Happy Days

What a difference a week makes!  Before seven o'clock on a normal weekday, Jackson cries at least three times:  once for taking his pajamas off, once for putting his new outfit on, and once when we put him in his car seat.  Since we leave at 6:45 every morning, I think a lot of the tears are brought about because he didn't get a chance to sleep long enough.  He also usually cries again when I leave him at nursery so needless to say, Jackson goes through a lot of stressful moments every morning.

But now that I'm home from work, Jackson has slept in every morning--until nine o'clock one day--and he gets dressed in his own time.  It is such a relief to have days with very little or no crying at all.  Yes, one reason for that relief is that our house is quieter and more peaceful; but more importantly, Jackson's days are more relaxed.  He still has his tantrums over 'terrible two' type things like when I stop him from changing the dryer settings while it's operating, but I feel less bad as a mom when the tears are caused by a learning curve instead of a daily routine.

I am so happy that I get to spend all of this quality time with Jackson and that I have a job that allows me so many weeks throughout the year to be with my little baby.  We have crammed in tons of new memories this week already and I know the rest of the summer will be filled with many more.

Developmental updates:  Jackson is getting better at repeating and remembering new vocabulary.  He said the following new words and phrases this week:  star, hair, cheek, hand, bath, sky, tree, bear, cookie, snack, thanks, please, okay, Elmo, candy, and Oh boy.  With all of these new words, and with his understanding of even more of them growing each day, it is becoming easier to communicate and solve problems faster.  We found out that Jackson has games that he likes to play with each of us individually because he likes to tickle my feet, but he doesn't do that to Lee, and he likes to climb on Lee's back to pretend to ride a horse, but he doesn't do that with me.  Jackson loves to show how independent he is and this week, on our walk back from the duck pond, he wanted to walk and kept going for over a quarter of a mile.  This included steep sandy hills and he never stopped once.  I had to keep a swift pace to keep up with him and he continued a steady, quick walk the whole time.  Jackson's movie of the week was Dumbo and I lost count of how many times we pressed 'play.'  He gets really invested in the characters' feelings and gets worried or outraged or even laughs at the right places.  Jackson has also been making sense of new objects and if he doesn't know the word for what he sees, then he invents a new term.  For example, he saw a pair of roller skates and he applied what he knew to say "car shoes." I was pretty proud of his creativity and quick thinking used to combine the vocabulary he's built so far into his very own label for something he had never seen.

Due to technical difficulties, I could not upload any photos but I will upload extra ones next time.

If you see Sammie Miles Davis, Jr. and Bella, give them my love.