Christmas (part one)

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Mdfrisco

We started off the Christmas festivities at my parents cabin. When we arrived they had in the middle of the living room, the rocking tractor that my brother and his family got for Jacob last year at Christmastime. Happy to be out of his carseat and able to move around, Jacob immediately started inspecting this new toy and decided to go for a ride.

They even had our last name engraved on the back.

The next day for Christmas Eve, we had the cabin full of family (including 5 dogs!) for dinner, presents and a good time together. One thing I have noticed is, as good as I am about taking pictures of Jacob…I am really bad at taking pictures of everyone else! So I didn’t get a single picture of that time. But of course I did get a few cute ones of Jacob in his Christmas outfit. First up, back on the tractor.

Even the big boys took the tractor for a spin 🙂

Jacob was fascinated with the horses and loved watching those large animals. So we spent some time on the fence of the arena watching the horses have their dinner.

We did get a picture of the 4 generations. Oma, Grandma, Mom and Jacob.

On Christmas morning, Jacob spent all morning opening presents and playing with his new toys.

However, if there are dogs around, they trump any package, box, toy or bow in Jacob’s book. And my parents dog Jane was happy to provide some entertainment for Jacob, he couldn’t contain his excitement!

After some coffee (for us) and breakfast, Jacob kept on opening and playing with his toys. He got a musical ball, clothes, books, a cell phone

Thanks mom, but you know this is not going to keep me from going after your phone, right?

Then Jacob tackled the present that was possibly his favorite one yet.

Hmmmm, can’t do much with it while it is in this box….

Daddy to the rescue!

And I have my very own truck!! Lets check out the horn here.

I simply couldn’t narrow these next photos down to one…or even two.

Besides it shows what a ham he is when he has an audience. Every time he would raise his arm, he would get a collective cheer from everyone.

and that makes him more and more excited!

Yeah!!!

Before we left, Jacob made sure to snuggle with his Oma for a few minutes.

He’s a pretty lucky little dude!

I’ll be back soon with the second half of our Christmas.

Getting into the spirit

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Mdfrisco

Justin’s parents called one day and said to keep our eyes open for a package they had sent, but didn’t tell us what it was. When it arrived we found a box full of Christmas “clothes/costumes.” So one afternoon, we got dressed in the clothes and set the timer on my camera to take some pictures. Unfortunately, my camera was not focusing properly, but we still got some fun photos to start off the Christmas season!

Try not to laugh too hard!

Ho Ho Ho!

12 month check up

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Mdfrisco

Since my last post we have been planning and throwing a birthday party for Jacob, I was in the middle of a good book and honestly am a bit overwhelmed by the amount of pictures I have to go through from Christmas and Jacob’s birthday party so I have kind of been avoiding them for a while. The party is over and I finished my book…and before I start another one, I am going to finish my Christmas pictures, then the birthday party ones and get them up here (hopefully) soon. In the meantime, I have other things to share.

We had Jacob’s 12 month check up last week and he is in great shape.

Jacob weighs 19 lbs 12 oz
He is 30.25 inches long
The circumference of his head is 18.25 inches

Jacob is really pulling himself up on everything and exploring the world from this new higher up position. He will walk for a short distance with support. When Jacob’s pediatrician asked me if he was walking yet I said no, he asked if Jacob crawled really fast and I said yes. He said that is why he’s not walking yet, he knows he can get there faster if he crawls. Occasionally I will encourage Jacob to use his push toy to walk a few steps, but I am not really encouraging it all that much…I’m not in too much of a hurry to get into this walking phase 🙂

He is still a champion sleeper. He goes to bed between 6:30-7:00 pm and sleeps to 6:30 am. Recently, he has been sleeping to 7:00-7:30 am we really have no complaints in the sleeping department.

He is also a champion eater. He eats pretty much everything I put in front of him. He has his favorites and when he is finished eating his favorites and fills up his tummy with everything else, he starts tossing leftover food over the side of his highchair to the dog. Jacob has quickly become Apollo’s best friend!

And here is the last of his weekly photos…Even if I tried to continue to do this after a year, I know it would be impossible since he will not.sit.still.

After sitting him on the couch, he immediately gets up to look outside the window to see what is going on out there.

When we sit him back down, he starts to pull at the sticker on his shirt

So we quickly yell “Touchdown” so he will throw his hands up into the air

And then for a split second when he puts them down, I get the picture I wanted…

Thank God for a fast shutter speed on my camera!

ONE!

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Mdfrisco

And now he turns ONE! How did that happen?

