I Really Like Him!

The other day I was taking to a stranger, yes, Grandma I know I shouldn't talk to strangers but I am guilty of that on most days- sorry! Anyway, the person asked what I did and I told them I was a stay at home mom which in the big city I live in is very uncommon. I hang out at the park on most days with all the nannies. She looked at me and asked me if that was hard and if I ever needed a break. I smiled and told her that it was hard and I do need breaks but I wouldn't trade it for anything! She looked at me and said you must really like him.


That was a few weeks ago and I have thought about that conversation a few times. I am so blessed to be able to stay home with Jacoby and it is worth everything to me! He is growing up so fast and every day it is something new and he is in this stage where he wants to explore everything. I am not sure where the last 9 months and three weeks have gone! (I refuse to call him 10 months until later this week because it makes me sad that he has hit the double digits!) But it has gone by so fast and I am so lucky that I have been able to be here every step of the way!

And it is so true I REALLY REALLY like him!!!!

Going Private October 1

I have debated going private on my blog ever since Jacoby was born and I have finally decided that effective October 1 I'm going to do it!! With a lot of persuasion from Jarod.
So let me know if you would like to be added to the list. I just need your email address, so you can leave a comment here or shoot me an email.
I promise a lot more pictures of Jacoby (not that there are not enough already) and even some video!!

9 Months!

This little guy's monthly photo shoots are getting more and more difficult! After trying for quite a while to get some cute pics, I finally just gave up this month. They are not my favorites but seriously he is every where and it is hard to get him to hold still!!! I am not sure what I am going to do next month- maybe bribe him with food?

Here are a few things about Jacoby.

1. We took him to the doctor and he is 18 lb 1 oz (15-25% in weight) and 28 1/2 inches long (50%)

2. Is a great eater and has just started eating 3 times a day! He loves pretty much everything but some of his favorites right now are cottage cheese, croissant, spinach and kale puffs, avocado, apple sauce, mango and summer squash

3. He started crawling in August, just woke up one day and decided that was the day and now he is off to the races every chance he gets.

4. Had trouble learning to sit down once he pulled himself up but has mastered that now

5. Loves the water and going to swim lessons. The swim teacher let him go the other day and he can actually float by himself but I would never let him go and I about swam across the pool in 2 seconds flat to rescue him but he was just fine

6. Still loves to swing but prefers to just watch the kids instead of interacting with boring Mommy

7. He whistles when he concentrates

8. When he wants to crawls really fast he does half bear crawl half crawl with his right leg

9. Will sit through half a book these days. We are making progress! We read to him every night before bed and he always wants to read them himself and flip through the pages but he is starting to get the whole story time thing.

10. He has to check out the acoustics in every room and if his voice echos he will continue to go uh, uh, uh. If it doesn't echo he stops.

11. He is my human vacuum!

12. LOVES to play peek a boo! He loves to look for us down the hall or behind the door. Pretty much any where and any time is peek a boo time with Jacoby.

13. Gets so excited when his Daddy comes home and crawls as fast as he can to the door! It is so cute and it gets me every day!

We love this little boy so much and he is so much fun!!!

Golfing

One night after Jarod got done with work, we decided to head to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls. I know secretly Jarod likes to take me because I am so horrible and it is great entertainment for him! This time I was not alone!
Jarod giving Lacy her first lesson in golf.

Jacoby was just happy to be outside and sat and watched us for quite a while and played with his "flight attendant".

Jarod spent most of the time instructing Lacy and me. He is so patient and a great teacher! Too bad he never has a very good student!

Look at that follow through... but notice the ball is still on the tee!! I am telling you I am horrible!

We have a lot of golfers in our family so I am not sure why we weren't blessed with that talent? But at least Lacy can hit the ball! Maybe we have found the golfer in the family?

Or maybe she would rather pose for the camera!

Jacoby soon decided that he needed in on the action so Daddy started teaching him about golf!

He just wanted to eat the clubs

and the golf balls!! Our little goof!

After we had enough embarrassment, we walked over to the marina which is across the parking lot to look at the beautiful foggy city view.

Um, can you tell we are sisters?? It has been hysterical how many people think we are twins with her in Chicago. Since we are 12 years apart, we have decided that I look young and she looks older than 18 so we have decided that we are 24 year old twins!

Jacoby was enjoying his afternoon with all three of us and he loves being on Daddy's shoulders.

As we walked around the marina, there were tons of geese and Jacoby was very interested in them. Daddy kneeled down and was talking to him about the geese and explaining things to him. He even walked Jacoby around the geese to show them all to them. That is how he decided to show him the geese, I on the other hand had a different idea!

We chased the geese around and around! I am sure they were not fans but we had a blast and I am pretty sure Jacoby enjoyed Mama's way this time!

My Boys

I bought these cute matching shirts for the boys a few months ago and before this little guy out grew his I wanted to get some pictures of my boys.

We call this the "Flamingo"!! Jacoby will crawl like crazy on the grass but as soon as you stand him up on the grass he lifts up his leg and won't put it down. We think he looks like a flamingo!

Here we are again. This totally cracks me up!! My good lookin boys!

