Bailey & Co.

Two weekends ago Grandma and Grandad came to visit from Virginia and we celebrated Jacob's birthday with them early as well as Grandad's birthday that Sunday. We had a great time with them despite Jacob ending up with his 6th ear infection of the year. Mark and his Dad made a really fun sensory box for Jacob. An idea I saw on a friend's blog and they modified. It turned out wonderfully and Jacob loves it! We also got party decorations for Jacob's upcoming birthday party, went out to eat at a yummy local restaurant (The Ivy House) and Jacob got some wonderful birthday presents. He got a new bike, that he is in LOVE with! We have it in the house right now but have been taking him for walks with it every evening. When it's inside he is constantly crawling over to it and wants to go for a ride. I think this bike will have many miles put on it over the next couple of years. Jacob also got some new clothes (just in time to replace all of the ones he outgrew the week before) including some new VT attire for football season; and Great Grandma sent him a chair that he figured out how to climb into in no time! Here are just a few of the many pictures from their visit.

Loving his new swing

Typical Jacob, taking all the books off the shelf

Photo shoot on our walk

Having fun with Grandma

Magazines are SO exciting

Check out this cool box Grandad's making me!

Play time

We have a climber

1 seconds later he was in the chair with the ball

Go Hokies!

Hanging out with Grandad

He loves his new bike!

Jacob playing with his new box the other evening. I'll try to take pictures of all the sides and post them soon.

As you can see my attempts to update the blog for our last month of activities are failing miserably. In brief, this is what we've been up to during the past month:

After Edisto, Jacob and I went to visit my long time friend Maggie in Raleigh and got to spend some time with Micheal and Claire too. Maggie's Mom died suddenly right before we went to Captiva so this visit was bittersweet but we enjoyed spending a few days with her (and her wonderful dog Poke). Jacob was such a trooper on all of our trips. He rode in the car a lot, spent the night in many new places and didn't have many of his toys to play with. In Raleigh though we improvised with the door stoppers at Micheal and Claire's house (those were a big hit, no pun intended), and a box of foam curlers at Maggie's (they were a lot of fun too).

Hanging out at Aunt Maggie's

Watch Poke "work"

Poke and Maggie


Maggie had lots of fans in her house!

Puffs containers are great entertainment for an 11 month old

and so are foam curlers :-)

Relaxing at Maggies

And doing a bit of patio gardening

Happy baby

Jacob and Poke, best buddies!

Fun at Michael and Claire's house

Heading to another door stopper

Peek a boo

There windows were the perfect height for Jacob!

Nap time

Checking out the mushroom fountain at the pool with Aunt Claire

Hiding behind the couch

Doing a bit of cruising before we got on the airplane to head home

Early morning cuddles with Uncle Micheal before we left.

After coming home from Raleigh we've been trying to settle back into a routine here. I've been working at lot at both the VA and UF, and Mark's been busy with work too. Jacob started a new classroom at school with most of the same kids but he's had to adapt to 2 new teachers. They are great and he's still in the same suite as his previous class so he sees his old teachers on a daily basis. I'm still amazed at all of the activities they do with a group of crawling babies. They have music class twice a week, and Fit kids and dance and traffic safety (yes, you read that right, I got there one day and they were playing with toys cars and talking about traffic safety). They go on lots of walks and every Friday during the summer is water day. Just thinking about all of that makes me tired. :-)

Jacob celebrated his last, 1st holiday, July 4th; and Aunt Jessie drove all the way from San Diego to visit during her move to Pensacola. We took her to Satchels for pizza and to the pool, and Mommy got a pedicure for the first time since Jacob's due date. Jacob also got to open his first birthday present. Thanks for coming Aunt Jessie, we're so glad we live in the same time zone again! We've a been planning his 1st birthday party (I can't believe I'm writing that, where does time go?). The party is next Saturday and we're keeping our fingers crossed the weather will be nice. Finally, Mark's parents came to visit last weekend, I'll do another post about all of the fun we had with them soon.