Fun with the little bear

In the time honored tradition of "messing," just as our parents messed with us and most likely their parents with them, we enjoyed a little fun with Jakob over the weekend. That's our lead in, but first, more evidence that the young man has no interest in crawling, but walking:

Jakob is no longer sleeping in one position as seen below. As a matter of fact, this morning, we found him lodged in the upper corner of his crib between the bumper and stuffed bear. He had no trouble kicking the sea animals display on the other side when it would turn off to show it exactly who's boss.

Yesterday, Marc brought home some sour candy and tested the waters on Jakob. At first, the sweet seemed to be having the only effect, but then the sour hit the back portion of Jakob's tongue and his facial expressions proved to be hilarious. Kim had fun taking photos of his new revelation:

The weekend wouldn't have been complete without sharing with you a messy face photo and a new piece of video. He's quite the messy eater these days and we're excited to take him to his first buffet when he's old enough:

Also yesterday, Jakob decided it was time he not only learned how to remove the plastic toy chain links from his bouncy, but also to figure out their durability. Check it out here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnaBj4_TWf0

We are busy counting down to Jakob's final (yes final) adoption hearing one week from tomorrow. The time seems to be going slow right now, but it's only a matter of time before it speeds up and seems like a blur.

This week Marc is unexpectedly heading to Los Angeles for a focus group at work, but we're pleased to report after his annual review, he has been promoted to senior account executive at his company. Kim is anxious to get the school year done and only has a few more IEPs to go. We're in the middle of the countdown to summer.

More soon.

Happy days are here again

Talk about a killer weekend! Okay, we will. So glad you asked. Sorry this post has taken so long. It's been a busy week.

First, headline news:

Jakob is well. Not just well, but as Mike Greenberg says on ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning, he's "back and better than ever." It's great to see him happy and enjoying what we're sure is going to be one amazing summer!

Thursday evening our friends Chris and Dianne and their kids graciously spent a little time with Jakob while we went out for crab legs with Marc's parents to Jumpin' Catfish. Kim, who does not like crab, had the chicken Cordon Bleu. Please do not think less of her. :) We love the little boy, but it was nice to have some adult time without him just for a few hours (not what you're thinking gutter mind!) haha. This would be the first night we would try to get the house cleaned. . . and fail.

Friday, we received a surprise invitation to have dinner with our friends Josh and Amy who live in Lee's Summit that we haven't seen in a while. They brought their girls and we brought Jakob and met at Mimi's Cafe. Good food. Good friends. Good time. This was the second evening we would try to get the house cleaned. . . and fail.

Saturday morning we went to Special Olympics in Lee's Summit and froze our butts off. Note to Kansas City meteorologists: we probably need to get a working definition of "55 degrees" because it felt like 15 degrees outside with the wind. We stayed for a little while and got pictures of Kim with her kids and then got Jakob back to the safety and security of the Northland, haha.

Saturday afternoon, much like the "nice little Saturday" Will Ferrell has in the movie Old School, we went to Lowe's to ordered storm doors to be installed for the front and back doors. We're hoping we will soon be able to have both doors open with a nice breeze coming through since we don't have an attic fan in this house. I'm sure we'll have photos soon of the little boy inspecting the installation and the quality of the doors.

Saturday evening, Jakob fell asleep early after we got home from Vineyard services so Kim elected to stay home with him in the hopes of continuing to get him back on schedule (which has been awesome now that he's well again!). Marc went and hung out with people from our small groups for a fun evening of playing the game Rock Band. Not only is it pretty addictive, but fun, fun, fun, and he came home almost hoarse from singing songs like Metalica's "Enter Sandman" (pictured below with buddy Ben), Weezer's "Say It Ain't So," Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" and Nirvana's "In Bloom." Both the girl's and guy's bands rocked it out well. This game by far blows the Guitar Hero series out of the water and it's available on the best platform out there, the XBOX 360! This would be the third evening we would unsuccessfully get the house cleaned.

