Santa's Village

We went on our first family vacation last month (August 13th & 14th). We met up with Carly's family and went to Santa's Village.

First, I met up with my old friend Tom. You probably know him as the mayor of Santa's Village.


I met Tom back when I was in Santa's Helper school. I dug out this picture he took of me at graduation. Coincidentally, I was wearing the same shirt.


Before we started hitting the rides, Jack had to make the height requirements.


As you can see, he didn't quite make it. So, we set out to discover exactly how tall he is.


We didn't get a picture of it, but we did get an accurate measurement (he's always up on his toes), and he was 27 inches tall. After all the measuring, Jack got a little hungry. We tried to tell him that this wasn't a real cupcake, but he just wouldn't listen. When did he even learn what a cupcake is? Did somebody feed him a cupcake when we weren't looking?


Here's Jack sitting in a tiny chair with a tiny fireplace in a tiny house with his tiny cousin Raegan.


Raegan tried to pretend that she didn't like Santa's Village, but we know she had a great time.


She even took in a ski lesson!


Here's yet another picture of Jack sitting around. The kid just sits all over the place. (Or at least he used to. He's much more mobile now!)

Gone Fishing

We picked up a great new toy last month. It got Jack's attention like nothing we've ever seen! Check out the look of concentration on his face.

Favorite Picture Update

We took a picture of a very tired boy the other day, and it occurred to us that it's basically a retake of Carly's old favorite picture from a post back in March. I don't think I need to tell you which is which!

Assorted Pictures

Crawling...?

Well, Jack's crawling...kinda. He can get up on all fours and rotate around very well. He recently started crawling backwards, which doesn't seem to annoy him as much as we expected. In fact, he has a pretty good time spinning around, rolling, and backing up all over his room. Also, he's getting better at sitting unsupported, and he can even go from a reclined position (like leaning against Mommy or Daddy) into an unsupported sitting posture. We started taking him swimming, using a real nifty float from Nana and Grampa.


He's also doing some finer motor skills. You can sneak up behind him and say something, and he'll roll or twist so that he can see who's talking. He can find and use a nearby pacifier (and find them in the dark of his crib), and transfer things from hand to hand. Also, he uses his hands together to accomplish tougher tasks, such as getting heavier items like his Tivo remote into his mouth. (He liked our remote so much, I had to give him our extra one.)

Besides movement, Jack's been moving ahead with eating, too. He's finished all his "stage 1" foods (whatever that means) - green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, applesauce, peaches, pears, prunes, and bananas. He also eats rice and oatmeal cereal. We've started giving him a sippy cup, but so far, it doesn't lead to much other than lots of apple juice in his general vicinity. After his doctor's appointment this week, we expect to begin stage 2, which include meats and some more interesting foods.

He's been paying alot more attention to what's going on around him now. For instance, he's got favorite shows. He likes Caillou and the theme song from Beverly Hills, 90210 (Carly's favorite show). In fact, he likes that song so much that he'll stop whatever he's doing and stare at the TV when it comes on. Really, I'm not kidding. I can even play it on guitar and it gets his undivided attention. Another thing he likes is being the only one in the room allowed to eat or drink. It ticks him off to see us eating or drinking anything. We think he has entitlement issues. :)

Playing catch-up

Yeah, it's been a long time since an entry again. Sadly, I've been having some technical difficulties getting the blog entries posted. Essentially, I'd have the whole thing written and ready to publish, and then I'd lose the entire thing. After two or three rewrites, I'd give up. But enough's enough. That ends tonight!

Here's some old pictures I meant to send earlier: