Reflections of, the Way Life Used to Be

So we're approaching Jackson's second birthday in a couple of days. It's been an interesting couple of weeks as my friend Kami is at BCH on bed rest while she awaits the arrival of her twins hopefully not for five or so more weeks. So I visit when I can, and her room is just three doors down from where we had Jackson almost two years ago. So I've been experiencing some serious de ja vu.

I went back and looked at my blog entries from two years ago at this time and it's amazing to me how different life is now, and how remarkably funny I was back then (kidding). Jason and I will sometimes reflect on life before Jackson came along and how basically we did absolutely nothing. Sure, Jason finished the basement, we played some sports, went to work, etc. But honestly...we did nothing. We had to have. Because there's no way we were doing anything before this because now we have no time because we are parenting. Life was carefree.

Sure, we had to be careful about what I was eating and what we were doing but at the end of the day, we would go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning and the only people we had to worry about were each other. And since we were both grown ups, Jason could roll out of bed, get a shower, get dressed and go. I could get up and do the same, and we didn't have to synchronize our watches and discuss our plan of action. Now everything is a plan, everything is a conversation. No decisions are made without determining what the plan is with Jackson and how our decisions and plans affect what needs to happen with him. It's something that you can't really understand until you're doing it.

So there's all these new responsibilities that at times feel inconvenient and cumbersome, but then there's all these new experiences that light you up. This morning I was getting Jackson dressed after breakfast and I gave him a high five for doing a good job. So he hops down off my lap and dashes into the kitchen and says, "Daddy! Five!" That seems like such an insignificant little thing, but what Jason and I know is that Jackson is now using our names to get our attention to do things that he would like to do. Daddy, befast (that's breakfast for those of you who don't speak Jacksonese). Mommy, bath. Mommy, out (of crib please). Daddy, sit down! Before it was all grunts and one word stuff, and now, it's Mommy, more meat please. Kids are cool.

Worst Blogger Ever

I'm the worst blogger ever. We have had so many exciting things with Jackson, and I completely suck and haven't documented jack (pun semi-intended). To try and fit in everything he's been doing in the past couple of months would be pointless, but I'll try a condensed version.

Physically: He jumps. He doesn't jump well, but he jumps. He's also scaled his way out of his crib one time, so we put up a gate at the top of the stairs. He hasn't tried it again thankfully so we haven't moved him to the big kid bed just yet. On occasion he will fling bowls at my head from the backseat. Which is impressive, but not that funny. He actually can throw balls pretty well and loves to play basketball on his little hoop and race his cars.

Chattiness: He amazes us with his new words each day. Today at school he said to me "run around" which was neato. He knows all his letters and loves to shout them out when he sees them on signs or magazines or whatever. He also will randomly start counting to four in the backseat of the car, which I find amazing. He has names for all his grandparents: Opa and Nama (My parents) and Papa and Nami (for Jason's Parents) as well as Bussy (Buffy the dog) and the occasional E for my brother and Auntie for his wife. We are working on learning Jason's sister and family as well. He is good at saying "I love (fill in the blank with a name)" and he also knows his teachers names at school. He, up until about two days ago, would say the word RED as Rhett and the letter W as ba ta doo. He has since learned the correct pronunciation. I would have been okay with him not learning that for awhile as I found batadoo to be adorable. He enjoys playing indoor golf with his Opa, which he will indicate by saying "Opa, golf, bussy" over and over again.

Decision-making: He is very insistent on making his own choices from time to time. He wants to draw. He wants to look at the birdies. he wants to play with the ball popper. He does NOT want to eat that banana. Wants to shoot, play basketball, race cars, go outside. I wouldn't call him stubborn just yet, but since both his parents are insane stubborn lunatics, it's not far off.

In any case, Jackson is simply a joy. He is at a tremendously fun age right now, amazing us with the things he knows and the things he can do each day. We are communicating with him more and more, he helps us decide things as a family and is a very nice, very loving little boy. He is your typical jump around, crash up, crazy little boy and loads of fun for his parents.

