9 months old

Sweet baby Jaxon is now 9 months old and taking over the house! He is so small, but yet has the biggest personality! He loves to practice pulling himself up on all the furniture: coffee table, couch, chairs, toys, drawers, you name it he's probably done it. He will pull himself up, sit down and then pull himself right back up. He can stand for a good amount of time, well over a minute, if he wants to. His legs are getting so strong! His two top lateral incisors have finally cut through the gums so we now officially have 6 teeth total, and I am pretty sure another one is going to be coming soon. I also have one very chatty little man. He loves to babble all day long. He does this silly thing where he almost whispers and goes through all the consonants he knows and adds "a" at the end of them. For example, he'll whisper, "da, ba, pa, ca" over and over again. The one word he definitely knows how to say is "hey". You can say "Hey Jaxon!" and he'll say hey back. It's the cutest thing. He's talked to Jake a couple times on the phone and when Jake starts taking Jaxon will say hey to him. Jaxon has also learned how to clap and loves to practice doing that as well too. His 9 month pediatrician appointment is on Tuesday, so I'll update this to let you all know how much he weighs and his length.

My mom came out to visit for a little over a week. We had a great time going to the San Diego Zoo and up to Los Angeles to the wax museum and walking around Rodeo Drive. She bought Jaxon a toy that he can pull up and try to push around the house. He's taken 1-2 steps by himself already!! I was hoping Jaxon would wait to walk until Jake was back home in November, but it's looking like he might have his own plans.

Jaxon's separation anxiety is not getting any better. I can't even walk to the kitchen without him fussing and following me. The poor little man can't control his emotions and thinks everything is such a travesty. It's very hard to see him get so upset, but I know it is just a phase and soon he won't even want to hang out with Mom anymore so I'm enjoying this small amount of time he does.

Just in case anyone was wondering, it is impossible to change his diaper now! What should be a 45 second ordeal has now turned into a 10 minute job. As soon as you take his diaper off he is rolling away, arching his back and making a run for it. I think I'm going to be trying out those new Huggie Slip-On diapers and see if that makes it any easier because right now I dread each diaper change.

With Jake being gone I am planning on trying to stay busy with some DIY projects around the house. I want to paint our nightstands in our bedroom and possibly even build a sofa table. I've never worked Jake's drill before so we'll see if that actually happens or not.

I can't remember if I told you guys about finishing my second online class on September 1st or not. It was the biomedical statistics class and I got an A! I applied for the nursing program as soon as I received my final grade so now I am just waiting to get an email with my testing and essay date (probably late October/early November). I need to start studying for the test, though. I should check out our local library and see if they have any books on it.

Jake and I also bought a new (to us) vehicle since my last post! We traded in my Suzuki XL7 for a 2008 Mercury Mariner Hybrid. It is very nice and clean and so far it is getting great gas mileage! My old SUV was getting about 16-17 mpg and this one is getting 30 on average. When I am just doing city driving I can get upwards of 36 mpg and Jake said he's even gotten 40! When we purchased the car it came with a 1 month/1000 mile warranty from the dealership. Well multiple times now the entire cluster has gone out while driving. The first time it happened to me I was sitting at a stoplight and noticed everything on the dashboard turned off and my speedometer was stuck, but everything came back on within a minute and worked fine afterwards. About a week after that, Jake wanted to take my car to work so he drove to a friends house in the morning to pick him up and he said the cluster went out when he was almost to the house. When he shut the car off, it was unable to start and so Jake had to end up taking his car to work that day. At that point we decided to take the car into the dealership to get it looked at and of course, since it happens so intermittently, they couldn't find anything wrong with it. They had my car for a week and that's what they told me. Well, yesterday after dropping my mom off at the airport I was driving home on the highway and the cluster went out again!!! Before it had happened on non-busy roads and side streets, well the highway is completely different. Better yet, instead of it just going out for a minute like it had previously, it was off for 37 minutes total! Turns out, if the cluster isn't working the a/c in the car doesn't work either, so Jaxon and I were so hot on the drive home since it was 100+ degrees here yesterday.  This time I took a picture of the dashboard to show to the mechanics on Monday and hopefully they will find the problem this time. It is so disappointing to get a new car and you have problems with it within a week of purchasing it.


Well, enough about my car rant. I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera for a few weeks so when I do that I will make another post with lots of pictures!

EDIT:: Jaxon weighed 20 lbs 14 oz and was 27.75" at his appointment on Tuesday. He did great with his shots!

Miss you all,
Alycia, Jake and Jaxon