Jacob is 6 months!

Jacob turned 6 months old on Tuesday!

Today he had his 6 month well check. He weighs 18 lbs, 4 oz, and is supposedly 29 inches long, though I think they may have measured wrong. That is off-the-charts crazy long. He wears 6-9 or 6-12 month clothes, and we just moved him into size 3 diapers.

Lots of firsts this month!! First time sitting up, swinging, riding in the shopping cart, sitting in the stroller the normal way (instead of plopping his car seat in it), trying solid food, and he cut his first 2 teeth!

At 6 months, Jacob can:

• sit up unsupported
• roll all around
• move in a circle on his tummy
• push up on his arms with his chest and occasionally his tummy off the floor (the tummy never lasts...his knees slip out behind him and he ends up scooting backwards)
• work to get things out of his reach
• rake the ground with his fingers to pick up small objects

He likes:

• being held, especially if the holder is standing/moving
• Jamie
• people watching
• grabbing everything he can possibly get his hands on
• being tickled
• looking in the mirror
• pulling hair
• the jumperoo
• putting his hand in my mouth while nursing

He doesn't like:

• books. Well, maybe that's not true. But he gets super agitated every time I try to read to him and every time I read to Jamie near him. Even if I let him hold the book he freaks out. It's like he's trying to condition me to stop reading to him. Sorry, little guy, it'll never work!
• having things taken away from him
• being home with just Mommy. He is way fussier if we're alone! I think he gets bored with no big brother to watch.
• shots :( He had 4 today. Poor guy!

look closely and you'll see his cute little teeth poking out. also, I love this boy's eyes!

His sleep is improving. He takes 3 or 4 naps, depending on the length. It's either two naps of an hour and a half or so and one lasting about 40 minutes or four of the 40 minute variety. We infinitely prefer the 3 nap days! His insanely horrible nighttime sleep stopped as soon as his teeth came in and he's back to sleeping just somewhat poorly. He usually nurses twice in the night.

He drools like a maniac.

We gave him his first solid foods this week! He has tried avocado, banana, and sweet potato. The only one he even remotely seemed to like was the bananas. It was actually banana "ice cream" (pureed frozen bananas), and it was the only thing he didn't grimace at and immediately spit out.

He is crazy ticklish! It's the best. :)

We sure love this boy!!

More pictures from this month:

He did this to himself. We don't bother putting blankets out for him anymore because he always rolls himself up in them, silly boy.

first time riding in the stroller with no car seat

first time in the swing!

watching Jamie play is a favorite activity

first sitting up picture!

first time in the grocery cart!

Jamie was singing a loud, annoying song of nonsense words and wouldn't stop. It was driving me crazy but Jacob was just LOVING every second of it.

When he saw me taking pictures of Jacob, Jamie insisted on having a brother picture too.

first food!

Not a fan!

a morning at the park

Yellow Jake & Barnacle James

September 19th is Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day. Why does this day exist? I have no idea, but I do know that it is fun. Krispy Kreme gives out free doughnuts to people who talk and/or dress up like pirates, which gave us a wonderful excuse to play dress up that day. What a great time Jamie and I had putting our outfits together and going out for doughnuts. And it was so fun to see Jacob in the costume I made for Jamie's first Halloween. I love these cute boys!

Jamie wanted to leave his "beard" on all day.

Those CHEEKS. They kill me.

my favorite of Jamie :)

I tried having Jamie help Jacob stand up for a picture, but it didn't really work. Jamie kept stepping backwards, so of course Jacob kept losing his balance. And getting both of them to look? Impossible. Still super cute if you ask me, though.

