Jake was born without much fuss. Michaela was almost three and "Baby Jake" was due in the beginning of January. We didn't have any trouble with the pregnancy (I remembered the ordeal with Michaela and the triple screen blood test so I REFUSED to take it this time!) and there wasn't any debate over the name. We decided to name him Edward James after Ed and my grandpa. I wanted a nickname for him that wasn't so grown up sounding and when I was looking through baby name books, I discovered that James and Jacob are from the same origin and have the same meaning so I suggested "Jake". Michaela immediately started running around calling him "Baby Jake" and of course it stuck. We do get funny looks when we talk about Jake to someone who has his official name in front of them. They always want to know where it came from. So I'm a little crazy, none of us are perfect.
I was teaching and we were going into Christmas break on December 15th. Since the baby was due the first week of January, I wasn't going back to work after the break until February and I had not gotten anything ready for the hospital or being home with a newborn. We got out of school Friday and I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning the house. Michaela and I were staying home the next week to get ready for Christmas and baby Jake and Ed would be on vacation, but he had to direct the morning show on Monday (he works at a television station for anyone who doesn't know) so he went in to work about 5am. The show was from 5:30 to 7:00 and Ed was the only one that could direct because someone had to take the day off. Right after he left, my water broke at 5:15. I was home alone with a 2-year-old who was asleep, no family in town, and my husband was inaccessible for the next two hours. Even if I could get him to answer his phone during the show, there wasn't anything he could do, so I went back to bed for a while. I got up about 6:30 and packed a bag for me, packed a bag for the new baby, and a bag for Michaela. I didn't know where she was going but she would have to go somewhere so I figured it was best to have a bag. We had a couple that were good friends of ours who were going to keep Michaela for a couple of days when we had to go to the hospital but since Jake was so early, they were on a cruise. She had an ear doctor's appointment anyway that morning and the ear doctor was right next to the hospital so I figured that Ed could take her while we waited for Jake's arrival. Finally, about 7:15 I decided to go ahead and call him. He freaked out! He hurried everyone and got the last things done that he had to do and left. That night in the hospital we watched the evening newscast and they congratulated us on the new baby and the anchor even mentioned that I had waited two hours in labor before I called and bothered Ed at work! Anyway, Ed picked us up and we all went to the Emergency Room. We got settled in a room and Ed took Michaela to her appointment and I called the daycare to ask if we could bring her out for the day. They were so exicited they didn't charge us for the day and even asked if we needed someone to come and get her! We were very lucky to have GREAT daycares when we were in Texas :) Ed got back to the hospital at 10:30am and Jake was born at 10:45. We had our baby Jake!
There were several friends that came to visit at the hospital and one of the teachers that I worked with picked up Michaela and kept her for a couple of days so I could rest. (Thanks again Rita and Raymond! We love you guys!) They called her "No, Michaela". If I keep writing and you keep reading you'll understand why if you don't already! Once we got home and settled in, it was clear that Jake was an entirely different baby than Michaela. He was calm and relaxed. He didn't need much and was usually content no matter what was going on. Michaela was in love with her baby brother. She liked to play with him so much and she couldn't wait until he got big enough to play with her too. She liked to climb INSIDE his carrier...with him in it. You know, the carseat carriers that have the handle on them, when Jake was sitting in it on the floor she would squeeze in between him and the handle. She grabbed the edges of the carrier near the top by his head and put her knees on the edges down by his feet and she would make faces and talk to him as she rocked the entire carrier back and forth! And not gently. Jake would just lay there and look up at her adoringly. We were frequently saying things we never thought anyone would say... "Michaela, don't drag your baby brother by his head!", "Don't put your fingers in his mouth...I know he sucks HIS thumb, but that doesn't mean he wants YOURS", "Stop trying to buckle yourself in the baby carrier, you're going to get stuck", and eventually "How did you BREAK the side of the crib?!?!" Life has never been dull with these two.
We went for a long time without many "Baby Jake" stories because we thought he was a sweet little angel. Ed and I neither one had much experience with kids and so for the longest time we thought Michaela was normal too. Our first real clue that we were in trouble was when her daycare director pulled me aside one day to "talk". Michaela had just turned two and I was still pregnant with Jakey. The director said she needed to talk to me one day when I went to pick her up. She asked, "Does Michaela EVER listen to either of you?" I was shocked and really didn't know what to say. "Well, sometimes. She is a little wild but she will do what we tell her eventually." She went on to explain that Michaela didn't do anything that a normal 2-year-old doesn't do (which is bad enough, I'm told) but she does it all 10 times faster than all the others. The minute they took her down off the bookcase, they would turn around and she was on top of the table. So when Jake was little, compared to Michaela, he WAS an angel! They would play together and Michaela took whatever she wanted. If Jake was playing with a toy and she wanted it, she snatched it away from him. He would look at her a minute, put his thumb in his mouth, and find another toy. She dragged him around, took his toys, demanded he watch or play what she wanted, and he thought that's how life was supposed to be so he just accepted it.
