Friday, July 20, 2012

Trip to Fayetteville

Jesse has been having a blast in Fayetteville.  He doesn't want very much to do with me these days, but would rather soak up all the time he has with his grandparents.  I will be ready to have him calling for "mama" again (as opposed to Nana or Grandma), but it is nice to have a little bit of a break. Here are some pictures of the week's happenings from my Mom's camera (unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to AR so I don't have any pictures of Jesse with Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of James' side of the family, but he did have a blast hanging out with all of them yesterday).

Jesse is really, really, really into flags (specifically the American flag) these days.  I seriously had NO IDEA how many flags there are between Chicago and Fayetteville until we made this trip.  Jesse missed very few flags on the drive down.  He loves flags so much that Pop decided to get an American flag for the front porch.  Here is Jesse helping to install the flag.  He also really loves tools, so this was a fun project for him.




He also got his first driving lesson.


He's still got a lot of learning to do before he is ready to be out on his own, though.


Another important first was his first popsicle.  He made yucky faces at first, but soon warmed up to the idea.



Today my Mom and Jesse and I made it to Crystal Bridges and enjoyed strolling through the galleries there.  Now, I can tell you with nearly 100% certainty that Jesse would have never allowed me to carry him through the museum (and he certainly didn't want to be stuck in the stroller either), but he quite happily allowed my Mom to carry him through all the rooms.


After Crystal Bridges we stopped for a bite to eat, and Jesse made friends with our waitress.  I'm not sure which one loved the other one more.  She asked Jesse to go to the computer with her to print out our bill, and he happily obliged.



He also had fun playing with her name tag. What a ladies' man.



We've had a great time so far, and Jesse is looking forward to bringing back his Grandma and Great Aunt Carol to Chicago for several days.  We are also really looking forward to seeing James again.  Whenever Jesse is in his car and we ask him where he is going he always says "Daddy".  This evening he saw the computer in my room and kept pointing and saying "Daddy" (we had Skyped with James earlier in the day).  This boy is going to be very happy to see him again, and so am I!




Saturday, July 7, 2012

Five Little Ducks

A few weeks ago, James and Jesse were watching some videos together.  They had watched the Five Little Ducks video before, but this time Jesse completely lost it when he saw the baby ducks leaving the Mama duck.  He seriously couldn't handle watching this video and kept saying "good-bye" as tears started welling up in his eyes.  Since then we have shown him the video again, but the same thing happens, so I think we're done with that video for a while.

Anyway, tonight James was giving Jesse his bath and was telling him that in a week he will be getting on an airplane and flying to Germany, kind of like when the ducks go away for a little while.  Jesse seemed to get what James was talking about (somewhat) and kept saying "Daddy, tuh-peh (airplane), fly, duck".  He didn't seem sad at the time, but you can see in the video that he soon got a little emotional over it.  It breaks my heart to see him get sad!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Watermelon

I think it's quite clear that Jesse loves watermelon.  He could eat an entire melon, including the rind, if we allowed it.







Thursday, July 5, 2012

What a Day

Today was "one of those days".  While it was probably one of the worst days I've had in a long time, it was also a good reminder of everything I have to be thankful for.  If this is really as bad as it gets, then I've got it pretty good.  As one "bad" thing after another kept happening, I kept reminding myself that it really wasn't that bad in the scheme of things.

The day didn't get off to a terribly good start.  I think I finally fell asleep sometime after 2 a.m.  The temperature reached a whopping 101 yesterday, and our apartment felt like a giant sauna.  It was pretty miserable.  We finally resorted to getting ice packs out of our freezer and putting them in bed with us, and at some point we just decided that the whole situation was pretty funny and we gave up on being irritated about it.  However, we did decide that we would be getting an air-conditioner asap.

Of course, Jesse still woke up right on the dot at 6 a.m. this morning, despite the fact that he was up 3 hours past his bedtime last night.  You can imagine that he was a little bit difficult this morning.