Uh Oh

Jackson said Uh Oh this morning and it is adorable. He was playing with a toy and he dropped it on the floor and he just said "Uh oh" out of nowhere. So cute. What isn't so cute is that he has his fourth ear infection...his third in about six weeks time. That's not acceptable. We had to go to urgent care this morning because I was so sure that's what it was. I was right. I had floated the idea of tubes to the doctor last time and she didn't feel like he was having the frequency of them to worry about that yet. Well, I think three ear infections in six weeks....I think we should at least start the conversation.

Kill or Be Killed

This is my philosophy about the toddler 1 class at Jackson's School. Really any toddler class. They are learning about being independent, they are mobile, they have wants and needs, and they have anywhere from 0-20 words to communicate these things, and usually the other toddlers don't have the same 20 words. Thus, when someone wanders into their space and either tries to take something away or bother them, the responses they are equipped with from least harmful to most harmful are:
1 - Pushing
2 - Pulling hair
3 - Biting

The responses to those three responses are the same. Pushing, pulling hair or biting. My son seems to favor method two, the hair pull. He learned the hard way that this is not a generally accepted method of communication when one of his classmates responded by biting his arm in three places in a span of 5 seconds. Two days later, he still has the teeth marks to prove it. If he is pushed, he generally will push back.

He hasn't bitten anyone except for me and his father. He bit his dad on the leg on Wednesday night, which we now attribute to the brand new tooth that appeared this morning. He now has a fang...I pity any child who incurs the wrath of his bite with that new tooth...it won't be good.

Today we get his ears rechecked after our bout with a double ear infection two weeks ago. We'll see if we've got tubes in his future or some kind of intolerance for a food that's making it happen. Whatever. I'm just hoping for no accident report when I pick him up today.

Walking, Day Two

Walkin on Sunshine

Wednesday, April 8. 4:49 p.m. Jackson walks. He and I were home playing waiting for daddy to come home and playing his new favorite "I scream when we play with this" ball popper machine.

We were picking the balls up and putting them back into the machine and dad came home from work. Jackson was about 3-4 feet away from me and had let go of the machine and was just standing there. So I put out my arms, with Jason standing about 10 feet behind me, and said, "Come and see me!" and he did! He took three steps all by himself and got to my arms and I scooped him up and we had a celebratory dance celebration in the kitchen. We do not yet have this on video but I bet we do by the weekend.

Now the fun begins....

Bye Bye

Jackson waved bye bye. It's one of those things you do all the time to try and get them to do, but they don't do it. Then yesterday, my mom came up to hang out with him. I was supposed to have Friday off as it's CU's spring break, but Jackson threw up all over himself Thursday night so I wasn't about to send him to day care without knowing what the deal was.

So she came up and I spent my day off going and running at the gym, walking through our ghetto mall in Longmont and buying groceries at Target. I did find a darling outfit for him for Easter so that was a plus. I got home, Jackson wasn't feeling much like eating anything (more on that later), so we played and then it was time for grandma to go home.

She went to the door and said bye bye Jackson and waved. And I saw him make a motion like he was going to wave. So we kept saying bye bye and sure enough, he lifted up his sweet little arm and waved bye bye to Grandma. Hooray!

10 Months Old

My child is 10 months old. How is this possible? As each monthly milestone passes, I keep thinking back to the days when the boy couldn't do anything. I'm not going to recap it again...but wow.



He can throw! He attempts to play a form of catch with his father. Jackson can't catch because he's not coordinated enough, and Jason can't catch because Jackson's throws are beyond errant. But they try. And it's adorable.

It's been 70 degrees here (!) and we get to take Jackson on walks after work, which is so nice. He is doing well at day care, although I swear we had our first consecutive days without cold symptoms this past weekend and now they are back. And of course even as I type this, his day care calls and he has a slight fever. Ugh.

Are You Talking to Me?

So yesterday Jackson said the word mama. It was a pivotal epic moment in my life. Did he mean it? I seriously doubt it. Did he look right at me and very carefully enunciate two syllables? Yes he did.

