Today we visited Gentry’s Farm in Franklin, TN. It’s a family-owned farm with a pumpkin patch, corn maze, hay rides, and lots of things for little ones to do. Jake was in heaven. He ran around in circles, yelling “Whoa!” seemingly oblivious of the 50-degree weather. I kept wishing for my gloves and a big cup of hot chocolate. But Jakers never stopped smiling. So happy that boy was. I love seeing the wonder and awe in his eyes as he experiences new things . . . and I so love being his mommy. 

What a fun boy our Jake is. He keeps us laughing and is such a little sponge right now. We’re amazed how he picks up new words every day. He is so proud of himself when he learns something new and seems to just love learning. That makes my heart happy. 

Well, happy fall, Ya’ll! 

-jen

Note: I’m trying something new with WordPress. I’m using the gallery option when uploading photos. I pretty much hate it, but it makes uploading much faster. I’m going to test it out for a few posts and see if it grows on me.

Happy Birthday, Grandma G! We hope your day is super special. 

Love, 

Matt, Jen, and Jakob E.

Spaghetti is most certainly Jake’s favorite meal . . . ever. When this boy starts eating spaghetti, he pretty much zones out and focuses only on the food in front of him. Okay, well, he does that at every meal, but he truly LOVES spaghetti. He does. He really does.

Last week I made baked spaghetti, slapped some of it on his tray with some green beans, and grabbed my camera. 

Be amazed. Be very amazed.

Wow. This takes talent.

Spaghetti looks an awful lot like spiders. “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

At this point I’m wondering how exactly I’m going to get him from the table to the bathtub.

Ooompa Loompa Doompady Doo

In an effort to capture some of our favorite moments of the last few months, here are a few videos from last week. Jake is learning his colors and is doing pretty well. He loves “lellow” the best, but grows more fond of “Guh-reeeen” every day. 

Now if there was just a way to video him telling us to “GO” at green lights while we’re in the car. 

Wow! That was quite a blogging break. After a much needed (5 month–gulp) break, I’ve been feeling the urge to blog again. I have missed out on some of the BEST highlights of Jake’s life, but I’ll try to catch up. Such FUN this boy is. He is now 20 months old and walking, talking, counting, recognizing colors, and acting like a typical almost-two-year-old boy.

As I stick my toes back in the blogging waters, here are Jake’s monthly photos from the past few months. Enjoy and there’s more to come soon!

I am now a shop owner! Well, of a virtual shop, that is, called Wee Little House. 

You can find my shop at: www.weelittlehouse.etsy.com. I’ll be adding new things to the shop over the next few days, weeks, and months until it’s stocked with handmade or found items by Yours Truly.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now and it’s finally a reality. Yay! 

Along with the Etsy shop, I’ve started a new blog at: www.weelittlehouse.wordpress.com. This blog will be quite a bit different from Jake’s blog. It will give me a little more freedom to talk about all the things I love. Of course, that also includes Jake. 

So, that leaves me trying to decide what to do about the JakobEliot blog. I really don’t have time to keep up with two separate blogs right now while trying to balance work and home. So, for now I’m going to let the Jake blog BE for a bit. I’m not planning to delete the blog at any time since it acts as a virtual journal for the first year of Jake’s life. 

Just bear with me as I try to figure out how to go about all of this. I’ll keep you posted here on where to hear Jake updates. 

See you soon . . . either here or there.

-jen

On Saturday, March 21st, Jake had his very first professional haircut by Amanda at Cognito. I have cut his little tail in the back and wings on the sides, but I wasn’t brave enough to tackle his little comb-over that was happening on top. So, I had an appointment that day and asked Matt to come along with Jake. 

I told Jake that Amanda was voted the best hairstylist in Nashville recently so he was in good hands. 

He didn’t mind the cutting a bit and I think he actually enjoyed wearing the cape (or is it a schmock?). 

Sometimes I wonder if Jake could be an easier of a child. He just sat there the whole time. 

And here we both are post haircut. I had probably 8 or so inches cut from mine. It has been a huge adjustment having short hair, but it’s actually pretty fun and oh so easy. Forgive Jake’s poof . . . this was also post nap. His squinty eyes crack me up. He hams it up for the camera like no other.

Matt also got a hair/face cut. I must come clean and say this was all by accident and totally my fault. You see, I always cut Matt’s hair with clippers, and the #2 guard recently broke so we’ve been taping it to hold it in place. Well, I guess I pressed a little hard on Matt’s neckline and the guard pulled away from the clippers. I gasped when I saw there was a big circle of shaved head. Thankfully, Matt didn’t kill me. He suggested I just cut everything that same length. And I really like the end result. 

It’s no big surprise that I’m not crazy about huge beards. I know they are really in right now or whatever and guys think they are sooo cool. But, if I wanted to be married to a mountain man, well, I would have married one. So, no complaints here about the new clean face. 

Jake wasn’t sure about it at first. We cut Matt’s hair while Jake was sleeping, and when Matt went to get Jake from his crib, Jake wasn’t having it. He wouldn’t look at Matt and just buried his head in his chest. At one point, he reached out to me to save him from the stranger that had his dad’s voice. It was so sad, but Jake’s used to it now and I think he likes that he can scratch his head again on the 5 o’clock shadow on his dad’s chin. 

