The flip side of sleeping.

Jake was up around 7am this morning. Very good! Lately, he's been getting up super early every second day or so. Hopefully, he'll stop completely soon! That would be great. I have noticed that if he takes a long nap, he gets up early the next morning. As nice as nap time is, I try to wake him up at 3pm at the latest.
However, I do think I should rave about Jake's napping and going to bed at night. I've been hesitant to do so because I don't want to jinx it! LOL!
Jake is a pro at going to bed. It's amazing. I truly believe sleep training him was the best thing I ever did. Jake could be a total monster during the day, but the fact he goes to sleep so well, negates a lot of that!
Jake goes to bed at 7pm. He probably could go to bed later, but he's happy at 7pm, and when we change the time next week (in Germany, daylight saving is on the 27th), his bedtime will probably be closer to 8pm. We normally have a bath every second night, though lately with all the outside playing, it's been closer to 5/7 nights. After bath time, Jake has a bottle. He's a little particular about his bottle. I tried switching to a sippy cup, and he was not having it! Plus, he'll only drink his milk warmed up. (When our microwave broke, my mom had to go old school and heat up his milk on the stove.) After his bottle is done, he gets his teddy bear, gives kisses, then I bring him up to bed. I put him down, put a blanket over him and leave the room. He goes down awake and rarely makes a peep. It's as simple as that. Bath, bottle, bed.
As for naps, Jake has been a nap rock star lately and is routinely taking 2-3 hour naps. It has been fantastic. He does the same for naps, has a bottle, but sometimes he fusses before falling asleep again.
Anyhow, both of these keep me sane despite the early mornings at times.

These pictures are from a couple days ago, but Jake has really been into building with his mega blocks. He's so funny too, if I'm on the floor playing with him, he's a lazy butt and makes me get the blocks, and he just builds. I guess I'm his assistant!

Wildpark

Today, I planned to go to the Gangelt Wildpark. I was hoping we would get the weather, since they were predicting rain.
I decided to risk it anyways, and I'm really glad we did. When we first got there, I was thinking it was still closed, there wasn't even a teller! But a worker told me to just walk in, so I did, it was kinda nice to get in for free. Plus, we were there for two hours and didn't see anyone until we were leaving, it was like having the entire zoo to ourselves.
Jake had fun, I think he had as much fun running in the woods than he did looking at the animals!
The only bummer is that we didn't get to play at the park. They had a great playground, but everything was really wet from earlier rain. Jake didn't seem to mind too much, but I did have to put him in the stroller to get him out of there!
Petting the goats. They came running up to him.

You can't really tell on the picture, but he was running up and down a little hill. He would run up, touch the fence, then run down. Repeat.





I left him in the stroller to see the Wild Boar. Because...
She had babies nearby and was being really protective. I didn't want to risk Jake putting his fingers in the fence. But the babies were so adorable!
The bears. Well, here's one bear. There was another one getting on her hind legs, and Jake kept waving. It was cute.
I woke Jake up from his nap to pick up Andrew. We went to rent some movies, and stopped at McDonald's for nuggets since Andrew hadn't had anything to eat. He thought he was going to eat them all, but Jake made him share one!

Picture Friday!

Happy St-Patrick's Day!

As customary lately, I shall lead with wake up time. Jake woke up at 5am, but my parents are in Dublin for the week-end, so I just stayed in bed. Jake cried a little, whimpered, whined, blabbed, yelled a little, and eventually settled back down around 6am and then slept until just after 7am. But he wasn't crying then, just talking, so I stayed in bed. At 8am, I got up, and Jake was having too much fun in his crib and pushed me away. So I went back to bed and lounged for another 20 minutes before going back to get him up for the day.
We spent the morning playing, we went outside for a little bit, and played a lot with mega blocks. He really likes to build!
Jake went to daycare this afternoon in his St-Patty's day pajamas. I thought it was really cute. He got them dirty, so ended up coming home in his spare outfit.
Then we had supper, and Jake got to see his cousins Nicole and Kim on Skype. I think he liked it, the internet was being silly, so it was freezing a lot. Plus, he was very into his phone. But he said hi and gave some kisses!
I hope everyone else has a great day!

De Balloon and the hairdresser

This morning was playgroup. We went to a indoor playground called De Balloon in the Netherlands. It actually wasn't too far from where we live, only about 25 minutes. Well...when you don't take a detour. I incorrectly entered the address into the GPS. I was on the highway when Mr.GPS said I arrived at my destination. Umm...I don't think so! Luckily I was only about 5 minutes away from the real destination.
It was a great place. There was a big playground thing that was all padded, had fun stairs, platforms, slides, balls, all sort of thing. At first Jake wasn't too sure, he fell asleep in the car, and it took him a few minutes to get adjusted to everything. There was a little toddler area, but it wasn't long before all the kids were climbing on the big toys!
The first time Jake went down this slide, he went down first. There was about a four feet platform...well, Jake just flew down the slide, flew across the four feet, then went out of sight! I swear, my heart stopped. But it was just a little more than a foot drop, and everything is padded, so he was fine! It didn't stop him from going down the slide again multiple times.
Oh, and the second time, I went down first, and I thought Jake wasn't going to follow me! It took a lot of prompting!
He absolutely loved the ball pit. He would jump in the balls, and he loves when I covered him up. He probably played for at least a half an hour here.


These were technically stairs. But the kids were climbing up, then sliding down them.

We had lunch at the venue, they had nuggets and fries, then we Jake had a haircut. He was in pretty desperate need to cut his hair. It was his second hair cut. I didn't bother with the cape to cover him, he hates it, I just brought a change of clothes since I knew his other clothes would be covered in hair.
He did freak out a little bit when the hairdresser was getting his hair wet and was just starting. But a box of raisins and a couple of songs later, he was content to just sit in the chair and smile to himself in the mirror. I think he looks so handsome now with his hair nice and short!

Hide and seek!

This is going to be a quick post. Jake was up at 430am this morning, and just ready to play. He's napping right now, but he'll be up soon, I can here him stirring already.
Jake does a few funny things lately.
He has a cold, so his nose has been runny for the past few weeks. He loves to blow it himself, so he will purposely blow until he has snot coming out of his nose, then ask for a kleenex, when we give him one, he wipes his nose, then runs to the bathroom or office door so he can put it in the garbage. Then, he walks back to the living room blowing out of his nose so he can start over.
He also likes to play peek a boo from behind the kitchen door. He'll carefully hide behind the door, then wait until I ask where is Jacob, then he'll pop out with the biggest smile on his face!
It's really adorable.

Quiet Sunday!

We had a quiet Sunday at home today. Jake got up at a very reasonable hour, around 730am. He's always in a pretty good mood when he wakes up in the morning. And he likes to play around in his crib. I go to get him, and he runs away from me. He's a silly boy!
We played this morning, then went outside for a walk, then played at the park. He loves the park. Today, he discovered that eating sand was yummy....but mommy this it's gross!
He took a very long nap this afternoon (over 3 hours!), I even had to go wake him up. I found him asleep in his crib, with all his stuffed animals and blankets thrown on the floor. But he was curled up with a little blanky with his butt sticking up in the air sound asleep.
It was so cute!!!