When trying to figure out where to take his 1 year photos, I kept scouting out all the parks and playgrounds by our house and since it is winter (or San Diego’s version of winter) the grass was turning brown and all the pretty fall leaves had fallen and become a dry, crumbled mess on the ground and nothing was really making me excited about taking his pictures. Then one day, I had the idea of going back to the trees where we had our maternity pictures taken. So we loaded up the car with our props, and stopped at the store to buy a second bunch of balloons since the ones I bought earlier had already deflated to the ground and headed back to the trees.

The chair was my grandpas grandmothers chair and it made the perfect prop for Jacob to hold onto.

Since Jacob already experienced his first Christmas, he knew exactly what to do with packages that have a bow on them.

There are many emotions that come with this day. It has been the most challenging yet the most rewarding year we’ve ever experienced. In reflecting on this past year, there are many things I’ve been thinking about and there is no way I can cover all of it in one blog post. But that is what is so great about this blog is a lot of those things have already been documented here one way or another. So at this time I am going to focus on Jacob right now…

I love the way he loves to dance. While preparing food and eating we play music on our iPod and Jacob bops his head all through mealtime. During playtime he likes to get a toy that plays music going before he starts banging around with his other toys. One day while Jacob was bouncing around to the tune of one of his toys, I said to Justin, “remember when we used to put him in tummy time and try to get him to lift his head…” and now he is bopping it all over the place. It’s kind of funny, because he does this ‘Night at the Roxbury’ head shake, but his noggin is so big which makes him top heavy and he often looses his balance and has to catch himself before falling over!

I love that his first word, spoken and signed, is doggie. Or the way he says it, Daw-GHEee. Jacob has been babbling mama and dada for a long time but didn’t really know what he was saying. Doggie is the first word he says and knows what he is saying. He absolutely LOVES the dog. He loves the tag on his collar, he loves to chase his tail when it is wagging and he loves to crawl over him in his never ending quest for an adventurous obstacle course. Whenever we come into the house from the garage after being away somewhere, Jacob gets a smile on his face and gets excited to see the Daw-GHEee greet us at the door. While we were taking these pictures, a man was jogging on the trail with his German Sheppard and Jacob starting signing doggie which is what he is doing in the picture below.

I love his interaction with people. Jacob knows when he is at the center of attention and will provide endless entertainment. He often throws his hands up in the air and that gets a collective “Touchdown” yell from anyone who may be in the room. He does it while playing, getting his diaper changed, in the bath, while eating and even in the car seat. Often while I have him in the shopping cart at a store, I will see him throw his hands up and smile at a stranger, waiting for them to say “Touchdown”, when they don’t he kind of gives me a curious look like, why didn’t they say it?? And I will smile at him and give him the “Touchdown” he wanted.

I love how he really pays attention to what you are saying. Anytime you say ‘Oh No!‘ Jacob will put his hands up to the side of his face like Macaulay Culkin did in the movie ‘Home Alone’. At first it was intentional, we would look at him and say ‘Oh No!‘ and he would put his hands to his face. But now if you say it without saying it directly to him he does it. I figured that out when I was reading a book called ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ to him and there are several Oh No’s! in the book and he kept putting his hands up to his head whenever I said it. Just like ‘Touchdown’ he does it during playtime, bath time, in the car, etc…anything to keep his audience captivated.

This parenting gig has been a pretty incredible journey so far. We are so in love with this little boy and he has brought us so much joy!

As reluctant as I am to give up the babyhood days, I am so excited to see what the future holds for Jacob. I’m sure the next thing will be letting go of the chair and taking his first unassisted steps! Happy Birthday to my sweet boy! XO

Ambitious

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Mdfrisco

I remember my mom thinking it was very ambitious of me to take weekly photos of Jacob for his first year, and honestly, I didn’t know if I would keep it up or not…but I am so glad I did. We are rapidly approaching Jacob’s 1st birthday and before that day comes and we take our last weekly picture with the elephant and giraffe, I figured I should get caught up with posting the past month of photos.

I am so thankful that Jacob loves my camera (or his silly dad behind me making him laugh). Most of the time when he sees my camera he sits up a little straighter and flashes a smile, even when there is no one else around to grab his attention he is really good at flirting with the camera (probably because I’ve had it in his face since the day he was born!) We’ve never had a problem getting these weekly pictures, until…his 11 month one…Jacob did NOT want to sit still and kept trying to make a break for it. He would throw himself back and wiggle his way out of Justin’s grasp…. And after a wrestling match with the couch & stuffed animals he ended up with lots of static electricity which made for a wild hairstyle…

Then finally, he sat still long enough for me to snap a decent picture. 49 weeks

50 weeks

And doing his touchdown pose for 51 weeks

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! I have lots more pictures to share from all the holiday fun and soon Jacob’s birthday, so I’ll be back soon.

