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!