Little J. Where do I even start? These past few months have both dragged by and flown by at the same time. Not having much disposable income at all, we really haven't strayed far from the house very often. I feel like he's leading a pretty sheltered life, but what can we do? I take him for walks around our neighborhood, but there aren't any kids close to his age at all. The ones who *are* here are in school most of the day. So, we visit the neighbor's backyard rooster and chickens (through the fence), poke around in the dirt and gravel for cool rocks, sticks, acorns, nuts and so forth and play with them in his water table, squish berries between our fingers, splash in puddles and throw things in them, look skyward for hawks and airplanes, and say "hi" to the neighborhood dogs. He's getting much more stable on his feet and his pace is getting quicker, so we've actually been making full laps around the neighborhood lately. Well, we were until it started getting colder and raining more often, anyway. I usually try to get him outside for at least fifteen to thirty minutes a few times a week. On the nicer days, we're outside for close to an hour-and-a-half.
In my last entry, I wrote about Halloween... but I forgot a cute story. At the downtown merchants' fall/Halloween festival, there was a little boy in a cow costume at one of the stores. J leaned in and gave him a hug... and the other boy hugged him back. As we were leaving, the little cow looked so sad... apparently confused as to why J was leaving and not staying to play with him. This became a story that J talked about daily for weeks on end. And he still talks about it from time to time even now. "Caaahw. Huuuug. Sah-ee. Ticteee. Can-ee. Puuuh." "Yeah. You were trick-or-treating, and you saw a little boy in his cow costume. You gave him a hug. He wanted to play, but we had to say, 'Sorry. We have to go trick-or-treating so they can put more candy in my pumpkin!'" Adorable.
We had Thanksgiving at my brother's and sister-in-law's house. My mom came down and my SIL's family was there (her mom, dad, brother, and aunt) as well as one of my brother's longtime friends and his parents. Jacob was happy to see everyone and loved spending some time with his baby cousin. He doesn't tend to eat well at social gatherings - too much to see, too many people to hug -, so he was down from the table within five to ten minutes running from person to person to baby person and trying to hunt down their fuzzy kitty cat.
Our Christmas tree was still stored away up my dad's house, so we spent the weekend up there two weeks before Christmas and then put it up down here just a week or so before Christmas. Jacob loved helping put it together and then decorating the bottom half with his ornaments. Of course, he wanted to put all of the ornaments on the same branches, so he needed a little help with helping. ;) We had him open his stocking and a few presents on Christmas morning and then headed back up to my dad's house to get settled and then head over to my mom's for dinner.
He really got into unwrapping presents this year, but he was still distracted enough with playing with everything once we got home that it took several more days before he finished unwrapping all of his presents from us. We kept the tree up until after his birthday, and he still points to the corner where we had it set up and talks about fairly often.
My dad gave him a talking father-and-son teddy bear set last year with the daddy bear reading "Twas The Night Before Christmas" and the son interjection off and on during the story. Jacob loved playing in his room and pressing it over and over again to get it to play. As soon as the story was over, it started all over again.
I planned a birthday party for him at home and went with a monkey theme. He's still loving the book "Hug" (where a monkey in the jungle goes searching for his mother and encounters many other wild animals all with *their* mothers getting hugs) and still loves bananas... so I went with a monkey theme. I didn't have any help planning, baking, decorating or anything, so it was all pretty simple... but I think it looked nice. We had thought that he would have at least three kiddo friends at his party, but none of them could come for one reason or another. One was having a bad day, one was sick, and the other had just become a "big sister" that weekend. Our place is pretty small, so we still had a decent house-full with my mom, her husband, my brother, my SIL, my nephew, and two of our friends. Jacob enjoyed the company, but I think he was actually a little sad that none of his friends made it since we had been talking about that happening for several days. He's all about hugs, though, so he got and gave plenty of those.
A few weeks ago, some of our St. Louis area friends came down, and J finally had his first hiking experience. Sadly, we got going too late and had to turn around and head back down the hill before the daylight completely disappeared, but J had a great time. It was already getting dusk when we got there, so I only got two half-way decent pictures. This is one of them.
D and I got our taxes done and sent out last week, so hopefully we'll get our refund back fairly soon and be able to get "out and about" a little more often... at least for a little while. Our refund is a decent amount, but so much of it is already "spoken for" - car repairs, credit card bills, and hopefully a washer and dryer. We were hoping to be able to take a trip out to the east coast to go visit D's parents (J's never met them yet... and, after eighteen years of being with D, neither have I!), but I'm not sure we'll have enough after everything's said and done. I guess there's always next year. :/
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