You know that ad that seems to run every so often, the one that has the baby in a high chair all covered in spaghetti and spaghetti sauce? The one that makes you wonder how long it took to stage?

For the first time, I believe it wasn’t staged. I also don’t entirely blame the baby. See this mess?
I did it. It was so horrible, I felt like I was in a sitcom. I was about to put Jakob’s supper on the counter to cool but I must have let my hands relax without realizing it, because the next thing I knew the bowl was on the floor and its entire contents were splattered all over the floor, cabinets, counter tops, high chair and even the patio window. Ugh. I think his supper that night was a mix of pasta, chili sauce, brussel sprouts, corn and carrots, but all I can remember is chasing the little pasta balls around the kitchen. Every time I thought I’d found them all…I’d step on another one.

My local library has a section of used books for sale, and I take a look every time I go in. I realized I’d forgotten to post about the different books I’d purchased, so here you go:

This craft book looks very interesting. The whole book is full of full-page color photos, and the crafts will be fun once Jakob is older.
This one looked good too. Did I mention they were $2 each?

I don’t remember how many I bought, but they were only $0.25 each, and each issue has knitting patterns, crochet patterns and all kinds of other crafts. How cool!

Finally, here’s Mommy with Jakob at 46 weeks.

Look at those teeth! His last top front tooth came in today, so that makes all 4 of his top front teeth, and his center 2 bottom teeth. I was going to leave you with this photo and end this post, but I couldn’t resist showing you the next one.
You’d have to know him in person to know what he’s doing here. See his little mouth? He blows kisses at you! I took this photo right as he started to pucker up. It’s so cute, out of the blue he’ll just look at you and start kissing the air. If he’s really feeling affectionate, he’ll pull you close and give you a kiss right on the cheek or lips.

Coming soon…a recap of Saturday and Sunday with Sally Melville and the latest since the weekend.

Last week was a blur. Jakob was still sick. Yannick was sick. I wasn’t sick- but was taking care of the two of them. Absolutely no housework got done. By the time I got Jakob into bed, Yannick was usually in bed himself and by then I didn’t want to do ANYTHING. Some knitting was done, but I can’t show you. I’m working on a new design and it has been driving me crazy. Every night I’d finish getting the boys to bed, make myself some supper and sit down in front of the TV. I’d finish eating by 8:30pm. I’d take out my knitting, get started, realize some error in my chart, and head up to the computer to fix it. I’d have a new chart printed by 9:30/10pm, then sit back down in front of the TV. If I was lucky I’d have an hour to knit before realizing a new error. The next day I’d work on the chart at work, come home and repeat the process. I thought I had it all finished by the time we went up north Saturday after work, but after knitting for 2 days I realized I wanted to make yet another change, so all that work will be pulled out too. (So even if I could show you, I’d have nothing to show you ‘cus it is all being ripped out. That’s a small consolation, right?)

We spent the weekend up north celebrating Easter with Yannick’s family.
I took this cute photo of Yannick’s mom and his nephew/godson Justin helping Jakob go for a walk.

Sunday morning Jakob met his first Easter bunny. (Yes his pjs have been changed – we’re having diaper issues. Anyone know of the most leak-proof for boys??). Yannick’s sister wanted to see Jakob’s reaction to tasting his first chocolate, but I didn’t let him try it.
I know you’re missing a “Mommy with Jakob at 44 weeks” photo, and that’s for a good reason. I look HORRIBLE in it!

According to What to Expect the First Year:
By ten months, your baby

…should be able to:
-stand holding on to someone or something CHECK (this is his favorite thing to do)
-pull up to a standing position from sitting CHECK
-object if you try to take a toy away NO- he’s good natured and doesn’t object to much
-say “mama” or “dada” indiscriminately CHECK
-play peekaboo CHECK
-exchange back-and-forth gestures with you CHECK
…will probably be able to:
-get into a sitting position from stomach NO (he did it once but seems to have forgotten how)
-play patty-cake (clap hands) or wave bye-bye CHECK
-pick up tiny object with any part of thumb and finger CHECK
-walk holding on to furniture CHECK
-understand “no” (but not always obey it) CHECK

…may possibly be able to:-stand alone momentarily
-say “dada” or “mama” discriminately NO (but I think he said AT once when he saw Sam, our cat)
-point to something to get needs met NO
…may even be able to:

-indicate wants in ways other than crying CHECK (he smacks his lips when he’s hungry)
-“play ball” (roll a ball back to you) NO (but he’s thrown it to play “fetch” once or twice)
-drink from a cup independently CHECK (but water gets everywhere! Does it count if he doesn’t do it neatly?)
-pick up a tiny object neatly with tips of thumb and forefinger CHECK
-stand alone well NO (but he can do it for a moment)
-use immature jargoning (gibberish that sounds as if baby is talking in a made-up foreign language) NO (but he does repeat sounds like dadadadada in a way that sounds like he’s trying to have a conversation)
-say one word other than “mama” or “dada” NO (unless he really did say AT for “cat”)
-respond to a one-step command with gestures (“Give that to me”- with hand out) CHECK
-walk well NO

March has been a busy month! Last weekend we celebrated my immediate family’s birthdays. None of us have a birthday in March, but we had to finally get around to celebrating our 2007 birthday before any of us had a 2008 one.

