Jacob is already 3/4 of the way through his first year.

He is such a big boy! He is pulling himself up to stand all over the house, and on me and his daddy. He breathes really loudly when he is pulling himself up, and it makes us laugh. He can also pull himself to his knees to reach things, and is starting to learn how to get down from the standing position by going back to his knees. We’ll give him some time on that. 🙂

As you can probably tell from reading my blog, he is getting into everything, grabbing things, hitting them against other things, breaking them and eating them. It’s funny, and yet also frustrating because I just never know what he’ll find and what he will do to it. His ideal day would be to sit in a pile of magazines and rip them to shreds. Sometimes I let him do this, because shouldn’t we all have a day like that?

He is a great copycat. Josh will stick his tongue out, and Jacob imitates him immediately and perfectly. I will sing “lalalala!” to him and he will respond with his version of it. If I dance, he dances. It’s pretty much adorable.

As I mentioned earlier, these pictures were impossible for me to do on my own, and pretty hard even with help. He NEVER stops moving for one second. Most of my pictures were out of focus and strangely positioned, and we’re just going to learn to love them. This stage is one of crazy activity, and everything is interesting for this little guy. I love to watch his face light up to discover something new.

He loves to take items and “put them away” – usually back into his basket of books or wherever they came from. One blurry morning I had to search on hands and knees for my eyeglasses only to find them in his toy box, nestled amongst his favorite things. 🙂

He really likes to put his face up to mine and give me slobbery, open-mouthed “kisses” and then chew on my nose. Or my cheek. Or my hair. Everything goes in his mouth and nothing comes out the same. 🙂

His little hands are always exploring, and the second step of exploring is tasting/biting/chewing on the item. Which brings us to his eating habits! Watching him feed himself is the most entertaining thing in the world. It’s such an exciting time. Everything is new, everything is delicious! And squishy! And he can bite on it and mommy doesn’t pull it out of his mouth! He is eating some baby food, some table food, and some finger food. All flavors and textures are open to him now, which means spices, and different cooking preparations, and all kinds of fun. He still likes to eat purees, but in addition he can feed himself handfuls of brown rice with black beans, grilled chicken, corn cut from the cob, spaghetti squash, and all kinds of exciting things! I try to give him a little bit of what we eat at each meal, in addition to his own finger foods, and then finish his meal with some pureed veggies and/or meats to make sure he’s getting a balanced diet. He makes a HUGE mess, as you’ve seen already on the blog. he squishes things between his fingers, slams them onto his tray, rubs them on his face, and sometimes even chews them with his teeth.

He is such a joyful creature. We get stopped quite often in stores and other places, and the comment I get most often is that he is “such a happy baby!” and he is. He is happy, even when he’s hurting from the teething process, even when he’s tired, even when he’s hungry, he can always find a smile for me or any friendly passerby. Sometimes I can tell he’s not feeling well, but he’s so sweet and happy that he will forget about it for a moment and smile and laugh, and then be reminded of the pain and his face will crumple. It’s sad and hilarious. When he wakes up, he looks around quietly and when he sees me, his smile lights up his sleepy face. Whenever I open the car door to get him from his carseat it’s the same expression: as though he’s so delighted to see me there! He likes to stick his tongue out and in while making a noise so that we get this cute little “blable-blable-bleble-blable” sound.

He has four teeth now, with another on its way in. He has his two front top teeth, and they are oh-so-cute. Hearing him crunch into foods is just the cutest sound ever. He like to test his teeth on soft things, like the inside of my arm, or Josh’s t-shirt (lucky for Josh, sad for me!). I will say “no bite!” very loudly, and he laughs. Sigh.

His hair is growing! I know it is now. He’s getting this cute little kewpie doll spike on the crown of his head. It’s soft and fuzzy and everyone wants to touch it.

His newest funny little habit is “sharing.” He likes to give you an item, then take it back, over and over. This is adorable but sometimes sticky and yucky, especially when the item is a piece of partially-gummed food he’s just pulled from his drooly mouth.
At his last checkup (two weeks ago, I think?) He weighed in just under 20 pounds. He is in the 26 percentile for weight, which is about where he’s been all along. I think he is just so active that he will stay under 50%. His height ranked him in the 64 percentile.

No one believes me when I tell them that he isn’t really humongous. I get that comment a lot: “wow, that’s a big baby!” and I will say “he’s actually a little lighter than the average baby his age, and not off the charts for height, either.” They don’t believe me. Everyone knows a tiny baby the same age as Jacob and is convinced he is huge. This makes me wonder where all the gigantic babies are hiding that skew the national averages!

I can tell you that the nine months that it took to grow this guy seemed about twenty-thousand times longer than the nine months he’s been “on the outside.” I can’t believe how slow things seemed, waiting for him, and how accelerated life has become. He keeps me occupied each minute of each day.

Maybe not every minute: he sleeps like an angel for around 10 hours at night, which is a much-needed break from his non-stop activity. Josh and I actually have time to watch tv without Jacob constantly pushing buttons on all the important boxes and “singing” loudly during all the dialogue.

Although he knows how to crawl on all fours, he is still army crawling like a speeding bullet all over the house. He will get on his hands and knees only when the floor is scratchy (like the bricks above) or especially cold. He is SO fast. I wish I could capture it on video, but he sees me with the camera and stops. hehe.

He makes the funniest facial expressions. He is a little comedian already! I like his “confused/concerned” face the most, but they are all pretty funny. He has a goofy face, and one that is crazy and wide-eyed and usually means he is going to lick or bite you.

It is almost impossible and very time-consuming to get him dressed. He flips and flips and flips until I just want to scream. He grabs at things and generally makes dressing him very unpleasant. And that’s why he’s usually just in a diaper. 🙂

Although I can barely keep up with him, his enthusiasm for life is so contagious that I find myself laughing instead of frowning at his frustrating hijinks. He lights up the lives of everyone around him, even strangers, with his dimply smile. He learns so quickly and changes everyday. I love him.