Meet Jake Anthony: Has Anyone Seen My Missing Blogging Time?

I seem to have misplaced or maybe even totally lost the time I used to have to blog. Oh yeah, I think I actually use that time to sleep once in a while now. LOL Isn't it funny how life always seems to get in the way????

Jakey's doing great these days and he continues to grow like a weed. He's hit 60 pounds and is almost 4 feet tall (yes, at 5 he's the size of an average 7 year old) and has the brainpower to match. Now if only his emotional and social skills could catch up we'd be in business;-)

Kindergarten is going really well and he's reading and continues to enjoy math a lot. His latest favorite math thing is to tell you how multiplication and division work "together"... like 5 x 2 = 10 and 10 / 5 = 2. It was quite a hoot watching him try to explain that one to Nanny!!!

His other favorite thing these days continues to be geography. Something he CLEARLY got from the donor because I couldn't even put a map of the USA together if my life depended on it... I tend to get lost in the middle there somewhere. He, on the other hand, can do it in his sleep. And he's progressed to doing puzzles of Europe, Africa, South America, North America (including Canada) and Asia. One day while he was sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner with Uncle JJ, he asked (very innocently) "JJ, what's around France?" After looking at me with a "deer in the headlights look", my brother said "water???" Then Jake said, "no, JJ, do you know what countries around around France?" My brother said "no", so Jakey proceeded to tell him the countries and when he got to Luxembourg, JJ stood up, took his plate and said "this is wrong on SO many levels" and went downstairs to the "man cave" to finish his dinner. It was priceless!! So, be careful, if you run into him these days, he may have a world geography quiz for you.

It's amazing how math and geography come into play in so many of the day to day things that we do too. Tonight, he wanted to try my toothpaste and I was trying to explain to him that I thought it was going to be too "hot" for him and so he asked me to put a "Rhode Island" size drop of toothpaste on his toothbrush. "Rhode Island size"??? Who says that??

A few weeks ago he was telling me about how the kids in his class were telling him that the difference between countries and states was purely related to size. He says "momma, that's not at all true because look at Luxembourg, it would easily fit within the state of Texas. But I didn't tell them because I didn't want them to feel bad for being wrong." Left me wondering how many times I'm wrong and he spares me the embarrassment?!?! LOL

Aunt Bear, Scuzzle and Poppy came over for Christmas dinner and AB was telling a story about one of our trips to the Dominican Republic and she couldn't remember our personal concierge's name. After asking me, which is the equivalent of asking a rock these days (since I gave ALL of my memory brain cells to Jake), she all of a sudden thought wait a minute...I can just ask Jakey. He was in the middle of working on something and without even looking up he says "his name was Oliver". No hesitation, no extra time to think about it, just boom...his name was Oliver. The kid never forgets a thing.

We had a Santa close call this past weekend... Jake has figured out how to climb up onto the roof of this big playhouse that we have in his play room (what normal people would call their formal living room) and slide down with a big BANG onto the floor. Now, when JJ is downstairs, this sounds like about a 7.2 on the Richter Scale. So, I was asking him to please NOT drop down when JJ was downstairs and he was laughing saying he was going to do it because he, of course, thought the whole thing was hilarious (I haven't managed to catch onto 5 yr old humor yet. Luckily though, he and Nanny seem to be on the same wavelength most of the time.). I told him that if he did it again, I was going to remove the roof on the house and that I put it together and I could take it apart. To which he replied, "you didn't put it together, Santa brought me this house". I could hear JJ chuckle in the kitchen like...oooh, you got yourself into this one, Sis. So, I quickly said that Santa leaves directions for these types of things for all parents. And moved us on to another subject. Whewwww...close call, but glad to know that the whole "Santa thing" is still alive and well in our house!!

Speaking of Santa, Jake got an amazing set of instruments for Christmas and has been playing them every day. He now has 3 trumpets (a tub one, a play one and a real one), a clarinet, flute, recorder, drum, saxophone, xylophone, violin and the most awesome keyboard you've ever seen. On Christmas day, the conductor assigned everyone an instrument and Nanny, Aunt Bear, Poppy, Scuzzle and I played song after song (though truth be told, I think we laughed more than we played). I've got to find the pictures of that event, it was quite funny to see everyone and even Poppy was playing his assigned instrument!!! Later Sunshine Mary stopped by and we had to strike up the band again so she could join in. I'm sure the neighbors were loving it...especially the real trumpet.

Back before Christmas, Jake and I had a chance to spend a long weekend out in Flagstaff Arizona visiting an old Chico State University friend of mine, DC and her 5 year old daughter, Izze. (Who, of course, is counted as one of Jake's many "sisters" now) We had a blast and the kids seemed as much like longtime friends as DC and I by the time we left. It was during this trip that Jakey got the chance to try a real bugle and surprisingly he was able to play it on the very first try. DC convinced me that he had a real talent for music and that's where the idea came from for all of the instruments for Christmas. Hopefully I'll get my butt in gear and find him a place to take some lessons soon.

After way, way, way too long, we also were able to catch up with our Fav Four Pak... Hallie, Baby Lea (who isn't a baby anymore but the closest thing we have these days), Abby and Sharon for a day at one of those cool play (more like exploration) places. I have some good pics from that day too, just have to find them. The kids had a blast together and Jakey just loves, loves, loves his sisters!!!!!

Well that's it for now... here are couple of new pics and I'm going to add a couple new ones to the website too. Back soon...(I hope)