Hi there!

Ivan graduated top ET of his class from power school. Nora's grandmother was able to come down that weekend to visit and see the ceremony. He got his own special little plaque and when he went to get it all of the other graduates has to stand at attention. The weather cooperated and Jax even slept peacefully through almost all of the ceremony.

After power school Ivan went on hold for 2 months and worked in a lab at the training school. He was happy to have a bit of a break from the studying and Nora and Jax were happy that he was home a little more.

In April we had Nora's mom, sister Rose, her husband William and their son Gus visit. It was really exciting to see the little cousins interact. For those of you that don't know, Gus is exactly 6 weeks older than Jax. At the time Gus was crawling and Jax was still rolling around. We took them all over the area and went to a few gardens that were in bloom for spring.

A few days after Nora's family left, some of our friends from Texas came to visit and we did the garden and tourist circuit again. during this time Jax got sick so we took him to the doctor to find out that he has horrible seasonal allergies! He was given a prescription for baby allergy meds and we continued our garden tours without any further problems.

At the end of April Ivan started his last leg of training; prototype school, he'll be done with that in just a few short months but we probably will not know for certain when and where we are moving to until after his graduation, please don't ask, we don't know, but we will let everyone know as soon as we find out. Just as in the other 2 schools Ivan is excelling and running away with the curve, we know he is getting excited to be finishing up with all this school. As soon as he is done he will be a certified nuclear reactor operator and no one can take that away from him, go Ivan! Right now he has started his 12 hour rotating shifts that will last until his graduation. He hasn't had to work overnight yet, I'm sure that it will be a shock to him when it happens.

As far as Jax news goes, he is crawling, crawling a lot, he will crawl on his hands and knees if he feels like it, but generally prefers to army crawl. He is also pulling up to standing. He just started that a few days ago and is already ready for the next step! Hopefully we can adjust to pulling up before he decides to stand up and walk off. We took him to the beach last weekend for Ivan's class family picnic. Jax had such a good time, I think he is part dolphin, but what did you expect when both of his parents were swimmers?

Sadly our other computer died and we have yet to get most of the pictures off of it, but here are a few from the past months and more recently. Us at Ivan's power school graduation, Jax and Gus at cypress gardens, Jax at wannamecker county park, and Jax at the beach (our friend Cassie was holding him while he was getting his picture taken).

Quick post

I love baby sunglasses. I especially love the way his eyes are, you can see them through the glasses. This picture is so priceless, it's the new background on the computer.
There are new pictures up on the flicker album. I like to just put it on slide show and watch all of them from start to finish.
Ivan is doing really well, he has one of the top gpa's in a class of about 300, and he is overall the top E.T. (his class is made up of E.T.'s, M.M.'s, and E.M.'s) by a pretty wide margin. He just has three tests left before his comprehensive final. He is gearing up to graduate power school on Friday Feb. 13th. He went ahead and volunteered to be on hold for 2 months before beginning prototype school since there were not enough spaces for all the students graduating. He will still be doing something during this time, (its still up in the air which job assignment he got), but his days and hours will be much shorter so he will get to be at home more and spend some more time with Jax and mommy.
Jax is consistently rolling from his tummy to his back and he will roll in the direction of either mom or dad if they are sitting beside him instead of in front of him. He is trying to roll from his back to his tummy, but can't quite get it yet, he can roll up on his side but just can't make it all the way over. He is starting to uncurl from birth, but he still keeps those little legs tucked most of the time. His legs are starting to straighten out from being bowlegged and his feet are starting to get arches and turn out. This past week he started laughing, he has been giving little chuckles for a few weeks and he squeals in delight, but now he does the full blown big hearty laughs. Great news, he has gotten to the point where he doesn't completely hate his car seat, in fact, he usually smiles when he gets in it (he knows he's either going for a ride or walk) and has stopped having huge breakdowns if the car seat isn't in motion, well, the breakdowns are fewer and far between at least.

Well Finally!

We finally have a crib for Jax! Just in time for him to turn 3 months old. The plan was to have one before he was born, but things just didn't work out that way. After finding and researching cribs that we wanted we would go to order or buy them and they would be either discontinued or out of stock indefinitely, this happened 3 times!!! The last time it happened was in August when we found yet another crib that was the style that we wanted, was one we could agree upon and was in our price range with good safety ratings. We went to order it and oh, no longer available in stores, no longer available to order online. That was the final straw for me. I had a mini nervous breakdown fueled by pregnancy hormones and just decided that we were going to use the bassinet in the pack and play for a little while because crib shopping officially sucks. We slowly gathered everything but the crib and went out and found the one we wanted about a month after Jax was born. As soon as all of Christmas was over we ordered that bad-boy so that Jax could start off the new year in a new bed.

After all the heartache that went into finding a 4th crib that matched everything that we both wanted, and then ordering it we thought we were going to be happy and done with it. I was so excited that I went and got all the bedding and ironed everything, including the little fabric flaps on the mobile. We went to babys-r-us the other day and saw it in person in white and it was so ugly, both Ivan and I hated it, it was just so tacky and that's what was coming to our house. When we got home we were both so upset and disappointed. Today when the crib got here I was just going to put it together and be done with it. But much to my surprise, ours didn't look so tacky, it actually looked really nice. I guess just a different finish makes a big difference. I got most of it done and then Ivan finished it off. We put in all of the dinosaur bedding and it looks so cute. Most important of all, Jax is sound asleep in it right now he had absolutely no trouble in the transition from pack and play to crib.

