Drumroll please...Anne is the winner!

We have an overachiever in our midst:) The below was sent in as an entry - and though many people had very clever ideas (I got some via email too), I have to give Anne the prize for effort alone.

"Jack Belushi"

Caption Contest

I am not feeling terribly creative as I was up a lot last night with Jack teething. However, I think these pictures deserve a good caption. Please post a comment and I will announce the winner. Of course the only prize is getting your screen name/name in a post title and bragging rights.

The Tooth!

If you click on the picture (to open it full-size) you can see Jack's tooth. It is a bottom tooth near the center.

Newport

We spent Saturday in Newport with Grandpa and Nonnie (Bill & Pat). Steve and Jack got their first tour of a Newport "Cottage", The Breakers . Jack was very well behaved on the tour and seemed more impressed than even normal at the ceilings. (He should be, many were amazing mosaics). Jack, however, was NOT at all well-behaved when we tried to go out to dinner. He was super tired and seemed to dislike the restaurants "ambiance" (read: low-light). I was a tad worried (okay more than a tad) as we couldn't really get him to stop crying at one point, but he was fine once we got to the car.

Happy Valentine's Day & .666667 Birthday:)

Jack did his first arts and crafts project at an Isis class yesterday.




So here is our monthly update!

~ Jack has found his voice. His volume is much greater and the range of sounds he makes is much broader. Lots of da-da da-das and other noises I can't quite replicate in letters including Ls and Gs. He also shrieks a lot in joy (and frustration). Overall he is much more expressive.

~ We have been trying to teach him some basic signs - mainly milk, eat, drink, more, mom, dad and hello. He makes the milk sign a lot, but so much so that I think he may just me doing it with his hand not understanding the meaning. It is so hard to tell with their tiny fingers.

~ He is very mobile, but not crawling. He sometimes rolls and rolls to get to what he wants, he also scoots a bit on his bottom. For those that know our house, he can get from the family room coffee table to the dining room table my rolling - if you let him go long enough. As such, we have started some baby-proofing, but have a ways to go. He can stretch and stretch to get things, lifting his butt off the floor even. He also can turn 360 degrees while seated to get different toys. In his crib he can get to his hands/knees and rock, but hasn't seemed to figure that out yet on hard ground.

~ He loves to be put in a standing position leaning on something with a toy in front. His legs eventually get wobbly, but gets a big kick out of it.

~ He now reaches inside a toy to get smaller objects in the toys with large enough openings. Some have holes too small for his fine motor skills at this point.

~ He has started to enjoy books, and often will help us turn the pages. We have quite a few touch-feel books and of those we read a lot, he remembers where the touchy parts are on the page. He will go right to them. That said, he tries to touch ALL the books and is a tad bored with those with regular flat pages:/

~ He also is now enjoying music. He often starts squirming in delight when I turn it on.

~ Though he is fully capable of using his right hand and plays with both, he still definitely favors his left more and uses it for more fine movements.

~ He is very happy to play with his toys by himself for extended periods which is nice for me.

~ He has eaten a whole bunch of different baby-food types. I gave him some fresh banana yesterday for the first time and he was totally uninterested. We will be starting with some more "real" food coming up - maybe even some Cheerios!

~ He consistently has 2 naps, the times vary a bit, but they are usually about an hour and never less than 35 minutes. At night he is ALL over the place, probably also due to the new tooth. We have had a couple of nights where he got up once, and some where he gets up 5 times. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Generally though, this last month was much better than the prior 3.

~ He is between 21.5 and 22 lbs (clothed) according to our bathroom scale.

The slideshow feature I use has gotten buggy and won't read tags right:( So here is a link to a slideshow of pictures from Feb 14!

Pictures

Forsooth - a Tooth!

I can't get a picture, but Jack's first tooth has peeked out!

Berkshires

We got back this afternoon after 2 nights of visiting our friend Joe in the Berkshires. Joe's parents have a beautiful new place in Lee and we had a lovely time enjoying the scenery, snow and Jack's first visit to a museum!

We went to the Norman Rockwell Museum, which surprisingly I had never been to. It was enjoyable, but quite small. His paintings are more impressive in person than I had imagined. He was very talented at capturing light in addition to the more obvious abilities of drawing lively faces and capturing interesting subject matter in fantastic ways. A few of the painting notes mentioned he was influenced by Vermeer which I found intriguing. I will let our sister-in-law correct all my unlearned opinions:)

Even though Jack was extremely well behaved while in the museum, I had to buy this book from the gift shop - The Terrible Captain Jack Visits the Museum Or A Guide to Museum Manners for Incorrigible Pirates and the Like. It is about a Pirate named Jack who is taught lessons in how to behave in a museum from the ship's well-traveled monkey named Steve. It is actually adorable, though a tad advanced for our Jack at the moment.

Thanks Joe (and his parents;) for a fun weekend!





Oh, and for those of you counting, we drove over the New York border so Jack as now been in 6 states. Number 7 (RI) comes next weekend and 8 (FL) the one after. We may also hit a new country before his first birthday if all goes to plan! More on that to come...

Reading?

He sometimes flips pages which is great, even if the book is upside down.

Does the score reverse

if I watch the game upside down?

I guess it was too much to ask to have the Sox win the series AND the Pats win the super bowl the first time I get to watch.