Christmas Time

We've had lots of fun being in Fayetteville over the break. In fact, we've stayed so busy that I've hardly had time to get on the computer. It has been so fun spending time with family and friends, seeing James' little sister get married, watching Jesse experience the Christmas season for the first time, and getting to go out on a date for the first time in a couple months. Here is a little update on the festivities so far.

On Monday Jesse and his cousin Ben got to hang out for the first time since July. They had a blast...that is, until Jesse started playing bully (he doesn't understand that his "pats" on the head are a little too rough).

Here they are playing in Ben's tunnel:





Riding Grandma's rocking horse:



and playing with Ben's latch box:





James and Jesse had fun crushing peppermints for candy cane cookies:



Tonight we had fun eating dinner at Hugo's with my parents and seeing the lights on the square. Jesse had the time of his life at Hugo's. He became good friends with an older couple at a table close to ours. He kept looking at them and smiling and giggling and offering them pieces of his food (and of course, they were smiling and laughing, too). He was much more sedated on our walk around the square, but seemed to like seeing the lights and ponies.




He was so wound-up after our outing that we let him stay up a little later to burn off some energy.

Eleven Months

I can't believe that in less than a month we'll have a one-year-old on our hands. This year has seriously flown by, and I can't even believe that Jesse is the same baby we brought home from the hospital. He has changed so much and so quickly.

Jesse's life at 11 months:

- He has been an especially great sleeper over the past month, still sleeping around 12 hours at night and taking two good naps a day. His naps have gotten a little longer recently, lasting anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours rather than just an hour or slightly more. He is also sleeping a little later (closer to 7)and putting himself to sleep extremely easily (little to no crying), and I'm hoping that continues.

- Something clicked several weeks ago, and Jesse quite suddenly went from barely eating any solids to eating decent amounts two times a day. He is eating about 4 oz. of yogurt and fruit for breakfast and usually eats pieces of bread, turkey and some type of cheese for lunch along with some fruit. We give him a little bit of whatever we're having for dinner, but some nights he is just not interested. He really doesn't seem to care for green vegetables at all, and is not overly enthusiastic about orange veggies but will usually eat some if offered them. Any time we offer him a new food or a food that he hasn't had very much of, he is very skeptical and has to examine it with his eyes (and sometimes his fingers) before he will put it (or let us put it) in his mouth. I have to hold the food out, let him stare it down and then let him choose himself to take a bite...otherwise he just swats my hand away and gets upset. His favorite foods are yogurt, any type of fruit, bread, turkey, cheese and mashed potatoes.

- Just today he stood for about 5-10 seconds by himself twice.

- He says "mama" and "dada" all the time now. When he was sick he just constantly moaned "mama" (sometimes babbling and other times wanting me) and now that James has a break from school and has been around a lot more, he has really been into saying "dada". We think he might also be trying to say milk when he's hungry, but it's hard to tell (it comes out sounding like "mim" and "mil").

- Until recently, he didn't seem to be phased by another kid taking a toy out of his hands in the tot lot; he would just grab another toy and play with it. Now he is beginning to fight back and gets quite upset when something is taken from him.

I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of things, but you probably really just want the pictures, so here are a few of those:

Head Banging

Jesse is such a boy. Today out of the blue he started throwing his head back into the back of his high chair. Then later this afternoon we were down in the tot lot and he started doing this into the hard concrete wall (that time it didn't last very long).

Opinionated

Lately Jesse has become somewhat opinionated about which books we read. You may remember me writing about how much he loved the book "Moo Baa La La La" when he was younger. This book was the equivalent of a pacifier for Jesse; it made him so happy. Well, over the past two weeks he has developed pretty negative feelings towards this book for some reason. Every single time I open that book to read to him he slams it shut before I can read the first page, and sometimes he does this very impolitely and will cry and squirm to get out of my lap. There was one day this week that we would make it as far as the second page (with the sheep on it) and he would make an awful face and start to whimper and look away. He would look at any other book, but not that one. I got some video of James reading another book to him, and then reading "Moo Baa La La La". Jesse didn't get upset in this video, but you can see that he wanted to shut it at first. He actually ended up letting James finish the book here, so maybe he's getting over it, or maybe he'd just prefer his Daddy reading to him.

Here's another short video of James reading him another book about babies playing in water. Over the past several weeks he has kissed the same babies in the book every time I have read it to him. He started doing this on his own, but now we will ask him to kiss the babies when we read it to him. It is so cute! I don't know what it is about those particular babies!

Table Manners

I think we're going to have to teach this guy some table manners!