I love these eyes!! He melts me everyday! He is getting impossible to take pictures of because he will not look at me to save my life when I have a camera in front of my face so he did pretty good for a while and then I got this....

but it is so cute that I had to take a picture of that too! He kept crawling away from me and sticking his bum in the air. I think he was done!

We had to catch him for a quick family pic and then it was off to the races again! He has too much exploring to do to be bothered with pictures!

Jacoby and his Mamma and Paka

My parents were here for 10 days and it always goes by way too fast! The morning before they left we went to the park one more time.

We took some pictures of Jacoby with his Mamma and Paka. Poor baby was actually sick most of the time they were here and was still not feeling the best when we took these shots. I love this picture of him playing with Mamma's hair and cuddling with Paka!

He loves his grandparents and he is such a lucky boy to have such wonderful ones that love him so much!

Mamma and Jacobes

Paka and Jacobes

Thanks Mom and Dad for coming out!! We miss you already but we can't wait to see you again soon!

Fun with the Family!

After their Nauvoo trip, Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jim came back to Chicago with my parents and Lacy. We were so excited to take them to the market for our Saturday morning ritual! Lace and us went running and met up with everyone else at the market.

Jacoby loves to go to the market because he gets to try lots of new foods. He was liking the raspberries! Everyone at the market knows Jacoby as the little guy who is always in jammies. It's early and I don't have time to dress him before we leave for the run but it is cute how every knows him.

My mom had to try lots of new things at the market to cross them off her list so we were busy sampling things like ground cherries and French strawberries. Who knew there were such things?

We ended up getting so much stuff that we took Jacoby out of the Bob and put everything in it and my Dad pushed it around. It worked like a charm!

Then we came home and got to eat our fun things! We gave Jacoby corn for the first time and the Iowan heritage came out in him. He loves his corn!!!

Jim and Heidi had never been to Chicago and we love showing our city off so Jarod put together a drive tour. He went and picked them up at their hotel dressed like this with the sign. Yep, that's my husband!

I think my Dad was a little embarrassed that he had to ride in the back but Jarod was insistent that he was the driver. They were off to pick up the Millers and they had a great time!

It was so much fun having everyone here and taking them to all of our favorite places!

I Can Stand All By Myself!

While my Mom and Dad were here in the Midwest they decided that they were going to take a trip to Nauvoo to see all the church history. My Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jim drove in from St. Louis because they were there for a work trip and my parents and Lace took a train from Chicago to Nauvoo and met up with them. It was very tempting for me to go because I have wanted to do that forever but the thought of being with Jacoby in his car seat for 4 hours sounded like complete torture for me and I am sure everyone else!!! So we decided to stay behind.

Daddy was in St. Louis for work so it was just my boy and me! It had been a while for us to have some quality time together and I was looking forward to it. We spent the day at the park and walking around just enjoying each others company. We had a great time!

We ended our wonderful day once again at the park playing on a blanket. Jacoby has been pulling himself up on everything and started crawling on August 13 so he was busy doing his thing. He crawled over to me and pulled himself up and gave me big kisses and then let go! I couldn't believe it, he was standing all by himself! He was so excited about it to! Could have been that I was yelling and clapping for him!

As soon as he saw me clapping, he thought he needed to and lost his concentration and fell down but it was so cute!!

I took some pics on my phone to remember the moment. What a great day with my little boy! I just love him so much!!

The Air Show

On August 15 my parents came into town!! We had such a good time!! The following day was the Air and Water Show at the Lake so we headed down to check it out. Everyone was very interested in the show!

It was really hot though so we tried to keep cool with water bottles. My mom commented that she was melting. It was a hard adjustment coming from Idaho to the humidity of Chicago on such a hot day!

Jacoby was lovin it. This is Jarod's favorite event of the summer in Chicago and Jacoby was very impressed too.

Daddy was busy telling Jacoby all about the different planes and mommy was busy people watching with the 3 million people that were at the air show this year.

I just love those chub legs!!!

It was so nice to have my mom and dad here!! We were celebrating my mom's 50th Birthday while she was here and made her do 50 random things and cross them off a list. It was a lot of fun at my mom's expense but I hope she enjoyed it to!

We hung out for a while and melted in the heat and then all of the sudden it started to sprinkle so we packed up our stuff and headed back home. We got home just in time before it started to rain and I mean RAIN!!

After the rain, everyone went up on our roof to watch the rest of the show! We had a great time but boy was I glad the air show was over!! It was not fun living so close to the lake and having practice time in the middle of Jacoby's nap every day for a week. Poor baby was exhausted with no sleep!

First Cab Ride

There are many firsts in a babies first year but for an urban baby like Jacoby this was a big one!!
He went for his first cab ride a few weeks ago on our way to a play group. Actually, I really am brain dead these days and walked outside a few minutes before we were suppose to leave and realized that the car was not there. After some panic, I remembered that Jarod took the car that morning and had told me numerous times that he was going to but I don't remember anything these days. So by default we took a cab.

Not only was it Jacoby's first cab ride at 8 months but Aunt Ace's at 18!! They bonded over this special moment :).

They both enjoyed it and Lacy got over her fear of the cab killer off some CSI show she watched. She cracks me up!!

We had a great time at the play group and were lucky enough to find a cab really far north in just a matter of minutes for our ride back. Thank goodness!!!