And I had Jamie try to take a picture of me and Jacob since I hadn't been in any. This was the best one he took.

eating his pirate doughnut

pirate selfie

A kind stranger offered to get a picture of the 3 of us. Everyone at Krispy Kreme was just dying over these boys and especially over Jacob's mustache :)

My 2 baby pirates! Jamie in 2010, Jacob in 2014

p.s.- Yellow Jake and Barnacle James are these boys' official pirate names. Barnacle James we just made up. Yellow Jake, on the other hand, came about because of a library book Jamie had checked out shortly after Jacob was born. I believe it was called Pirate Bob, and one of the characters was named Yellow Jack because he had scurvy. At the time, Jacob was pretty yellow himself from jaundice, so we dubbed him Yellow Jake. He is thankfully no longer yellow, but the name has stuck!

new car!

We have a new (to us) car: a white 2011 Toyota Camry! 

After we found out we were going to have to get a new one, we decided we'd better do it sooner rather than later and spent last weekend looking at cars. It was a bit nerve-wracking. We have only bought a car once before, and it was when we lived in Kirksville, so prices were lower, my dad went to look at cars with us, we had no children to worry about during the process, and we had actually saved up money for that very purpose. Not so much this time. Somehow we managed though.

We came very close to buying a 2007 Honda Civic. I really wanted that one to work out....unfortunately, after we had our mechanics look it over, they said that while it was in good shape, there were several things that would need to be done on it immediately (lots of fluid changes and flushes, etc) to the tune of $700. The (very stereotypical used car) salesman refused to negotiate the price at all, which left a bad taste in our mouths. We talked about buying it anyway because even with the additional work the price wasn't outrageous, but we didn't feel good about working with someone who wasn't willing to negotiate or take care of problems that car had before we even bought it. 

We were still considering that option when we looked at some cars at CarMax. Well, let me tell you, we were completely won over by the customer service and the coverage they offer. Within 5 days, you can straight-up return a car, and your purchase includes a 30-day warranty covering parts and labor if you need any repairs in that time frame. It felt so reassuring compared to how nervous I would have been driving off the lot with the Civic we looked at. And when we had some car trouble Thursday morning, I was very glad we had made that decision (not to worry, everything is taken care of). And their customer service was just unbelievably amazing. Everyone was wonderful, to the point that when we couldn't find someone to watch Jamie and he was having a hard time holding still and staying quiet, one of the workers came over and read to him and talked to him about superheroes and Star Wars. Another person offered to hold Jacob for me when he was being squirmy while we signed paperwork. 

The Camry is a much nicer car than the Malibu ever was, and we are happy to have it! Not so happy about having a car payment again, though. We hope it lasts us a long time.

last time driving the Malibu

The boys in the Camry for the first time. Jamie has been SO excited about getting a new car. He keeps talking about our "beautiful, nice new car."

Jacob's name

People ask me this a lot, so I just want to clarify in case anyone has wondered . . .

We did not choose Jacob's name because it starts with a J, nor are we planning to have all J names if/when we have more kids. We talked about lots of names for him, and Jacob was the only one that started with J. It just happened to be the one we liked best.

And his middle name, Wilder, is a family name on my dad's side. Several generations ago it was a last name that got passed down as a first name when a daughter was married and wanted to use her maiden name. More recently, it was my great-grandfather's middle name, and my grandpa had a brother whose first name was Wilder who died as a teenager. It's also my brother Matthew's middle name. Recently I was looking at some genealogical records and found that the name can be traced back to a Nathaniel Wilder (my 6th great-grandfather, I believe) who died at the Battle of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War. Interesting tidbit :)

Anyway, that's the story on his name. Jacob Wilder. I really love it.

camping!

