Spring is in the air (almost)

Maybe spring isn't in the air yet but it is April 3 for the love of the Easter bunny and still having highs in the 50s has seriously got to go.  At this rate all of us will be albino, not just Matt and Jackson.

 We've been increasing the time he spends on the potty.  He thinks this means take your potty wherever you go even when you have all your clothes on.  This particular day he was busy watching the men next door install new windows.

 Grammy sent him a pair of rain boots.  He asks to wear them just about every day.  Sometimes it is the first thing he does when he gets up in the morning.  Aunt Robin sent him the next size up so he will be boot ready for as long as he wants to wear them!  Oh, and don't call his boots "shoes".  They are boots and he knows it.      

 My little bee is getting so strong.  He can climb a ladder and has no fear of any slide.  We play outside every single day and if it was up to him it would be the entire day.  His very first hissy fit was over going into the house when it was time.  I'm guessing it is the first of thousands resulting from "time to go in".  I can't believe how fast his little baby tummy is disappearing.  He's getting abs already and he even has a tiny little bicep!     

 Dad wasn't home so his first real grilling experience was with Mama.  He was very helpful with the tongs, but after it was done he wouldn't even touch a bite of pork loin.  Our former meatatarian has recently decided he prefers to be fruitatarian.  This was also the day I found out he can get on chairs and onto the couch by himself.  Now he tells himself "sit down".   

 Jackson and Matt have a little song about brushing teeth.  It goes something like "brusha brusha on the bottom, brusha brusha the on top, brusha brusha side to side... don't miss a spot".  He is obsessed with tooth brushing now that we let him have a speck of toothpaste.  He would brush all day and has toothbrushes stashed in all the bathrooms in case the mood strikes.    

He hasn't quite figured this game out yet.  Mostly he wants to ride on the golf club like a horse.  Sometimes he swats things with it- poor Gracedog.  I keep showing him but he thinks he's supposed to balance the golf ball on the club instead of hitting it.  Maybe dad will be a better teacher. 

It's impossible to know how many words he knows now.  He says about a hundred without prompting if we counted them all and is pretty easy to understand (or maybe just to me).  He follows all kinds of directions and answers questions with "i don't know, yeah, or no" and his response almost always matches the question.  When the time changed we just didn't adjust his schedule so now he sleeps 7-7:30 and naps from 12:30-3:00.  We are working on manners and he nearly always says "thank you" and "bless you".  "Please" is getting there along with "yes, ma'am".  I have to remind him about those.  He loves doing any kind of craft and helping clean.  I realized that the Swiffer can actually be made into a pint size handle so he dry mops every day while I vacuum.  He's quite the helper for now so I'm totally exploiting that while it lasts :)  He loves singing along to the radio.  Any time a song ends he claps and says "yaaaaay" (including at church hey at least he's enthusiastic).

 That's the little guy at not quite 18 months.  He'll be an official toddler in just two weeks!
 

Valentine Snow Day

The thing about living in Greenville is that we get weather for Asheville along with ours our the news ticker and they have a Winter Storm Warning just about every single day.  I get so excited every time it looks like maybe- just maybe- the snow might actually make it to our house.  It never does.  Valentine's weekend we ended up with a 50% chance of snow but Matt kept telling me, "it isn't going to snow so don't get all excited". 

That weekend all the Wolfords (and Erik who I am teaching Jackson to call "Just Erik" haha) had come down as a makeup weekend for New Year's.  Saturday morning we all got up, ate a delicious breakfast that Grammy made, the girls got pedicures, and then sat around playing for a while.  Eventually it was time for Jackson to take his nap and no sooner did he go down then the flakes started falling.  Over the next hour and a half it really came down pretty good.  I kept asking if I could go wake him up and at one point I tried but he rolled over groggily and put his head back down.  Finally I couldn't stand the excitement anymore (total Floridian it was not that much snow) and woke him up so we could go play before it melted.  He was sooooo cute running around in it!  He loved snow although he definitely didn't get it. 

 Now I really am excited for next year when he will be big enough to really play and we can take him up to VA to go sledding.  Okay, so maybe that trip is just as much for me as him but I know we will both have fun!

So not cool, Aunt Erin

Loving on Grandad

Upside down :)

Moonshine tasting.  Blech.

One...TWO!

