Birthday

My baby Jack is one year old (and has been for a week!)
We spent the evening of his actual birthday in the clinic at Kaiser for his 104 degree temperature (poor little guy!) but he enjoyed a party on Sunday evening. Here are a few pictures from his party:

The cake

The presents

He had fun with one of his balloons!

And more fun (with food in the mouth!)

After Jack started sleeping through the night, the year flew by, and now here we are at toddlerhood! Can you believe it?

Goose Eggs and Crackly Paper

The Widmans put an offer on a house here in Brentwood. Pray for us!
And in other family news, we had our first trip to the ER today.
Jack was playing on the loveseat this morning--one of his favorite indoor activities--and he was loving it as usual. He's a little daredevil. We put one seat cushion and all the back/side cushions on the floor around the front of the loveseat, and he steps or crawls from the floor to the seat cushion, from the seat cushion to the cushionless seat, from the cushionless seat to the cushioned seat, and then back down again. Sometimes he falls into the cushions and he laughs and laughs. Adrenaline junkie in the making. Well, this morning, as Jack was at the highest point of his climb, Lulu the cat entered the picture, and Jack dove after her. Off the couch. Missed or bounced off the cushions on the floor. Landed on his head on his plastic toy wagon. I was on my way to catch him, having seen this coming, but I was too slow.
He immediately started screaming and immediately, plus two seconds, grew a huge goose egg on his forehead. After he calmed down, we tried frozen peas on the bump, but he wanted none of it. Just wanted down. He seemed normal, but I called the Kaiser advice nurse, just in case. She asked about all the concussion signs, but all were negative. Yet she wanted to check with the ER doctor, just in case. On hold... ... ... ... The doctor wants to you to come to the ER, just in case. *Sigh* I knew he was fine, but what if there's bleeding in the brain or something else extreme, and what if I were the worst mother in the world who did not take my child to the ER before his brain exploded? So we went. Two seconds in the empty ER--listen to his heart, weigh him, take his temperature--then an hour at the minor injury clinic, chasing Jack around the hall, and then sitting in the room, blowing up a blue glove, playing with a wooden gagging stick, turning on and off and on and off and on and off the flashlight on the flexible stand.
Then the daredevil--the fearless, couch diving Jack--got afraid. Got very afraid. The doctor entered the room. Why Jack Jack was afraid of this nice man even as the man walked through the door I don't know. Does he remember the crackly paper on the seat, and know that the people of the crackly paper give shots? I have no idea, but Jack was afraid of the doctor. Poor child!
Of course, the doctor found that nothing was wrong. So we went home and went on with our day, minus time in the gym, minus one morning nap, minus a $75 co-payment, plus one bill in the mail, plus one goose egg, plus one giant headache for mom.
I should have taken a picture of his head this morning when it looked really bad. The goose egg shrunk throughout the day. If it's black and blue tomorrow, as the doctor said it might be, I will take a picture and post it for all to see.

Last Saturday, I helped my mom throw a bridal shower for Jodie.

Hollie, Lindsay, me

Karla, Shelley, Mom, Auntie Terri

That evening, at a barbecue at my parents' house in honor of my brother Matthew's friends Sam and his wife, Matthew and Pam surprised us with some news: they are married! They were married on August 21 in Martinez at the courthouse. Below is a picture of them feeding each other cake at Matthew's birthday party to make up for the lost wedding moment...


After such excitement, a short trip to Capitola was a welcome Labor Day weekend retreat!


All of this causes much need of a shower with Dad! Here is a post-shower pic of Jack:

Roaring Birds

The Widman Family went to Tahoe for a long weekend. Here are a few pictures from our trip...


Jack's first beach trip! He wasn't too sure about the wet sand!
















Standing on the beach chair--his favorite beach activity!














Dad joined us on Friday!














We had a lot of fun at the beach!













At the Forest Room buffet, Jack learned how to drink out of a straw! (Thanks, Uncle Matt, for the cell phone picture!)








At a craft fair, we found Paul Bunyan's baseball bat! (The man who made the bat wanted Jack to hold a sharp lathe for the picture, but we quickly jumped in and said NO THANKS!)














Lulu was glad when we came home, even though she doesn't look it!








Side note: Jack learned to roar about a month ago, in answer to the question: "What does a lion say?", but now has decided that all animals roar, so he roars at the sight of any animal--dogs, cats, birds, a blow-up killer whale at the beach, stuffed turtles at the craft fair, and even a fuzzy scarf at the craft fair! It's cute, but hopefully he will learn the right sounds at some point! Birds would be quite scary if they really did roar!