Over Labor Day weekend, we went camping in Cades Cove with Mark & Sarah's family and my friend Brianna and her kids. It was the first time we've gone camping with other people, and it was just SO much fun. The kids especially had an amazing time. Altogether there was a 6-year-old, four 4-year-olds, a 2-year-old, a 1-year-old, and a 5-month-old. The big kids all played together SO well the whole time. Patrick and Lillie fit right in! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mark and Sarah and their girls were driving up from Atlanta and planned to meet us at the campsite in the afternoon. Those of us in Knoxville decided to go earlier in the day and go hiking before we headed to the campground. We went on a fun but very long hike to Abrams Falls. The kids did great on the way to the waterfall, but on the way back Jamie especially got whiny and wanted to be held. He also kept tripping over and over, poor guy. The waterfall itself was beautiful and putting our feet (or in some cases, more than our feet) in the icy water felt amazingly good on that hot, humid day. Jamie just loved playing in that water! Unfortunately, the hike took longer than we anticipated and then there was a lot of very slow traffic on the Cades Cove loop road, meaning we got to the campground a few hours later than we had planned on. I felt awful because we had no cell reception and consequently no way to contact Mark and Sarah to let them know! When we got stuck in the traffic, Thomas actually got out and biked to the campsite to try and let them know as soon as possible that we were okay and on our way, but he only got there a few minutes before we did.

Once we finally made it there, we got the tents set up, and it was already time to get the fire going so we could make dinner. That night we had tin foil dinners that Sarah made and s'mores afterwards. We also tried making Pillsbury breadsticks and crescent rolls over the fire (a big hit!) and roasting Starbursts (sounds weird but turned out to be delicious). We had brought some games but it took a long time to get all the kids settled into bed, and then the bugs and impending rainstorm sent the adults to bed not long afterwards.

Thomas showing everyone the first of many weird little caterpillars we found. They turned out to be a big hit with the kids.

camping baby! Jacob did all right. He slept about like at home (and this was before the crazy teething insomnia hit).

Christine's favorite activity turned out to be filling her shorts with rocks. It was so funny and cute.

That night there was a crazy storm. The downpour was so intense that poor Brianna and her kids, whose tent had no tarp and who were sleeping just on blankets on the ground, got flooded out of their tent in the middle of the night. We saw the headlights and heard their car drive off in the middle of the night and just felt awful for them! They spent the rest of the night at home and were happily able to rejoin us in the morning.

That morning we had hot chocolate, chocolate chip pancakes, and fruit for breakfast. Thomas went on a bike ride, and the kids spent forever playing on and around this big rock in our campsite; then Sarah, Brianna, and I took them on a nature hike, leaving the men and Jacob back at the campsite to rest.

This rock was THE place to be for the big kids.

Jamie prepared these scavenger hunt bags for everyone for the nature hike.

I was so impressed with how well he wrote everyone's names!

sleepy Christine

After the hike, it was time for lunch. Later in the afternoon, we went to a nearby creek to play in the water. I didn't stay that long because I had Jacob in the Ergo, but I wish I could have! The water felt great and it was a beautiful area.

Afterwards there was more playing on the rock, more playing with caterpillars, more fire building, and a dinner of hot dogs followed by more s'mores. It started raining again while we were making dinner but fortunately most of it held off until the night again. Brianna's family left that evening while the rest of stayed one more night. The worst part of that night was that Thomas misplaced our car keys just as it was getting dark. We searched and searched but it was very difficult with nothing but flashlights; fortunately Thomas finally found them. . . in the trunk key hole. It was very frustrating during the short time they were lost, but we are so thankful it turned out all right in the end.

Elena had a caterpillar on her head!

everyone wants to see the caterpillars!

the smoke made it hard to get good pictures near the fire

In the morning we got everything packed up while the kids continued playing on the rock! Jamie was NOT happy when it was time to leave and kept whining about wanting more time at that rock. Unfortunately the camping trip ended with him having a meltdown as we left, but he quickly recovered with some snacks in the car.

camping brothers :)

And just in case this post didn't already have enough pictures.... One of the perks of being friends with Brianna is that she is a fantastic photographer. She took our family pictures a year and a half ago and also did Jacob's newborn pictures, and she thoughtfully shared her camping pictures with the rest of us. She took MANY wonderful photos but I'll just put a few of my favorites.

Abrams Falls

They loved playing in the tents! Especially this one :)

Jacob with Aunt Sarah

These crazy caterpillars were all over the place!

I LOVE this one!

love these toes :)

We had such a wonderful weekend!!