 

The last post must have jinxed us because not a week later Jackson got a cold from a baby at a playdate which of course turned into an asthmatic episode (he doesn't actually have asthma but his symptoms are the same).  The weight he put on in January came back off so his pants are a little droopy and he has quite the cough but you can't really tell he isn't all the way up to speed other than he slowed down a little over the month.   It's given him a chance to perfect his Mandarin babble.  He says about 40 real words.  Yesterday we were leaving Steinmart and as we went out the door he told me "push it".  He hasn't learned to say "no" but I'm guessing by this time next month it will be his fav...he shakes his head at me for now!     

We had a Valentine's Craft party at our house.  11 toddlers came and made heart sun catchers.  It was a blast.  We'll be finding tissue pieces for weeks to come.  After it was all over the family room looked like Times Square on Jan 1. 

If it isn't too cold we spend as much time as possible outside.  Jackson can run now- usually away from me when it's time to get dressed, of course.  He loves the slide and will go down the big corkscrew all by himself.  He insists on swinging on the big kid swing most of the time and grunts when he wants to get down.  If there's something to climb on he's going to find it.  Matt and I bet on when he would climb out of his crib.  Matt took 16 months and I took 18.  We'll see at the end of this month...   

Blocks are a big time favorite but he only wants to pull them apart or clean them up.  He cleans up everything and loves to run around with the Swiffer.  Doing laundry takes forever because it is his job to put each thing into the dryer (only I hang most of our clothes so he tries to pull everything off the rack and rush it to the dryer to "help").  He routinely unloads the silverware for us now even if it is dirty :) Meals are a pain because he dumps his plate onto the tray and eats like a barbarian just to get a reaction.  He can use his fork and spoon but prefers to fling them to the ground until you take them away and just let him be an animal. 
 

In the last month I started counting to get his attention when he's doing something he shouldn't be doing.  That was great until he learned to say TWO.  Now he says THREE.  It's impossible not to smile when he looks so proud of himself.  I count in Spanish now when he needs a reminder to behave.  I can't wait to see what he learns next month! 

He's a Growing Boy

Helping mom make applesauce cranberry oatmeal muffins- his favorite!

 The most important thing this month is that we FINALLY got Jackson's test results back and everything was perfectly normal.  After months of waiting and being concerned it was a major relief to know that everything is just fine.  His doctors think that the combination of switching to just formula, starting a preschool, and a record cold/flu season caught his little immune system all at once back in October.  He's been 100% healthy and put the weight he lost with the pneumonia back on over the last month.  We aren't doing the nebulizer treatments at all and hopefully we won't have to again.
  


Now that he's feeling back up to speed the things he's learning are happening so fast I can barely keep up.  He's great at kicking a ball and chases it all over the house.  He can catch pretty well and throws a ball- always left handed.  He feeds himself with a spoon and fork for the most part although if he's really hungry he just tips the bowl back and "drinks" whatever is in it.  Grace has decided that he's not all that bad now that she gets to enjoy the falling food at every meal.  She even lets him pet her on his own and hardly ever bolts to the baby gate so she can be safe on the other side (except when he's chasing her which I try not to let him do!).  He helps fill up her food bowl in the mornings and gleefully adds handfuls to Grace's water dish if he gets the opportunity. 
   

DJ Jackson

Oh look, a skateboard!

Two nights in a row he teeteed on the floor while the bath was filling up so I decided to move a little potty into the bathroom.  The very first night he actually went both and I was so unprepared there wasn't a treat or anything available.  I cheered and danced around and that seemed good enough.  He sits on his potty every night now and usually goes right away.  Now he knows he gets a smarties so he's pretty motivated.  We sing two songs and if he goes great, if not we get in the tub.  Some mornings I sit him on it when he's getting dressed but for right now this is enough for us.  He's still not that great at getting on and off the little potty himself so once he gets that part down we can do a little more. 

Although we don't teach him sign language, he learns it at school so we have a handout to teach us the signs he uses.  He signs please, more, drink, dad, and elephant.  If he knows more I don't but those are the ones I've learned... I'm working more on teaching him Spanish and he recognizes quite a few words but doesn't say them yet.  He learns a new English word just about every day and his vocabulary is 25-30 words now so we don't have much need for signing- he says "more", "milk", "up" for upstairs, "ball", and "shoes" so he gets his point across most of the time!

We've reached the "I love helping" stage even if it is more unhelping than helping.  He puts the silverware into the drawer (not necessarily the correct drawer), helps take laundry out of the dryer (even if you are loading it), picks up and puts things into drawers (so you can't find them ever again), closes any door that dares to be left standing open, puts his shoes away, turns all the lights off (holding him up), and is obsessive about brushing his teeth.  Speaking of teeth his premolars are coming in the last two weeks!  Slowly but surely.  Maybe he will have all his teeth before they start falling out?