Now he did have his moments here and there. The whole first year of his life he had almost constant ear infections. He never showed any symptoms...again, very laid back kid!...we would take him to the doctor for what was supposed to be a "Well Baby" check and he would have an ear infection, or two! No fever, no fussing, no pulling at his ears. But when he turned one and still wasn't walking or saying words like he should have been, the doctor sent him to a specialist for his ears. He had to have tubes put in at 14 months. One month later, he was walking and two weeks after that he was kicking a soccer ball up and down the field at his sister's games. Unfortunately, due to the constant fluid in his ears, he was behind in his speech so he started seeing a speech therapist at about 17 months. Laura Beth was really great with him and he quickly picked up sounds and words that he had not been hearing before. Now because of the developmental delay, they did evaluate him just in case there were other issues. Laura Beth would try to see how he reacted when he was angry to make sure he showed anger in appropriate way,s so to make him mad she would fuss with him when he was playing or take his toys out of his hand. She got so frustrated because she couldn't get any kind of reaction from him, he would just ignore her or play with something else. We told her she needed to meet Michaela. After a year of therapy, he had come so far along he was actually ahead of his age level and he tested out of the program. Honestly, I was sad to see her go. I really liked Laura Beth and Jake liked playing with her!
There was the time when he was about two that he was in the playroom watching TV and he managed to pull the TV over on his foot. We had it sitting on the floor so that it wouldn't fall on the kids and hurt them but obviously, they were too smart for us. He figured out how to hurt himself with it anyway. He cried and cried and the foot was bruised so I took him to the ER to see if it was broken. Fortunately, it was just bruised. A couple months later though he was playing in the living room with Ed and he was running back and forth between the couch and the TV. He was laughing really hard (he loves playing with daddy!) and I told them both they needed to settle down. But they kept playing crazy in the house and a couple minutes later SMACK! Jake was running toward the big TV while he was laughing and he tripped and slammed face-first into the TV stand. Ed took him straight into the bathroom and yelled for me. When I looked at Jake, he had blood all over his mouth and chin. I couldn't even tell what was bleeding! Ed wiped his face and I looked at his mouth and his front tooth was bent all the way back to the roof of his mouth! It was so gross! I'm usually not very squeamish, I can handle all kinds of blood and guts and gore but I can't stand needles and teeth. I thought I was going to throw up. But I couldn't leave his tooth like that, I was afraid it would heal that way and mess up his whole mouth. So I reached in and grabbed the tooth and tried to put it back in the right position. The stupid tooth popped right out. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to take him to the ER if they couldn't do anything anyway but I didn't want to ruin the tooth if it could be fixed. So I called one of my studnets. It was 7pm and I knew her dad was a dentist. I had her cell phone number because she had babysat for us before. He was super nice and I felt like an idiot for bothering him at home at night...but it was my baby's tooth! There wasn't anything they would do so Jake is still missing that front tooth. There is a picture of him and his big sister both with big goofy gap-toothed smiles. We are hoping he will start getting his permanent teeth soon but I don't know what he will do with a full set! He got another trip to the ER the next summer when he was three. He had been playing with Michaela and came out of the playroom coughing. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had a penny in his throat. Are you kidding me?!! "You swallowed a penny?!" "No, I didn't swallow it all the way, it's stuck." Oh, of course, silly me. So he was three and maybe he didn't really put a penny in his mouth. But after a few minutes of talking to him, it was pretty clear that he had TRIED to swallow the penny but he didn't think it made it all the way down. I knew it wasn't blocking his airway because he was talking and coughing but I wasn't sure that it had really gone all the way down either. A penny is kinda big, it could get struck somewhere in a 3-year-old's esophagus right? So we went to get an X-ray and we could see the penny sitting right in the middle of his tummy. The nurses were trying not to laugh about it when they told me that the entrance was the smallest part and the penny would "come out" on its own. As long as they were sure it was going to come out, I wasn't going to look for it.
After these kinds of "incidents" with Jake, I worried more about his intelligence than his behavior. This child was somewhat accident prone and I wasn't entirely convinced that Michaela wasn't behind many of these little disasters befalling the boy. There's no telling what she talked him into before he learned to question her instructions. ("I don't care if Michaela told you to draw a picture on your tummy with the permanent markers!") How smart could he really be if he kept listening to her and getting hurt or in trouble? We've tried to tell her how important it is that she look out for her little brother, and she's great when she wants to be, nobody ELSE had better bother him! But he has started to question her and he is doing very well (academically) in school. So I guess we don't have to worry too much about his intelligence...he obviously just adores his big sister! They really do love each other so much and we are so blessed to have such a great pair of babies. And now we have a third baby that they both love so much. Joey is only 3 months old but he looks up at his big brother Jake and his big sister Michaela and he smiles so big and he laughs. We will have to keep an eye out for markers and pennies but hopefully they are enough older than him that they will be more mindful of his safety. But then again they ARE Jake and Michaela!
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