6 Months

Six months? Already?

 Turns out, you moms have not been lying; they really do grow up so fast.

Believe it or not, this little guy has been around for over half a year now. I hardly remember what life was like without him. Now he's my regular partner in crime. The more I get to know him and his little emerging personality the more in love with him I fall. I really do feel so lucky that Brock and I get to be his parents.



Okay enough with the cliches and on to the pictures.

Few things in life smell as gross as that deer puppet. It has been drenched in spit up multiple times, but Jack loves it and sleeps with it every night. I'm afraid if I wash it and remove the scent, he'll pull a mama bird and reject it, then suddenly have trouble sleeping. Actually... writing this just made me realize how ridiculous it all sounded. I think it's time to do some laundry. Anyway, Jack used to sleep peacefully on his tummy in the middle of his crib each night...

 

 

 

...but now he tends to move around quite a bit before settling in. It's cute to hear him "talk" to himself and roll around happily in there before he falls asleep. More often than not, this ends up his position of choice. Hey, whatever gets you to sleep through the night, buddy. (FYI- Jack is still a champion sleeper. Rarely do we get less than 11 straight hours out of him. I'm just hoping he doesn't start teething anytime soon because I've heard that can really mess things up.) 

Unsolved Mystery: Jack's Sleeve. Oddly enough, Jack wakes up every single morning with his right sleeve pushed up. It's always the right one; never the left. I have no idea why. We decided not to get the video monitor and I am gravely regretting that decision. I would love to know what goes on in there every night that causes him to have the same sleeve pushed up to his elbow every morning.

Jack loves sitting in the "big boy" cart seat now. We are, of course, at Costco. We've developed a shameless habit of frequenting Costco for "lunch" almost every day. And by "lunch" I mean free samples, obviously. Okay, and sometimes a churro sneaks its way into the mix as well.

Jack with uncle Joel. Not the best picture of Joel, but I am pretty sure he doesn't read this blog (or even know it exists) so I doubt he'll ever know I posted it. Plus, he goes on a mission to Taiwan in two days so I'm sure that looking creepy in my blog is the last thing on his mind.

Jack's not the cuddliest baby around these days, so moments like this these days are rare and CHERISHED. He loves snuggling up with Grammy and listening to ACDC. The "Rockabye Baby" version of ACDC. He looks absolutely huge in this picture. Partly because my mom is tiny but also because, well, he is huge.

My cousin Emma had her little guy George just a week after Jack was born, so these guys are exactly the same age! This was the first time we were able to get them together and their meet-and-greet was just as cute/entertaining as we'd imagined.

Two leaning buds, one toy pea. (Yes, it's a pea. I think it came with another pea... and a pod.)

I had started thinking that Jack was finally starting to grow some hair. Then George came around.

We went to go visit cousin Chase after he got surgery on his toe. This brave kid had a pin through his foot underneath that cast. I'm sure the chocolate milk and candy we brought him helped speed up the recovery process.

Mom of the Year! It's always a good idea to hand your child a plastic bag to play with when he's throwing a fit in Winco. This picture makes me laugh. I think my son is the cutest baby in the world, but I can fully admit that this picture is terrifying. 

Okay, the vital statistics: at 6 months, Jack officially weighs 21 pounds, is 28 1/2 inches tall and has a normal sized head. (I don't really care about or pay attention to the head circumference measurement more than that.) He is in the 94% for weight and 97% for height. I'm going to have to learn how football works because I have a feeling my future holds a lot of games.

I love this little goon. And this little goon loves that monkey.

Happy 6 Months Jack! I guess it's unrealistic for me to expect the chalk not to get smeared at this point...

...or the chalkboard to stay out of his mouth, for that matter.

Sunshine

This is going to be a hard post to write. As I post pictures of beautiful red rock, green grass and 65 degree temperatures, it is a bone chilling 23 degrees outside. The space heater blasting 6 inches away from me is just no substitute from that southern Utah sun.

Last weekend we were able to escape the sub-arctic temperatures for a few days and enjoyed visiting Brock's family in St. George. The drive down flew by, mostly due to sunshine, a happy, complacent baby, the always enjoyable company of my sis-in-law Bailey, Sonic breakfast burritos and access to Spotify on my phone. After what, 2 years of its existence? I finally broke down and signed up for the Premium trial. Let me tell you, I am SOLD. Access to like 90% of all music ever created within seconds on MY PHONE? Wherever I go? I'll take it. I just hate how if you forget to change the settings, it shares everything you listen to with all your Facebook friends. I apologize to all you who were plagued with important updates like "Carolyn Gassman Sargent starred "I Need a Girl: Part II" from the Bad Boys Soundtrack on Spotify." This is news that nobody needs to know.

