Memorial Day Weekend

Last week was very busy here at Mum and Dad's. On Friday night, they were hosting a party for all Dad's office staff (about 40 people) and so we spent the week getting ready for that. Andre finished up repainting their kitchen as well as the spare bedroom, as guests were also spending the weekend. I'll let the photos tell the rest.


We stopped work long enough to relax outside one evening with a glass of wine





Unfortunately, these are the only photos we got of the party





Little Jack was a trooper and behaved perfectly on Friday and Saturday with all the hustle and bustle around here. He spent much of the time snoozing in his swing



High school friends of Mum and Dad's spent the weekend with us. They left in the morning yesterday and so we spent the rest of Memorial Day doing this:



It was great!

Don't Judge...I Was Desperate!

So, here's Jack...and guess what he's doing?





Yes, he's watching American Idol. I know, I know, I'm a bad mother, but the whining was getting beyond a joke and TV (gasp) seemed like a good option in my exhausted opinion. His Daddy was scandalized but Jack seemed to enjoy himself thoroughly, as did his Mummy!

P.S. This won't be a regular occurrence :-)

"Vellies"

Growing up in Zimbabwe and South Africa, we were used to most of our dads, uncles, brothers etc., wearing these:



Here's the description from Wikipedia: Veldskoens (or veldskoene, pronounced "FELL-skoons") are South African shoes made from untanned leather or soft rawhide uppers attached to a soft sole. Their name comes from Afrikaans vel ("hide") and skoen ("shoe"), and their design is believed to be based on the traditional Hottentot footwear observed by the first Dutch settlers in South Africa[1]. Veldskoens are familiarly referred to as "vellies" in South African slang.

I love these shoes, as they are such a 'blast from the past' and a reminder of my childhood in Africa. So imagine my delight when I found these for Jack:




They are from Babies R Us of all places and I got them in two sizes as they were on clearance for $2 a pair! Now he's a real South African boytjie!

A Great Achievement!

For the past two years, Dad has been working on editing and rewriting a book on reconstructive breast surgery. And he finally finished and published it this spring! It's an enormous accomplishment and contribution to the medical community and we're so proud of him. Last night we attended a reception held in his honor, at the medical school here in Peoria. It was a really special evening; several people spoke, including the Dean of the Medical School, the Chief of Surgery at the hospital Dad works at, and a visiting professor, one of Dad's colleagues from Duke University. They all spoke so highly of Dad and his work and made us very proud!

Jack, all dressed up on the way to the reception

Me with Mum and Dad

All of us together

Jack and Nana (thankfully, he behaved himself beautifully: he slept most of the time and smiled at everybody the rest of the evening!)

What's up with us...

On Saturday, after spending a week back home in Atlanta, Jack and I flew back to Peoria again, this time for a month! Woohoo! We're loving being here and enjoying lots of Nana and Grandpa time :)

We had a really good week back in Atlanta, as you can see from previous blog posts; we spent Mother's Day with my siblings, had a photo shoot for Jack and his cousins, visited Barnsley Gardens with friends, and went to a birthday dinner party for my boss last Friday. Thanks Robin for hosting!! It was really great to see everyone from work there and specially good to spend time with Paul and Sharon (my boss and his wife) as we won't see them again until August! They're going on sabbatical to England for a couple of months:

Us with Paul and Sharon

Andre spent the weekend in Atlanta, seeing friends and packing all the things I left behind (!) and then drove up to Chattanooga on Monday to take care of some things there. He drove up to Peoria on Wednesday and we're so glad to have him back with us! Jack was very glad to see his Daddy and gave him a big grin.

