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Lately Jackson has been obsessed with letters. He loves the Leap Frog Letter Factory show. He watched it one day in the car about a month ago. It must have sparked his interest because one day he came running out of his closet holding up some letters that used to hang on his wall. "A! Mama, A!" I was impressed. I had tried to teach him the letter A a couple months before, and he wasn't too interested. He kept insisting the A was a D. Now he is a sponge and begs to watch the Letter Factory every day.
My dad bought him this Letter Factory toy, and he loves playing with it and learning his letters. He will watch the show and find the matching letter and hold it up. He also enjoys stealing my book from me. "Mama's book," he'll say and then he will find all the letters he knows in it.
Sometimes he will find non-letter objects and bring them to me. He found a Frisbee with a hole in it and said, "O!" Or even black tape. "O!" he exclaims proudly. He does get some letters confused, like A and V, M and W, and S and Z. When I try to tell him it's actually a different letter, he looks at me like I'm crazy. Overall, he does pretty well.
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One weekend, we went to the zoo with Jackson and the tiger there was really active. It kept pacing back and forth by the glass. Jackson thought it was pretty amazing and kept waving HIS tiger in front of the glass to show the real tiger he had a tiger too. It was pretty cute. We stayed there for a good portion of our zoo visit.
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When Jackson wakes up, he looks for Ryan in two different places--in the office and in bed. When he can't find Ryan, he asks me where Dada is. I always tell him, he's at school! When Ryan comes home, Jackson gets really excited and runs and gives Ryan a big hug. It is pretty cute. Today, Jackson and I were running errands, and Ryan got home before us. Jackson didn't really pay Ryan that much attention when we got home, so Ryan requested his daily hug. Jackson quickly said no and tried to run away. Ryan picked him up and started to hug him, and Jackson started screaming (and laughing), "No! Dada, STOP IT!" Yes, that is his new phrase that we all love *cough, cough*
Speaking of which, Jackson also has learned to scream, "No!" over and over again. We also love this...not. We have been trying to teach him how to say, "No thank you" instead. Wish us luck. He is really good about saying please now, so maybe there is hope.
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Jackson has this new found love for babies. He loves to look on Instagram with me and watch all the baby videos. He will sometimes request them, "Babies, please?" Whenever he watches them, he gets this almost goofy smile on his face. I'm pretty sure he thinks babies are adorable.
He has 2 small tiger stuff animals and 1 bigger one. He calls the 2 small tigers the babies and the bigger one the mommy. He then kisses them. Sometimes he will feed them "Babas" and put them to bed.
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Whenever Jackson wants us to go somewhere or to follow him, he will grab out hand and drag us along. I'm pretty sure he thinks he is the boss in this family. If we don't follow him, he gives us a small smile and says, "No, no," very sweetly and then pulls harder. Sometimes he will even go behind us and push us until he gets his way.
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Two things that Jackson hates are (1) Baths. I think this stemmed from him having his hair washed and getting water in his eyes. I have to literally force him in the tub. Once he's in there and playing with his bath toys, he is happy as can be and doesn't want to come out. Go figure. (2) Bed time. He doesn't want to go to bed ever. He has become quite the expert at prolonging bedtime. He's learned to ask for a smoothie right before bed. This is Ryan and my weakness because they are healthy and so good for him. Jackson also learned to run up to Ryan and snuggle with him. This is the only time he will snuggle, and so it's hard for Ryan to send him to bed. Jackson has also been known to hide from his bedtime diaper change, request multiple high fives, kisses, and "ugga muggas" in his crib to prevent us from leaving, and when all else fails, will cry just for those few extra minutes he doesn't have to go to bed. This makes bed time quite the task.
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Jackson has a hard time with prayers. When we say it's prayer time, he starts whining and complaining pretty loudly. We realized it's because whenever we say a prayer, we make him do something he doesn't want to do--sit down and eat or go to bed. This makes it embarrassing at church when they say it's prayer time at nursery, and he is the only one yelling in defiance.
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Today, Jackson's cousin, Christian, came over to play while his siblings went to the temple. Jackson was pretty excited. They played really well together. Jackson has what we like to call a totem pole. Whoever is at the top is Jackson's favorite, and he will only let that person do things for him. I'm usually at the top. Grandma trumps me a lot of the time. Well Christian trumped both of us tonight. Jackson kept trying to get Christian to take him out of his crib. He wouldn't let anyone else do it. Unfortunetly, Christian is 9 and not old big enough. After awhile, Jackson finally let me do it, but it took some encouraging.
When Christan left, Jackson waved and said, "Bye, Christan!"
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Jackson was playing with his toy drill today. He was drilling a toy screw into the platform thing. He was concentrating so hard. When he actually did it, he threw his hands up in the air and screamed, "I DID IT!" It was pretty cute. He then stuck the drill in his mouth and turned it on, just to see what would happen. He quickly pulled it out and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
"I did it!" (Sorry it's blurry! Cell phone pic.)
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Now that Jackson is talking more, he wants to make sure he is understood. He will repeat things over and over until I repeat it back to him showing him I understand. The problem is that sometimes I can't understand what he is trying to say. The other day he was saying something like, "Dist! Dist! Dist" I had no idea what he was saying, and he was very persistent. Finally I pretended like I knew what he was talking about, "Oh! Dist!" and he then nodded his head in approval and walked away.
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Jackson loves his elephant backpack. I think he sees Ryan with his backpack and wants to copy him. He insists on putting his "pack pack" on and walking to the car, except he only walks a couple steps before he dramatically plops on the ground and can't walk anymore. I guess those "pack packs" are heavy things!