Sunday morning we got up leisurely and Kim made a great pancake breakfast. We enjoyed some time at home and then headed to the Pet Expo down at Hale Arena to introduce the little boy to the wonderful world of trade shows and one of Marc's client contacts. Jakob was quite honestly the most excited we've ever seen him at any given time and it was great to watch him take it all in.

After this, we spent some time with our good friends Mike and Cynthia working on our marriage mentoring tools and then headed to the Hereford House at Zona Rosa to capitalize on their happy hour prices. The weather was great and we spent a lot of time outside that day first on Mike and Cynthia's deck then at Zona Rosa. Good times again! That evening we came home and made a point to not even try to get the house cleaned! So there.

Monday evening the Charles Dickens classic line was the story of the evening: "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." We decided to use a new bristle tool to clean out the dryer and Marc ended up losing the long skinny end in the dryer lint trap. After making many futile attempts to get it out with hooks, grabber tools and duct tape he resolved that Tuesday night would be needed to start again by taking the back off and retrieving what had fallen in. The upside is that in the middle of all of this we did finally get the house cleaned. Yeah buddy.

Tuesday evening, Marc took the back off the dryer and in what has to be the most painless of processes ever and got the bristle piece out and the back on in record time. That's obviously a huge praise God. This evening Jakob went down early and we have almost finished the massive amounts of laundry we have piled up since the lint trap cleaning debacle began.

The next few weekends hold quite a few fun events for us with Marc hanging out with some friends to watch a bit of the NFL Draft this Saturday and working the Vineyard worship services, the first weekend in May we will finally finalize Jakob's adoption, the second weekend in May Kim is having a Tastefully Simple party and celebrating her very first Mother's Day and the following weekend we will host a party in honor of finally being able to "legally" call the little boy ours. That's going to rock!

In the meantime, Marc finished up his final round of spinal steroid disc injections Tuesday and will continue physical therapy for the next few weeks, and Kim is in the process of finishing up her IEP meetings with her students' parents and planning for the end of the school year as it rapidly approaches.

Side note: As more of our friends begin doing blogs of their own, we would like to share their happiness with you. To the right navigation on our blog page we've added Matt Brunk Convergence, Carver Family Blog and I'm not sure why it took so long, but James Nored's blog is there now too. All good stuff.

We continue to make strides in this thing called parenting and through it Jakob has provided us with some of the highest highs, moments of growth in patience and some of the most frightening times we never thought we would witness. But, we love him more each day (if that's possible) and can't imagine life without him.

People tell us all the time that he's lucky to have us, but we are the ones who feel blessed by him. We're blessed in knowing he adds another area of completeness to our lives and we love to brag about honestly perfect strangers who come up to us at restaurants, stores, etc. when we're out and tell us how beautiful he is. It would be different if we heard that just from family and close friends, but we really did find the child God had planned for us from the very beginning. That's quite humbling.

As usual, more soon.

That old familiar feeling. . .

It seems like each year April rolls around and we expect the snow and cold to be over only to have Mother Nature chuck one more day or weekend in that reminds us of why we hate February. That was this last weekend. Snow+cold+sick Jakob=no fun. In addition, because of the paparazzi, we're having trouble getting him in and out of the house without a barrage of flash bulbs. All attempts to disguise him or keep him out of the press have failed (see above). Our worst fears are revealed. He is the cutest baby in the world. . . nothing can stop his tyranny.

We're feeling like bad parents because it appears Jakob never has enough to play with. We were able to get his "small" pile of toys that are in the living room in the shot with him so you could see the lack of options.

The bad weather coupled with the fact that Jakob has been sick made for a tiring but surprisingly productive weekend with a few silver linings. The little boy has had another first and we now have to watch our fingers as a bottom front tooth has appeared.

Also, we're pretty sure he has said on more than one occasion, and to Marc, the word "da-da." It's not extremely frequent, but this last weekend it became much clearer. Now if we can get him to say "ma-ma" we'll be in business.