This week is my father-in-law’s birthday (Happy Birthday Marcel!) and my…well, I guess my nephew (Yannick’s sister’s son) Justin’s birthday. (Happy Birthday Justin!). Justin is also Yannick’s godson, and we will be celebrating both of those birthdays this coming weekend.

Finally, there is one more special birthday in March.

A very big HAPPY BIRTHDAY! goes out to little RJ who made March 13th her birth day. Congratulations JayJay!

I’m catching up slowly. I thought I’d do more but it’s late and I want to go to bed. I’m going to try to get through the rest tomorrow. In the meantime, there are 2 new posts below this one to keep you busy until I get back. Good night!

Remember how I mentioned the Shiva in the last post? Here’s where it becomes relevant. Three of us from playgroup went to the Shiva house (house of one of the mourners where family/friends come to pay their respects. We each brought our kids. One woman’s son spent the entire time sleeping in his portable car seat. He was the lucky one. The other 3 kids (Jakob and 2 little girls) all ended up with GASTRO.

Oh I am so sick of gastro. There’s nothing worse than watching your helpless little baby’s body heave and shake while he throws up, and you know he doesn’t understand what’s going on, and he’s scared and sick and sad.

Jakob woke up fine Thursday morning, drank his bottle, played with us as usual while waiting for Yannick to wake up enough to give him breakfast, when suddenly he started to throw up. I stayed home from work with him and when he continued to lose everything we gave him to eat/drink I made an appointment for him at the doctor’s that evening. By the time we got to the doctor’s office he had a fever of 101F, and by the time he went to bed that night it was 102.5F.

When he wasn’t actively sick he was in relatively good spirits. At one point I had put him down, seated, in his crib to play so I could have my hands free for a few minutes. When I came back to get him I found him like this:
For the first time ever he pulled himself to stand up in his crib. He was so proud of himself! Unfortunately the excitement didn’t last long, as the sickness had completely exhausted him

He ended up spending the rest of the day and all day Friday like this:

(Mommy with Jakob at 43 weeks).

I felt horrible that he felt so bad but at least I got to spend 2 days curled up on the couch with my sleeping baby. Nothing beats that.

27 letters in the alphabet. Yup. That’s right. What? You only counted 26? Oh, well, you forgot the letter “and”.

This is a clip from Sunday night’s episode of Big Brother 9. Oh. My. God. That Natalie is really something huh? They cut out the part of the exchange where she couldn’t count to 4 (she thought that the red, blue, yellow and green bars of a toy in the hamster cage were “3 different colors” and how that was very significant), but at least they kept in the alphabet thing.

(p.s for those of you who don’t feel like watching the whole clip, once it loads you can skip ahead to somewhere around 3 min 45 seconds and just watch the end from there. That’s when Natalie shows up).

27 letters in the alphabet. Yup. That’s right. What? You only counted 26? Oh, well, you forgot the letter “and”.

This is a clip from Sunday night’s episode of Big Brother 9. Oh. My. God. That Natalie is really something huh? They cut out the part of the exchange where she couldn’t count to 4 (she thought that the red, blue, yellow and green bars of a toy in the hamster cage were “3 different colors” and how that was very significant), but at least they kept in the alphabet thing.

(p.s for those of you who don’t feel like watching the whole clip, once it loads you can skip ahead to somewhere around 3 min 45 seconds and just watch the end from there. That’s when Natalie shows up).

I was just leaving a comment on the Yarn Harlot’s blog when I typed up the following paragraph:

You can never have too much yarn with you! I was daydreaming the other day about what it would be like if I was in the Big Brother house and realized that I’d be sneaky and hit the thrift stores before leaving and find some mens’ 3X knit sweaters to put in my luggage, so once I was in the house I could unravel them and have something to knit. I’m still working on what to use as needles since you’re not allowed writing implements. I could probably sneak in some dpsn as hair sticks though, or as shawl pins. I think I’ve been thinking about this too much! 🙂

It’s sad but true. I really was thinking about that the other day. I mean, they go through your bags and veto what you can and can’t bring. Plus you only get one small duffel. So bringing in obvious yarn would be out of the question. But they can’t stop you from unraveling your own shirt, can they? I mean, as a last resort I could even finger knit it…

(Let’s ignore the fact that I would never be appearing on Big Brother because it is a US show, as if that was the only reason).

So I was watching the nine hundredth repeat of the premiere of Girlicious on Much Music. I know. Does the world really need Girlicious? I don’t think so, but what do I know? Anyways, during the fifty million commercial breaks, they aired the American Idol video game commercial about 10 million times. In the commercial they sing along to Fergie’s hit Glamorous, and it got stuck in my head.

Fast forward about an hour later and I can’t stop singing just that part, of just that song. The portion that they sing in the commercial is the following:

G-L-A-M-O-R-OUS

We flying first class
Up in the sky
Poppin’ champagne
Livin’ my life

Well, I was feeding Jakob lunch and trying to get him to eat his veggies when all he wanted were the toast, cheese and orange waiting for him. Suddenly puree of brussels sprouts was not so interesting. What do I do to get him to eat? Start singing of course! What did I end up singing to him?

B-R-U-S-S-E-LS

It’s flying first class
into your mouth
They’re from Brussels
and they’re sprouts

Hey- stop laughing- it worked!

p.s. I don’t know if Brussels Sprouts are actually from Brussels but it worked for the song. 🙂