Use your words...

Jackson is starting to repeat some "words" back to us lately. It's so fun to see what he can learn. Here his vocab list:

"dada" = dada
"uh-oh" = uh-oh
"eeeez" = cheese
"eeeeys" = keys
"daw" = dog
"dall" = ball

We'll keep working at it.

The bug has bit...

The flu bug has hit Ron, that is. I'm hoping that Jackson and I can steer clear of it, but we'll see. I'll keep you posted.

Happy to wear a hat...

There was a time when my hair was too fabulous to ever mess it up with a hat. Boy, am I glad those days are long over. As I drove into work this morning, with my hat pulled down to just about my eyeballs, I saw many kids all bundled up to protect themselves from the 16 below wind chill. At that age, I walked to the bus stop without a hat, for fear that I would mess up my hair. Many mornings my hair would still be wet from my shower and before the bus would pick me up, my hair would be crisply frozen. I'm so glad kids these days don't worry about messing up their hair, and are free to wear a hat to keep the heat from escaping.

This picture is not of me, but it might as well be... though my mall bangs were a little better.

Weekend photos...

This is what Jackson looks like when he's really mad. In this case he wanted to play with the camera, and I wanted to play with the camera.



We took Jackson for a short walk around the neighborhood in his birthday wagon from Grandma Jan and Grandpa Joelon Sunday as the temperature creeped towards bearable.


We can't wait for the weather to get warmer.


This is our new bath towel for Jackson. It's from Ikea and it works very well. Not as small as the baby towels with the hoods, but not as hard to manage as an adult size towel.

Coat of many colors...

Does everyone have a song that makes you cry no matter where you are or what you are doing when you hear it? A song that has no significance in your life, it isn't attached to a memory of someone in you past, just a song that for some reason makes your eyes well with tears?

Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton does this to me. I recieved a Dolly CD for my birthday yesteday from my Mom, so I've been listening. I've heard the song three times today and each every time it makes me sad and always had in the past when I heard it. And I'm sure I'll shed a few tears when I see Dolly live from the fifth row!!!

30 candles on this cake...

Today is my 30th birthday and today is a day like any other. I spent the morning with Jackson at Target. Came home fed him lunch and got him down for a nap, spent some time cleaning and now I here I am checking in on my blog.

I've had a lot of fun these last 30 years, I've seen a lot of amazing things, I've met a lot of fantastic people, I've had many good experiences, and I've managed to make some of the best friends a girl could ever ask for.

And I am getting older every day, or so the mirror tells me every morning. Since when can't I wear red lipstick?? Since it starts leaving my lips for the cracks that surround them, that's when! So I've decided that a lighter shade of lip gloss is more suitable for me. And if anyone notices that my hair is thinner, it's because I've resorted to plucking gray hairs every morning instead of finding the time to use the box color that I bought at Target a few weeks ago to cover them. These are just a few of the things that I've noticed as the thirty mark got closer, the rest I won't share for fear that you will look closely for these flaws or that I will gross out my husband completely.

Last night I picked a few black heads and did a fierce job plucking my eyebrows. When I came back out to the living room I shared this with Ron and told him that I am ugly now, but it's all so I can be prettier tomorrow.

Well my eyebrows look rather nice, and I bought an 30 year old appropriate outfit to wear tonight, and I'm going to do my best to party like I'm still in my 20s. Now let's just see how many days it takes me to recover.

Happy Birthday to me!

Taking the frog home...

Jackson's first toy came home with us last night. We kept a stuffed frog on Jackson's carseat carrier from almost day one. On Jackson's first day at Playschool, his teacher told us that we could bring a mobile for Jackson's crib. I grabbed the frog from his car seat and attached it to his crib rail. (And then proceeded to cry like a little little baby.) Well Jackson has moved from a crib to a cot at school and someone else is sleeping in what used to be his crib. What a big boy.

We checked out Jackson's tooth progress while he brushed his teeth this morning and tooth number three has broken through! The picture is a little blurry, but I thought it was funny enough to share.

Tooth number three...

It's been on the verge of making it's way in this last week. I thought for sure Jackson would have tooth number three by Monday, but it hasn't managed to break through the gum quite yet, but by the weekend our little guy will have three teeth! We are a little slow according to the chart.

Almost made me yak...

