finally getting really antsy. The good news is that you lift your head just fine when you're lying in this position, but there's something about being laid down on the floor for tummy time that you just can't stand!


• You love to chew on Sophie the giraffe, to play with your blue Bear, to kick around in your bouncer, and to grab things


• You are already starting to give up the paci, in favor of your fingers, just as your sister did around this time. Your sister sucked her thumb, but you prefer to suck your fingers like this:
  


• You enjoy grabbing your feet, which is ranks at the top of my cute-things-babies-do list. You just recently started to get your right foot into your mouth:
  
  


• Like I said, we haven't started food yet. But we did try out the highchair for "practice". You sat with one leg propped up just like Julia used to do:
  
  
  


• You enjoy swinging:
  
  
  
  
• Daddy is your best buddy! You give him huge smiles when he gets home from work. Here, daddy was giving you some sugar:
  
  


• You love to watch your sister. She enjoys hanging out in your crib with you, and she loves to imitate you as she pretends to be a baby herself. Here she had asked to be in the crib, and she was kicking around as you were. Then she kept giving you great big hugs.
  Also, you would roll to your side to look at her and "talk" to her, and she would "talk" back. The two of you did this over and over again for quite some time:
  
  

We never did a 4 month post because, truthfully, February was a very difficult month as we worked through a few different challenges:

• You still despised tummy time.


• You had constipation issues.


• We took you to Cranial Technologies to evaluate your head shape, and they determined you could indeed benefit from a band to help reshape your head. Since you hated tummy time so very badly, you spent the majority of your time either lying down or sitting up in a bouncer. Either way put pressure against your head. It seems hundreds of thousands of other babies spend that much time with pressure against their head, so we're still unsure why your poor head was affected so much. We're very sorry baby!


• You had sleep issues. In January we noticed: If we tried to have you fall asleep in our arms, that alone required a lot of work - walking, patting your bottom, shushing all while you fought against us. Then if you finally fell asleep, you always woke up when we laid you down in the crib. On the other hand, if we put you down in your crib from the get-go, you still did a lot of screaming. So come February, we decided it was time for sleep training. And it was really painful for Mommy and you both. You cried a lot. I cried a lot. You screamed, I said a few choice foul words. It was extremely difficult, but we made it through it and are both better off now!