Although atypical for a boy, Jakob is also testing to see just how clean he can become. From Saturday through Sunday he had a total of three baths. The reason? He is on a new antibiotic which lasts until next Tuesday, and for some reason it has united with his bowels causing frequent and ginormous "evacuations" the likes the book of Exodus hasn't seen. With the frequent baths he does smell good and not so much like a piglet and we like that. We're also posting these in an attempt to keep up with our good friends the Coffin Family (see blog on right navigation) who have some awesome bath photos of son Tyler. The faux hawk and horns picture is a must at this age.

On Sunday, Marc helped lead worship for the first time in the Vineyard Venue service. He was really excited to be part of it and looks forward to doing it again in a month or so.

Last night, Jakob took some time out from chewing on a plastic book and playing in his bouncie to talk on the phone with Poppa, and would have talked with Nana, but she was in the midst of finalizing taxes for the big April 15 deadline. Jakob did his best to reassure her that in a few days she would feel better. :)

We're looking forward to the warm weather this week so we can hopefully get him outside again to enjoy it. This weekend Kim will also be heading to Special Olympics with her students to enjoy a full day of athletic fun. Marc and Jakob will also head down to support Mama.

More soon.

Celebration Warm Weather Journey

In our last post we recorded Jakob had been nice enough to share the nasty gastroenteritis that has been going around with Marc. For more information on this fun little virus, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroenteritis. The day after Easter brought that number up considerably. He successfully infected six family members who came to our house. Sorry guys. Glad to hear you all are feeling better. We promise we've disinfected EVERYTHING in the whole house.

Last weekend Marc turned 34 and we celebrated by going out with Marc's parents on Sunday. Kim and Jakob got him a gift card to Kohl's, socks and two car license plate frames that say "Northwest Missouri State University Alumni." Pretty cool.

The following Monday evening (Marc's actual birthday) was spent doing things guys who are getting older do. Marc took a half day of vacation from work and his friend Matt took him to Liberty Hospital to get the results of his recent MRI on his lower back and to meet with a specialist from the Pain Management Center. While there he received two steroid injections in the herniated L4 and L5 discs in his lower back and this week began physical therapy. Just think what 44 will bring. . .

That night, we went to Texas Roadhouse to have dinner and so Kim could see Marc ride the saddle and of course capture it on video. Jakob was MORE than tired and other than happy with the loud and sudden noises an event like this brings. For more, check out www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BAxwWeW-0.

This week was super busy for us. Monday, before we went out for Marc's birthday, our adoption case worker came for her final visit prior to our final adoption hearing. On Tuesday, Kim went to see The Other Boleyn Girl (two thumbs way down), we met with our marriage mentor couple on Wednesday for dinner at Granite City and Thursday we had small group at our house. Needless to say, we were pretty beat and happy when Friday rolled around to catch up on some sleep.

Today, we spent a lazy day enjoying the weather. Finally, some sun and spring weather descended onto us! We headed over to Zona Rosa to take the little boy on his second official outdoor stroller ride. He's big enough to not need to be in the car seat now, and he enjoys being able to look around.

We got him some rad new sunglasses, a cool pool hat with sharks on it and some choice new onesies from Hot Topic. We stopped off to have a quick bite of formula lunch and ran into one of Marc's coworker friends Angie who was with her husband and son. We follow their blog and you can check it out in the right navigation area (see Coffin blog).

Tomorrow we're going to play "clean this pit of a house" and in the evening Marc will be heading down to Overland Park with Matt to see our friend James give a message at a church in Johnson County. Sort of a "guys night" of a different kind.

Kim is excited because the countdown to summer has officially begun. She's finishing up her IEP meetings and has organized a monthly lunch and movie event for the kids. They're hoping to check out Prince Caspian next month the next installment of the Chronicles of Narnia series.

We're in the process of planning a party to celebrate Jakob's final adoption hearing which will take place next month. It seems like time is going slowly right now, but in the next weeks ahead it will most definitely pick up. Marc's working with some of his coworkers on invitations and giveaways, and Kim has found quite a few creative party additions which will be sure to make this a memorable event. That coupled with Kim's first Mother's Day make May a special month for us.

Jakob is excited his Nana's team won the game against North Carolina tonight and hopes Monday brings more of the same. We're looking forward to a killer night of worship at Vineyard on Monday night with our friends from small group.

More soon.