On Saturday Ron convinced me to see Cloverfield, after an employee told him how great it was. The movie is supposed to appear to be shot using a hand-held camcorder. The relentless bobbing and twisting of the camera almost made me vomit. I found I could not look at the screen without becoming lightheaded, dizzy, and downright queasy. I made it about 20 minutes in before I had to lean over to Ron and tell him I needed to leave. Ron finished the movie without me, while I cruised up and down the aisles at a nearby Target. Ron says it was the scariest movie he's ever seen and couldn't stop talking about it all the way home. For a full recap of the movie, you'll have to ask Ron... I never even got to see the monster. :(

Catching some zzzzzzs...

At home Jackson takes two naps a day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. It breaks up the day nicely for us, and allows an opportunity to get a few chores done around the house.

At school, Jackson is too interested in what his friends are doing to fall fast asleep in a room with the lights on and 10 other toddlers running around. In the last few months we've been noticing that this has become a problem. After three nap-free days in childcare my little gem is a bear, crabbby as can be. It only takes a day to get him straightened out again, but the third evening is rough!

This week, Krystal, Jackson's teacher, tried a new approach. Instead of transferring him to a crib when he was sleeping she has been getting him to lay on a cot at school and fall asleep! I don't know how she does it, but yesterday he took almost a two hour nap. Yay! My little boy, a big guy, napping on a cot like the other toddlers do. I'm a proud mama.

Birthday Shots...

Not the kind of birthday shots you are thinking!! Shots of Jackson's first birthday have arrived. I am using ones that Mom took of the birthday cake fun. We have discontinued heating our upstairs and while we are saving a load of cash, picture downloading is not happening. Our computer is upstairs, and I just can't bring myself to go up there for the time it takes to download the pictures off the camera. It was a brisk 41 degrees in our upper level this morning. Imagine putting on frozen underwear each and every morning... it's not fun.


Jackson had a blast with his cake.


But he really didn't like it when dad put a birthday hat on his head!

And the doc says...

Jackson had his one year check up today.

Here are the stats:
30.5 inches long (70%)
22 lbs. (50%)

My baby is going to be one...

I took Jackson's 1 year photos yesterday. I think the photo shoot went pretty well, I snapped the shots while Ron kept dragging him back to set!

What a Mom will do...

Jackson had a stomach bug last Thursday and woke up throwing up, the poor little guy. Ron settled in with him in the chair only to get thrown up on. We did get off a little easy as I had fed Jackson bananas and toast for dinner so the mess was easier to take care of. After a couple rounds of clean up, I got Jackson to sleep in his crib, but was worried that I wouldn't hear him if he got sick again. So like any other mother would do, I slept on his floor. Ron came in the next morning and captured us on camera. Surpisingly, it wasn't all that uncomfortable, and it was kind of nice being so close to my baby that I could hear him breathing.

He's feeling better now!

We forgot the bubbly...

This year we tried a new way to bring in the New Year. We invited other friends with kids over to welcome 2008 when New York City did, 11:00 p.m. I thought that we'd get kids to bed and then have some adult time playing games, but no such luck!! Grayson was the only one that slept, but was awake in time to ring in the new year. I guess there was too much excitement for the little ones to want to miss. The picture is of our friends Emily and Jerry's little one, Maddie (2), Heather and her son Grayson (1.5) (Russ joined us for a little while but had to cater to the super dedicated exercisers at Lifetime), and Ron with Jackson. Our friends Jason and Darcie joined us after picture time with their two girls Elise (3) and Anja (2mos). It was an event to remember!

And the next morning I realized that I never even got to open the bottle of champagne that I ran out to get earlier in the day... bummer. We'll save it for another celebration. Maybe I'll pop the cork after all our guests leave on Jackson's birthday. I hope happiness and health for all in 2008.

A quick learner...

I am so impressed at Jackson's ability to pick things up lately.

When I was pregnant Ron and I decided that we would teach "Baby Boy Horwath" sign language. It seemed like all the hip parents were signing to their children. I had done some research and read of the benefits of being able to communicate with a child much sooner than vocal language is learned. When Jackson was 7 months we signed up for a baby sign language class knowing that 7 months was the perfect time to start teaching an infant. We learned 30 or so signs and practiced them back and forth. We started Jackson with two signs. "More" and "Milk". For about two weeks we were so good at using these new signs with Jackson, but feeding times got busy and Jackson didn't immediately pick up on them and Mom and Dad got impatient, so we sort of threw the signs out the window for a little bit.

A few weeks ago Ron started signing with Jackson again and I made a point to help in the effort, and voila! It's working! Jackson now knows the signs for milk, more, AND all-done! What's next?

Learn your baby signs>>