You Are My Sunshine!

Your are my sunshine...

my only sunshine...

you make me happy...

when skies are gray...

you'll never know dear...

how much I love you...

please don't take...

my sunshine away.

(One of Jackson's favorite songs. I've sung him this song since we brought him home from the hospital, often bringing "happy" tears to my eyes.)

I'm linking up here:

and here:

Jackson's 15 and 16 Month Pictures

Not sure how I missed posting Jackson's 15 month picture, but I did. :-( So here are his 15 and 16 month pictures and a few updates.

Lately, Jackson has some days where he eats really well and others where he doesn't eat as good. I guess kids go through stages like that. We are still doing 2-3 bottles of whole milk a day, however, his Dr. said we need to ween him off the bottle by 18 months, so we are going to need to start doing this soon. I'm nervous to do this because when rocking him to sleep, we almost always give him a bottle to settle him down. I'm not sure what we'll do when we don't give him a bottle anymore. 

Jackson weighed 27.6 lbs. at his 15 month check-up. I guess the next time he'll be weighed will be when we go for his 18 month check-up.

He's saying a few more words these days, but its still not as much as I would like. Its not below what the Dr. would consider to be normal, but it seems to be less than most 16 month old children. I think its more of whether he actually wants to say the word as opposed to whether he can say the word. He has started to say ball. He actually picks up a ball and says it, so he's putting the word with the object, which is good. He is saying mama more often and bye bye, both words he's said in the past but just didn't use very often. He said choo choo with the hand motion last week when we saw a train in one of his books. Last week I was showing him how to crash his cars together and I was saying crash and he copied me crashing the cars and said crash. :-) He has also started shaking his head yes and no for what he wants and doesn't want, which is helpful and he'll even sometimes try to say yes and no.

He got 2 more teeth during his 15th month and is getting 4 more. He now has all of his first molars and he's getting all 4 of his canine's in now. I'm thinking this is part of the reason he's not sleeping as late as he used to. This past week he hasn't slept past 7. :-( He used to sleep until 8 or 8:30, but unfortunately thats a thing of the past these days. Even on the weekend he was up at 6:30 or 6:45. He's not really taking very long naps in his crib either. Only about 45 minutes to an hour. However, if he sleeps in the living room on the couch, he'll sleep for more like 2 hours or longer.

As I said in a previous post, he has just started to really love being read to. He will grab a book and bring it to you to read and will sit on our lap for several books at a time. He even fell asleep at nap-time a couple of times last week while I was reading him books. He's learned to go down the stairs now. He's known how to go up the stairs for several months now, but just figured out how to go down them. He also loves to get into the dogs' kennels and play. :-) He's recently started throwing major temper tantrums, complete with falling on the floor and screaming when he doesn't get his way, which is not fun at all! Otherwise, he's really sweet a majority of the time and we have so much fun together.

A Living Room Wall Make-Over

This past week, I did a little make-over on one of our living room walls. I'm really liking the way it turned out. 

Here's the before and after pictures.

Jackson is so tall that he can reach pretty much anything on this table. He loves to get the frames and its a constant battle with him. :-( I miss being able to set all kinds of pretty stuff out.

So my solution to the problem was to hang the pictures somehow. I moved our wedding photo over to our photo gallery on another wall in our living room. (I'll show you that re-do when I get it all finished). I decided to buy some 8x10 frames matted down to 5x7. They were only $3 each at Walmart! These pictures are all family pictures of both mine and Jake's immediate family (i.e. parents and siblings). I bought the "Family" and "Home" signs at Hobby Lobby for 50% off and only spent $20 total between the 2 signs. I thought I could put the Home sign back far enough that maybe Jackson couldn't get to it. The other stuff on the table is just for this picture. :-( I had to put it all away after taking the pictures because I know he would get into it.

Here are a few close-ups.

And here's a picture that shows the full wall.

Project Life 2013 - Weeks 7 and 8

I missed last week because I was sick. So to catch back up, here are my pages from the last 2 weeks. ☺

Week 8

For this page, I used the "Its a Good Life" full kit from Just Jaimee.

Week 7

For this page, I used the XO mini kit from Creashens.

"Little Blue Truck" - A Cute Children's Book

Jackson LOVES books. Which makes this momma so happy. I'm not much of a reader, I never have been, but I definitely want my children to enjoy reading.