The Idea Factory

Today we went over to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was so packed with people that it was difficult to navigate the stroller through the crowds, but we had a fun time. We bought a membership, which allows us unlimited entry to the museum for us and one guest (come visit and you can come with us for free!), unlimited Omnimax tickets, free parking, and lots more! I have a feeling Jesse and I will be visiting the museum quite a lot in the winter months when we can't go outside but need to get out of our apartment building.

While James and Matt went to check out the submarine exhibit, I took Jesse to the Idea Factory, a place where young kids can run around (or crawl around) and do all kinds of fun things. There is an area perfect for Jesse's age. He loved crawling around all over the big mats and looking at himself in the mirrors. Unfortunately the fun had to stop a little early because we had a diaper situation to take care of and I had to track down the guys to get the diaper bag.

After spending some time at the Idea Factory, we all went to the Omnimax, which was featuring a film about the building of the first transcontinental railway through the Canadian Rockies. I was so impressed that Jesse made it nearly half an hour into the movie before he got fussy. He just laid in James' lap and watched; he was totally mesmerized by the scenery. I can't remember the last time he sat completely still for even just several minutes; this guy just loves to move, so it takes something pretty entertaining to get him to slow down.

Here are some pictures of Jesse having a blast in the Idea Factory.

Before leaving we also visited a seasonal exhibit which features Christmas trees from around the world. We knew Bulgaria was one of the countries so we had to find that one. This picture doesn't really do the tree any justice, but here it is anyway.

The Bean, Among Other Things

After living in Chicago for 2.5 months, we have finally made it downtown to do some sightseeing. Having a visitor and time off from school are great excuses to do some of these things, and it was actually much easier than we thought to get downtown. We rode the Metra commuter rail, which is just about 3 blocks from our apartment and a 15-minute ride to Millenium Park. After getting off at Millenium Park, we took the obligatory pictures at the giant bean. Even though I had been to Chicago before moving here, I had never seen the bean before.

Then we walked through Millenium Park and Grant Park to the Museum Campus. We had planned to go to the Shedd Aquarium, but the line was insanely long due to a new exhibit that had just opened, so we made the decision to explore the Field Museum instead. We stopped first for a snack by the lake.

Jesse got a short but much-needed nap while we went through a large exhibit about the Ancient Americas, the people of the Northwest Coast and the North American Indians. He woke up just in time to go inside the Pawnee Earth Lodge (picture below) and then go see some huge stuffed animals.

It was a fun day, and now that we've figured out how easy it is to get downtown with public transportation, we will probably do it again soon!

Thanksgiving Break

This week has been such a great break from our crazy lives here. It has been so great to have James home during the day, and even though we couldn't celebrate Thanksgiving with family, we got to spend Thanksgiving with our friend Matt who came to visit and also with some new friends here in our building.

We have such good memories of making our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals in Bulgaria that we decided we had to do it again even though our neighbors had already invited us over for a Thanksgiving meal. I tried to keep the meal fairly simple since we would be having another one later in the day, but it's really hard to cut things out, so it ended up being more than I had planned. I will say, though, that getting together a traditional Thanksgiving meal felt so simple here compared to overseas, where it was difficult to find the right ingredients.

This year I decided to try out a brine, and I think it worked really well. The turkey turned out very juicy and flavorful. This brine is a mixture of saltwater, brown sugar and fresh sage, rosemary and thyme. It's a good thing that we had just bought a plastic tub for Jesse's bath toys, because I found out at the last minute that our turkey wouldn't fit in our largest pot. This plastic tub was the perfect size for the turkey and our fridge. Here is our turkey taking his overnight bath.

Making cranberry relish:

James made the pumpkin pie:

Enjoying the fruits of our labor (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry relish and pumpkin pie):

Four hours later we went up to our neighbors' apartment and joined them and two other families for a 100% Kosher Thanksgiving meal. I wish I had pictures of this, but I forgot to take them. It was a delicious and elaborate meal, and they were so gracious to host all of us and prepare this excellent meal. I am so thankful for good friends to spend Thanksgiving with!

Sharing

This afternoon Jesse was eating a Mum-Mum (baby rice cracker) and started offering me bites. He did this the other night when we went out to eat, too. When it comes to his food, this guy is not greedy (at least not yet). I had to run to grab the video camera in the middle of it, so he had forgotten about sharing at first, but it wasn't long before he was offering me bites again.

Also, I'm not 100% convinced, but I think he might actually be saying "mum mum" in reference to the food. It's hard to tell because he makes lots of sounds that begin with the letter 'm', but it seems like every time I sit him down in his high chair he starts to say this, and as soon as I get out the mum mums he smiles and stops. I guess time will tell...

