jackson is reading

i'm so surprised he sat down and read this so calmly. i was a bit nervous when we started filming because the first 2 times he read this i had to keep telling him to sit still and to put the toys down. i didn't want to sound mean on video! i dont know if its the fact that we were making a video (which he is constantly wanting to make of himself) or if it was because it was for grandma jan but he was so calm and serious. way to go jackson!

jackson said "you told me to put on my jammies so i put on all my jammies!" he was wearing 7 pajama pants and 3 pajama shirts. it was hilarious. i was so sad brent had him take it all off before the picture. he was super thick.

also, today brent told me that a new study came out that kids under the age of 2 shouldn't watch tv. he said people think baby einstein is fine but its not and you should limit the amount of background tv they see. i told him i had heard that just yesterday.....from jackson. jackson told me that "we let sam watch tv even though he's under 2. but when he's 2 then he won't be under 2 and he can watch tv." when i asked him where he heard that he said he heard it on the news. "brian williams said that." so, i guess you can say jackson is more up on current events than i am!

doctrinal question

Jackson asked me today if Jesus pooped.

I don't know.

On Monday I took the boys in for well check ups and I just thought I would document that here to remember. Jackson weighed 39.8 lbs which is the 50th percentile and he was 41.25 inches tall which is the 48th percentile. His eyes were 20/40 which they said was normal for his age. We had to fill out a paper with what he can and and can't do and he could do everything on the paper which went up to 5 yrs and some months. Really, he made me so happy. He was so cheerful the whole time. He's very talkative and social. He is the child that will say something loud and a little offthat makes all the adults in the room laugh. When I told the nurse I wanted to have the Dr. look at a cut he's had on his mouth for a long time that we couldn't explain he said in a very loud whisper "Can I take off my sock and show her the owie on my foot?" So he did and then told the nurse "I have these cuts on my foot and I don't know where they come from. It's a mystery." He had to get two shots which he was scared of but did. He would try to scoot away but nothing like holding him down to do it. I cried to watch him try to be strong. Way to go supportive mom.

Sam weighed 23 lbs 6 oz which is the 12th percentile. He is 32 inches tall which is 25th percentile. Both of my kids have started big then gotten smaller percentile wise. After having jacksons numbers though I not really concerned about them being too small forever. Who knows?? Sam was so giggly through the whole Dr.'s office procedure. He had no problem sharing my attention but didn't shy away from the nurses either. He would laugh and dance and try to do whatever Jackson did (including jumping off the examining table.) Jackson I don't think ever would have crawled up to that table at Sam's age but Sam is much more fearless watching Jacksons example.

It's so fun to watch their personality differences and yet to watch them play happily together too. Sam wants to be and do whatever Jackson is. He's started playing with what I consider "older" kid toys just because that's what Jackson is doing. He builds towers with duplos but jackson didn't even get them for christmas until he was 3. Sam is much more interested in sports and the rougher side of boyhood. Jackson basks in the attention of others. He is very strong-willed and sees things as black and white. It's fun to see him get more adventuresome though as he gets older. He's noticing sports and competition more. He's always had a lot of girl friends in the ward and I'm beginning to see differences with some of them in playtime. He'll agree to play house but not choose it then want to switch to chase, or pirates, or building. Sam does much better than Jackson did alone. He'll entertain himself and he's much more passive. ahhh.... motherhood

Alabama

we went to alabama last week and got to stay til monday. One of my favorite things to do with my family on a sunday night is walk the quad. i feel like in the length of the walk you get a chance to rotate through who you're talking to and I just really enjoy it. Most of the time we have to leave too early though and we miss it. On our way back there are some fountains outside of the Ferg that evidently my dad always walks through when its hot outside. Jackson wanted to walk through with him which was fun for him. When we got back to the car, of course he was soaked and didn't want to get his car seat wet. I told him to strip down to his underwear and ride home like that. Jackson told me he couldn't do that because Sam would see his underwear. "Jackson, you take baths with Sam." "Oh yeah" he said.

If I don't just start typing right now I will never remember

my brain is fuzzy. this summer has been fun and slow. yet for some reason I haven't been able to blog. on this blog or the other. so here it goes. just some things rambling around.

i have lost count of the number of times Jackson has said "to infinity and beyond" and then I hear a fall/jump/yell.

whenever i say "ok family let's get in the car" sam starts his fastest waddle that he can manage in that direction.

i've been so emotional this pregnancy. mad. sad. mad. sad. tired. then sad again.

this past week when i put the boys to bed, after prayer, sam will crawl up into jacksons bed, lay his head on the pillow, pull his blankets up and ask me with his eyes if he can sleep in jacksons bed. it is so hard to resist. one night i let him try, convinced that he would get down in less than one minute. i waited and waited and waited and after hearing no evidence i peeked and there he was, still laying in bed. Probably 15 minutes later jackson told me sam had gotten down (no doubt because Jackson had gotten down). So when I went upstairs to put sam in his crib, he knew his crime and was trying to crawl back in bed to lay down.

sam is talking--sort of. Its the kind of talking that only parents can understand its hard to really call it talking. the first word he said was diaper but it was more like "i-uh" other words he'll say are dog, daddy, mommy, jackson, milk, grandma, blanket, shoe, hi and ducky.

jackson loves numbers. i think at least. he likes to pick two numbers and ask me to tell me what they add up to equal. this week as he was eating cereal he put the chocolate pieces together and the peanut butter pieces together (yeah, we eat real healthy cereal around here). Then he said "I know how many 4 plus 2 is" and counted all of the pieces.

Remember this natalie

Important:

Never tell jackson to do anything.

Also, note to self: figure out how to get him to do what you want without telling him what to do. I really want to either help him get over this while he's young or train myself to help him in a more effective way. When I tried to teach him how to swim this summer he was totally doing better at the beginning than he is now after 5 or 6 days of swimming. The more I push, the more he resists. At the beginning of the summer after a few attempts he would put his face in the water, push away from the wall, breathe, put his face back in the water and keep swimming til he got to me. I got too pushy. Today we just got back from the pool. It hasn't bee 2 weeks since he was doing the good swimming. He never got out of the baby pool. He told me 2 days ago that he never wanted to swim. Ok, swimming is a big deal but it's not the biggest deal. What about when we get to issues like grades, church activities, RELIGION. These are really big deals.

I mean you would think that your kids would automatically be better than you because you can teach them all the things you know and then they learn more than that. right? totally not the case.

How do I help a child experience life moment by moment for himself and dealing with the fact that he's not going to trust me to just tell him what's worth his effort and time?

maybe exposure?