Jackson had school closed for the holiday, but I did not. So my mom watched him all morning and much of the afternoon. Then I came home to prepare for a meeting and take over, and I was feeding him a nice big snack at about 3:30 pm. I paused from shoveling the food into his mouth to take a sip of water and while I wasn't looking at him, he just said, "Mama." That was it. Not mamamamamamamamamamamamammaa. Not mama followed by bljounoeuwounlkjouiojlajsdas. Just mama.

I was like, Mama? Did you just say Mama? Were you talking to me? Trying desperately to get him to say it again, which to me would at that moment have validated it, etc. But he waited a bit to say it. But he did smile and laugh, because he knew that he just made my...well I don't know. More than my day, more than my year. It was just awesome. Hooray! Mama! That's me!

Comb-over Be Gone!

Jackson has had the worst combover ever going for awhile on the back of his head.
We decided to address it yesterday while visiting grandma and grandpa in Lakewood. Grandpa used to cut hair when he was in the army, and he used to cut my brother Eric's hair, so I asked if he would try cutting Jackson's hair. It wasn't even very much, but it made a huge difference.

Checkup Time

We were back at the doctor again, this time for Jackson's well-child exam for nine months. We knew in advance it would be a shot-free appointment, which I was happy about and I'm sure Jackson was relieved about as well.

He is up to 28.5 inches long, 19 pounds, 15 ounces and his head is...well big. Jackson lost some weight with his bout with a virus last week...he was well over 21 pounds not even two weeks ago, so that's a bit of a bummer. But he did very well. Tonight he fed himself some chunks of baked potato and pigged out on chicken and apple compote baby food. It was a fun night and it's nice to have a relatively healthy lad.

Stair Master

So the great fever epidemic of February 2009 has come to a close. At least this version has. Jackson has recovered thanks to some TLC from his grandpa who came to stay with him yesterday and today.

I forgot to share a fun detail...which is that Jackson climbed stairs on February 1 at my parents house. Yeah, it was only two stairs...but he climbed them. Watch out world!

Daredevil

Jackson apparently thinks he doesn't need to hold on to things when he stands up at school. His latest endeavor is pulling up on the exersaucer at school, standing there, and then letting go, thinking he can continue to stand there on his own. He hasn't developed that strong of balance just yet so this is not a good idea. His teachers have to watch him like a hawk and make some diving catches so he doesn't bash his head anywhere. Super.

Self Service

We've been experimenting with Jackson and finger foods for a little while now. He has always been interested enough to push them around his tray, and usually will pick them up. He has been known to use the pincer from time to time. But when he actually decided he wanted to put the foods into his mouth, usually he would grab them with his fist, put his whole fist in his mouth, and attempt to put the food in that way. Then he would take the fist out and the food would drop for either us to clean it up or for Buffy the Dog to eat.

Tonight at dinner at grandma and grandpa's house, he successfully transferred food from tray to hand to mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it. Hooray!

Chew This

Hooray for chewing! Last night we were all sitting on the floor watching that game, and we let Jackson go to town on a teething biscuit during our dinner. He finally did actually go to town and actually gnawed on it to the point that it required chewing. He never got anything to the point of swallowing, but it did lead me to try some more finger foods today.

We have been putting Cheerios on his tray for like two weeks, and while he can pick things up using his thumb and finger, he doesn't have a lot of interest in putting such things in his mouth. Jason has a banana basically every morning, so today I took a slice and cut it into little Jackson-sized pieces. He played with them, but again wasn't super-motivated to eat them. Which surprises me, because he puts literally EVERYTHING into his mouth. I have an exercise ball in the basement which is two feet tall and all he does is try and take bites out of it, so I find it odd that he won't put something clearly sized for his mouth actually into his mouth.

So after a few minutes of watching him push banana pieces around, I held one out for him to try. He kept it in his mouth and chewed on it for, oh, five minutes or so and then swallowed it without incident. Then did it one more time before he had enough. In any case, the little monkey seemed to like the bananas and hopefully we can start progressing him to chunkier foods and he will enjoy it. Really I just want him to feed himself one so we can cheer that he did that and move on.