Here are some of the weekend's documented highlights.

We did this amazing hike with Brock's mom, his cousin Jordon and his wife Ashley to a rock formation called "The Toilet Bowl" in a town called Gunlock. Take note of the hiking stick. Not only does it make us look like legit hikers, it somehow makes hiking way more fun.

Me, Brock and Jenn (mother-in-law). I really wasn't going to let go of that hiking stick for anything, was I?

Jumpy pic fail. Although, if you look closely, I'm pretty sure you could slide a piece of paper under my left toe.

Ahh, success! You don't want to know how many tries it took to get this. Synchronized jumping is as exhausting as it is cheesy.

What's this? An Abbey Road re-creation on red rocks? I don't know how I thought that this "pose" resembled Sir Paul McCartney. Once again, I have ruined an otherwise successful picture.

The cardigan was shed shortly after this picture was taken. It was a beautiful day at the baseball field. 65 degrees (or more) and not a cloud in the sky.

Too bad nobody ever wants to hang out with this poor, attention starved baby...

5 mile morning run. Rule: you can only run in this family if you sport neon gear. Thank goodness I have bright shoes because my tendency to buy all grey/black/white clothing nearly disqualified me. The starting lineup (from left to right): 4 models from a fitness magazine, Quasimodo and Rocky.

All in all, it was an awesome weekend. I think I'm about ready to go back. 

An Insomnia Induced Facelift

I have attempted to "re-vamp" the blog.

The key word here is "attempted". As it turns out, there is a really complicated process behind getting blogs look nice. Kudos to all you bloggers with clever fonts and custom layouts; all that copying/pasting of codes made my head spin so much I somehow ended up stress-eating an entire Totinos Party Pizza by myself. 800 calories later, I'm still rocking Blogger's default template and fonts that were probably available with Windows 95.

Ever since the Instagram era began (or rather, ever since I tardily jumped on the bandwagon when I realized that Instagram wasn't just a picture editing app), I've slacked big time on this little blog. For me it is an oddly daunting task to (gasp) plug in the camera (bigger gasp,) transfer the pictures (even bigger gasp,) attempt to tidy them up in Picassa, and (biggest gasp of all- your lungs should be full) upload them to my blog. The much more appealing alternative is a quick Instagram post. I can get my social media on in a quick 20 seconds, 50 characters, and a couple of "clever" #hashtags.

I have realized though that I do like to write occasionally, and I figured that maybe a little online "makeover" might give me the motivation I need to start this up again. I've been battling mommy insomnia for weeks and I figure writing might be a better alternative to the way I have been passing time lately. Which is watching Netflix documentaries about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. FYI- I am sold on both. Total believer, right here.

Speaking of insomnia, the painfully cheesy title of this blog can be blamed on last night's bout of sleeplessness. Have you ever spent the late hours of the night thinking up something really brilliant, playing out all the details in your head, growing increasingly proud of this stroke of genius that has hit you? Only to wake up in the morning mortified that you actually thought it was a good idea and relieved that you didn't act on it? (Unless you did...in which case, we've all been there, right?)

Well, last night while lying in bed around 3 am, my mind somehow wandered toward my blog and I began brainstorming (did I really use that word? I apologize; this is not 8th grade English) ideas for its much needed facelift. Then it hit me. The new blog title. "Behind the Scenes: The Raw, Uncut Footage We Call Life." Or no! Maybe "Deleted Scenes: What You Don't Catch on the Highlight Reel". I also played around with "The Lowlight Reel" and "The Sargent Show". I was giddy with excitement. This whole "movie/film" theme was brilliant, right? How clever and catchy! I finally drifted off to a delightful sleep, these brilliant thoughts marinating in my head.

Then I woke up.

"The what?" sputtered Brock between gasps of laughter, "Deleted Scenes?"
"I know, right?" I replied with tears of laughter in my eyes, "How ridiculous. That's what happens when sleep deprivation renders you practically intoxicated."

When the absurdity of last night's thoughts dawned on me, I had immediately relayed them to Brock. We laughed for a few more minutes. I was relieved that I hadn't made any of these changes during the night. What stupid ideas! What are we, film people? Movie buffs? (Again, I apologize for using that term. What am I, a 75 year old man?)

