Stinker

Jayce loves to push the laundry basket around. I think it's just another way for him to walk around assisted, and it's kind of funny. He normally will push a basket around whether it has anything in it or not, as he was with this basket initially, but I turned around after about 2 seconds to this.

I didn't buy the "what?" look on his face obviously. But a minute later he was busted anyway.
I need to figure out a way to stop this soon, because it's wearing me out! Unpacking the diaper bag, my purse, suitcases, the diaper holder, magazine basket, etc is the newest and most fun game. I was too tired and unamused yesterday to get a picture of the toilet paper that he had gotten into. Someday, when I'm well rested, I will laugh about this.

Playing Outside

Poor Baby

Chris and I are slightly fortunate that when Jayce gets sick he doesn't fuss. There is no crying, night waking or irritability. On one hand this is great, because obviously it is convenient for us. But on the other hand it's terrible, because we often don't realize that Jayce is sick until he's very sick.

A few months ago Jayce had a double ear infection, and his only symptom was 8 days or so of a runny nose. He smiled at the student doctor who was observing as our doctor checked his second ear, and said, "Aww, this one is really red. "

"He hasn't been fussy at all and didn't have a fever or anything...I didn't know..." I attempted to explain that I was neither negligent nor an idiot.

"Well he's awfully happy for being so sick. I've never seen a baby with a double ear infection in this good of a mood," commented the student doctor. "Yes, he's always this happy. Even when he had pneumonia," agreed our doctor.

I am always trying to find the balance between being that mom that calls the doctor on the day a runny nose appears, and a mom that knows that there won't be many symptoms with an illness. Yesterday I took Jayce to the doctor, again due to a long running nose. Turns out he has another ear infection, just on one side this time luckily.

Later that day Jayce was crawling around and went to lean his head up against the couch and just fell over. He did this twice in a row. As I watched him I remembered several times last week when he was crawling around and forgot to put one of his arms down and kind of crashed. We had laughed, thinking that he had just been really excited about whatever he was going after. But last night it suddenly dawned on me, he has an ear infection, so that's affecting his balance! He wasn't tipping over because he was excited, it was because he was sick! How incredibly guilty did we feel last night for laughing about this all week?!!

I quickly rescued my poor baby from his failed attempts at leaning against the couch and tried to alleviate my guilt with lots of rocking, story time and snuggling.

Sorry buddy! Next time we'll know better!

Ramblings

I have been absent from the blog world for longer than I like to be, and it's not because we've had nothing going on, in fact we've been pretty busy. It's actually due to a little something that I've just realized about myself this week, I'm kind of addicted to pictures. The computer that I store our pictures on and has the photo download and editing software has been out of commission for the past week. I have fought off the urge to put the software onto another computer all week, and will hopefully not have to do this much longer.

Anyway, back to the point at hand, I realized that I so much prefer to tell a story with pictures that I'd almost rather not tell it without them. I have been telling Chris for years that I often am disappointed when something mildly monumental goes by and I didn't have my camera handy, because I feel like now that the moment is gone and we have nothing to remember it by.

Our past few weeks have been filled with some lovely moments that luckily I was able to catch on camera, and will just have to share at a later time.
-Our first trip to the zoo, where a sleepy boy who was barely engaged by most of the animals stood wide-eyed at the polar bears running back and forth and diving into the water.
-My baby and my college roommate's babies all together in the bathtub after a long hot day. If we all weren't so tired and had been thinking more about the photo op, we could have made sure that they all had suds in their hair. But really I'm just glad that she had grabbed her camera because it was really cute!
-Chris tickling Jayce's nose with a flower at the park.
-An overalls clad baby exploring the grass and sticks in our backyard, and breaking into a huge grin whenever the bright yellow head of a dandelion broke through the sea of green and brown.
-Justin playing the piano while he and Jayce sat mutually transfixed watching the hammers hit the strings.

More sweet moments still to come.

Fun with Grandma and Aunt Mel

One of the things that bums us out about being so far away from our families, is that Jayce doesn't have much opportunity to play with his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and vice versa. Luckily this was rectified a bit last week in Florida, where Jayce did lots of swinging, patty cake-ing, and generally charming his grandma and aunt. It was fun for all.

Beach Baby

We ended up with one warm day in Florida, the last day, and I was so excited to get Jayce out onto the beach. He LOVED the sand, he couldn't stop just turning it over in his hands and patting it, and of course trying to take a bite or two.

His aunt Mel built a few little sandcastles that Jayce promptly destroyed, and then tried to crawl all over the beach, holding onto his little shovel the whole time.

Waiting until Mel stopped waving to wave back, of course.

He didn't seem overly impressed with the ocean itself, which we took him down to the edge of and let the waves get his toes. I think he was just a little bit overstimulated with the noise and sights at the beach, and the ocean was just a part of that.
He was completely worn out after his time at the beach and fell asleep immediately, in what I can't imagine was too comfortable of a position.

A Quiet Morning

Typically in the morning at home, we try to have a little bit of family time before Chris heads off for work. Jayce has his bottle and then sits with his dad and helps him eat his cereal, and then sits with me and eats bits of my bagel. We were sad that Chris couldn't be with us in Florida, so we had to start up a new tradition, watching the birds.

I know this sounds very simple, but there was a variety of birds and ducks that were constantly outside the condo, and Jayce was really content to just nestle quietly in my arms and watch them go by. I had to get a few pictures of his sweet face to remember these moments by.

Swimming, Kind Of

We're back now from our trip to Florida, and though we did have a nice time we didn't really have nice weather. We didn't get snow like most of the Mid-West, but we did have cool temperatures and really cold, strong winds. We were all geared up to take Jayce swimming, so we decided to let him try out his new floating toy and do some kicking in the big bathtub instead. He liked it, but I'm looking forward to getting him into the full-sized version this summer.

Mean Parents

We discovered a few months ago while visiting Chris' grandparents that Jayce hates their jack in the box. We thought we'd offer it to him again this trip to see if anything had changed.

We brought our camera along just in case things hadn't changed.

Luckily they hadn't.

Take #2 at mean dad's insistence.