He's gone three straight nights without his 10 pm bottle, so it looks like we're doing okay there. He does wake up a little bit at like 3 am, which I think he did before but now I'm just extra-sensitive hearing-wise because I'm jumpy about him maybe wanting food. We'll see. He's for sure eating in the mornings like an absolute champion.

Just Keep Swimming...

Jackson attended his first swim lesson on Wednesday night at the Longmont YMCA. Jason loves swimming and I do not, so we decided that swim lessons would be his thing, but there was no way I was going to miss the first one. There were two other children in the class with them so it was a nice little class with a very nice teacher. Jackson got to float, move around in the water, go through a hoop and lots of other things. He seemed to do very well right up until the end...he got a little cold. Oh and then afterwards he had a meltdown for no reason we could ascertain. But other than that, it was a total success. Thrilling video footage to come later on youtube/leabuff.

Must Be All Those Crunches

So yet another first for the Lew family. Jackson has been napping poorly of late during the day, he's probably ready to drop a nap but I'm struggling to figure out where we're gonna drop one because they are very inconsistent. I'll figure it out. Anyways, we got home from school and work at about 5:30, so I decided to see if he would take a quickie before his dinner.

He fell asleep basically immediately. So Jason and I reheated some pizza and had some salads and starting to eat our dinner and of course about 6:25 he started squawking. So I went upstairs to find him sitting up in the middle of his crib chewing on his blanket! So that would be the first time Jackson has been discovered in the upright position in his crib. Not sure what will come next, tooth number 2 (immediately next to what has been dubbed tooth number 1) or standing in the crib. We'll keep you posted.

When It Rains...

It pours! Jackson seems to literally be doing something new everyday. On Friday it was crawling. Then yesterday, he successfully pulled himself up to standing. Jason and I joke that it seems like everyday he is doing something new, but seriously....everyday he is doing something new. It's so cool.

He had never even really tried to pull himself up. He tried Saturday night, he tried Sunday morning, and then finally yesterday afternoon he did it. It's crazy. How fast they learn is really something to see.

Next we hope he will get a job.

We're Mobile

Jackson has officially crawled. It's not Pampers commercial quality crawling, but it was crawling and he is still doing it today. It happened last night, and we happened to catch the occasion on video, which we are pretty thrilled about. He starts and stops and has some Army-style crawling in there, but he still did it and it's very fun. There are other videos of it on You Tube.



We have been continuing our babyproofing as we rented a storage unit and put lots of things in it that were either cluttering our existence or would have been hazardous to our wee man and could be replaced with other things in the house that were less hazardous. For example, we now have the coffee table that was in my parents house when I was a baby. It's a funky old table and it's tiny and light, but it's easier to move for us and smaller so we have more room to play on our main level.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! We celebrated by being asleep at midnight. Hooray us.

Today we really wanted to get out of the house so we took a trip to the mall. It's so pathetic, but what can you do. So we took Jackson to the play area at Flatiron Crossing. I take him all the way to the back no one is ever back there except crazy little kids that almost trample him. It was a harrowing experience for his father, who had not yet dared to enter the kiddie area at our mall.

We were going to sit down, and this man turns to his wife after watching some kids play in front of him, "Thank God we only had girls. What would we do with boys?" because there was some boisterous play going on with the wee lads. I thought about that statement, and what prompted it, and you know what, I say WHATEVER to that.

I was a freaking maniac as a child. I do not know how my parents survived...or I guess more accurately, how I survived because I was a Grade A pain in the ass. Apparently I required constant interaction and didn't do a lot of playing independently. My brother on the other hand...we would have to go into his room to make sure he was still alive because he did so well on his own. He would sit on the floor of his room and play with toys by himself for hours, and then just fall asleep on the floor for his nap. He has always done better taking care of and entertaining himself than I ever did.

Anyways, it seems that is rocking milestones daily! Today he pulled himself up to sitting from laying down for the first time that we know of. Any bets on when he'll crawl?