Family visits

The week that we came home from the hospital, my immediate family all came to our house to visit. I have been meaning to post about this for weeks now, but I am just getting around to it now. Mike & Blakely drove up from Raleigh to make dinner for the entire family. Karen, Brian & Sierra came from Virginia Beach. Mom & Dad came from Richmond and Katie, Shaun and Pierce drove over from their house. It was a wonderful meal and it was so much fun for everyone to be together to celebrate Jacob's birth.

Here is a picture of everyone at the dinner table

(except Katie who was taking the picture & Jacob who was sleeping):

My parents (who are called Mimi & Papa by their grandchildren) enjoyed spending time with our growing family.

Here they are with Sierra, Pierce & Jacob:

This past Tuesday, Keith, Jacob and I drove up to Winchester, VA to meet up with some of Keith's family members. Winchester is pretty much half-way for both us and them (it is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Charlottesville and the same from the Pittsburgh area where Keith's family lives). Since his mom doesn't drive, this was the first time that she was able to meet Jacob. She came with his aunt Kay, his cousin Susie and her daughter Rebecca. It was really nice to see all of them and we had a great lunch at the Olive Garden.

Here is Keith's mom spending time with her first grandchild:

Keith, Jacob and I posing with Marge

A family picture (Susie with Jacob, Marge, Kay, Keith and Rebecca):

As you can see from the following pictures, we resorted to using a pacifier at the restaurant. I am not a huge fan of pacifiers and, if I have any control over it, I would like Jacob to not use one. I just do not want him to become dependent on it as I have heard horror stories of two and three year olds who do not want to give it up. We have had to use it twice now, both in situations where he would not settle down and the sucking of the pacifier seemed to easily soothe him. In this particular situation at the restaurant, he was hungry (and overdue to be fed) but I was trying to put it off as long as I could since it wasn't super easy to breastfeed him in the Olive Garden. I felt bad making him wait, but when we gave him the pacifier, he fell asleep instantly and didn't seem to be in distress. Hopefully we won't have to use it a lot, but since it seems to work well, I am definitely keeping one in the diaper bag for situations when it might come in handy.

I was surprised he took the pacifier, but he seemed to like it:

And he fell asleep pretty quickly (and slept for about an hour):