But somehow throughout the day, I couldn't seem to shake the idea of giving the blog a facelift. And every time I tried to come up with a new name, all I could seem to think of were titles involving the words "scene" and "highlights". And all I could picture was a clever little graphic involving a film spool. It was too late- the movie theme had seared itself into my brain in a bad way; I knew it wasn't going to leave. Apparently the thoughts we think during that late night state of mind are very powerful. Even more reason for me not to watch anymore conspiracy theory shows at 2 am. Or else my next post might be an essay on America's faking of the moon landing.

So here we are. I've got a new cheesy title and crappy "pixely" picture to accompany it. (Seriously. It was created in "Paint".) Anybody with a hint of pride would probably abandon the project all together, but my husband is at school until 11 tonight, Jack is asleep and I am waiting on my turn in "Words with Friends". Basically I have no life, so this post is getting published as a last ditch effort to entertain myself. It's a work in progress. I have plans to make it better, I promise. But for now, I am starving and there is another Totinos in the freezer calling my name. My body will probably hate me tomorrow. If so, I've got a sort-of new blog to complain about it on. You lucky reader. :)

Month 3... 2 Months Later

 When I was 1 year old, I weighed 18 pounds.

Jack is 4 months old. He weighs 19 pounds.

We are getting really excited about this kid's future athletic career.

I was really hoping my arm strength would increase proportionally as Jack gained weight. Sadly, this has not happened. My arms still resemble Spongebob's. 

Out of his many fantastic baby-esque qualities, my personal favorite these days is his ability to sleep. Jack has become a champion nighttime sleeper. He regularly sleeps 11+ hours each night. We're still working on the napping thing. He is quite the cat napper, peppering in little power naps throughout the day. If he's asleep for 45 minutes, I consider it a huge accomplishment. Mostly I'm lucky to get 20 minutes at a time out of him. Just long enough to draft up a mediocre at best blog post, right?

These pictures are from November when he was 3 months old. At this rate, I'll probably get around to posting his 4th month pictures in about June...

I love dressing Jack in "big guy" clothes. Because, you know, "big guys" are always wearing shirts with cartoon cars embroidered on the chest.

I had been planning Jack's lobster costume since about 2010. He ended up wearing it that day for about 13 minutes. Some would say the costume was a waste of $24.95+shipping and handling, but I say it was my favorite 13 minutes of the year.

This was going to be Jack's blessing outfit until we found the original get-up that Brock and his dad were blessed in. Jack took the outfit a little seriously and began sternly calling me to repentance.

Jack with Brock on his blessing day. He was so well behaved- he didn't even cry or poop during the blessing! Oh yeah, and Jack was pretty good too. I know, best joke of the day. 

We had a luncheon at my parents' house afterwards. Most people would probably take lots of artsy pictures of the tasty spread (soup, salad, bread) but of course I was too busy eating/wrestling with Jack to bother with the camera until the food and people were all gone.

Soon, young Jack, the sight of pizza will not be quite so boring.

Jack and aunt Bailey. For a while Jack had a widow's peak hairline. I'm glad it evened out. I saw the Twilight movie. I know how much trouble baby Vampires can be.

I'm not sure who is holding Jack here, but he is obviously liking the attention.

Jack is finally starting to like the car more. Either that or he's just getting lazier- he usually only bothers to whine for the first few minutes of each trip before he gets sick of it and quiets down. I think he's also glad to be back to our normal radio faves- he was getting a little sick of the constant Christmas music.

Bad parent alert! Yes, Jack is watching The Lion King on my laptop. Judge all you want. When your baby is so fussy and clingy you literally have to use the restroom with him on your lap, Disney is your last resort.

Jack likes to help hold his bottles. Sometimes he'll even hold them himself. The blurry hand in the lower left corner is either clapping with delight or rushing to aid a nearly falling bottle.

Tummy time. Jack sporadically rolls over, but it's not an everyday thing. The doctor said not to worry- its a lot harder to roll 20 pounds over from back to front. That makes sense.

This picture serves two purposes. One, to showcase the ghetto fabulous homemade PVC pipe toy we handcrafted for Jack. $5. You can't tell me a 3 month old knows the difference between this and the $50 model. Secondly, I wanted to point out Jack's thighs and the way they fill up the Bumbo's leg slots. Where he get dem legs from? He get 'em from his mama. Just kidding. Kind of.