As soon as James left for work, I got busy filling out the paperwork to get an air-conditioning unit installed in our apartment and making a doctor's appointment for Jesse (he has had really smelly ears that aren't getting better, and I wanted to make sure he didn't have some type of infection).  I got Jesse a 9:15 appointment, which meant that there was just enough time for Jesse to get a bath and me to get a shower (there was no way we were going anywhere without bathing first...not after living in a sauna all night).  When it came time to round up the diaper bag, I couldn't find my keys.  This is not unusual, as I'm very good at sticking them in random places, but after 5 minutes, I began to wonder if Jesse had done something with them.  I searched in all the usual spots (under the couches, in the trash can, in the toy bins, etc.), but couldn't find them.  Meanwhile, Jesse is either screaming for my attention or spilling milk all over his toys.  Next, I went to our friends' apartment, thinking maybe we had left them there last night, and I even went down to the laundry room, thinking maybe I had set them down there, but nope, no sign of them.

At this point, I decided that Jesse must have thrown them in the trash the previous day, and that they were long gone, since James had taken that trash out already.  But then it occurred to me that since yesterday was a holiday, the garbage men probably hadn't come yet.  I grabbed my rubber gloves, stuck Jesse in his stroller (after taking a break from my search to change a very dirty diaper), and went down to the trash room, determined to find yesterday's trash.  I called James and he told me which trash can he had put it in, and after digging through the entire trash can, I did manage to find it.  About this time our building manager walked by, wondering what on earth I was doing.  He was sympathetic when he found out what was going on, and he helped me get Jesse's stroller out the door while I carried the toxic waste outside.  I went through every last piece of trash in the trash bag (which was quite possibly the smelliest job I have ever done in my life), but still no signs of the keys.

Since I didn't have my keys, I was locked out of our building, so I decided we could take the time to re-trace our steps from yesterday.  I was thinking that maybe the keys had fallen out of the stroller on our way to the parade, or that maybe Jesse had taken them out and stuck them somewhere.  We went by the produce store to see if they had fallen out there, and we went to the real estate office where we had been standing to watch the parade, but no one had our keys.  We went back home and waited on someone to enter or leave the building so that we could get back inside, which was luckily not a long wait.

By this time I had been searching for nearly two hours and I was dripping with sweat.  I was about to take a break from searching and just wait until Jesse went down for his nap, but I thought I'd do just a little bit more .  Well, lo and behold, my eyes stumbled upon them sitting on top of a box in our hall closet, right at Jesse's height.  I was super relieved, and this is the point when my day started turning back around.

Not only did I find my keys, but we managed to snag the very last air-conditioning unit at our local hardware store.  This was a miracle, because I had called them at 12:30 to see if they had any units left, and they had only one.  They wouldn't hold it for me, and James wouldn't get off work until 1:00, so all we could do was hope and pray that he could make it there before it was gone.  His boss ended up letting him leave 15 minutes early, and he booked it over there to get it.  It was still there, and just minutes after he staked his claim on it, someone else walked in asking about it.  Talk about perfect timing!  And then to add to this, we were able to get priority on the wait-list for air-conditioner installation because we have a child.  Probably within 10 minutes of James getting home with the unit, a man arrived to install it.  We had no guarantee that he would come today, and were told that it would likely be tomorrow, but he told us that they told him our apartment had to get done today.

A day that had a very, very crummy start ended up being quite good in many ways. I am thankful for all the ways that God has provided for us today.  Of course, he didn't have to, but he did, and I am grateful for that.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about Jesse, it seems that he must just have a case of stinky ears.  No ear infection whatsoever.  Poor guy.  I think he must just be constantly dirty from all the sweating he has been doing.  We really do bathe him daily (sometimes twice now), but he just never looks clean.  Maybe the a/c will help :)  

Happy 4th of July!

We had fun celebrating Independence Day despite the scorching-hot weather.  We began the day with waffles and strawberries, compliments of James, and then we headed over to our neighborhood's 4th of July parade.  It wasn't anything particularly exciting, but it was fun to watch, and I think Jesse enjoyed seeing all of the flags and hearing the bands play.  We took it easy in the afternoon and then joined some friends from our building for dinner at their place.  Since Jesse got a good nap and was doing well throughout the evening, we let him stay up WAY past his bedtime to go see fireworks.  We were able to see the Navy Pier fireworks show from the lakefront in Hyde Park.  On our walk back home we got a close-up fireworks show; people were setting off fireworks all over the place.  We felt as if we were walking through a war zone, and it definitely sounded like it with all of the sounds echoing between all the buildings.  We felt a little unsafe with the masses of people and all the fireworks being launched from the path we were walking on, but we made it home safely.  There was no shortage of fireworks around here; I heard them way into the wee hours of morning, as I laid in bed unable to sleep because of the oppressive heat.