Test Results

This week Jordan went for a physical evaluation. Overall, he is on average for his adjusted age of ten and a half months. He interacts well with adults, reacts to sounds properly, and plys with his toys like he should. The people did notice something in a few minutes that we have noticed all summer long. If you give him a toy in his left hand he will eat it. If you give him a toy in his right hand, he will pass to his left - and eat it. They didn't see it, but he will hold a bottle with two hands or only his left. He definitely favors his left and his grandparents and parents think he is left handed.

The biggest problems were the gross and fine motor skills. Picking up something the size of a box of cheerios is gross motor skills. Mostly whole arm type of stuff. Picking up individual cheerios is fine motor skills. Mostly hands and fingers. He was on the low end of normal in both areas. I would love to give him more practice, but there is a big problem with the fine motor skills. The best way to practice that is to let him feed himself. However, he has no teeth. I can't let him have crackers or cheerios until he can chew. Of course, as soon as he learns to eat cheerios, he learns to throw them. Maybe I can wait a little longer.

The one thing they told us to work on is tummy time. They say that he should still learn to crawl.

Does this look like a crawler to you? Does he even look like a sitter anymore?

Family Reunion Pics

Here's your new screensaver Traci.

Jordan - a.k.a. Athos

Isaiah - a.k.a. Porthos

Christian - a.k.a Aramis (the 3 musketeers)

Family Picture

The life preserver is because he HATES to get dunked and he wanted to walk.

Too cute. And baby looks good too.

The family reunion was held at a place called 'Great Wold Lodge'. There are about a dozen of them in the country. They all have water parks in them and are family hotels. The catch is is that the water parks are designed for both kids and adults - not infants. There was screaming, splashing, little waterfalls and all sorts of stuff a 3 year old would love. Infants can only deal with so much stimulus at a time and this infant in particular can only handle being wet in certain ways. Jordan HATES to be splashed anywhere on his body and still cries during baths when his face gets too wet. It took him about 10 minutes before he could deal with all of the activity around him. Kids were running, there were strangers in the pool, there were sprinklers everywhere. His eyes looked bigger than mine. However, after he got used to the stimulus he LOVED it. We should have taken a video where he was laughing while his gums were chattering from the cold water.

Speaking of stimulus, look at the 3 musketeers up top. Christian (3 years) and Isaiah (4 months) are the children of my cousin (I don't know what number cousins are anything they are and I don't particularly care - we're all cousins). Anyway, you are looking at the next 15 Xmases or so. Especially when they can all walk. There was a preview this weekend. Of course Christian loved Jordan and wanted to go play with him. He was told Jordan hadn't learned to walk yet. Christian thought the best way to teach him was to help him. Christian grabbed Jordan's left hand and started walking. I still had Jordan's right hand while trying to slow down the 3 year old. Jordan didn't say a thing because he wanted to play with Christian, but he would have literally been dragged away on the floor if I wasn't there. 3 year olds don't do anything slowly except eat veggies.

One more thing happened on this trip that i just have to mention. When we take jordan out in public, he gets lots of attention. We take him out to the market and he sees people and they see him. People smile at him and he smiles back. The women especially like to do this. Living in FL, we hear at least twice a month were Jordan reminds someone of their grandkid(s). Anyway, the night before leaving we are in a restuarant in Harlem with cousin Tony. He is a little grabby hasn't had solid baby food all day and he's a little fussy. He's been a champ all trip so it's OK, we just try to do our best since it's already past his bed time. The 3 adults are talking about the trip and eventually we forget about the baby. He's in a high chair eating a bib so what could happen? Well we weren't giving him attention so he found a table of 5 women behind us and these women were nobody's grandmother. He was just cheesing for attention and they thought he was adorable. He practically was flirting with them. He couldn't stop smiling directly at them which they thought was adorable so they smiled back at them. It was getting to be a pretty vicious cycle until cousin Tony stepped in.

The last day was marked by flight delays. I won't go into details because if you have ever flown in Atlanta or NY (especially the same day) then you have had the same stories. I'll just say that Jordan couldn't have been better. He doesn't mind flying and he cares nothing for flight delays. He got to spend one flight napping on mommy and the second flight climbing on daddy. Overall he was a perfect baby for this trip. Thank you Jordan!

Tour Pics - Part 2

This is the first time his parents have given him a bath in a sink.

Like I said aunt Rochelle hasn't seen him in nearly a year. He seemed more interested in the doll in this picture, but he absolutely loved her.

Unlike Chicago, he stayed awake in Times Square.

This is Marilyn. More on this pic below.

This is the bed we slept in. He apparently thought it was a playpen because he preferred to stay awake in it.

The second day of the tour, Jordan was amazing. We left Brooklyn before 8am and went to times square. I don't know if all 9 month olds are like this, but he acted like we were in the local supermarket. The scenery was nice, but the strap in the stroller is the real entertainment. We even took a boat tour around the island of Manhattan - his first bost ride - and he handled it like we were driving the family car down the interstate. Due in part to the fact that I forgot how long it takes to walk from 7th to 12th avenue, we returned to Rochelle's house at 4pm. Any other time this would be a busy enough day and we'd relax before bedtime or something. However, this trip had nothing to do with relaxing. We turned around and went to visit Gail in Long Island.