Wet Tanbark

The things we do to save our children's (and our own) sleep!
Last night, Joah had to be in Reno for work, so I had the whole bed to myself! Except that when Joah's not home, every single tiny noise wakes me up. So at 6:30 AM, after a less than perfect night of sleep, I am wrenched awake by the terrible, growling yowls of two cats at odds with each other. I irrationally think, Oh no! They're going to wake up Jack! so I rip off the sleep mask I inevitably don at about 5:30 every morning and storm outside, stopping to carefully close the screen door, lest it slam and wake up Jack. (You can see how much I cherish every moment of my sleep--Jack's sleep=my sleep!) I march around the outside of the house in my jammies, and eventually find the white cat that lives under my back deck, crouching alone between the rose bushes. "You get out of here!" I hiss at it, and stomp my bare feet on the cool cement. (Fat load of good the silent stomping did.) But it did slink away from me, along the front of the house, into a bush under Jack's window. Great! Go closer so you can be louder! As I follow the white cat to shoo it further away, I tramp through the wet grass and spot, just around the corner in the dirt on the side of the house, the ORANGE CAT --the new kid in town who is quite a bully, from what I've seen. I am bracing myself for another fight--the two cats are so close together--and I want to chase away the orange cat, but I don't want to step on to the dirt with my wet feet and make mud, which will have to be cleaned off before climbing back into bed... if I ever get there again. Are there rocks to throw at it? No rocks to be found. Still clutching my sleep mask, I pick up a handful of the next best thing: wet tanbark. I start chucking the tanbark at the orange cat, not even coming near it with my throws, but (miraculously) it takes a step or two back. I grab another handful of tanbark, and lose all inhibitions. I step in the dirt, muddying my feet, and chase that cat away, all the time whisper-yelling "You get out of here! Get! Go on!" What a sight I must have been in my pajamas, clutching my sleep mask, throwing wet tanbark with all my might and whisper-yelling threats at that orange cat! By the time I wiped my muddy feet on the wet grass and found my way back into bed, I wasn't sleepy any more. Of course. So in order to save Jack's sleep, and thereby my own sleep, I got out of bed, chased a cat across the yard, and lost my last few minutes of morning slumber. Ironic, isn't it?

Smuggling Cheerios

Jack ate Cheerios in the nursery today. Good for him! Last time he tried plain Cheerios, he didn't like them. (I don't blame him--I don't like plain Cheerios either!) Maybe today's attempt at an unfamiliar food item was due to peer pressure--the other kids were eating a snack too--or maybe his sense of taste or sense of crunch is improving. Regardless, I'm glad he's acquired a taste for the simple snack!
So I went to get Jack out of the nursery to feed him (as I do every Sunday so we're not rushed to get home after church) just as they were finishing snack time. I helped him finish the last few Cheerios on the table (many had already made it to the great abyss of the floor) and took him upstairs. As he was on my lap about to nurse, he opened both fists and looked down at his palms, where he had smuggled two Cheerios out of the nursery, one in each hand! He transferred the left Cheerio into his right hand and looked at the two together, in awe of his secret snack. I told him, "You'd better eat them!" so he slowly brought his right palm to his mouth and crunched on his last two Cheerios with enjoyment.
Thanks, Lindsay, for re-introducing Cheerios to my son! It adds to my ever-widening snack options and made for a very cute moment in the Lactation Station today!

Trying it out...

So Kami OldenKamp convinced me that I ought to do a blog. I don't think I have all that much to blog about, nothing that anyone cares to read anyway, but I'll try it out for a while and tell people about the blog when there's something substantial to read!
We met with a real estate agent today after floundering for a little while on our own looking for a new house. We're meeting him tomorrow morning to look at a house in our price range, which I don't think is in a desirable location for us. We'll see.
Jack has been walking for a week now, and stood up from a sitting position unassisted for the first time today. He didn't even use the floor to push himself up with his hands like I thought he would--he just put up one knee (so he was in proposal position), pushed himself up with his legs, and brought the other foot forward to stand up!
I've never really been around kids before--just pets--and animals can only progress so much in their skill! A dog can be very well-trained, but that's as far as he gets. It's amazing to watch Jack learn things seemingly by magic! (I certainly didn't show him how to stand up without pulling up on something!) But I know it's not magic--it's how God created our minds to learn.
This seems like a really short post compared to Kami's and Sarah's, but I guess I'll get better at it with practice!