your little hands wrapped around my finger, it's so quiet in the world tonight...

last night i had a lot of thinking time in my favorite thinking chair. jackson has teeth on the verge of cutting through which kept him up quite a bit last night. it was that sort of 'i just need my mama to hold me and rock me so i can get some peaceful sleep' kind of night. it's as if i had the magic touch that allowed him to instantly go into a deep rest by simply holding him, but the magic broke the second i placed my sleeping bundle in his bed. 


i wished mamaw the best of luck this morning when i dropped him off- it turns out cousin josie had a similar night so i think mamaw is going to have her hands full today! luckily i am working from home just in case i am needed i can get to him in a quick dash. during the many hours of groggy rocking last night i did some mental assessments and to-do lists with all that there is to do this week so that on friday i can truly cut the chord to work and relax and enjoy the christmas break. it may be wishful thinking, but in any case it's nose to the grind today through friday to see if i can make that wish a reality. in the meantime, here are some random updates on what else has been going on around here...


tooth #3 popped through last week for jp. we still have had least half of our christmas shopping to do. our prime time for shopping is post 8pm when jp is in bed and amazon is fully open, as always. the snow sunday evening put a damper on our plans with friends, we had to turn around and come back home after sliding around on the roads. bing's energy is about to come to a full boil and explode soon as he continues to serve his 2 months of healing duty indoors. sammy seems to think that having bing inside grants him full permission to act out. have i mentioned before how children of the furry variety can often times be more difficult than those of the jackson variety? i have avoided talking about it on here because my grandma reads my posts regularly, but her fight with cancer has gotten much harder in the past week with an emergency surgery followed by news that the chemo is not helping so there is most likely nothing else that can be done- you can imagine the string of thoughts/fears/prayers that statement brings about, all of which i'll have to address at some point, but for now semi-denial seems to be working out just fine until i can force myself to face it head on, but for now focusing on praying harder than ever before is what i'm putting my energy into and i can't think of a better thing for my energy to go towards than that. on a MUCH lighter note and to my grandma's amusement i'm sure, jackson's bag of tricks continues to grow, including clapping, waving, mimicking what dan and i do, playing peek-a-boo with his blankie, pointing to 'jp's tongue' and 'mama's tongue' and many more- genius, i tell you, genius. 


that is all for now- more to come later!

3 Dates...

Jackson has been inviting you along for dinner dates every week as usual, but his mother has failed to post them... so, here I present to you weeks 38, 39 and 40:


Week 38 Dinner at Mamaw and Papaw's for Thanksgiving:



Week 39 Dinner, you're having chicken as a main course:



Week 40 lunch from yesterday afternoon, you're having peas and veggie shreds (looks like cheddar cheese but is made from veggies!):

homework assignment

one of the methods to the madness that is this blog is that i have been turning my posts into books for jackson. so as i rush to get all of 2010 published for him i had a brainstorm of how to not only incorporate my thoughts, ideas, wishes, but also those of the other leading figures in his life- Dan and his grandparents. below is the email i sent out this week explaining the homework assignment i had for these people... my mom, of course, already diligently completed her's and i'm so intrigued to see what answers each comes up with... 


Mom, Dad, Nancy, Joe & Dan:

I have a homework assignment for each of you :) - I know, you are all groaning and possibly rolling your eyes, but I promise it should be fun, hopefully thought-provoking and definitely worth the time it will take, which shouldn't actually be very much at all.

As you probably know I am turning my blog into books for Jackson to keep when he's older as they document our lives on an every day level and though my blog I am sharing my thoughts, views of life and memories with him. The original plan was to turn all of my blog posts into a book once a year so he would have one book per each year of his life- I am actually now doing it on a quarterly basis because apparently I blog too much to fit all of them into one book! In any case, I am working on his last book of this first year of his life and would like your help.

I would like to ask the most important people in his life a few questions at the end of each year and will then include those answers in his book. I want him to not only know you as his grandparents as he knows you today, but I want him to really understand how you view the world, how you grew up, the lessons you have learned along the way and all of the dreams that you have for him.

So, with that being said I have listed below the 3 questions I would like each of you to answer for 2010. It would be really great if you could answer these 3 questions sometime before the middle of January as I would like to have all 4 books from 2010 published by his birthday! 

Note: I would also like for his great-grandparents to answer these as well, but realize that may be more difficult to arrange, however I'm going to try my best. And Dan and I will be answering them as well, of course.

Thank you in advance for indulging in my little project :)

The 3 Questions:

1. What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given and who gave it to you?

2. What was your biggest childhood dream?

3. What are 3 things you know now that you wish you would have known earlier in your life?

Love,

Jessica

diez, dix, deset, عشرة, עשר, dieci, assara, ten... MONTHS!

jackson philip is 10 months! that's a lot of months if you ask me. months that have each brought new skills, new developments, new memories... and it seems like with each new month the amount of stuff he learns each day grows and grows and his personality is bigger than ever. i see so much of both dan and i in him. dan claims his attitude is one of those things he inherited from me, but we all know that could not possibly be the truth. sweet, sweet boy, i love you so much. the amount of love and joy that you bring to so many lives every day is something you may never understand, but trust me you are cherished to an almost ridiculous amount.