The Tunnel

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Mdfrisco

When I was little my dad built a really cool fort in our backyard. I was pretty young and I know my brother got a lot of use out of it with his friends, but I do remember playing in it as well. One thing I really remember about it was the hole in the floor that we used to lower a bucket so we could bring up supplies, it was high up so we had a ladder to climb to get up to the top. It was truly a legitimate fort with a solid construction job done by the best! Here we are with our dog Rusty, probably around 1984?

A few years later we moved into a new house and we had a pool table in our great room. My best friend, Stacey, and I used to drape sheets over the side of the pool table and voila we created our very own fort! There were little shelves in the corners underneath the pool table and we would put the necessities like our PJ’s, flashlights and books or games. We had pillows and blankets and we would sleep in our fort at night and play games and read books during the day. Underneath the bottom of the table was a slab of some sort of stone that made a fantastic chalk board. So we kept a carton of colored chalk on one of the shelves as well and we drew pictures, wrote our names in fun artistic ways, played tick tack toe and hangman and graffitied (is that a word??) to our hearts content.

When Jacob really got the hang of crawling, he began to get more adventurous. We used to put our oversized pillows to block the places we didn’t want him to crawl to, until he figured out that he could shift to 4×4 mode and crawl right over them. If anything was in his path, no problem, he just crawled right over/under it, actually, he loves to crawl out of his way so he can go over/under something. If I am sitting on the ground, he will crawl over my legs and then turn around and do it again, and again, and again. He tries to squeeze his way through tight places to get somewhere. I started arranging things in a sort of obstacle course for him and he loved it. A couple months ago, I was on Amazon browsing for something new to buy Jacob that would make his crawling adventures more fun and I came across the tunnels. Thanks to Amazon Prime I had it at my front door in 2 days and immediately opened it. The first few days Jacob just looked at it. He was trying to figure out what this big thing was. He would be at one end looking through the tunnel and I would be at the other end encouraging him to come through.

And he would crawl around it…then he would crawl up to the opening and move it back and forth with his hand, but he wouldn’t go in.

After about 2 days, I found myself crawling through it to show him how it is done (sorry, no pictures of that!). Then I put one of his toy balls that he loves halfway through the tunnel and that did the trick.

The nice thing about this one is the middle of the tunnel has mesh lining so it seems very open while inside the tunnel. Sometimes Jacob stops halfway through to check out the sky view. When he came through the first time, he stopped, turned around and thought about what he did and then went right back in, no toy necessary.

Since then it is nonstop back and forth, back and forth, in and out of the tunnel. Even Apollo enjoys the tunneling game!

I’m sure when he gets older the tunnel will make a great addition to the forts he will build along with the couch pillows, tables and draped blankets. For now it is a great exercise/obstacle course/playtime game.

And this closeup picture tells me that I need to do a better job of wiping his face after meals! If only I can get him to sit still and stop pushing my hands away when I try…

Santa

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Mdfrisco

Now that I got my November pictures up…and Christmas is next week (yikes!!) I guess I better get some Christmas spirit up on this blog.

The first week of December the wonderful shopping center by our house that did the Halloween Extravaganza, had a Holiday Celebration with Santa. This being Jacob’s first Christmas, there was no way we were missing this. After dinner we got all bundled up and went to check it out. It was quite the production! There were so many people, and kids (and dogs) everywhere. They were giving out hot chocolate, there were Christmas carolers on the stage singing away. The Marine Corps were there collecting toys for the Toys for Tots foundation. There was a laser light show and of course a huge Christmas tree.

The main attraction of the night was Santa Claus, we got there about 10 minutes before the event started and there was already a line forming to see Santa. When I saw the amount of people there we didn’t waste another minute and got right in line. Santa was escorted to the event by the fire department and arrived in big red firetruck with its lights flashing. Once he made his way to his chair the line moved pretty quickly. Jacob was so distracted by the lights and people and cameras I don’t think he even realized where he was.

Then he started looking around and finally looked up at Santa

He just took him in studying his face trying to figure out who the heck he was and why there was all this hoopla surrounding him.

Then we were quickly ushered on so the next kid in line could have his turn. This year, I’d say Santa was a success…we’ll see what happens next year!

Thankful

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Mdfrisco

We have a lot to be thankful for, our family, friends, health, home, job and so much more… Of course this year, I kept thinking about how thankful we are to have this happy, healthy and pretty stinkin’ cute little guy.

Every year we spend Thanksgiving at Justin’s parents house. The day before Thanksgiving we had a quiet evening entertaining Jacob (or rather he was entertaining us!)

He loved having new territory to cover and different things to get into

And of course his GiGi is always game to play with him

And sing him songs

After a good nights sleep, Jacob was ready to celebrate Thanksgiving

He was busy getting everyone’s drinks ready for them

We attempted to get a family photo for a Christmas card, but clearly Jacob was not into it, he was ready for his nap!