Andre getting his Jack fix after being away from us for four days

The Picture People

While spending the week back in Atlanta, I received a coupon in the mail from "The Picture People" at the mall. It seemed a pretty decent deal, a free 11x14 and 20% off all other purchases with no sitting fee. Figuring we might as well try it out for fun, Ness and I made an appointment and crossed our fingers, hoping that all three littlies would cooperate and smile at the same time! Hoping for all three was slightly ambitious but we actually got some beautiful photos out of it (and of course spent more than we planned on!). We had such a fun time together and all three kiddos did surprisingly well with the 2.5 hours at the studio. Here's one of our favorites:

Jack (10 weeks) and Alexis (12 weeks)

Barnsley Gardens

Today we hung out with our friends Pip and Dave and decided to take a little road trip up to Barnsley Gardens, a favorite spot of ours and one they hadn't been to yet. It was gorgeous weather, although pretty hot and humid out there already. We had a really fun time, ate at the restaurant, walked the grounds, visited the ruins and ended with ice-cream. Good times.

Little Jack was a trooper!

The ruins of the old mansion

The Rose Walk (they smelt heavenly!)

Back home this evening, chilling with Daddy and having a little cuddle after being in the car seat most of the day

Mother's Day 2010

The morning got off to a rather rushed start as Andre only woke me up at 8:48 am...church starts at 9:15. He fed Jack his bottle at 7 am and decided that I needed to sleep in! After a mad dash to get to church (and we were only 20 minutes late!!), we did enjoy the service and loved catching up with friends we haven't seen in a while. We then headed up to Ness and Sean's for lunch with all the siblings to celebrate Mother's Day. We were just missing our Mum! (and Dad, of course). We miss you Mum and hope you have a WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY!

The clan

The Henrys

The Yakovlevs

Me and Ness with our munchkins

Steve giving Michaela piggy back rides

The Joneses (borrowing babies!)

Visiting Grandpa at work

Today Mum and I went down town to Dad's office to say hi to everyone and show Jack off :) We choose a good day to visit, as they were having a birthday lunch for one of the nurses, so we had a bite to eat with Dad. Yum! Jack behaved himself pretty well, but he wasn't giving out smiles this morning. Quite the serious little guy today!

His shirt has a picture of a dog in a pirate's hat with the words "Mommy's First Mate" embroidered on it. One of the nurses dubbed him "Captain Jack Sparrow"!

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting an estate sale, running errands, making returns and packing for our trip back to Atlanta tomorrow. We are going to be home for a week (full of doctors appointments, visiting friends and catching up with my sister and brother) and then I fly back to Peoria next Saturday for a month. Since I have so much maternity leave, I am making the most of the time off by trying to spend a lot of it with my Mum and Dad. Andre will come up and join us the following week, after working on a couple of projects in Atlanta first. Vanessa will come up with the two girls in June and Steve will be coming for a weekend, so all three of us will be together. Hooray! I love family time!

Jack-in-the-box

So, Mum and I were curious as to how much Jack weighs now, as we haven't had him weighed since his one month check-up, four weeks ago. Being the resourceful (ha!) women that we are, we decided to weigh him on the kitchen scale. This meant finding something to put him in...and a packing box worked nicely!
He slept through the entire experiment and we figured he's somewhere around 10.5 lbs :)

Two months old

Little Jack turned 2 months old today. He's grown so much this past month (we'll find out what he weighs when we go for his check up next week), is sporting a very gratifying double chin and is fitting into some of his 0-3 month clothes (finally!). His eyes are a definite blue now, just like his Daddy and we melt when he smiles. His hair is starting to grow and so his little head is all fuzzy wuzzy right now. So cute. And he LOVES it when we change his diaper...the minute we take his pants off, he starts grinning!! Hysterical! The other thing he loves is his bath; he kicks and coos the whole time and we're subjected to ear piercing screams as soon as we take him out.

Thankfully, he seems to have outgrown his night time fussiness. He now goes to bed around 8:30 and usually sleeps until 5: 30 am. We're all fairing better because of this! We so enjoy watching our little man grow and just love him to bits!

We still can't figure out who he looks like, but we've got some newborn photos of me and Andre which he resembles, so I'll put those in another post.

Happy 2 month birthday to our little Jack!

Smiling at Grandpa

Cuddling with Nana