After our whirlwind of vacations, Jack and I are settling back in to normal life. Whatever that means for a ten month old. Yes, you heard right, TEN MONTHS. Jack had a month-a-versary yesterday and is now a full fledged ten-month-old baby. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Joe skipped town again this afternoon for a conference in Chicago, so we were on our own for the nightly ritual. The feeding/bathing/dressing/bottling/settling/sleeping deal is much easier with two people. And even though I do this on my own many weekday nights (the boy goes to sleep at six, so often Joe can’t make it home to say goodnight to him), it just seems harder knowing I am on my own for the entire night.

The reason it seems to be getting harder and not easier is that Jack does not like to get dressed. He kicks, he screams, he wails and gnashes his teeth (all eight of them), and generally makes himself as unpleasant as possible. So tonight, lacking the normal energy of a super-mom, I had to set him down for a bit. Then I realized. Hmmm. We don’t have any recent NAKED pictures of my sweet boy.

So without further ado, here is Jack in all his glory:




The blurry object in this one is the cup I use to rinse his hair. Somehow he carried it into the crib and was waving it at the dog.


He was still watching the dog, I think he wanted to drop the cup on her.


After a while he’d had enough and wanted to be done with the photo shoot.

Just to appease him, here is an earlier picture of him dressed and playing with kitchen implements:


Thank goodness for that little chair. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep him still while I prepare his food.

Tomorrow we’re having lunch with Elissa, Baby Jake (who just turned 2 months old!), and Travis Cooley (a faithful reader of the blog). I will be sure to get some good pictures.