Yummy...

Jack's been eating solid food very well for awhile now. I've been making all of his baby food and some of it's fun to make (pears, sweet potatoes) and some of it is not so fun to make (prunes, green peas). The only reason the prunes and peas are not so fun to make is because those particular foods have to be strained after you've steamed/baked them because the skins are lumpy and can be hard to digest for a baby of Jack's age. Overall, though, I'm really enjoying it and I love that Jack will grow up liking food that tastes like the actual fruits and vegetables that he's supposed to be eating. I think the night of these pictures Jack was eating peas, sweet potatoes, and cereal. That's just what the evidence is telling me. :)

By the way, sorry I haven't been posting much lately, but I think I've made up for it because I've posted a ton today! (Jack took a great nap so I had some time to update the blog).
I'll try to be better!

Funniest. Picture. Ever.

Here's Jack "drumming" with Uncle Grant at Whole Foods the other day. If you saw Grant do this with Maggie when she was younger then you know what we're talking about. If not, let me explain it to you: basically, Grant moves Jack's arms like he's drumming and makes the appropriate drum noises along with the arm movements. If you're lucky, every once in awhile you'll get a drum-stick twirl. Jack's not really crazy about those twirls, but he does love the actual drumming part. You can tell he's Jim's son! The second picture shows Jack enjoying the drumming, but the first one was so hilarious that I had to post it!

Reading makes you smart!

...Or so I've heard! Jim took this picture because he wanted to document me reading to Jack. I guess he thought Jack wouldn't believe us if we tell him when he's older, so we needed hard proof to back up our story! :)

He really does love it when we read to him, though. I bet we read about 15-20 books a day and I love that he loves it so much. I've always loved reading so I hope somehow that gets passed on to Jack.

I don't think I've discussed Jack's sleeping habits lately, so let me update you: nighttime is WONDERFUL! Up until the past few weeks, he was still waking up for that early morning (4 or 5am) feeding and then he'd fall back asleep until about 7am. Well, I'm happy to report that he's finally dropped that feeding and is now sleeping continuously from 7:30pm to 7-7:30am. Aah.... Now if only I could sleep continuously throughout the night! For some reason I am waking up at least once, sometimes twice, for no reason at all. I think I've trained myself to not sleep through the night! Yikes! Did any of you other moms go through this? How do I make it stop? It's so frustrating that my kid can sleep through the night but I can't!

Granddaddy & Jack

Two of my favorite men...

The wonderful week with Lindsay...

We flew Lindsay up here for her Graduation present from Tulane Medical School and I can't say her present wasn't somewhat selfishly motivated! We LOVED having her up here for a week and spent almost every moment together having fun and talking, talking, talking. Jack adores his aunt and she has this wonderful ability to make him laugh so hard and for so long...it's so cute!

She and her husband, Jim, (who couldn't come because he was studying for his boards...we missed him!) are moving to Miami next month for Lindsay to begin her residency program at the University of Miami. Jim will be transferring to their med school, as well. We are so excited for them because they will both be a part of really amazing programs, but we are simultaneously bummed that they will be so far away. At least we will have a fun place to visit them and we plan on visiting a lot! We are going down to New Orleans for Lindsay's graduation in a few weeks, so check back to see pictures of our visit later!

Dan & Amy's short but sweet visit

The Landers came up for a quick 24-hour visit on Saturday-Sunday and we definitely made the most of our short time together. It was so beautiful here that we spent a lot of time outside: walking to Radnor and walking to Whole Foods. We got a new camera (yay!) but I don't know how to download pictures from it yet and that's where all the outdoor pictures are, but in the meantime, check out these cute pictures of Jack snuggling with his Aunt Amy and Grandpa, and one of him checking Grandpa out. He hasn't quite figured out what he thinks about that hat! :)

Did you hear that?

Cousins

Can you feel the love? ...and the hug?!

Thirty, Flirty & Fun

Ok, I know that was terribly cheesy, but I do love that Jennifer Garner movie "13 Going on 30." Saturday was my 30th birthday and we had SUCH a fun weekend. Our friends, Amy & JD, came into town and brought their sweet new baby, Charlie, for us to ooh & aah over. Kelly & Josh had a big cookout at their house Friday night and then we all went out for a birthday dinner on Saturday night to Radius 10, one of my favorite restaurants in Nashville.
My cake was the best cake ever except that by the time we got a picture taken the sparklers had burned out.
Have you noticed how in big groups, even though we're not in high school anymore) all the girls always end up at one end of the table and all the guys end up at another end? See, we really are all 13 at heart! :)
And finally, here's a picture of my and my sweet hubby, who is also a fantastic party planner.

Jack & His GrandNonna

LaDonna came into town today on her way to East Tennessee and we had such a wonderful visit (albeit too short) with her. There is no doubt that Jack adores his GrandNonna. The entire time she was here he couldn't keep his eyes off of her (making nursing him slightly difficult at one point!) and she could just make him laugh and laugh. It was really cute to watch and fun for all of us to get to spend some time with her today. Here are some cute pictures from her visit.

I Heart Spring

As long as we've been married, Jim and I have always taken walks around our neighborhood (when it's warm enough) when he gets home from work in the afternoons. The weather has been so nice here lately and we've really enjoyed being able to resume our afternoon walks. It's been especially nice to take them with Jack because he loves riding in his stroller and seeing all the birds, dogs, and creeks that we pass and he'll just chatter along to himself the whole way while Jim and I get some quality "grown-up" time. Here's a cute picture from right before our walk the other day.