Apollo can always be found in the kitchen while you are cooking, looking for things that are accidentally (or purposely) dropped on the floor. It is like a game to him, to see how quickly he can snatch up the food, sometimes he gets it before it even hits the ground. So on these holiday occasions, it is like the Superbowl in Apollo’s book, especially when it comes to Papa J’s cooking! Turkey anyone??

And it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without an attempt to get a picture of all the dogs

Compared to years in the past, we had a small gathering this year. I enjoy the more intimate gatherings since it gives you a chance to really talk with everyone. However, there were so many people that we missed getting to see. Regardless, we had a good time and Jacob enjoyed his first Thanksgiving!

My babies!

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Fulfilled promise

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Mdfrisco

My mom is still very close with her best friend growing up. I have lots of fun memories when I was young of all the time our families spent together over the years. The youngest of Lynn’s 4 children got married at the beginning of November so we drove to Bakersfield for the happy occasion. Papa J and Nonnie came with us and had a great time babysitting Jacob at the hotel, while we went to the wedding with my parents, so it was a bit of a date night for us.

It was an absolutely beautiful wedding! You can see pictures of it here and here. The next day we all went to Lynn’s house for brunch and visited for a while, afterwards, we got back on the road again and drove to Paso Robles. It had been three years since we were last in Paso Robles celebrating my 30th birthday and I’ve been wanting to go back. There was a time when Jacob was not taking the bottle…I was getting frustrated and discouraged, and to keep me motivated to continue to work with Jacob to take a bottle, Justin made a promise that we would go back to Paso and go wine tasting once he did. So this trip was a bit of a late celebration for us! We visited our favorite places and discovered some new ones as well. Jacob was a good sport and enjoyed crawling all over the tasting room floors.

Justin decided that Jacob needed a little facial hair to match his daddy.

Jacob was napping while we were tasting at J. Dusi, when he woke up we went outside to take in the pretty scenery and play around before heading off to the next winery.

This little cart reminded us of all the ones we saw during our trip to Tuscany.

There was a giant oak tree which made for a fun backdrop

After a couple of days, my parents left to go home to get started on their kitchen remodel and we stayed one more day. We choose a road on the map that we have never been down before and stopped to visit the wineries in the area. Not only does Paso Robles have some fantastic wines but the country is beautiful! It is a must to visit a place up on a hill to take in the view.

A beautiful wedding, fantastic wine and fun times with family made for a wonderful trip and a fulfilled promise

Change

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Mdfrisco

I remember a conversation with some friends over dinner a few years back where we were talking about some of the biggest stresses on a marriage. Big changes in your life that can affect your relationship, such as finances, jobs, moving and kids. We talked about how those things are a part of everyone’s life, but it is how you handle those changes and the importance of working together as a team with your spouse to transition through these changes that makes all the difference in the world.

This has been a big year of changes for us. We started the year with a bang with the arrival of Jacob in our family. Once we got settled into that new normal, I went back to work, working from home and going into the office one day a week. We then got adjusted to that new routine. A couple of months ago we made the decision that I was not going to work at all and be a full time stay at home mom. It is something that we ultimately knew was going to happen sometime anyway, but a part of me didn’t want to let go of that part of my identity (and the extra income was a bonus too). I always said when we had kids I wanted to be at home with them, but it was hard for me to let go of my job. I was a little surprised at how difficult it was to make this decision and how emotional it was.

I left my office the same month I was hired 10 years ago…As I look back on those 10 years there are so.many.memories. I learned so much about the research industry and business in general. I grew as a person in my personal and professional life. My doctors do wonders in the field of Allergy and Asthma and in our community as well. They work so hard to teach other physicians, patients and the staff working for them. My co-workers are wonderful people and have become like an extended family. Granted it was not always easy and there were some bumps and frustrations along the way, but that is a part of life and you will encounter those things anywhere you go. The good memories far outweigh the frustrating ones. I love the silliness that comes with dressing up for Halloween, themed parties or simply just to dress up period (my office LOVES costumes!), I love how a requirement for all our holiday parties (or any office party for that matter) is a dance floor and good music. I love how everyone is there to celebrate the good times in life like birthdays, weddings, babies, and that they are always there with a hug and words of encouragement during the hard times.

When I was hired I never thought I would be there for 10 years, but when I look back at the memories I know exactly why I was, and man those years flew by! As hard as it was to leave both my office and my identity in the working world, I am so thankful that I am able to be at home with our little man and I am excited to for this journey in life as a full time momma! We worked SO hard for this family and I am going to soak it all up. I am also thankful that I have a husband who is supportive and that we can work together as a team through these changes.

And because I can’t do a post without a photo…Here’s Jake taking a bath in grandma’s big bathtub at the cabin. He still LOVES his bath time 🙂

The Frisco Project

Adventures in life, pregnancy, friendships, family & a little photography