I introduced books to Jackson with the hope that he would love them and it started out that he would barely sit long enough for me to get through the first page of a small board book. But recently, he brings me books and sits on my lap and lets me read him several board books at a time. He even fell asleep while I read to him a couple of times at nap time last week.

We've recently made reading a part of our bedtime routine, which helps to settle Jackson down and get him ready for bed.

He got a few short board books for Christmas, but now that he's really enjoying being read to, I wanted to find some board books that were a little longer. Saturday night at Target I searched the children's books in hopes of finding a cute book for us to read together. I found this one called "Little Blue Truck" and really liked it. Its a bit longer than any of the board books he currently had and it taught a lot of animal sounds (which we are currently working on with Jackson) and a good lesson in helping and being kind to others. Its a really cute book.

Here is a picture of the book (courtesy of this blog) and a link to it at target.com.

And here are just a few pictures of Jackson "reading" it. ☺

I plan to buy him several more books in the near future so we have a variety. Any suggestions??

Just a Quick Weekly Update

This week has been... well, not so great! 

I was off work Monday for President's Day and also off Tuesday because Monday was my normal Monday off. Having those days off was great, but the not so great part is that we all ended up with the Stomach Flu! 

I should start by saying, this stomach flu was like no other I've ever known. It was like a Super Virus or something. It actually hit my sister's family over the weekend, going through all 4 members of her family. Monday, it hit my parents and by Monday night it hit Jackson. Jackson, only really threw up once and never even acted like his stomach hurt, but he had terrible diarrhea ALL WEEK LONG! I mean like explosive diarrhea. (Sorry if thats TMI, ha!) Let me also add, that this is not fun to change when your own stomach is all upset! He actually still has it, but it seems to be getting a little bit better. Yesterday I must have changed at least 8-10 poopy diapers, and he had to have 2 baths. To make matters worse, all of that caused a diaper rash, even though I was changing him as soon as he would go.Thankfully, when he woke up this morning, his diaper rash was pretty much gone and I've only had to change 2 poopy diapers today.

The flu hit me Tuesday night and Jake Wednesday morning! It really has been awful. :-(

Thursday, we got a huge snow/ice storm. We were all still home sick, so thankfully we didn't have to get out in it.

Today, Jake went back to work and I stayed home with Jackson because he was still having diarrhea and I just didn't want my mom to have to deal with it. Thankfully, its been better today and I think it may be safe to say that we are all on the mend. Thank goodness! I was able to get the house all cleaned and sanitized today, which feels good.

So thats why I haven't really blogged this week. Its just been a not-so-fun week. Here's to hoping this weekend and next week are better.

To end the post on a happy note, here are a few pictures from this past week that I posted on Instagram. (Most from before we all got sick.)

Jackson's first time on the carousel at the mall last Friday night. He loved it.

Sunday morning at church in the Nursery Class. I had nursery duty, and I couldn't help but get a picture of these three cuties eating their cookies together. ☺

These next two are from Sunday night. Jackson snuggling with Daddy and...

Jackson standing on his toy! He's becoming a little monkey.

My super silly boy eating lunch on Monday.

Jackson decided to join Libby in her kennel Tuesday evening! Ha.

He also decided to help Daddy out on the computer!

Thursday morning couch time, watching Disney Jr. and trying to get over the flu.

Later Thursday morning as the snow and ice started to come down. You can't really tell from this picture, but the snow flakes were huge!

I hope you all had a better week than we did and I hope you all have a great weekend.

My Sister's Blog Re-design

I am so blessed to have a wonderful sister. She and I are pretty much best friends. I love having her close by so we can share our lives together. 

She has a 5 year old and then she and I got pregnant within just a couple days of one another in 2011. (You can read about that here.) Mason was born just 12 days before Jackson. I hope our children will grow up becoming the best of friends. ☺

She started a blog around this time last year. She blogs about her family and her days as a stay at home mom! She also blogs about some of her sewing projects, which are always fun to see.

Since I just re-designed my blog, and had so much fun doing it, I decided to give her blog a re-design and I'm so excited about how cute it turned out. She LOVES owls! So we went with an owl theme!

If you get a minute, stop by her blog and check it out! ☺