To cut or not to cut?

As Jackson's hair has grown we decided it would be fun to see what it would look like if we let it get a little longer! Now not girly longer but you know that surfer shaggy look.

However...it has recently come to my attention that my child has a mullet!

party in the back!

Now i'm left wondering if we should power through this awkward stage of hair growth or give it a trim? There is no way i'm going to cut it because I have no clue what I'm doing but I fear a barber might cut too much off...

From the front it's pretty dang cute!

I think we'll just give it a little longer and see what his crazy head of hair does :)

Just What We All Needed

Jesse finally had a day off on Friday!! He turned his phone off and completely dedicated himself to spending the day with Jackson and I and I couldn't thank him more for that...we needed it!

We had heard a lot about the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo down in Colorado Springs so we decided to venture down there and spend the day at the zoo! Now I must admit that due to the name "Cheyenne" we assumed that this zoo was up in Wyoming so we spent the entire week telling Jackson about how we were going to Wyoming on Friday...haha we felt pretty silly when we realized it was down in Colorado Springs...oh well :)

This Zoo was probably the coolest thing we've been to in a longggg time! It was HUGE! And to top it off there were hardly any people there....The Perfect Day!

I couldn't believe we actually got to feed and pet the Giraffes! An experience of a lifetime for sure!

Cheezin it up!

We spent a lot of time at the Giraffes because they were just so beautiful!

Jackson learned how to dip a french fry...look at the concentration :)

After the long, frustrating and exhausting week we all had we REALLY needed this day together. We had such an amazing time and loved every minute of it :) Its so wonderful how just one day can renew your sense of family and togetherness and give you a new view on life. I love my husband and son more than anything and love spending this special day together.

Not such a good day

Lately my patience has been running thinner and thinner and sometimes it just feels that I may explode at any moment. The stress of Jesse working 14 hour days and on his "days off" being too exhausted to play and needing to still work from home is just plain sucky! I know if I really thought about it I could think of 1,000 other words to use to describe it, most of which wouldn't be inappropriate, but for now I'm just going to go with sucky.

I know that Jackson can sense the tension and stress in the house and is certainly letting me know he does with the constant whining, getting into everything, hitting, bitting, climbing all over me like i'm a jungle gym and just needing to be all up in my business at all moments of the day. In fact he is attempting to help me type at this very moment.... Someday I will look back at these moments and miss him wanting so desperately to, as I see it, climb back into my womb. But for now it makes me want to lose my marbles at many points during the day!

This move has been nothing like what we expected from the very beginning. The stress level that Jesse is dealing with at work is through the roof which trickles all the way down to us. It's hard to not have daddy home in the evenings for dinner and bedtime and to wake up most mornings with him already gone for the day. We WILL survive, I know this. And things will NOT always be this way. But for now I just needed a moment to vent....

I know that it's time to put on my big girl pants and fight through this time so that is what I must decide to do from now on. I must wake up each morning and vow to be a little more patient with myself and my child and take deep breaths when I feel myself losing the last ounce of sanity I have in me.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day...

A Beautiful Sunny Morning at the Park!

With Jesse gone at work since 1am for inventory and an unfortunate call that he may be at work till 10pm tonight :( :( I decided to take Jackson to the park to take my mind off of things. It rained a bit last night so unfortunately the slides were all wet but we still had some fun in the chilly sunny morning!

 

 

Watching some construction

shhhhhh :)

Ummm....I think you forgot to give me the manual????

So Jesse and I decided to bite the bullet and potty train Jackson this past week. All signs were pointing to him being ready and he seemed very excited about the potty! We went and got big boy underwear, a potty, pull ups...the works! Then reality set in....
First off I don't think we realized that although Jackson may have been showing signs of being ready and was successful at doing his business when set on the potty, he certainly wasn't ready or old enough to have the appropriate bladder control or ability to pull on and off a pull up or underwear. Now I know that kids don't get potty trained overnight and by no means was I putting that sort of expectation on Jackson but after the first day of full on potty training we discovered that perhaps our excitement of Jackson potty training early was clouding our judgement on if he was truly "ready".
I have never felt so uncertain or questioned so many things in my life than I have since being a parent. "Am I feeding him the right thing?", "Should he be saying sentences by now?", "Is he sleeping enough?", the list just goes on! And now the newest question "Have I royally screwed up my kid by attempting to potty train him too soon???" Every book says something different, every parent will have a different take on it and every single moment of every single day I am left wondering if the choices I am making are the right ones....being a parent is HARD! There are even moments that I want to pick up the phone, call my old midwive's office and say "ummmmm was there anything else in there...like a manual???"
So for the time being we have made the choice to pull back on potty training and going about it at a much slower pace. We are leaving his potty out so he can choose to sit on it if he wants (which he does) and he has picked up the sign for potty and we encourage him to sit on it fully clothed and do his business (which he sometimes chooses to do). We'll see....obviously there isn't a manual and I"m sure till my dying day I will wonder every day if the decisions I'm making for him are the right ones but all I can do is love this crazy little kid and hope I don't screw him up too bad :)