Jack's First Easter

We had such a fun Easter with Jack except for two things: it was FREEZING cold and Lindsay and Jim couldn't come home and be with us. (Made doubly bad because Easter fell on Lindsay's birthday this year). My mom hand-stitched the embroidery on Jack and Maggie's outfits and they turned out so cute! We had an Easter egg hunt outside but it was so cold so we had to put a hat on Jack to keep him warm. Mimi ordered Jack and Maggie Easter baskets embroidered with their names on them. Maggie's was a bunny and Jack's was a yellow duck. They looked adorable carrying them around. Maggie's was full of eggs and Jack's was obviously empty, but we can't wait for him to join in the hunt next year!

St. Thomas trip

Sorry it's taken me so long to get these pictures posted of our trip to St. Thomas! I know there's a ton of pictures, but I actually had a bunch of other cute ones I wanted to post, so believe it or not, these are just a few of them. We went with my Mom & Benton and Chris & Kajsa. We had so much fun on our trip and Jack was such a great little traveler. He slept for almost the entire flight of each leg between Nashville, Miami, and St. Thomas. We got him in the pool for his first time and he loved it! Well, the very first time he didn't love it too much, but after that it was great. Apparently you're not supposed to put sunscreen on babies under 6 months, and since he was 5 months old on the trip, we decided to purchase him a SPF swimsuit and hat. Poor thing, he looked like he was wearing a wet suit in the pool! But it was actually really cute...

The other pictures are of Jack snuggling with his Mimi (one of his favorite pass-times!), him cracking up as we are about to go down to the beach, and a beautiful rainbow we woke up to one morning that was stretched out over Charlotte Amalie and the ocean in front of our balcony.








You can also see a picture of some of the local inhabitants on St. Thomas. These iguanas were everywhere! Anytime I would get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would have to turn a small light on because I was afraid that one would somehow get into our room and be sitting there waiting for me to trip over it in the dark. I know...I am delusional!
There's a picture of all of us from our last night on the island at a great restaurant called Oceana. Obviously Jack was ready for bed and not enjoying having his picture taken!


We took the ferry over to St. John one day and everybody but Jack and I went snorkeling while we were at Trunk Bay. The picture of Trunk Bay is the one where you can see people swimming in the water. (I still haven't figured out how to put comments next to the appropriate pictures!) The beach was really beautiful so he and I sat in the shade under a palm tree and he took a nap. The picture of the beach with the small pier jutting out into the ocean was the view we saw every day from our balcony.

We are finally beginning to adjust to life back in the real world. It snowed here this weekend while Jim's sister was here, but unfortunately we forgot to take any pictures so you'll have to just enjoy these sunny beach photos for the time being.

Go Team!

Hook 'Em Horns! ...and... War Eagle!
These outfits were given to Jack by his Granddaddy (my dad) and his Grandpa (Jim's dad). Can you guess who gave him which one? Hint: My dad went to dental school here and Jim's dad did his undergraduate here.

Twice the fun

The night before we left for St. Thomas, Jim snapped Jack trying to get both of his favorite toys into his mouth at the same time.

BIG-time

We went to the doctor yesterday for Jack's latest round of shots and he weighed in at 17 and 1/2 pounds. Crazy!!! Sorry we haven't had much to post lately. We're leaving in a few days for a week in St. Thomas so I'll definitely have some new pictures to post once we get back.

Jack Burrito

You can see that we still love bath-time around here! For some reason we would wrap Jack up in two towels after his baths when he was a newborn and he still loves it. This is him wrapped in a cute bear towel he got in his stocking at Mimi & Poppy's house this past Christmas.

Happy Jack

We were playing this morning on the floor of Jack's room (where you can find us most mornings) and he was just laughing hysterically and being so cute that I had to snap some pictures. You can also see him with his favorite toy in the whole world in the second picture.

Pretty boring

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a couple of days. I guess we've just been pretty boring around here and there hasn't been anything new to report! Jim went to Memphis last night because he has work meetings there today (Morgan Keegan's headquarters are in downtown Memphis) and I was so worried about him with all of the awful storms that came through West Tennessee. I think around 36 people died from the storms/tornadoes last night. At one point I talked to him and could hardly hear him because of the tornado warning sirens that were going off so loudly. Thank goodness he was ok, but I am so sad for all of the people who lost a friend or family member. Jack and I stayed with Mom & Benton and I am so glad we weren't at home by ourselves when those same scary storms came through here in the middle of the night! Well, that's about it because, like I said, we're a little boring these days. I hope everyone around here has been enjoying the 60-70 degree weather the past few days because I think it's about to get cold again starting this afternoon. Yuck.

Zzzzz....

I forgot to mention that the sleep-thing is going great! He rarely cries when going to sleep now and is sleeping about 11-12 hours every night. The naps could still use some improvement in length but are getting much, much better. I am sooooo encouraged and am finally starting to feel normal again! (As opposed to the sleep-walking, space-head that I was turning into).

ExerSaucer

When my grandmother and Aunt Vee gave us this ExerSaucer for Jack at one of my baby showers, I couldn't imagine that he would ever be big enough to fit in it. We put him in it for the first time this week (at Courtney's suggestion) and he loves it. Whoever invented this thing was a genius!

Ready for vacation

We are going to St. Thomas with my parents next month so we were trying this sun hat on Jack to make sure that it would fit him and also to see if he would hate it. The answer to both questions is yes.

More fun with Maggie

Don't they look so much alike here?

Granddaddy & Tup-Tup

If you read my sister's blog, then you know that Maggie calls her uncle Spencer (my 10-year-old brother) Tup-Tup. Nobody can figure out how she got Tup-Tup from Spencer, but she's always called him that and we think she always will! We are also hoping that Jack will call him that because it is just so funny and cute. Anyway, my dad and Spencer stopped by on Saturday and here are some cute pictures of them with Jack. For a 10-year-old, Spencer is so good with both Maggie & Jack (and they both love him him so much). Doesn't he look just so comfortable holding Jack?