Monday, September 28, 2009

Jazzy Milestones VI

One Mode: When she is not hungry or sleepy, Jasmine Olivia has one mode... and one mode only: Deliriously Happy.


Unfortunately, we couldn't blog about her turning 5 months old when it happened because we were on the road at the time (10 days ago) and life has been the usual whirlwind since then. But without further ado, here's a quick list of all the wonderful things that Jasmine can do...

At 5 months old, Jasmine Olivia...
  • tries to grab everything...
  • chases all 3 of us around the house in her walker...
  • laughs a whole lot...
  • has gone from walking to running in the walker and can touch the floor on the highest setting. It seems like just yesterday that her feet barely touched when on the lowest setting... now we need to raise the settings occasionally just to slow her down and minimize the in-house collisions...
  • is not quite crawling, but is scooting forward and backward... but mostly backward... to get whatever toy is just out of reach...
  • has learned that multiple rolls and a few scoots left or right will usually get her where she wants to go...
  • has started her push-up regiment...
  • tries to grab EVERYthing (did I say that already?)...
  • is super noisy when she eats...
  • still doesn't eat all that well during the day because she's too easily distracted (she'll stop eating if she hears a fly in the next room rub his wings together)... but she'll chug a 5 oz bottle with her eyes closed in the middle of the night without waking up...
  • pretty much sleeps from 9 to 7, with a 4 minute intermission (sometimes 2 intermissions) to chug the aforementioned bottle...
  • is still solely on breast milk (what apple sauce?! Daddy didn't smuggle her any apple sauce!)
  • is spending more time alone in her crib (nothing earth shattering... I'm talking 10 or 15 minutes here or there... but if you ask her, that's a lifetime)...
  • throws her toys when she's done with them...
  • makes Justin laugh...
  • will dive from daddy's arms to mommy's, or vice versa, when she's ready for a change of scenery...
  • reaches to be picked up when she's in her walker or car seat...
  • won't sit back in her car seat (she doesn't cry, but she's constantly straining to get out... inclined with that "lemme out" look on her face)...
  • seems to have gotten to 5 months a whole lot faster than Justin did... I know "life slows down for no one"... but it sure does have a way of speeding up exponentially with two kids in the house.




Sidenote... Every time I glance at the 1st photo in this entry, I can't help but to think of Crazy Eddie from the mid 80's... (a true NYC icon... pic / vid) ... I just see Jasmine flailing her arms, screaming "insaaaaane".

Monday, September 21, 2009

Adjustments


It has been 6 weeks since I started my new full-time job as a Stay-At-Home-Mom and you'll be happy to know that the kids did not tie me up in the attic {yet}. It has definitely been an interesting adjustment for all of us, but I think we've finally gotten into a comfortable groove.

I guess one of the biggest tradeoffs of having children so close together is that you are unable to truly enjoy the milestones as they occur with each child. Justin and Jasmine are accomplishing milestones like crazy, but by the time we've praised one milestone of Justin's, it becomes a distant memory because Jasmine is doing something new too a few minutes later. So, there are less pictures, less videos and less time to capture it all because they've moved on more quickly than we could document. One of the greatest benefits on the other hand is that you get to watch and foster a wonderful bond between a brother and sister who are inseparable by default and hope those bonds will continue into adulthood. Jerome and I have definitely had our sad moments when we realize that Justin is growing so quickly and we don't have the opportunity anymore to dote on him like we used to. Hopefully, he has been affirmed enough up until now to still feel the immense amount of love we have and to also help us shower that same love on Jasmine.

More to come.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Mine Mine Mine

Hey Justin... how about we try writing
on the concrete instead of our legs... ?


Here... for example... can I write
with this red piece of chalk?

whoa... hold up... did she just touch my red
chalk?... mom... did you just touch my red
chalk? dad... did you see that?

Somebody get mommy some chalk
of her own. I'm outta here.

[ok... so that's not really what happened... in actuality, he shared his chalk just fine... but it's my blog and I like my version better].

Monday, September 7, 2009

Family Portrait

Being a photographer, as long as I've kept this blog I've had a simple rule about posting photos that were not taken by me (or at least with my camera): They're not allowed. At worst, I'd post any interesting photos not taken by me in the family photo archive... but the blog has remained sacrosanct in that respect... That is, until now (hey... rules... broken... etc. etc.)... I'm so doggone behind with updating the photo archives that if I waited any longer to post this photo, Jasmine and Justin would both be old enough to autograph it themselves. So with that said, here's the official first exception to the not-my-photo rule. It's gotta be about 2 or 3 months old by now (wifey will give me the exact date later)... but nonetheless... here was our first official family photo from earlier in the summer. Enjoy.