Little Monkey learns to Stand

The other day I mentioned that Jake was starting to pull up on things. Well, I knew he was close to doing it, but he hadnt actually succeeded on his own. I usually had to help. Until the day I posted that. I jinxed myself because now he is pulling up on EVERYTHING and giving me a heart attack every time he falls. Here are photos of his very first "pull-to-standing" success on April 25th:

Booty Shot

Yay! I did it!

Now I can get into this diaper bag!

Haha! My evil plan is working!

His new favorite place to pull up - the window sill under my desk. Note the very hard tile all around him.
He's a nosy little guy, spying on the neighbors.

And for fun, the naked crawler!

Very First Owie

Jake fell from a sitting position last Thursday and hit his head on the leg of one of our desks. I'm surprised it actually took this long for him to hurt himself! It left a dent for a few minutes and then turned into a big raised purple bump. After the swelling went away it really didn't look very bad. Nobody even asked us what we did to our poor child ;) Here are pics:

Mr. Tough Guy (the bump is above his right eye, the desk leg is in the top of the pic)

Mom, I'm fine. (You can see his top middle teeth in this one)

Close-up

He likes to play with his pacifier clip, but doesn't care much for the pacifier itself (which I am glad about!)

I don't know who taught him this nose scrunching thing but he does it ALL the time.

So I'm glad we have the first owie out of the way because I have a sneaking suspicion that he will be getting them more often with all the pulling up on things he is doing. We have entirely too much tile in our house. I think I need to wrap my kid in bubble wrap.

Hope you all are well!

Visitors, The Zoo, and other Various Pics

Last weekend Tim's childhood friend Shawn, and his wife Amy came to visit us! I was a bad hostess and didn't take any pictures, but we had a really good time which included acting like kids at Dave & Buster's (I'm a sucker for the stuffed animal crane) and our very first trip to the Dallas Zoo! Here are a few pics from the zoo and then a bunch of just random Jake pics :) Enjoy!

The Olson's ride the monorail!

Baboon, I think?

Jake didn't want to sit still on the monorail

And he wasn't entirely crazy about the zoo in general. If he would just learn to fall asleep in his stroller, the kid would be fine, but he flat out refuses to sleep in there, so this is what we end up with :)

We had to lower Jake's crib to the very lowest setting a few weeks ago. He's starting to pull up on things and I wasn't about to let him flip out of his crib! Can you spot our little munchkin?

Sitting up after a napAll smiles!

Cutie pie

Letting him try the standing up thing. That lasted about 5 seconds :)

Big boy bath! Note the scrunched nose. He does that all the time now for some reason!

This boy LOVES the bath! Hi Mom!
Wait mom, I hadn't covered up yet!

Cruising around before bed

He is all over the place

And now for more Jake updates:

*Jake's 4th tooth came in on Tuesday (a top middle one)

*His 5th tooth came in yesterday (the other top middle one)

*He is still army crawling, but is very quick about it. These are the things that interest him:

~The dog's water bowl

~Shoes

~Cords

~Door stoppers

~Curtains

~Pulling up rugs

*As you can see, he pretty much likes everything EXCEPT his toys. Getting into things you aren't supposed to is apparently instinctual. Who knew?

*Many of you have been asking how he is sleeping. With a few teething exceptions, he has been doing fabulous! He goes to bed around 7pm most nights and wakes up around 7am most mornings. We feel pretty lucky to have such a good little sleeper. I have to credit the books Babywise (thanks Suzanne!) and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child (thanks Mom!) for helping us get a good sleep routine down. It makes all the difference in the world!

*Jake got his first owie yesterday. I took some pics and will post them this weekend. He is fine, but he does have a bruise to show for it!

Have a happy Friday everyone!

All about ME!

So, I have decided to dedicate a post completely to myself. Selfish, maybe, but I have a few things to share. First item up for discussion:

MY DUMB CELL PHONE IS BROKEN. I can make and receive calls, but my screen is completely white, so I am unable to see missed calls and can't check text messages or see who has even sent me a text message. It is highly annoying and I do plan on getting a new phone at some point, but I have yet to do so. So if you have sent me a text and are annoyed at me for not responding, I am really sorry, but it's NOT intentional. If you need to get in touch with me you have to leave me a voicemail or email me :) Sorry for the inconvenience!

Second item on the agenda:

MY AREA CODE IS CHANGING! So at some point, the state of New Mexico (where my cell # originated) decided it needed to get more than one area code. 505 has run out of available numbers. That is fine, except it means that my phone number no longer begins with 505. It now begins with 575! You can still reach me at 505-xxx-xxxx, but that will only last until October 5th of this year, so pull up your contact list and update my number!!! The rest of my number stays the same, just the FIRST THREE NUMBERS are different. Until Oct. 5 you can reach me using both the 505 AND 575 prefix. Thank you for your cooperation!