Who knew he would like these this much? I only wish they had a little more nutritional value in them. Maybe I will have to invent a super baby mum mum that is packed with nutrients...

Decking the Halls

We are usually very insistent upon not getting out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, but this year we decided to do things differently. I realized the other day that we would only get to enjoy the decorations for a couple weeks if we waited until after Thanksgiving, since we will be going to Fayetteville sometime the second week of December. So, in an effort to maximize our enjoyment of these things, we decided to put up the tree a week early. James insisted that Jesse be awake when we got the tree out, so here are some pictures of our festivities. Jesse didn't seem to be too excited about the tree (he liked playing with the branches, but we quickly took those away since he could easily poke an eye out with the ends of them), but he loved the lights.

Playing with his Little People Nativity Set. He loves making it play music (Away in a Manger) and chewing on all the pieces. He also loves turning the stable on its side and putting all the people and animals in it.

When James draped the lights on himself, Jesse thought this was really funny.

His favorite part of the nativity set is baby Jesus. He shows his love by putting baby Jesus in his mouth, of course.

Ten Months!

Our little man turned 10 months old yesterday and I can hardly believe it! It has been a good month and Jesse is changing and growing so much. I love seeing him discover new things. I feel like we have established a really nice routine over the past month, since Jesse finally went down to just two naps a day last month.

New things at 10 months:

• He pulls up on everything he possibly can and cruises around all our furniture. He learned very quickly how to get himself back down, so we have had very few falls, except for the times when he has decided to just let go completely. He will stand alone for a few seconds, but then he inevitably crashes.
• He really, really loves doors. He especially loves the doors to our bedrooms and one particular cabinet door in the kitchen (the others are locked). He just sits or stands by the door and opens and closes it (under very close supervision of course), sometimes for quite a while. He also goes immediately to all the doors in the tot lot: the doors to the pretend houses and the castle and the mailbox. Doors are just super fascinating to him. Thankfully he hasn't figured out how our sliding closet doors work just yet.
• This past week he learned to clap his hands and now does it all the time, whether we ask him to or not.
• He is still really fascinated by certain books and certain pages of books. Sometimes he just laughs for no apparent reason when we're reading to him. For a while, he would always kiss the "little mouse" in Goodnight Moon (that page is actually a little dirty from his kisses) and he loves all the books where he can touch different textures.
• He seems to notice other babies his age much more now. Not only does he try to kiss them, but the other day it was so cute when he and his twelve-month-old friend Sid seemed to lock eyes from across the tot lot, give each other huge grins, and then crawl across the room to each other. Then they continued to follow each other around and play with the same toys.
• He pretty much hates being fed solids (unless it's yogurt and bananas because he will do anything to get his favorite treat). He just swats the spoon or our hand away and gets upset and the whole thing just becomes a frustrating experience for me and for him. The whole baby food thing has just been a struggle with him from the beginning, so I have decided that we are done with it. I still try to feed him yogurt and fruit in the morning, because he accepts this pretty well, but we are just doing table food now, and letting him eat whatever he can pick up and feed to himself. He loves eating bread and cheese at lunch time because these are two foods that he can pretty easily feed himself. I am hoping that he will quickly get better at feeding himself more slippery things, like fruits and veggies (he has gotten pretty good at picking up and eating banana...go figure).
• Speaking of food, he really loves his Puffs and every time I get out the container to give him some, his face lights up.

Here's an idea of what a day in the life of Jesse is like. It varies a little day to day depending on when he wakes up, how long his naps are and whether or not we have somewhere we have to go. I try to get out with him each day (for both my sanity and his), whether it's Bible study, going to the produce market, or running some other errand, but this might change a little once we have snow on the ground and it's freezing outside.

6-6:30 Wakes up and nurses

6:30-9:00 Play time at home

8:00 Breakfast, usually yogurt and fruit, but sometimes he hardly eats

9:00 Nurses and goes down for his morning nap

10:00-10:30 Wakes up from nap; this is the time we run errands or take a walk

12:00 Lunch and play at home

1 or 1:30 Nurses and goes down for afternoon nap

2:30-3:30 Usually wakes up from nap, plays for a bit and then nurses

4:00-5:00 Play time in the tot lot or getting out and going somewhere

5:30 Dinner, bath-time some nights

6:30 Nurses and bed-time

Playing with his favorite cabinet door in the kitchen:

Eating lunch:

Getting into trouble in the kitchen:

Bathtime is so much fun: