this is not a toy

pretty soon my dear husband will be regretting that he ever

let jacob lay eyes on his precious instrument,

let alone his HANDS.

but i thought this was pretty cute.

here is jacob displaying his future in guitar-playing

and his new favorite thing to do all day long (pulling himself up)

*no, jacob does not hit his head on the guitar after the tape stops rolling*

it's been awhile

let's see....what has happened since the last time i posted?

jacob had his first christmas. isabel and jacob got to visit santa at the mall (much to their daddies' dismay- $20 for 2 5x7 photos- what a waste of money. hmm?)




jacob enjoyed watching his big cousins, Ryan and Lindsey, play, just as much as they enjoyed watching him.




Ryan even was gracious enough to let jacob play with his beloved Cars (the movie) Lightning McQueen collection.




we spent the holidays in pittsburgh where we were able to celebrate Christmas with both mine and jesse's family. here is a picture of my sisters and me with the kids:




jesse had his 28th birthday on december 31st- but due to illnesses in the Nordine family, we celebrated 5 days later. happy birthday lee and jesse! (both turned 28 on the 31st)



we welcomed in the new year without a bang - we both fell asleep in front of the tv by 11:30 pm. i guess we are officially boring people. sad day!



sorry it's been so long....i have no one to blame but myself. :)

christmas at the museum

this is what jesse and the other museum artists have been busy working on: a statue of Mary & Joseph and baby Jesus, along with the starry ceiling, decorating the main hall of the Creation Museum

teething, crawling, christmas....what's next?

just a little update on the progress of this boy who is growing up faster than we can believe... jacob is officially crawling. not Indy 500 crawling, but he gets around, nonetheless. he can do them all: army crawl, bear crawl, and regular crawl, but not all at once, and not all in the same day. he likes to mix it up a bit. :)

and after 4 or 5 nights of jacob waking up at 1 in the morning, crying like no other, and waking up way too early from every single nap, i finally figured out why...we have a tooth! well... it's trying to come up, but not all the way there yet. i love it when i can figure out the reason for his unusual behavior. thank you Lord for giving me wisdom...most of the time!

and we finally got a good shot for his Christmas picture. we decided not to include jackson...it was just too much to ask of them both!

and some of the runners-up:

a new look

i was just wandering around blogspot and found a couple new features for our blog...complete with a new look. same old boring stuff...and lots of pictures of our son. :) please take time to participate in my new "poll". (my attempt to make myself feel better about only having bought 3 out of 10 christmas gifts so far.)


now, try not to laugh...yesterday, jesse made attempt #1 at a christmas photo of jacob and jackson. between jacob's drunken face and jackson's inability to look at the camera on command, it made it difficult to get a good shot. i wasn't there- so what WAS jackson looking at??? we will be making attempt #2 very soon.

happy birthday to me...

it was a weekend full of fun as i celebrated my 27th birthday. it all began on friday with a surprise at work. my friend candace had made cupcakes and invited a group of my friends to sing happy birthday to me....a surprise to me. and lets just say, i think all 150 people in the office heard them singing- what a nice embarrassing moment. :)

it continued onto friday evening, jesse took me out to my favorite mexican restaurant, abuelo's, while jacob attended a night of free babysitting called "Time Out" (courtesy of a group of Creation Museum staff).

and still it continued onto saturday morning, as my friends jessie and mandy were to take me shopping...only to find a SURPRISE birthday brunch waiting for me when we went to pick mandy up at her place. so i got to enjoy my favorite meal (yes, breakfast) with a group of 6 girls. we ate pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, delicious scrambled eggs, biscuits and chocolate gravy, danish pastry from Panera, fresh fruit and dip, hash browns, and i am sure i am forgetting the other things. it was a wonderful surprise and a nice time together.




saturday evening jesse and i decorated the tree. we went with simple this year- just snowflakes and white lights. it is all we needed and all we cared to spend time on.



brithday morning i woke up (at 8 am- yes that is a huge sleep-in!) to the smell of baking cake and pancakes. jesse had my cake in the oven and he was fixing me pancakes for breakfast.
we spent a nice day together as a family...even though jesse and i are still getting over colds and we were slightly feeling miserable....it was a good day. :)




and i can't end without mentioning the tragic ending of my birthday day....all i need to say is Bengals-10, Steelers-24.....sniffle........

thanksgiving: part 2

here are some pictures from our weekend in pittsburgh

the hanna family grandkids [from left: Lexi and Eva (held by their grandma Stotler) Connor, Philomena, and Trevor in front (held by their grandma Hanna) Jacob (held by his gammie Pié)]

the spring babies: philomena was born 3 weeks before jacob,

and connor was born 2 weeks after jacob.

jacob in the highchair his mommy used when she was a baby

grandma and grandpa mclane