Family bowling

During Memorial Day weekend we stayed in town, and decided to go bowling together. It was definitely an experiment.

Jake was given the lightest weight ball they had and the bumpers were up, but it wasn't easy!
Slow ball rolling...
Still, it was pretty cool. Scores from the first game.


Second game. We all kind of got tired, ha.
The littlest bowler. Very cute.

Dogsitting

For 2 days and 2 nights, we dogsat for some good friends of ours. Snickers, an 11 month old standard poodle/schnauzer mix puppy joined us. Snickers had been to our house a week prior for a dinner with our friends, so it wasn't an unfamiliar place.

Nevertheless, she was not happy when her owners left and stared at the door and cried for 30 minutes.

But then we took her for a walk. And then later to the dog park. She was a pretty happy dog after that. (Grandma and Grandpa were with us then, and they enjoyed the dog, too!)
At first, Jake and Snickers weren't too sure about each other, but then by the second day they were friends. They especially loved playing with the ball together.
She's a sweet dog and we had fun, but there were 2 who were VERY, VERY happy when she left -- the cats!

Spelling

Jake spelled his first word today! Well, first word other than J-a-k-e, which he's been doing for awhile.

Out of the blue, he looked at me and signed/said "d-e-b" spells bed! He got all the right letters! So cool.

Also, screen-free week has unexpectedly continued with an unwelcome visitor, the Flu. Flu has also given Jake a headache so no TV watching because it makes his head hurt more. So there has been lots of sleeping, book-reading, and cuddling.

He's getting better already, and we are seeing signs of a growth spurt, both physically and mentally. Such as spelling his first word.

Screen-Free Week Update

Screen-free week was officially over as of Sunday morning. Okay, it was a day short of a week but we figured that 6 days in a row was pretty good!

The rest of the week went pretty well. Wednesday after school and swimming Jake was so tired he napped in the car on the way to pick up our eggs and go home. Nothing I could do about that. Thursday in the afternoon he was obviously tired, and ended up napping during a car ride. It made me wonder how much more energy he was using by doing things all day long instead of watching a movie or playing on the computer. But what was neat to see was that he was getting better at finding ways to entertain himself. Of course, the "new" cookset toys sure helped!

Friday went well, and we just barely made it to a friend's house before he fell asleep, but then he had lots of fun playing and didn't fall asleep on the ride home. Saturday there were errands, yardwork, and fun playing with random things as Mike and I cleaned out the office. I have also almost memorized the library books.

During the week I noted that it does take more energy for him to do things all day instead of having some resting time in front of a screen. It takes more energy for the parents, too!

Sunday morning he watched a movie. When it was over he started whining to watch more. Mike and I couldn't believe how quickly that came back and we worked with him to divert to another activity. The rest of the day he was great about not asking to spend time on the TV or computer. We're definitely going to keep this up, and with the warmer weather coming it will be even easier. We also brought one of those kitchen/egg timers so Jake can have more of a visual on how much time he can have in front of a screen.

All in all the week was a success in changing some habits, both for Jake and his mom and dad!

Some weekend pictures

This one was actually from last weekend. We all went to the playground and Jake was so tired by the time he got back that he could barely make it inside the door.
This Saturday we had some sun and it was briefly warm. The boys mowed the grass while playing their usual game -- racing each other. Jake does have a pretty unfair advantage by not having a lawn mower in his hands.
Run, run! Mow mow!
Shirtless. Means summer is coming!!
With the grandparents' help, we got the little red table moved upstairs. Later, we'll convert it to more of a desk with paper, pens, computer, etc. but for now Jake wanted to continue cooking on it.