Milestones (yeah) and sickness (yuck)

We have had quite the eventful February! Full of both good and bad. I am a proud mom and admittedly not so great at keeping the baby book updated, so this blog is a good place to record stuff. Anyway, first for the good news: Harrison is crawling. Not conventional, but rather a hybrid military-style army crawl, inch-worm type of thing but it gets the job done! He also has some new teeth on the bottom, which he really likes to rub his tongue over all of the time. He's started "dancing" (okay, so rocking back and forth) to music and clapping his hands. Harrison can sit back up from being on his tummy, a very proud moment in his life. You should have seen the look on his face. He still loves spaghetti, yogurt, chicken, cheese and pizza. Dad's Tootsie roll pops are another favorite (yep, Mom saw that...) The not-so-good news: we ended up spending the night in the hospital on Feb. 8th due to a bout of sickness. It started as RSV, which turned into bronchiolitis. This apparently caused his little airways to constrict, and so while he was sleeping he wasn't getting enough oxygen. Needless to say, none of us got a whole lot of sleep that night. Corey and I were eating McDonald's on the floor at midnight, before attempting to sleep on a very narrow fold-out chair...attempting is the key word. We got to go home on Sunday afternoon, thank goodness, and he has been doing well until yesterday (2/24) when he ended up with a temp in the afternoon and turned out to be another ear infection in both ears. I can't wait until spring when all this junk is out of the air! Other than all that, he's been as much of a joy as ever and manages to smile even when he's not feeling that great. We are looking forward to our rescheduled trip to Lincoln this weekend and Great-Grandpa Zylstra's 81st birthday in a few weeks.

Getting ready to head to church...

Hello all. Hope everyone is happy and warm on this Super Bowl Sunday. It's kind of depressing that after today we have to wait until August for football again. Harrison turned 9 months this past week. Yesterday we took him to get some pictures taken to celebrate the occasion. He was on the verge of a nap the entire time, but was in a good mood till the very end.

Ankeny continues to treat us well. Feeling more like home all the time. Next weekend, barring any weather surprises, we're going to head to Lincoln for the first time since the big move. We are very excited to see everyone we can while we're there. We also continue to enjoy life without any classes to take. For those that didn't know, Erin and I completed our MBAs this past semester. It was quite the relief to have that done.

As always, enjoy the pictures of the little guy. Go Cardinals.

Happy New Year!

My how a month has flown by since our last post. We must apologize to any followers of this blog for our period of inactivity. Hopefully with all the holiday commotion, you'll cut us some slack.

2008 brought many exciting changes for us Jansens, and we are hopeful that 2009 will be filled with a little bit more stability. We are loving Ankeny and being back close to home. What a blessing that has been. The new house is treating us well. Definitely a little more driveway to scoop, but I suppose that just makes it a better workout.

Harrison continues to grow and amaze us everyday. He continues to be such a blessing in our lives, though he has provided plenty of challenging moments this year. Ear infections and the croup have made winter something to be despised. As of this post, Harrison is feeling better. We'll cross our fingers that nothing else from daycare finds its way back to our household.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and enjoyed bringing in 2009 with a Hawkeye victory. As always, we've provided some new pictures of the little fella for your viewing pleasure. Take care everyone.

Happy Friday!

Just a few new pictures to wish everyone a happy Friday. Harrison is now almost sitting up, rolling over both ways, eating real food (when he feels like it), and in the middle of his second ear infection. That last one is not so much fun and the medicine is terrible but we are getting by.

We’ve been in the new house now for 3 weeks and loving it. Harrison is adjusting nicely to his new daycare and making lots of new friends. He still loves his exersaucer and is infatuated with tags (like the ones with care instructions, etc. Yes, it’s the little things). His silky puppy blankie is a lifesaver and a must-have at bedtime or naptime.

Take care and stay warm!

6 months and going strong

Hard to believe November is already here. We had a perfect evening for Halloween on Friday night. We had ourselves a pretty scary dragon on our hands. Harrison was a kind enough to allow us to parade him around to the grandparents in his costume. Pretty ferocious.
Harrison hit the big 6 month milestone this past week. It's pretty surreal to think that nearly 6 months ago our lives changed forever. Pretty cool stuff. The little guy is doing great despite the fact that he's been born into the worst Michigan season of all time. We're all over here just asking for a win over Ohio State to close out the year to make it all good. Pretty simple request.
Harrison has been getting into the solid foods now. Applesauce and sweet potatoes, along with oatmeal have been the favorites thus far. Okay, they're pretty much the only things thus far. He had his 6 month appointment this past week and had another round of shots. Poor guy. But, everything else checked out good.

We closed on the house on Tuesday and painted this weekend. We'll be moving to the new place for good on the 14th. It'll be pretty exciting to get all of our stuff out of storage. Almost like Christmas.

That's all for now. Hope everyone reading this is doing well. Take care.

DM Half Marathon

Corey and Harrison came out to watch me run the Des Moines half marathon last Sunday, Oct. 19th. It actually went better than I'd expected (I think I ran faster to see those two handsome boys at the finish line :).

This one's not at the marathon but I just thought it was so cute I had to add it in!

Our first blog video

I know it's a bit belated, but I'm finally posting a video of our little guy. While Teryl and I were in Ann Arbor watching Michigan get pummeled by Illinois, Erin and Grandma Carol were able to capture some video on camera of Harrison eating some rice cereal. I'll let you all decide if he likes it or not.

Teryl and I had a great time up north and enjoyed getting to spend time with Jim and Jennifer Ver Ploeg and their kids, Rachel and Jacob. For those of you who don't know, Jim is Teryl's first cousin. We went to the Big House on Saturday, which was great. Always great to go to Michigan Stadium. One of these days, though, hopefully I'll see a win. Oh well.

Hope you are all enjoying the fall weather. Hopefully it lasts awhile before winter sets in. Take care everyone.