Jax's First Birthday

We gathered at Carolyn and Brent's to celebrate Jax's 1st birthday. The birthday boy had been a little cranky during much of the day...or at least the part of the day when I was there. He had a cough and a runny nose, so he wasn't in tip-top form. The theme of the party was "baseball", so his personal little cake was in the shape of a baseball.  The cake intended for the rest of us was decorated to look like a baseball field.

After thoroughly plastering himself in cake (his first true adventure in big kids food), we moved to the living room for the gift opening.  He was surrounded by gift bags and boxes and one curiously wrapped large gift from the Garner family.  He didn't know what to do.  He went from gift to gift, pulling one thing out of a bag and then moving on to the next bag.  With a lot of help from his sisters, he managed to get everything out of the wrappings and onto the floor.

The hit of the evening, for all the kids, was the Elmo carpenter workbench (which was the curiously wrapped gift) that Wendy and Zane brought.  Gage and Kelly couldn't be there...they were at baseball practice.

At first, Jax didn't want to try his cake.  But after he got a 
little "forced" taste, he went to town on it!

Wendy and Robin got a laugh about something, while Carolyn directed a "look" at Carlee for some reason.

Pa, Pop, Kate, Jax and Carolyn...all doing their own thing.

Tyler, Carlee and Kate "helping" Jax with the Elmo carpenter bench

Sunday Lunch

The Little League barbeque chicken dinner was today, so Kelly took all the tickets and picked up the meals for us. Since Wendy's birthday was just a few days ago, we decided to make this her special celebration, too.

Here are a couple of videos, one of Jax doing nothing in particular, and the next of Carlee, performing, as usual. She was reciting nursery rhymes in her own special way. Sorry for the poor video quality of Carlee. It seems as if my photos and videos of her are often over-exposed looking.






After dinner, we sang Happy Birthday to Wendy...in several keys. She blew out our ceremonial two candles and then we dug into yummy brownies and ice cream.

Kelly and Brent then took the older four kids out with baseball gloves, tees, bats and balls and they had a little practice. Well, actually Carlee didn't participate in that...instead she morphed into her school marm persona and put her mom and Wendy through their paces.

Observing Jax

Carolyn had an appointment at the salon so I'm sitting with Jax. Carolyn always tries to schedule her appointments around his naptimes if I will be sitting with him to make it as easy as possible for me. Jax has always cooperated by taking a long (2 hour) nap and waking up just long enough for a little play time with me before Carolyn returns home. Lately, however, he doesn't go right to sleep upon being placed in the crib. He's learned some new skills and practices them for a while before he grabs his small lovey blanket and settles down long enough to fall asleep.

The new skills? He crawls. He sits. He pulls up. He's even tried a little cruising around the crib. After a half hour of all that activity, he has dropped off to sleep.

I love watching him on the video monitor. What a treat to be able to view without influencing activities. He's perfectly happy in there on his own. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know what's going on in his little head?

Today, Carolyn has told Kate that she will eat lunch with her. So, I will have a couple of hours to read without guilt.

The video below was taken yesterday. I stayed with Jax while Carolyn & Brent observed Kate's dancing lesson and then picked up Carlee. Jax was asleep when I got there and woke up about 5 PM. He was excited to see me walk in and laughed when I clowned around for him.

Laughing Baby!

While I was making sure all my photos from my camera had been saved in a file on the computer, I came across this video of Robin, Jax, Kate and Carlee. It was December 11th, the weekend after the Wendel/Rioux Family Christmas. Carolyn and Brent had traveled to New Orleans to attend a party given by a friend who had played minor league baseball with Brent. Robin was at the house helping me. In this video Kate and Carlee were running around in their usual manic fashion and Jax was enjoying it enormously. Who doesn't like hearing a baby laugh?

It's a hard knock life!

Carlee, age 2 1/2, is our little fashionista. She has very definite opinions about what she will (or will not) wear. Every morning is a struggle to reach a meeting of the minds between her and Carolyn.

The same thing is true at night, when after having taken a bath she digs through her drawer full of (mostly) pajamas and gowns. She pulls them out one at a time, gives them a look and then throws the ones not in favor on the floor.

Last night, Carolyn fussed at her and told her she would be in trouble if she didn't get all of them picked up and put back in the drawer. So, Carlee complied and feeling like she was being overworked, spontaneously started belting out "It's a Hard Knock Life." Most of you probably know that is the song in "Annie" when the orphans are being punished and have to work at cleaning their dormitory in the middle of the night. It's a great song and Carlee certainly sang it at the appropriate time!

I've asked Carolyn to try and get that on video. If she does, I'll upload it here and let you know when it gets posted. Carolyn says that both girls sing it; she saw them "cleaning" the tub and singing it, but Carlee is usually the song leader...using the real words. Kate is more into ad-libbing words and music.

Veteran's Day Program at St. Philip's

The St. Philip's Veteran's Day Program was held on the front lawn of the school. Boy Scouts raised the flag and then a number of songs were performed by the students. Instruments played included flutes, clarinets, trumpets, guitars, drum, recorders and bells. I had no idea they had so much variety in their music department. When I was going to school there, eons ago, they finally had a piano teacher about the time I was in 6th grade. I took from her, as well as from about 3 other piano teachers. I'm not sure what that says about me. I know I wasn't a prodigy, so I can draw a rather bleak conclusion from the number of teachers I had.

But, enough about me...

Carolyn thought that the pre-K 4 class was going to perform since Kate had come home singing patriotic songs lately. But, that wasn't to be the case. The little ones just sat and watched. Jax enjoyed the program, too. He was a very good little guy, especially considering that he hadn't had a nap and this was his 2nd program of the morning; they were at Gage's program earlier.

Here are a couple of pics of Kate telling Jax goodbye with hugs after the program.




Carolyn and Jax

Jax at 6 months

Jax turned 6 months old on October 29. He's a pretty easy baby...easily entertained and happy to watch his sisters or anyone else who sits near him. Of course, you understand that his sisters rarely sit. They are very busy, very noisy little girls. But they make him (and us) laugh.

Jax seems to be very zen...he spent a few weeks studying his hands, but now he seems to have moved on and particularly enjoys watching the palm trees sway outside the windows.

He seems to know that it's theoretically possible to travel from where he is put down to another place in some other manner than rolling. He's experimenting with a couple of different methods. One way is to plant his face on the floor, push his toes down and straighten his knees. That forces his bottom up (like he's in the middle of a jackknife dive) and has some potential. The problem, however, occurs when his heinie is at its' highest point. In that position, since he's using his face instead of his arms, he just can't keep his balance and he invariably falls to one side or the other. Imagine how far he would go if we took him off the blanket and put his head on a skateboard! Wow!!!

A second method he has tried is just to keep his belly down on the floor and kick his legs. It looks very similar to the way Kate crawled early on, but she actually used knees and hands. She seemed to exert an enormous amount of will power to keep her legs under control, but then all of a sudden one leg would fly up and waggle around a little bit until she regained control of it and got it back down on the floor. But to be fair, I'm sure she was a little older than Jax is now when she got to that point. So, we have that to look forward to with him. As I said, he keeps his belly down and kicks his legs and occasionally one of them goes high up in the air, but no forward motion can be hoped for unless he has some snake muscles in his belly.

I keep trying to get a picture of either his jackknife position or his leg up in the air, but haven't managed to capture it yet. The picture below is the closest I've come.