Snow Days and Work

It has been a busy week around here! We seem to be having a lot more of those, partially precipitated by my increased work schedule. My co-worker is out with some family issues so last week I worked all week. This week I was off Monday-Wednesday for mom's surgery, but I went back today and will be working full time until further notice. Good for getting more hours for my license (and the money isn't bad either!) but it is much more difficult being away from Jake all week instead of just a couple days. I don't know that I could do this forever, but for the mean time this is what is necessary. We also had a few issues figuring out how we were going to do bottles for full weeks, but I will write another post about that later.

And to make this week more fun and exciting, we haven't had temperature out of the 30's! On Sunday we got about 4 inches of snow, which made for a lot of concern about the 4:15AM commute to Dallas mom and I had Monday morning. Fortunately the roads haven't been bad, but as of today we STILL have snow in our yard. I don't ever remember snow sticking around this long here! I think that move to Hawaii Josh and I always talk about might need to come sooner than later if this is going to be any sort of normal around here!

Happy New Year!

A little late on this.

We celebrated the New Year at home this year, with our beautiful baby boy. It was nice. Relaxed. We had a wonderful 2010 welcoming our baby boy and watching him grow. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary and took Jake on his first road trip to Michigan. We grew a lot as a family (not just in adding a new member), laughed a lot, played a lot, and slept not as much as we would have liked!

We welcome 2011 and are looking forward to our baby turning one and into a toddler and seeing him continue to learn and grow.

And since I said a couple of weeks ago now that I would share family pictures...here are a few!

11 Months

Wow. One month from today we will have a one year old. I absolutely cannot believe that! I am not sure how 11 months have gone by since our sweet little boy came into our world. And while I don't want him to grow up, I love watching him learn new things every day! I swear he learns something new everyday and it is crazy to watch! His birthday party invitations went out today which makes him turning 1 actually real! I am not ready yet.

New things for this month:

• Waves hi and bye
• Talking up a storm...says mama, dada, ball, hi, shoes, per (diaper), dog, done, and all sorts of other babbles
• Occasionally signs more and please. We are still working on thank you
• Dances when he hears music
• Lip syncs to music (hilarious)
• Gets how his toys work and know which ones make music
• Pushes trucks around the living room
• Walks with push toys
• Drinks from a straw
• Asks to nurse (usually by attacking me)

Outtakes!

Jake's First Christmas

Whew! We had a super busy weekend with lots of presents and food! Grandpa and Grandma Rodriguez got here Christmas Eve day and we headed to Grams house before heading to church. This was the first year in a long time that we have not gone to Midnight Mass, but we didn't think Jake would make it through Midnight Mass. So we thought we would go to the children's mass. Well we didn't expect it to be so crowded so early, and when we got there it was already packed. Although there were quite a few rude people saving entire rows until 10 minutes before mass started. About 5 minutes before mass started someone came up to Josh and I and offered us a place to sit so we took it. Jake made a bunch of friends with the people around us.

We headed back to Grams house to do Christmas Eve with the Morrows. Jake got to open his stocking from Grams and lots of presents from Grams and the Morrows. After some trivia and desserts we headed back to our house to go to bed and wait for Santa! Christmas morning we got up and Jake opened his presents from us and Santa. It took him forever to open presents because he would get distracted with the toy and play with it for 10-15 minutes before wanting to move on! Eventually we got through all of them though. We had breakfast with all the grandparents then Jake opened the rest of his presents. He has so many things with wheels now...he is in heaven!

After Grandpa and Grandma Rodriguez left on Sunday we relaxed for a little bit before heading over to the Morrow's house for some more Christmas fun! We hung out there for a little while and came home to get some rest after our long weekend!

On Sunday Jake woke up congested and he has been coughing and had a runny nose since then. Poor baby is having a hard time sleeping. It sucks to not be able to do much to help him.

So before pictures...we got our family pictures and Jake's birthday pictures back last week! They turned out great! I will post some of the family pictures next time. We also got Jake's birthday invitation today (well the file for it, we have to have it printed). It is so freaking cute I can't wait to get it out!

Now here are a ton of pictures.

Opening his stocking at Gram's house



Loving his new straw sippy cup

Yea presents!

Worn out Cosmo

Sharing his cookie with mama

Opening presents Christmas morning

LOVES his drum!

Lots of blocks to play with

Cosmo opening her stocking

Loves his dino from Grams

This kid loves things that move!

Our family Christms morning



With Grandpa and Grandma Rodriguez



With Grams Christmas day

Mama and Grams

Loving his bubbles!

At the Morrow's for Christmas dinner the day after Christmas

Pam loves Jake!





Picture catch up

We are almost ready for Christmas here. Well we are ready for it to come but haven't finished everything! It is much harder to wrap presents with a little man around! I am so excited to see Jake open his presents Christmas morning!

We had family pictures and Jake's first birthday pictures last weekend. We haven't seen any yet though, she is supposed to post a few preview pictures on Facebook when she is done. I am stalking her page waiting to see them, she has the session before ours up so I am hoping she puts ours up tomorrow. I am so excited to see them! Although Jake gave her a hard time about smiling, of course he chooses the times we are paying for pictures to not smile for the camera! I also got an improptu photo shoot done yesterday when we were at Buy Buy Baby. One of the photographers from the photo studio there walked by and said Jake was cute and wanted to take some pictures of him and said we could get a free 10x13 print. So we finished our shopping and then got some pictures taken. There were a couple of cute ones but the one I decided on is fabulous! I might have to scan it in because it is so cute!

Ok pictures!

One of the out takes from our Christmas card photo shoot

This is my favorite onesie right now

Playing with ballons after pictures

Look at the big boy drinking from a sippy cup!

Already in the fridge!

Our family ornaments

Jake likes petting Cosmo when he is nursing...and that is the one time he is actually gentle with her

Who needs Santa when I have Grandma! (And he is definitely spoiled by Grams!)

He spent 15 minutes sitting and reading this book today and didn't notice I was taking a bunch of pictures of him

Mama

Jake's new word...mamamama! He has said it sporatically for a little while, but usually just when he is mad. Since Tuesday he has been going around saying mamamama. I love it!

We are having family and Jake's first birthday pictures done this weekend! I am super excited! We've got lots of fun stuff planned for his pictures, but I think we will save them for a surprise. We've also been working on planning his birthday party. I have another really cool surprise that I have been working on for that too. I sat down to work on it the other day and spent about 5 hours on it, and I still have a long ways to go.

Not much else is going on right now. I have to start working on Christmas cards so no pictures today!