Jackson and his new potty adventure

So for the past month or so Jackson has become increasingly more interested in the potty and what Jesse and I are doing when we go to it. We've started talking about what we're doing and being very open with him about the process and his interest just seemed to keep growing so we thought hey, let's give it a shot and see what happens!
Now Jackson only just turned 18 months old and he's a boy so I've done little to no research on potty training boys because I didn't expect him to be interested or ready to try till sometime after he turned 2....apparently I was wrong! We've been taking things slow and going off of his level of interest and ques but we realized that at some point we'd need to make a decision what we were going to do and go with it. We decided that since his interest is there now that we best seize this opportunity because we may not get another one till much later and it may be much harder then. We made the big trip to babies r us to pick out his "big boy potty" which we made a big deal and when we got home after a few "dry runs" he willingly sat on it and went pee which shocked us beyond belief!

Practicing with Daddy

I must say that although we are only 3 days in and haven't really been intensely potty training till probably today it is sure A LOT of work on our part! The constant talking of the potty and our body parts and what things do and where things go makes for quite the interesting conversations in our house :) However, since both Jesse and I are well versed in potty talk and Jesse enjoys sharing about his bodily functions...it really isn't much different from daily life if you think about it ;) I have been overjoyed with Jackson's ability to have a dry diaper during nap time for the past 2 days and we love celebrating each accomplishment with him and seeing the smile on his face.
I'm finding it hard to be optimistic about him "actually"potty training right now when everything else with Jackson has been such a struggle for us. I do think that part of the problem is that I wasn't ready for him to do this yet, he's only 18 months old, he's still my little baby! I'm afraid that once he is potty trained and wears big boy underwear that all the baby will be gone...I'm not ready for that. But regardless of if I'm ready or not, he is, so I need to let him grow because I'm pretty sure that out of all the things that Jackson will do in his life that are new for us this one will be a lot easier than the ones to come...i.e Preschool....ugh I can't even think about that now!
Today wasn't as easy with the potty and Jackson's willingness to be on it. I think part of the novelty of the potty has worn off and now it seems like a chore to him that takes him away from his playing. Even though we had a few accidents today we did have a HUGE triumph in that he went poop in the potty for the first time!!

We got him a new "Potty Time" toy that he gets to play with only when he's on the potty

We'll just continue taking one day at a time and seeing where things go....

Our trip back to Oregon...

Jackson and I just returned from a long 3 1/2 week trip back to beautiful Oregon to visit with family and friends. We had such a blast and while it was very hard to come back to "reality" we both were so excited to see Jesse! For the last week we were there every time I got on the computer Jackson would run up and say "Da!" and point at the computer and whenever he awoke from a nap he pointed around saying "Da?" I could tell he REALLY missed his Da! This trip certainly made Jesse and I realize that we can't go on that long of a trip away from each other again, so trips back to Oregon will now have to be about 10 days long which is ok with us.
We lucked out during our Oregon visit with the weather being so beautiful! We got tons of walks and water play in with Grandma Brigette.....

I love how he worked on filling up this basket for such a long time (he hasn't quite figured how the concept of holes :)

 Unfortunately a few days before we were to leave on family vacation with Jesse's side of the family Jesse had to cancel his plane ticket and wasn't able to come back for the trip which really disappointed us all. Jesse's promotion has proved quite challenging over the past month or so...all 3 of his kiosks were torn down and re-built and with many mistakes and delays occurring higher up in corporate Jesse's workload has been astronomical! We've just had to roll with the punches and take the challenges as they come but this change certainly has proved to be way more than we signed on for...Our motto recently has been "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!" All of this change has affected Jackson quite a bit, although I try my best to keep my emotions stable around Jackson, at times it has been difficult.
Family vacation was a rough one with Jackson being 18 months old and interested in getting into everything under the sun and I swear his main mission was to cause mommy to lose her mind! I don't blame him for his difficulty on vacation with the constant "no touch" and "stop" that I had to repetitively say because well while camping that is the environment you are in. Between the struggles and challenges that Jackson and I had I was able to have many wonderful conversations with my in-laws and those moments were worth all the work! Jackson did have a super fun time with his cousins and it allowed me to see just how quickly Jackson catches on to things and how many words he was starting to form...

Playing in the sand with Cousin Sierra

Cousin Henry taking Jackson for a walk with Uncle :)

mmm Grandma's always have the best snacks! Cheerios!

I felt so blessed to have such a wonderful family that wanted so much to help me with Jackson but Jackson is just at that age and with all the change he's been through he really only wanted Mommy.

The rest of our trip was pretty relaxed and we spent most of our afternoons hanging in the backyard playing with water or going to the park...

We went to the park and had a blast with Grandpa David...

Jackson and Cooper had the best time at the Beaverton Fountain!

He loved helping Grandma Brigette water the plants...I think it's because he knew he'd get to play with the hose after :)

I think he might be a chef when he grows up! He loved helping Auntie Melissa in the kitchen

OR maybe he'll be a soccer player :)

And of course I LOVED seeing my baby nephew Joshua! He's growing up so fast....