I can't wait to see how he changes over the next month :)
   

New Christmas

The original plan was to spend Christmas with my family in Florida and New Year's (aka New Christmas) with Matt's family at our house.  Aunt Erin and Erik made it into town midweek so Erin rode out with me to collect the Gracedog at the strategically picked outlet mall exit above Atlanta.  Since we were gone to FL for five days and Gracedog doesn't board well (that is an understatement- her vet file has a huge DO NOT BOARD stamped on it because she will not eat or drink and ends up needing an IV and becomes the most pitiful dog you've ever seen) we packed the dog off to stay with Grandad at the lake for a few weeks so she would be happy.  Poor Grace came home not only to a tormenting toddler but also to Lane the Loving Goldenpoo, who Grace would rather not love.  I'm pretty sure she's wishing she was still at the lake.   

Jackson loves Lane.  She lets him pet her unlike his own dog.

Sadly for us all, on Friday morning Grammy woke up sick as a dog and was so sick she was afraid to come share her germs with all of us.  Since we'd been holding out for Grammy and Grandad to arrive we changed up the schedule a bit and decided to hit the Pelham Road Warriors hockey game.  Neither Matt, Erin or Erik had been to a game!  They even got to see a pretty decent fight which I missed while in the bathroom.  Of course.

A friend told me about a neat place downtown called the Palmetto Olive Oil Co that does tastings so we checked that out on Saturday.  So cool!  They give you a bowl of bread and little cups to taste all the different oils.  Then you try the lighter balsamic vinegars.  At the end they give you a dish of vanilla ice cream and you get to try the dark balsamics.  Who would have thought that pomegranate and dark chocolate balsamic vinegar would be so delicious on ice cream??

We also checked out the Shoeless Joe Jackson museum.  I'm not a baseball fan.  It was eh.  Matt enjoyed it and his dad would have really liked it.

Since we still hadn't opened any of our presents including Santa's presents we did that for New Christmas :)  Jackson got a train that does all kinds of songs, letters and sounds from Santa and a wagon from us to use to roll up to the pool this summer.  His favorite gift from Florida was a DJ stand that has a microphone.  He sits in a box and plays with that thing constantly- although he thinks you have to put the mic in your mouth and talk for it to work.  I hate this toy.  It is soooo obnoxious.  Of course it is his favorite.  Thanks, Nana.

        

First Haircut!

Since he inherited my five strands of hair, keeping Jackson's hair trimmed hasn't been much of an issue.  He sits in his chair and lets me trim up the back and ears every six weeks or so.  His hair has a good bit of curl so it isn't like I have to do a good job.  By mid November it was starting to look a little mullety though, so it was time for his First Haircut. 

 These were the before shots.  Not that they are very different from the after shots.  You should have seen the looks on the three ladies' faces when I said "first haircut".  You could practically hear the mental NOT IT unanimously uttered by each one.

Not surprisingly, Jackson was more interested in watching the man next to him get his hair cut than anything else.  He was perfect!  The lady said that in 10 years of hair cuts he was by far the best "First Cut" she had ever done.  He even smiled when she used the hair dryer on him :)   
 

 Big boy after his hair cut.  Dad made it just in time for the reveal.  I must say that Great Clips did a wonderful job.  They even put his little locks in a special envelope with the date on it for us to put in his baby book! 

Thanksgiving 2012

 

 Since our families live so far apart that there is no way to see everyone for all holidays, before we got married Matt and I agreed to alternate holidays.  This year he had Thanksgiving and I have Christmas.  For Thanksgiving we packed up Jackson and Gracedog and headed up to Virginia.  I requested snow, but it wasn't even cold enough for a jacket, let alone snow. 

Matt's grandparents came down from Alexandria and spent the night.  Grandpa was worried about Jackson and the stairs but he shouldn't have been because Grammy got a gate to keep him safe.  It also kept Gracedog from trying to go down- she can't do the stairs anymore and has to get an airlift from Matt. 

Check out my paper turkey.  It was better than Matt's.  They must not teach that in engineering school.

 I love making cornbread dressing.  This year I tried a new recipe and made it in the crock pot.  It needs a little tweaking, but it was pretty good.  Definitely using that one again. 

Maybe next year we will invest in turkey prongs instead of bending two forks into oblivion.

Lane in action

Playing with Grammy under the table

 Although he was a sick little guy for most of this trip, we got him to take a picture in his new bandana bib.  Grammy made matching for all three.  Jackson and Lane liked theirs... not so sure about Gracedog.  You'd have thought it was poison.