It's Santa!

We took Jax to see Santa today. Of course Santa was at the complete other end of the mall from where we parked. Not usually a big deal, but Ivan is on crutches with a really bad sprained ankle. Jax was really good with Santa and didn't cry until after his visit was over and the picture was bought and paid for. I need to hook-up our scanner and stick that baby on here. Until then this cute picture of Jax in his Christmas outfit will have to do.

Marrington Fields Forever

Things around here have gotten pretty busy with the holidays fast approaching we seem to have run out of time for everything else. Right after Thanksgiving Jax got his first cold it was a little scary at first because he's never been sick before or felt so bad before, but he has come through it with flying colors. Right after he started to feel better we had to go back to the doctor for his 2 month check-up and his first shots. The visit itself was pretty awful and Jax was such a trooper through the whole thing, it wouldn't have been so bad had the clinic not been so over-booked and we wouldn't have had to wait for 2 hours to get everything done. Jax is now weighing in at a whopping 11 pounds 3 ounces and is 22 inches long, for those of you keeping track that's 3lbs2oz over his birth weight and an extra 2 inches. We have to go back again this week for him to get his flu shot because the clinic was all out last week. Hopefully it won't be so bad this next time around.

We have been busy getting the house ready for Christmas and getting all of our gifts in order to send off. Christmas cards are in the works, but may become New Year's cards at this rate.

Mom is doing good, she and Jax go for a small walk most days weather permitting, she goes back to the doctor soon to see if she is cleared for exercise and off of her limited duty rest. Let's all hope that she is cleared, it would be a Christmas miracle.

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Daddy is doing well in school and everyone tells him so. This weekend his class held their class held their class picnic out at marrington fields here on base. We hadn't ventured out there before but it was on the to-do list since there are some nice nature trails there. It was the picture of southern beauty with it's mossy oaks and ponds. Ivan had a good time showing off his family while we watched the different sections of the class have football, ultimate Frisbee, tug of war, golf, and eating contests.




In other news, Sarge has figured out that Jax has hands too. You can now find him rubbing up against those hands anytime we set Jax down. I don't think Jax minds very much since the kitty is soft. Fitzy doesn't really care for the baby yet, but she loves to sleep under the Christmas tree and acts like her being here is our present.



Here is a picture of Jax at the 2 month mark:

a little info

Things here are a little hectic, so the blog has been neglected lately. Ivan has about 2 tests every week, so he is super busy studying or trying to go to bed early. All of his studying is paying off though, he is currently ranked 12th in a class of 319 and moves up a little higher after every test. Nora went to her 6 week check-up the other day and is still on light duty, she did too much heavy lifting and walking too soon after Jax was born and ended up delaying the healing process. She promises that she will be good and hold still for the next month so that she can be better and be able to move around again.

And now for Jax news (that's the whole reason you're reading, right?) Our little guy has decided that now that he's a month old he needs a later bedtime, so he grumbles for about 2 or 3 hours of being put down and finally goes to sleep long about 2. We had a small victory last night and he fell asleep for good after the first time that he was put down, and it was at 1, so we are making a little headway. Also as bedtime approaches he decides that he needs to be grumpy for about an hour. It isn't colic, thank God, but it is pretty frustrating. He is just too excited to go to sleep, but too tired to stay awake without being grumpy. We found out that he loves to be held so that he is standing up, and he will hold it as long as he can before his knees give and then as soon as he can he'll shoot himself back up. He is getting pretty good at balancing himself in a stand so that he can hold himself very briefly independent of our hands. I think it's pretty funny that he can support his whole body, but he is still having trouble holding up his head. We are working on crawling and he is just really improving every time he's on his belly. He can hold his head up at a 90 degree angle for a few seconds and has figured out how to roll over onto his back if his arms are underneath him. He will move his back legs and can actually scoot just a little, he could get further if he figured out how to move his arms too. He also LOVES to dance. Anytime he gets fussy or grumpy all we have to do is put him in his bassinet and turn his mobile on and he will lay there and kick his feet and wave his arms for about 10 minutes while it runs through it's cycle. Now he has started to coo so he will make baby noises and coo and smile at his mobile too. This makes life so much easier to have a solution to a grumpy baby. He is also quite the snuggler. He loves to be held and prefers to be held at all times during the day, but will go to sleep by himself at night (whether he stays asleep is a different matter). He is focusing on faces and he will watch people walking and follow them across a room. He is starting to smile and not have it be related solely to gas and has even smiled upon seeing either one of us and will coo at us. We know we are still really lucky to have a baby who is so sweet and is only fussy for about an hour a day, that is so much better than what it could have been.

Picnic in the Park

Today we took our lunch over to a park/playground area about a block away from our house. We spread out a blanket and had a nice picnic and enjoyed the warm sunshine. We set Jax up on his boppy pillow so that he could sit and watch everything that was going on around him. After we ate we took Jax for his first ride down a slide and he got his first turn on a swing. We tried to find a way to play with him on most of the equipment. He was a pretty good sport about everything and lasted for almost an hour before he was ready to go home and take a nap.