How to Eat Pie

One of Jake’s favorite things is blackberry pie. He is lucky that my father is a very good pie maker and has tons of blackberries on his property in the summer. My father picked all the blackberries he could and froze them. Just about every time my Dad sees Jake he brings him a homemade pie. Within the first few bits of his first blackberry pie, Jake decided that eating it with a fork just wasn’t fast enough so his solution was to pick it up and eat it like a piece of pizza.

The Revival

It has been well over a year since I last posted. Lets just say that the first year of teaching leaves very little time for anything other than work and family. Good news is that I seem to have a bit of handle on the teaching thing and can now try to keep this blog up again. I am afraid I have lost all my followers but maybe some will come back and there might even be some new ones. I promise some good stories based on our crazy lives and the life of a middle school teacher. Jake is at a really fun age so I am sure I will have plenty to post. And lets not forget about the dogs, especially George, who opens a locked sliding glass door at will and jumps our new five foot fence without having to take a running start.

This Christmas was the best ever. Santa was very good to Jake and brought tons of presents even though he only asked for two puzzles. Not surprising the puzzles are the favorite gift that he plays with the most. It took Jake two days to open all his presents for two reasons: 1. He is a bit of neat freak and carefully put all the wrapping paper from each present in the trash bag as he took it off; and 2. He played with each present for quite some time before moving on to a new present. He also ran over to the statue of Santa and said “Thank you Santa Clause” after opening each gift.

First Birthday

It is hard to believe that Jake is already 1 year old. It is truly amazing how much change and development has occurred with Jake this year. A year ago we came home with this beautiful baby boy who couldn’t even hold his own head up. Then a year later he is even more beautiful, walking, eating real food (we still haven’t found a food he doesn’t like), and “talking” up a storm. Jake enjoyed his birthday despite having an ear infection in both ears. Then on his actual birthday he got sent home from daycare because he had a temp of 102. He had been on medication for a few days so it was surprise. He ended up having a virus on top of the ear infection. Don’t worry he was still able to eat left over cake from the party on his real birthday despite having a virus. I guess nothing can keep Jake from his food. Jake received tons of presents for his birthday and we may need to build an addition due to the amount of gifts he got (I can only imagine what Christmas is going to be like). We are so lucky to have such caring, thoughtful, and generous family members and friends! I will have to edit the video of him eating his cake but alas I have some house work and school work to do first. So stay tuned for the video.
Oh yeah, note to self and any other mothers, red frosting is not a good choice for a one year olds birthday cake.

Watch Out

We have a walker. Jake is officially walking. He was taking a few steps at a time prior to starting daycare on Monday. Then within a few partial days at daycare he was without doubt walking. Oh, and about daycare…..Well it was a nonissue for us. Jake loved it from the first day. We made it through the week with no tears from Jake (I know that won’t last forever). He was able to nap there well. The first day he took a nap there, grandma came to pick him up at 3 and he was still sleeping!

Yummy

Here is a video of Jake eating his dinner tonight. This kid enjoys every bit of his food. I know it is no big surprise that Erik’s and my child loves food. Eating is surely one of Jake’s favorite things to do. Oh and he tends to make a big mess too (no shocker there either).

Feeding Myself

Jake is asserting his independence and likes to feed himself. He is good at feeding himself if we put the food on the spoon and then let him take over at that point. However the other day that was just not enough for Jake so we decided to let him just go for it. He was doing ok so Erik and I turned away for a second to eat some of our own meal and Jake managed to pick up the bowl that is suctioned to his try (I struggle to get this bowl off the tray sometimes when it is suctioned, so clearly Jake is stronger and smarter than me.). I guess that using the spoon was just taking too long for our boy who loves his yogurt. Jake just picked up the bowl and to dump the yogurt in his mouth. He was very proud of himself!


Piggy Face!



In other news in our house we were lucky to get a visit from Aunt Devon whom Jake loves to hang out with. Grandpa Ho was kind enough to drive Devon up. We even got a little girl time in and went to a concert and left Jake in the wonderful care of Grandpa at Erik's baseball game. I also got my first teaching job so we went out to dinner to celebrate with my Mom. Jake decided to use the time while we were waiting for the check to take a little stroll with Dad. As you can see from the second picture Jake is trying to walk alone. He has taken a few steps on his own but still picks crawling most of the time.

First Swim at Caz Lake

We took Jake for his first swim at Cazenovia Lake yesterday and he loved it. At first he was a little unsure of the sand on the bottom but once he got use to it he was happy as a clam to just stand and play in the water with his dad. It was a gorgeous day here and we are hoping for some more so we can take Jake back to the lake for some more fun.