Indiana Dunes

This weekend is our last "free weekend" before James starts classes, so we figured we should get out and do something fun before he is swamped with work. It would have been fun to explore a museum or something here in the city, but with the weather already starting to get pretty cool, we thought maybe it was a good idea to do something that we won't be able to do once winter sets in. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is just an hour's drive from us, and we had a great time walking through some dunes and getting some gorgeous lakefront views. The rest of Northwestern Indiana seemed quite "bleh" to us, but the park was beautiful.

Hyper Boy

Here's a video of James making Jesse laugh tonight after dinner. Don't be fooled when Jesse lays down...he is only getting started then. And one disclaimer...you might not be able to hear the toy playing music at one point during the video, but that is what I meant when I said something about Jesse "making music with his bottom". He sat on the toy and it started playing music. Just didn't want anyone to take that the wrong way :)

8 Months!

We celebrated eight months of Jesse the day we moved into our new place, so needless to say, I am just now getting around to writing my monthly update. This last month has felt like a whirlwind, and I can finally say that we are now somewhat settled and unpacked. It sure is great to have the move behind us and our lives back in some kind of order. I think it's good for Jesse, too. He seemed to sense that things weren't quite the same--I mean, it would be kind of weird to wake up each morning to find more things rearranged and boxed up. And since he has started crawling, it just meant more things that he wasn't allowed to get into. Now we are back into a daily routine, which is good for all of us.

Here's what Jesse's been up to the past month:

• He has become a really good crawler and loves to get into everything. Somehow he just knows which things he is NOT supposed to get into. He absolutely loves shoes (gross!), electrical wires, and drawers. He's pulling up to his knees a lot, but hasn't quite mastered getting up onto his feet all by himself.
• Related to crawling, he has turned into such a content baby over this past month. He was fairly fussy early on in his life, but ever since he could sit up on his own for long periods of time, he quickly began to entertain himself quite easily. Now that he can crawl, he is even more content. There was one point about this time last month that I told James that I felt like Jesse didn't even need me anymore (except for eating and keeping him out of trouble, of course). He's just so happy exploring, or playing with a box of toys, or hanging out in the jump-up.
  
• He is still growing like a weed, or so we think. We don't go back to the doctor until 9 months, but according to our scale he is over 22 pounds, and according to a yardstick he is getting near 29 inches. I'm glad that his 18-month clothes don't swallow him up, because that is pretty much all we have for fall/winter clothing, and it is already chilly here. He even fits into some 24-month pants that we have, as long as we roll up the legs.
• He may be growing like a weed, but his interest in solids has waned. I would say he is moderately interested most of the time that I offer them, but he could really care less whether or not he gets them each day, and he usually only wants 4 or 5 bites (maybe 1/2 tablespoon, sometimes 1 tablespoon), unless it's bananas or peaches, and then he will eat it all. He makes it very clear when he's had enough (turns his head or screams) and he still acts like the first bite of every food (even his favorite foods) is sour. I have tried all kinds of things--feeding solids early in the day, late in the day, mid-day, before nursing, after nursing, half-way between nursings--and nothing seems to make a difference. Some days he wants them, and some days he doesn't. He doesn't appear to be starving, so I'll just assume that he's fine and that one of these days he'll come around.
  
• He is understanding so much more of what we say and what is going on around him. He has been giving kisses on command for a while now, and it is so sweet! He will almost always give me multiple kisses when I ask, but he is more stingy with other people. We also have the book "Pat the Bunny" and he loves to play peek-a-boo with Paul (lifts up a flap to see Paul's face) and smell the flowers (he puts his nose to the page and sniffs). The other pages he just wants to chew.
• He doesn't show many signs of separation anxiety yet. He is still ok whenever we leave him in the nursery at church or with other people, but a lot of times he will cry whenever I leave the room when we're at home (and sometimes he will do this when James leaves, too). He mainly does this first thing in the morning--when he wakes up James will often go and get him and bring him to our room, and then I'll leave to go put in my contacts before I feed him, and that's when he loses it, because he knows that I am his source of food.
• He is sleeping well, and pretty much sleeps through the night (11-12 hours) again, now that we allowed him to do some crying when he began to get up a lot around 6 months. He slept pretty horribly, however, the night we slept at my parents' house and the night we slept in a hotel outside of Chicago. I'm not sure if it was the Pack 'n Play or him being in the same room as us, but it was pretty rough, and we didn't feel that we could just let him cry himself to sleep in a hotel, so we were up with him a lot. Once we got to our apartment, though, we set up his bed immediately, and the whole time my parents were here he never woke up once at night. Since they have left, he has woken up some, but I'm thinking it's because of the teeth he has coming in. On the nap front, he sometimes takes 2 naps a day, but lots of days he still takes 3.
  

Those are some of the highlights from Jesse's eighth month of life. I have to include a funny story from one of our first evenings in Chicago. We were walking back to our apartment after eating dinner, and there was a line of cars stopped at a stop light. Most of them had their windows down because the weather was so nice. James was holding Jesse so that he was facing out, and Jesse was in a super happy mood. He was flailing his arms everywhere and just babbling away, and he caught the eyes of some ladies in one of the cars. They started cracking up and yelling "hey baby" to him and Jesse loved the attention, so he got even more animated, which caused pretty much all the passengers of every car in line to talk to him, too. I do have to say that he has gotten a heavy dose of attention here in Hyde Park. The other day at the produce market he started fussing a little bit in line, and a lady came up to him and said to him "you too handsome to be mean" and "you feisty". I think he's going to like all the new people and sights in his new neighborhood...there's so much to take in.

That's all for now. I hope to have an update on the move soon, but I wanted to jot down some things about Jesse before I forgot. I'll leave you with some pictures.

Our Future Banjo Player

Jesse seemed really fascinated by James' banjo playing the other day, so I had to get out the camera. He'll probably be wanting lessons before we know it!

Cleaning out the Closets

This time next week we'll be on the road to Chicago, probably getting ready to cross the state line into Missouri. We've begun the packing process this week, and yesterday we decided to go through lots of our keepsake and memory boxes to get rid of stuff (the things we found could warrant an entire post, but I will spare everyone). I wouldn't consider myself a pack rat by any means, but a person would wonder if they saw some of the things I have kept over the years. I mean, seriously, was it necessary for me to keep every single wedding card we ever received? And by this, I mean cards from people we've never met, and the gift tags that come on gift bags. I bet there were 100 small tags from Bed, Bath and Beyond sacks. Needless to say, these went in the trash pile.

Of course, we have a little crawler who loves to "help" us. After we had cleared out the closet in our office yesterday, we decided to take a break and play a game of peekaboo. This video doesn't quite do justice to Jesse's excitement at this game.