I went on a little expedition today.  I’ve been working on my mountain climbing skills for the last week or so.  Seeing as we don’t have many mountains in the flatlands of central Illinois I’ve had to settle for our stairs.  I started slow but I’ve really hit my stride in the last day or two.  Today I made it all the way to the summit of Mt. Ourbasementstairs.  It was trecherous but the view from the top was spectacular (and the yogurt melt trail snacks weren’t bad either).

Here are some of my journey highlights:

For my final 10 for 10 post, recapping a few  highlights from the past few months (mainly the ones that have the best video/pics) I thought I’d just show you a few fun clips of me playing.  That’s right.  I’m getting old.  I can play now.  I know, I know.  I probably shouldn’t get too cocky.  I’ve only been to a playground a couple of times but I can tell already…I’m going to be good.  Of course, I’ve been good in my own swing for a long time now:

But late this fall my horizons were broadened to include all kinds of other fun playground paraphernalia.  I’ve tried several other types of swings, some slides and lots of other fun stuff. 

Dear Local Playgrounds,

Look out this spring.  The Jack Man is coming for you and you’ll never be the same again!

Like I’ve said before, there isn’t really much that I like more than eating. And I’m not too picky either. It can be anything from day old cheerios I find on the floor to the finest selections from Gerber, I love it all.

Because I love food so much I made a trek into the kitchen to see what I could discover and I found some awesome stuff! Apperently we have this stuff called tupperware. I know it’s technically not edible but I’ve really enjoyed chewing on it all the same. I just hope they don’t start making me do the dishes!

Those of you who know me well know that I am a pretty content guy.  Some might call it lazy (mom and dad…I’m looking at you) but I like to call it resourceful.  I’m just conserving energy.  Because of my “resourcefulness” I really didn’t crawl for a long time.  Instead I’d just sit/lay with or roll to the closest thing to me and play with that.  Recently though, my parents decided it was time for me to crawl so they did a little coercing with the one thing that I REALLY care to move for…food.  (By the way, that just makes sense.  Moving for food ensures that my energy will be replenished and it will therefore be worth my effort…duh!)

I can’t believe I’m posting this but my parents took a video of me right after I first crawled.  I’m so slim and trim that…well…I crawled out of my pants.  That’s right.  I’m just that fast.

Since my first time crawling was too fast for my pants to stay on, let alone to catch on video, my parents and I decided to shoot this little crawling session a week or so ago.  Here I am in all my HD bear crawling glory.

It’s been a fun first Christmas.  It all started with a fun afternoon at church.  I hung out with some entertaining people and celebrated Jesus’ Birthday with friends.  Then mom and dad let me play with some of the candles they had on stage.  Don’t worry though, they were battery operated. 

We had a number of family gatherings and I got lots of things that light up, play music and keep me in a non-stop state of ADD bliss.  Of course, since I’m a pretty mellow and focused guy, it’s a little overkill but I’m really grateful for all of the fun gifts anyway.  I’m working on a toy rotation right now to make sure they all get played with.  We don’t want anything getting left out.  I also got some really cool books and some fun clothes so I’ll continue to look as stylish as ever.

I had a lot of fun times at different Christmas celebrations with family and friends.  There was lots of eating, napping, cuddling and crawling.  And of course there were lots of laughs.  I especially found it amusing one time in particular when my uncle Marc was tossing a can of playdoh in the air.  Not sure why it was so funny but since when do I need an excuse to laugh?

Essentially though, Christmas this year for me was all about one thing…paper!

 Tonight was bath night so I thought I’d share this fun video from a bath I took a week or two ago.  They called it a bath but it wasn’t like any bath I’ve ever taken.  First of all, I had to sqeeze in with both mom and dad.  I’m small so that might not seem like such a big deal but I’m used to having an entire big tub to myself.  Then, once we got in, the water started exploding all over the place with tiny bubbles.  One quick word of warning…just because they look like marshmellows does NOT mean they taste like them too. 

And just for fun, here are a few pictures from my bath tonight…

Get ready.  No seriously, you may want to prepare yourself before you watch this video.  Last month my parents took  me to their huge bathroom mirror.  If you thought I was cute before, double the Jack may just be overload.

One of the coolest things I was able to do over the past few months was get back together with Jeremy Fenelon, a photographer friend of mine.  You may remember him from the photo shoot I posted about last March.  I was really pretty small then so I held back some but this time I was 7-8 months old so I felt like I could have some fun.  It was a COLD day but the sun was out and the leaves were beautiful which you can see in the pictures if you’re able to stop looking at my cute little face.  Good luck with that though. 

You can see some of the best shots below or you can check out even more of them here. 

When I was little I had a little blue hat with a turtle on it.  It was cool I guess, for a baby.  But as I grew up it became time to dress a little more grown up.  After all, you have to grow up sometime.  So my parents and I went shopping and we picked out this cool brown hat.  It had been a while since I’d worn one so I decided to give them a little show.  (Of course, I knew what it was on my head…duh.  I was just having a little fun with my parents who obviously got a kick out of it.)