February and March 2012

 Residency Appreciation dinner 2012

 Sledding with Daddy!

 

 First haircut 2/25/12

Aunt Rachael and Jackson at the beach

 

Sand is delicious!

Here ya' go

First time in the sand, with mommy (Thanks Aunt Rachael!)

Over it....

Playing in the sand with Dada

He did that himself ;)

Lilly, Uncle Chuck and J

Aunt Rachael, Uncle Chuck and J

Playing in the closet at the hotel in New Orleans (ended up being the best game of the week)

On the St Charles Streetcar with Molly and Angie

Banging on the table with spoons at even the fanciest of restaurants (Commander's Palace, New Orleans)

 

Ready for a night out, heading to Commander's Palace, New Orleans

Swimming in the hotel pool with Dada, New Orleans

 Stalkers at Peyton Manning's childhood home

Happy First Birthday Jackson!

We celebrated Jackson's first birthday this last Saturday.  MeMaw Harris was able to come in the weekend before and spend the whole week with Jackson before his party. 

Our house was packed with people that wanted to come spend time celebrating our little man- we are so blessed!  I think Jackson had a good time...he was a little overwhelmed initially with all of the people that were sitting around in "his" play area.

 

 One of his favorite people came to his party- Ms Beth from daycare!  Unfortunately she and her husband are moving very soon for a new job.  Jackson absolutely adores her!

The theme was Winter Onederland.  I tried to decorate in a very wintery but not Christmasy kinda way.  I ordered printable signs, cupcake toppers and cupcake wrappers from Etsy (Shindig Parties was awesome!)

 Jackson was a little timid about his cupcake.  But once he tasted the icing and, especially, the cake, he became a little more interested.  He very methodically ate the whole thing!

Jackson got lots of presents!  Del and I gave him a tractor, wagon and animals to play with which he really seems to like :)  Aunt Rachael got him a corn popper, which may have been his favorite present of the day as he kept playing with it and, when not, kept an eye on it so the other kids wouldn't play with it.  He got a toy "laptop" from Memaw that he enjoyed throughout the week, a swing and books from Queenie, a cute interactive book from Hadley, Jason and Briana and many other lovely presents that I am not going to keep listing...   ;)

He also had his 12 month visit this last Thursday.  Here are the stats:

• Length- 30 inches (50th percentile)
• Weight- 22 lbs 1 oz (65th percentile)
• Head circumference- 49.7 cm (>97th percentile)
• 4 shots at this visit- MMR, Varicella, Hepatitis A, 2nd Influenza

Jackson's favorite things of the moment:

• Books! This boy would be happy if that's all we had I think ;) His favorites are:
• The Little Blue Truck
• The Monster at the End of this Book
• Mr Brown Can Moo, Can You?
• Goodnight Moon- before bed every night
• Books with flaps and things to touch like his "Baby Animals" book and "Where's Spot?"
• Things that make noise!  He loves his drum/drumsticks, maracas, ring stacker (lights up and plays music), corn popper
• 
• Balls!  Loves his ball popper, train, t balls....he plays with the toys a little but mainly likes to carry a ball around in each hand
• Things that match! Along the lines of above....I believe Jackson is a little compulsive (no idea where he gets that...) He likes to have two things that match and hold one in each hand- balls, shapes from his shape sorter, drumsticks, maracas....
• Playing in cabinets and drawers- particularly the bathroom cabinets and the pantry

Things Jackson can do:

• Walk!  He loves to walk and would love it if we would let him walk all over the house :)
• Trying to use his spoon to eat, after dumping his bowl of food out of course :)  Along these lines, also, he likes to throw food off his tray, which is not a highlight.
• Turning lights on and off.  He loves to be the one to flip the switch when we walk into, or out of a room
• Turning the pages of the books when we read
• Understands what "No" means but, at times, disagrees with it :)
• Saying "Dada" to Dada all the time, "Mama" when he's sad or mad or happy to see me after I've been gone awhile (on call, etc), "Bye Bye" when he's going to sleep at night, "Hey/Hi", new today- something that sounds like, "What's that?" and pointing to things for me to say their name :)

Other pictures from the last couple of months including just after Christmas and our visit to Tennessee.

 

We are so lucky to have our little boy.  He is such a blessing to us and makes us smile and laugh every day.  He does something new all the time and it is fascinating to watch him grow.

Christmas Eve

Because I am working over Christmas this year, we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve.  It was a great day!  I did have to go to work for a little while but then was able to get back and spend the rest of the day with my boys.  We opened presents, went to church and ate a lot!  Jackson has gotten so many wonderful gifts that we are spreading opening out over a few days so that he doesn't get quite so overwhelmed.  Today he opened a present from us- a Ball Poppin' Dino which he really seems to like.  He is very focused on figuring out how it works.  He tries out a variety of things to stick through one of the holes in it, he wants to know what makes it turn on, etc.  Very cute!

 

His absolute favorite toy of the day (I think) was from Queenie and was a drum and variety of other musical instruments.  He LOVED beating on the drum with the drumsticks and was also into shaking the egg-shaped maracas!  He liked placing the maracas in the Ball Poppin' Dino because it made extra noise :)  He is definitely very musically oriented- he loves anything that he can make noise with!  He also loved the use the drum as support to walk around the room- he would push it in front of him while he walked!

We also got several wonderful books to share with him.  He loves "The Little Blue Truck" which is a board book I found at Target and that Santa put in his stocking :)  It's super cute!

He was such a busy boy that it didn't take much for him to take a nap (starting out on me).

We went to church after lunch which was wonderful.  He did great throughout service!  When the pastor made jokes and the congregation would laugh, he would start giggling about 30 seconds after everyone else had stopped :)  We thought it was coincidental but in the truck on the way home, he started giggling after Del and I laughed at something.

Before church :

 

At home after church (note minimal snowfall):

We finished the day with our Christmas dinner.  We had stuffed beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, chorizo and apple stuffing, corn casserole, grilled bacon-wrapped asparagus with gruyere in the center and a peppermint chocolate roll cake to finish it.  We were stuffed!  Jackson tried everything but was more a fan of corn casserole and stuffing than of steak or mashed potatoes :)

 What a change from last year:

We want to say thank you to all of our friends and family that have been such a comfort to us in the past year!  We are beyond blessed to have had such a happy year!  After the fear and anxiety that surrounded last Christmas, this Christmas is the exact opposite.  Del has been released from having his blood counts checked regularly and now only needs to have them checked if he gets sick!  This is very exciting news to us.  He will have to continue to take antibiotics every week for the at least the next couple of years to hopefully prevent a recurrence of the Campylobacter.  Small price to pay though for being otherwise healthy.  

 Merry Christmas!!