The New Dad Blog

Merry Christmas and the Flying Boy

 

Well it has been a busy week. We had Christmas of course on Tuesday. We woke up on Christmas morning to a picture perfect snowstorm that Jude was enthralled by as you can see in the photo above. We had a good 8" of fresh snow, and it basically snowed all day so it was a wonderfully cozy Christmas.

We had a lovely quiet Christmas with just the three of us. To the left is our traditional self-timed family Christmas photo with Jude enchanted by his gifts from Santa - the cart with the blocks in front and the push cart to the right with Eyeore (a gift from last year from Marcy's cousin Michele). We decided to go a different route this year with Christmas dinner - no turkey or ham, instead a range of different appetizers such as baked brie with fruit, chicken satay skewers (barbecued by Marcy in the snow), curried nuts and pork bratwurst. Marcy did all the work and it was a sumptuous dinner.

The day after Christmas I had to return to work and Marcy's parents arrived from Des Moines. Unfortunately it was around this time that Jude started to get sick. He had a runny nose and a bad cough and he looked terrible. Undeterred, Marcy's mom (Baba) took over a lot of Jude's caretaking which Jude really enjoyed. Marcy's dad was able to get a lot of the handyman jobs done around our place which was really helpful.

With Jude being so sick he didn't really feel up for walking that much this week. He would take four or five steps regularly and then he would plonk down on his butt. Although there were a couple of times he managed a dozen or more steps which excited us all.

Today was the first day Jude had more energy since Christmas. He was very playful and Jude and I had a play session on the bed this afternoon. I play this game with Jude where I hold him in my arms and go 1..2..3.. and throw him on to the bed. Baba captured the timing of the photo above just perfectly as I was throwing Jude on the bed this afternoon. If you look closely at the photo above you can see Jude with a big smile on his face.

Jude's First Halloween

You all saw this outfit a few weeks ago, but here is Jude dressed up on Halloween day.  Every year there is a Halloween celebration on South Gaylord street, which is a neighborhood about a mile away from us. We took Jude along, and while he was a little young to actively enjoy the event, he did seem interested in taking in the sights from stroller height, with kids & adults in costume & decorations everywhere. He's a bit young for trick or treating, and the blow up castles and other fun things they had were a bit beyond him too. We will take him along again next year and I am sure he will enjoy it in a more active way.

This week Jude had his fourth tooth come in, so he now has the front two on both the top and bottom. And for the time ever, we saw him actually using them. He took a cheerio in his mouth, bit down with his front teeth and kept one half in his mouth and the other half he took away with his hand. We were impressed.

There was another first for Jude this week, but not a good one. Jude caught his first cold. He had a very runny nose for a couple of days and he was coughing, but he seems to be over it now. Sleep has been an issue this week, probably due in part to his cold. Several times this week he awoke at 4am and after spending an hour or so hoping he would go back to sleep, one of us would get up and play with him until breakfast time. And then we had daylight savings end last night so that screwed up today a little bit. We are going to bed earlier and earlier to try and get some good sleep before Jude wakes up.

In the last couple of weeks Jude has started to develop some definite preferences and he can get quite upset when he doesn't get his way. He loves playing in the dishwasher as well as the fridge and when we close these he can get very upset. If we ever take away something he is playing with (whatever it is), we need to have an immediate alternative or the screaming will begin. He enjoys playing with his empty yogurt containers and we play a game called Crash, where we build a pyramid of containers and then he comes along and knocks them all down. That always gets a squeal of laughter out of him.