We have been a busy little family lately. Jack’s ear infection did not go away after the first round of antibiotics so we had to go back and get another prescription. Now I am happy to report he is back to his normal self. Oh, except for the fact that he is cutting his LAST TOOTH. Can you believe it? Once this one is through he will have 20 teeth. Just in time for us to get another baby and go through it all again.

Of course I have a ton of pictures to share. Jack is becoming quite a little boy. He put on his dad’s fancy headphones to listen to a little Kelly Clarkson the other day:















He watched some Notre Dame football with Joe, Travis and Guido:















He played in the rain:














































The last shot is with our friend Nick, the only adult brave enough to run around in the rain with a toddler.

Joe went on a trip recently and Jack and I met him at the airport. Jack had fun trying to breach security:















He also recently learned to use the dog door:















And he practiced using chopsticks. Apparently someone doesn’t believe that he can use them, so here are two shots to prove it:































And finally, he attended Nick’s graduation from the US Airways Flight Attendant Academy. I was a little worried about this trip – the program started at 5:30 p.m. Not the best time of day for a squirmy toddler. But he was mostly well behaved. For the first 15 minutes or so he sat quietly on my lap:















Luckily it wasn’t too long of a ceremony. Here he is at the end with Nick the graduate:















Less than three months until the new baby arrives. Jack is starting to figure out that we are getting a baby, although I’m not sure if it will truly sink in until later. He can say “baby” and if you ask him if he wants to bring home a baby he always says “yeah”. I have a feeling he will change his mind about that come December.

His vocabulary is growing quite a bit, although he’s still not really speaking in sentences. Here are some of the words he says on a regular basis:

cracker
Lucca
Guido
yam (which sounds like mom and can be confusing)
bread (which sounds like dad, also confusing)
school
grape
water
up
down
car
outside
sausage
ketchup
chicken

He also knows a lot of the letters of the alphabet, and can tell you what sound a P and a W make. It’s fun to watch him learn things and try to say new words. Things got much easier when he started being able to communicate instead of just scream!

More pictures later of our trip to the zoo

We have finally moved into our new house and are settling in. On our big moving day it rained. Of course everything we owned was packed away, including all of the clothes. Jack thought that was the perfect opportunity to sneak out and play in some puddles:

























































As you can probably guess, he was drenched. Happy, but drenched. The only clothes I could find that weren’t already in the moving van were dirty. So he spent the rest of the day looking a bit smudged.

One of the biggest transitions of the new house is Jack’s new big boy bed. I realize he is a little young for a bed, but with a new baby coming this was the best time to transition him to a bed. Of course he sometimes falls asleep in front of his door instead of in bed, but for the most part it’s working out okay. Here he is taking a nap the other day:















He is in his pajamas because he was really sick that day. He had an ear infection and was pretty miserable. It is the only time I’ve seen him willingly lie still. He even whimpered a few times. It was quite sad.

About three hours into his nap I heard him make a noise. I went to check on him and this is what I found:















Apparently he started to get out of bed, but was too tired to make it the entire way. I successfully lifted him back into bed, and he slept for another 20 minutes.

One of Jack’s newest favorite pastimes is playing in the car. In the old house this was less than fun because the car sat in the sun all day. Here we have a garage, and it makes his entertainment a little easier. The dogs even got involved – I think they are still confused about why we are staying in this strange house and they want to go home. So here they all are, pretending to drive away.















We’ve had a few other adventures in the past few weeks. We took a trip to Rustler’s Rooste, where Jack and Joe took an unauthorized trip down the slide:















And we had breakfast at SOMA, where Jack displayed his climbing abilities:















So that’s the latest. This weekend we are visiting a potential preschool, visiting with Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Tom, and tonight Joe and I are getting some rest while Jack visits my parents. With his ear infection this week he was up a lot in the middle of the night and I feel like I haven’t slept in a year.