All these “firsts” with Jake are so much fun. He’s growing so fast and looking more like a little boy each day. He’s still not walking, but he’s getting more brave by the day. His vocabulary, on the other hand, is really exploding. He can say quite a few words, including: mama, dada, bye bye, ball, book (without the k sound), shoe, more, bite, down, uh-oh, and no. When we tell him not to throw his food on the floor, he will sneak it off his tray and say “down” and when it hits the floor, he’ll say “uh oh.” Nice. We’re working on that one. We’re also working on the “nos.” He doesn’t say it in response much. Instead he says it when he’s about to do something he’s not supposed to do, like touch the controls on the sun room heating/ac unit. He’ll literally crawl over to it, point at it, and say no. Then he’ll go right on and touch it. It’s hard not to find this amusing, but I’ve started putting him in his pack n play for 2 minutes when he does it. It seems to be getting better.

What a boy he is. I love to watch him play. He is pretty good at playing by himself for stretches each day. He LOVES to read and we probably average several dozen books a day, sometimes reading the same one several times. He also loves his shape sorters and his nesting blocks. He concentrates really hard and is quite good at them. It makes my heart proud. 

Well, I better get some work done while Jake is napping. Just wanted to fill you all in on the latest firsts.

Jake and I spent the night at my mom and stepdad’s house one night last week while Matt was away. It’s always such a tricky ordeal to get out of the house with a one year old because he uses my busyness as an opportunity to get into everything. Usually he drags all of the tupperware out of the cupboard or pulls every book he can off the bookshelf in his room. I rarely mind it much so long as he’s occupied.

I had our bag packed and ready to go, so I put it in the sun room and shut Jake in there while I went to grab a few things in the house. Normally this isn’t a big deal at all. The sun room doubles as Jake’s play room, so it’s about the only room in the house where he can’t get into anything that would potentially be harmful. 

What I didn’t realize was I had put a banana in our bag, along with some other food items. And apparently Jake was hungry. I wasn’t out of the room for long, and when I came back, Jake found the banana and was attempting to eat it . . . in the peel. He somehow found a way to break open a small part of the peel with his teeth. 

It scared me at first because I thought he might get choked, but when I realized he had it under control, I grabbed my camera. 

Here he is trying to suck the banana out of the small hole he created with his teeth.

And is it just me or does my child look exactly like a monkey here? Those eyes, his mouth, the wrinkles above his mouth, his posture . . . 

Is this a look of satisfaction or what?

It’s good to know that if my son were stuck in a jungle in the wilds of Africa, as long as he could find bananas, he’d be okay.

Matt was out of town last week on a work trip, so that left just me and jakob e at home together. It was a surprisingly easy week. But considering Jake had a terrible stomach bug the week prior, anything else would be a breeze. (That week goes down in history as our worst week ever. Stomach bugs are nasty things, I tell you.)

Here we are our first night home alone. We were bored, so we took silly pictures of ourselves. And this is me without makeup and with my hair looking rather shaggy. Don’t be frightened. All that hair is now gone, by the way. I got it cut on Saturday and it’s the shortest it’s ever been in my life. Jake also got his first professional hair cut on Saturday. He didn’t mind it a bit. I think he liked the attention. 

Last Wednesday we went to the Nashville Zoo with some good friends. It was our first trip this year. We now have a zoo pass, so I’m excited to make it a regular outing since we live just around the corner.

I wondered how Jake would respond to the animals or if he’d even notice them. The first exhibit after you enter the zoo is of the monkeys. I kept pointing to them and tried to get Jake to watch them swinging in the branches, but he was far more interested in the little girls standing in front of him . . . or their hair. I had to keep pulling his hand away from grabbing handfuls of it. 

Then we looked at the elephants, but because they barely move and they blend in so well to their surroundings, I don’t think he realized that they were real, live animals. 

Finally we came to the giraffes. At first, Jake didn’t even notice them, but then two of them started walking toward each other. Jake’s eyes got huge and he began pointing and looking at me like “Mom, that is the tallest dog I’ve ever seen.” Just to see his response was well worth the price of the season pass. 

He also LOVED the meerkats. I parked his stroller right in front of the glass, and one of the little guys (or girls, I’m not sure which) came right up to it and stood with his little front paws up in the air. I thought Jake was going to hyperventilate he was so excited. 

Once the weather really turns hot and humid, I think we’re going to have to plan our zoo trips for the early morning. It turned hot really fast the other day and it’s only March. But, it was a good test run and I’ll know better next time how to plan. I’m so excited to take Jake again and to see some of the animals we missed last week. 

And I just have to say that I’m on cloud 9 that Jake is finally feeling better. It seems like we’ve been battling one thing or another since mid January, so I was elated to have our first week of health and happiness in over two months. 

Matt came home on Friday evening, and our little duo became a trio again . . . just as it should be. We had a nice weekend spending time together as a family and with friends. And now we’re onto another week. We’ll see what this one holds.

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Jake has had a pretty nasty stomach bug all week, and we’re still in the throes of it. I finally got him out of the house yesterday to go see my mom. I needed a break. After he sufficiently stunk up her entire house, we came home to our much stinkier house. Seriously. This stuff stinks. Real bad.

I’ll be glad when it’s gone and Jake decides to eat again. He hasn’t had an appetite since last Sunday and, if you know our boy, that is nothing like him. I’m pretty sure he’s lost weight. His little baby belly is shrinking. (Maybe that’s what I need. A good stomach bug to get rid of my baby belly.) The day before yesterday we resorted to feeding Jake Oreos and M&Ms. Nice. It’s the first time he’s had either. Actually, it was the first time he’s ever had candy. Ironically, he threw a fit yesterday because after he ate the last of the M&Ms, he was angry that he couldn’t have any more. Little booger.

I’m looking forward to a weekend of working (since I spent the entire week holding Jake, I didn’t get anything done) and sanitizing every surface area and toy. 

Hopefully we’ll be back next week in full force. I better get some groceries because I’m pretty certain that as soon as Jake starts feeling better, he’s going to be ravenous. 

More from us later . . .