Jackson

Indulge me for one blog post, will you? Because I am a very proud mother today and need to share it. Jackson and I have been going to the "Toddlers" ECFE class since the beginning of the school year and while it's been going very well, he's definitely had a hard time separating some days. And he hasn't once been interested in the "arts and crafts" portion of the class. Until today:
Something clicked for him today and he just waltzed right in, went over to the table to see what they were on about and dove in. I went over to help him and together we made the above picture. It ties in with the story read in class today, "Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me" by Eric Carle. The story has a big ladder that goes all the way up to the moon, so Jackson's picture has a ladder (tongue depressor) going to the moon too. The yellow squares are "stars" and the 3-D blue thing is just a 3-D blue thing. Jackson glued everything on himself (with Mommy's help) and told me what everything was. There are some chalk drawings at the bottom, a la Jack, but he did not do the 5-point stars at the top (what can I say? I loved coloring as a kid and couldn't resist!).

This piece has since been taken apart, since he wanted to sleep with the ladder but NOT the rest of the picture, so that's that. But it was so fun to do this with Jackson and even more fun to see him WANT to try something new and TELL me about it as he was doing it. I can't believe how big he's getting. (He'll be 2 exactly a month after Christmas.)

Just a bit more bragging and then it's time for some more photos. Jackson's language has positively exploded lately and we're having such a great time communicating with him. Not only is he telling us 2-word sentences, but he's on to 3- and 4-word sentences too. And he's not just repeating us anymore, but is instead making his own observations of the world. Examples:

• When discovering that Mommy wasn't in bed anymore one morning on vacation, he said to his Daddy, "Mommy sweep all done."

• Today in class when he was sad that I left for the parent class and his teacher told him it was snacktime, he sat down and said "Eat now" and stopped crying.

• While watching out the airplane window on our flight yesterday, he told his Daddy that the "huitcase up-up WHEEE!" when he remembered watching the suitcases being loaded up the ramp into the plane (going up-up to him always means that there's a "WHEEE" on the other end for going down!).

• When we wouldn't let him play with the light switch at Omi + Opi's house, his response was "I NEED LIGHT!"
  

As promised, here is your reward for sticking in with me for this long on this Jackson-Jackson-Jackson blog post: photos from our vacation. What can I say? I love my kid. And I'm very proud of him!

[playing with his Uncle Joe's old rocking horse]
[being pulled through the snow on his Daddy's old sled]
[tasting his Omi's homemade German Apple Pancakes for the first time]
[up-up, WHEEE! in action, as he ran up and down the (icy!) ramp at the beach]
[my sweetie]