Gail is one of my dad's former coworkers from the 80s. I literally grew up with her son David who is the same age. Also her daughter Alana and husband Steve was there. The funniest part was when I saw Bob. Bob is my dad's former boss. I am 31 years old and literally haven't seen Bob in over 20 years. The last time I saw him he was 20 years younger, had a mustache, black hair, and was twice my height. I heard this stranger say he was some guy named Bob, but I didn't know it was THE Bob for about an hour. Gail has been reading this blog since it began and she was thrilled to meet the baby. My biggest regret is that she will now be bugging her kids to give her a grandchild. Or course everyone was loving on the baby and he was loving them back. He enjoyed Gail's house so much I'm sure he would have stayed all night if given the choice. However, we had to leave at 8pm. I would have posted some pics from there, but all of the pictures were taken on other people's cameras. Oops.

Usually bed time is 8pm, but Jordan is on tour and has plenty of people to meet. Next stop is Marilyn's house. She has known my Mom she says since they were teenagers (My mom was never as young as I am. She was born at 40 years old with some weird desire to force kids to eat vegetables). Marilyn's son Kalik and his girlfriend Angela was there too. Angela's 3 year old daughter has the distinction of being the only toddler in history who didn't want to spend all day playing with Jordan. However, Marilyn more than made up for it. She was wearing a tank top with straps, her hair was braided, and she was wearing loose dangly jewelry. The one year old found her more than entertaining. He hung in there a while too, but eventually he started to crash. Jordan loves being around people and doesn't want to miss out on anything, so he will stay up as long as he can. By 10:30 he was visibly fighting sleep. His mind was saying party but his body was shutting down. He wasn't saying anything, but I felt terrible about it.

The next morning was a very special trip. We went up to the Bonx to visit my grandparents. Of course this was their first time meeting the baby. My grandfather (unsurprisingly) was not as excited as my Nana. We bought them plenty of photos and of course they loved those. I got to let Jordan play in the room I used to play in even though he couldn't walk on his own and would never remember. Actually, thinking back, I think I only got to ply with him for about 5 minutes. Between Traci, Nana, and my Aunt Barbara, he didn't get much floor time. Anyway, towards the end Jordan also got to play with Aunt Barbara, my mother's sister. We would have stayed a lot longer but it was time for us to drive to Pennsylvania. We had to attend the Ross Family Reunion!

Tour Pics - Part 1

First let me say that there are more pics coming. I just haven't downloaded all of the pictures yet. These pics are from the first part of the trip.

Jordan is about ready to go. He doesn't know where he is going, but he knows he's ready to go there.

I know this is Jordan's blog, but I have a fondness for cute ladies.

Actually, all 3 of us have a fondness for her.

These previous 2 pics are very special ones for me. The one directly above is my Aunt Barbara who of course has never met the baby before. The one above that is my grandmother (Jordan's great-grandma), Nana. That picture alone was worth the entire trip.

We flew from Orlando to LaGuardia and it took 4 hours. No delays, just a stop in Canton, OH. Of course, Jordan was a champ. We kept him fed, he kept us busy, but he also kept quiet. He just spent half the flight sleeping and half the flight trying to get us to put him down. I don't know why since he can't stand on his own, but he tried really hard. After landing, we met my younger sister and her husband at the airport, then rented a car and drove to my older sister's house. She hasn't seen Jordan in about 16 pounds (He is currently almost 20). Then all 6 of us went out to a great Thai restaurant. The only problem with the restuarant is that they made no pretense of being a family restaurant. They didn't kick us out of anything, but there were no high chairs, no changing tables in the bathroom, and I don't know if there is such a thing as a kid's menu for Thai food. The aunts learned a very important lesson. You must be very careful when you have a one year old sitting on your lap - they grab everything and hold nothing. He reached for everything and unfortunately got hold of a cup of Sprite. Aunt Rochelle and I were sticky for the rest of the day.

After the restaurant we took a nickel tour of lower Manhattan's bridges and then dropped Aunt Traci off at the house of some old friends. We left the restaurant at about 8pm and then woke him up at 9pm to see the old friends. We didn't take him out to play, but he did wake up. Then he fell asleep when we drove back to Aunt Rochelle's. We had to carry him upstairs at 10pm (we never have stairs in FL) and laid him on a strange bed in a strange house. He figured we wanted him to stay awake since we kept waking him up, so he obliged. We placed him in between us on a king size bed where he proceeded to play and kick even though we were dead tired. He was totally silent, but he taught us a lesson about constantly waking up a sleeping baby. He played in bed in between his parents for over an hour. I thought only pregnant women were supposed to experience the 'Joy' of a baby kicking them in the ribs all night.

First, a little perspective

We are finally back from the trip to NY. I had a great time, but I’ll go into that later when I get the pics downloaded. I just want to say one thing. We really make life to complicated. We left my sister’s house yesterday at 7:45 am. Due to weather and delays and such we arrived home at 9:45 pm. That is 14 hours of traveling. Driving would have taken 16 and a half if we went the speed limit. We all have horror stories like this so I won’t go into detail. However, my boy performed like a champ. I can’t tell how fun it is when we land and the person in the seat in front of us says they didn’t know there was a baby behind them. All day long Jordan wanted to stand up and play with people. When we sat on the tarmac, he wouldn’t let me or the people next to me be unhappy. His parents spent all day worrying about the time and worrying about him. He didn’t care about the time and he knew he was OK. Sometimes I think adults make thing too complicated. He found the greatest joy in simply walking through the terminal while everyone smiled at him. I was complaining about my feet hurting. I was complaining about only being able to eat fast food when changing planes. He thinks formula is nature’s perfect food. He spent all day playing, napping, and eating. He loved every minute of it. I think sometimes we make being adults harder than it needs to be. We all got to walk, we all got to play with each other, we all got to eat, and we all got home. For a baby, that is a very good day.