Third important item to share:

I CUT MY HAIR! Three or so weeks ago I decided I needed to chop off my mop! Here are the photos:

The BEFORE shot

AFTER (excuse the toilet)

The Soccer-Mom Style

The Sleek-Mama Style

The Curly-Laid-Back-Mama Style

Last, but really the most juicy bit of information in this post:

BABY OLSON 2.0 WILL BE DEBUTING IN OCTOBER! You read me right, I'm pregnant! I'm finally out of the first trimester and feeling pretty good, so I figured now was a great time to share the news with all of our readers :) Yes, we may be a little bit crazy. Yes, we will have 2 kiddos under age 2. Yes, Jake and the new baby will be just 14 months apart. And YES, we are absolutely THRILLED!!! We will be finding out the sex (if s/he cooperates at the ultrasound near the 1st of June) and first instincts are that its another BOY! We'll have to wait and see though. Oh and the last question that we have heard from EVERYONE under the sun "Were you trying?" - ANSWER: Technically? Yes. I mean, really, we all know how babies get made right? So with that in mind, yes, we were trying. LOL Sorry to be sarcastic but that question is sooooo getting old. Fast. So I'll just throw it out there before it gets asked 500 more times ;) And don't worry if you have been guilty of asking us this question. It's ok. It's just when thats all you keep hearing, even from people you barely know, it wears on ya.

So as you can see, this post about ME was absolutely necessary! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that everything goes as well with this pregnancy as it did with little Jacob! The three (four) of us hope that everyone out there reading this is doing well and drop us a line sometime! We miss hearing from those of you we havent heard from in a while. Until next time..

P.S. We will be back to Jacob-focused posts next time. Don't worry :)

Happy 8 Month Birthday Little Man!

We love you so much Mr. Blueberries Gone Wild! We are just amazed every day at how blessed we are to have such a happy, healthy son like you :)

P.S. Thanks Kim D. for reminding me that I had blueberries in my freezer! Our boys should get together and have a blueberry-mesh-food-feeder party!

AND NOW FOR THE UPDATES.....

Jake is adding to his resume! You can now add a third tooth (a top one this time, with another coming in any day), the ability to get from a laying position to a sitting position, and he ALMOST has figured out how to get his belly off the floor with his crawling. We're making leaps and bounds in the development department!

Ladies and Gentleman......Matchbox Twenty!

In case you all didnt know, Matchbox Twenty is pretty much my favorite band of all time. I've been to more of their concerts than I can keep track of and I just LOOOOOOOOVE them. Tim has come to embrace my infatuation and was finally able to attend his first MB20 concert with me (My usual partner in crime is Linsey - these pics are a happy early birthday present for you!). Enjoy!

The excitement builds...

Alanis Morissette opened...isn't it ironic? ;) Good times, good times...
My lovely Rob Thomas and the rest of the boys
I love the silhouettes in this pic
The full stage and screens
During one of the songs they asked everyone to take out their cell phones and light them up. This is the result. I think every.single.person in the Staples Center had one.
The name of their most recent album: Exile on Mainstream ( a throwback to the Rolling Stones)
More Rob
Bye Bye Rob! Thanks for the great evening!
Aww, aren't they sweet!

Tim enjoying the music
Self portrait
Happy to be there, but sad to go home
Showing off my not-so-flattering t-shirt (hey, it was almost St Patty's day!)

This Just In...

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Matchbox Twenty Concert post to bring you some breaking news from the Olson household. Ladies and gentleman, we have a crawler! At first I wasn't sure if it was safe to actually call it crawling, but just because he can't quite pull his belly off the ground doesn't mean that the kid doesn't know how to get around! I would say he was officially crawling this past Tuesday. Go Jakey!!! I took some video, but I haven't had a chance to edit it and upload it to YouTube yet. I'll try to do that very soon. For now, here are some pictures to hold you over :)

Hanging out in the front yard

Trying to get the hang of this sippy cup thing

I mostly just like to chew on the spout Close-up!
Cheering on his girlfriend's 1st birthday
Hangin' with Daddy Happy boy!
Still chewing on everything
Non-toys are so much better than baby toys
And this is blurry, but I just can't resist that cute little bum!

And just a few more updates:

*BIG HUGE CONGRATS to my dear friend Ivory and her hubby Jamie on the arrival of their beautiful baby girl, Emma! She was born March 14th and is sooo cute!!!

*Happy 1st birthday (a little late) to Jake's very first girlfriend Ella James! We can't believe how fast the year went!

*So far we have survived the severe storms that have passed through Dallas recently. In the past two weeks we have had to hide in the bathtub on two separate occasions, once at 4am. Tornado sirens are SOOOOO SCARY!

*We have been making some fun changes to our home and I think I am FINALLY ready to show you all some more pictures (I know I have been promising this for like a year now). Expect to see them later this week.

*Matchbox Twenty Concert post is still coming. I know the anticipation is just killing you ;)