Project 52 2014: Week 7

"A portrait of Jackson, once a week, every week, in 2014."

 Jackson sneaking a drink from Papa's Huge cup!!

*Linking up with Practising Simplicity.*

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day Everyone! 

Yesterday, Jackson had his first Valentines Day Party at Pre-School! He got to bring a Valentines Day Box and Valentines for his friends. :-)

So I found this little Valentines Day Box kit at Hobby Lobby and put the box together and it turned out super cute. I also found Jackson a cute little shirt to wear to his party from Carters. :-) I bought Skittles Valentines and Jackson helped me sign them all for his friends.

My mom picked Jackson up from school yesterday, so when I got to her house after work I snapped a few pictures of my little Valentine and his box of goodies.

We had dinner there and my sister and her family came over too. I got Mason and Landon Valentines Day shirts as well, so I got a couple pictures of all three boys in their shirts. They are too cute if I do say so myself!

Tonight we are just celebrating at home. Jake is making Filet Mignon for dinner and my 2 sweet Valentines and I are just going to relax!

And because I always like a comparison, here are all 3 of Jackson's Valentines Day pictures. ♥♥ He's getting so big.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day!!

Jackson Lately

Jackson is getting so big and learning so much, I just don't want to forget a few new things he's been doing and learning. :-) He's come such a long way in the last month or so. His speech has improved tremendously and he's saying so many words now that I can't even write them all down. It's amazing how it just kind of happened over night.

First of all, he's doing really well in pre-school. After his first day, there were a couple weeks of dropping him off where he would cry and not want us to leave him. Thankfully, he would only cry for a second and then go about his day just fine. Nevertheless, it was hard to leave him knowing he was sad. Thankfully, we've had a good 2 weeks or more with no crying!! :-) He's doing very well there, learning a lot and he brings home an art project every day. He always points out his school when we pass it and really seems to be doing quite well there.

He's learned several of his colors and knows them very well. He knows, Blue (Bwoo), Yellow (Yeow), Green (Geen), White (Yight), Pink (Ink), Purple (Pur), Orange and Red (Yed). :-) 

He's been doing better about cleaning up his toys and he loves helping us do whatever we're doing. Saturday he had a great time helping us put the groceries away. I hope he always wants to help this much.

We've taught him how to rub noses and how to tell secrets. It's the cutest thing. He doesn't really say anything, but he whispers in your ear and it's so sweet.

He's learned a few of his shapes recently and I think they may be working on this in school too. He knows Star, Circle and Triangle so far.

He's started to become interested in learning his letters too, but he calls every letter "C". :-)  However, he can say all of his letters if you point them out and tell him what they are.

We're not really potty training yet, but he's seemed to have a little more interest in it now that his cousin Mason is potty trained. He has sat on the big potty a couple of times in the last week (which he was always too scared to do before) and he talks a lot about going pee on the potty. I'm hoping these are good signs and we'll have a success on the potty soon. :-)

With all the progression we've had in learning new things, one thing we've digressed on is sleep! And this mommy is not too happy about it. He had been doing really well before our trip to AZ, but since we've been home he's been waking up multiple times a night (sometimes as many as 5 times)! He gets up, opens his bedroom door and stands at the gate and whines/cries til I go in his room and either rock him back to sleep or lay with him til he goes back to sleep! This routine is getting real old and I'm exhausted the next morning. Anyone know what I can do to solve this problem. We sleep trained when he was in his crib and were very successful, but I'm not sure how I can do that again with him being able to get out of his bed now.

 Some of his favorite things right now are:

-Playgrounds and Playing with other Kids

-Fruit Snacks, Chicken Nuggets, Fish Sticks, Oreos, Cheez-Its, Apples and Watermelon

-Any shows on Disney Jr. or Super Why

-The movie Cars

-Coloring

-Playing with Cars
-Apple Juice
-Bath Time

So that's what Jackson has been up to lately. 

He's at a really fun age and I just love watching him learn so many new things. He's such a sweet boy and we love him so much!

28 Week Bumpdate and a couple Sneak Peeks.

How Far Along: 28 Weeks: The start of the Third Trimester!

(You can check out my 28 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

 Size of Baby: (According to babycenter.com) 28 weeks: By this week, your baby weighs 2 1/4 pounds (about the size of a large eggplant) and measures 14.8 inches from the top of her head to her heels. She can blink her eyes, which now sport lashes.

 

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I had a dr. appt. at 25 weeks and was up 19 pounds then. She was measuring 1 week ahead as she has been for a majority of this pregnancy. I go to the Dr. again next Monday, so I'll have a better idea of my weight gain then.

Maternity Clothes: Yes, all maternity clothes.

Gender: Its a GIRL!!! I think we're really close to a name! I hope to share it soon.

Movement: Yes, she's moving around quite a bit now, and I love it.

Food Cravings: I did have a craving for Mexican yesterday, so we had it for lunch and it was very yummy. :-)

What I miss: Just being able to do normal things without feeling tired or out of breath. I also miss being able to wear my wedding rings, which I haven't been able to wear for quite some time now. :-(

Sleep: Having to get up at least once a night to use the restroom and just can't seem to get comfortable sometimes.

Symptoms: A growing belly, and some sciatic nerve pain that has actually felt a little better this past weekend. I'm also having a few Braxton Hicks contractions here and there and some pain under my right ribs, which I had with Jackson as well. I've also had a little bit of heartburn that comes and goes.

Best Moment this week: Picking out the fabric for Baby Girl's nursery bedding. My sister is making the bedding, curtains and recovering a chair for the nursery! I'm so excited and can't wait to see it all done.

Here's a little sneak peek of the fabric we got. I really love it!

We also got fabric to recover Jackson's infant car-seat rather than buying a new one. She was able to work on that yesterday and got a majority of it done!! It turned out so super cute!! I just love it.

What I am looking forward to: Deciding on a definite name for baby girl and getting her nursery ready. I'm also looking forward to my next Dr. appt. where we'll get to schedule my c-section and have a date to look forward to meeting our sweet Baby Girl! My baby shower is also something I'm looking forward to which will be next month! I can't believe we're already in the third trimester!!

A comparison at 28 weeks pregnant with both Jackson and Baby Girl.

Project 52 2014 - Week 6

"A portrait of Jackson, once a week, every week, in 2014."

 Jackson at the Phoenix Zoo on Sunday.

 

*Linking up with Practising Simplicity.*

5 on Friday

I'm linking up with the lovely ladies above for their 5 on Friday Link Up!

So I've talked a little bit about how my dad has built us a new, second bathroom in our basement. He just finished it about a week ago and we're loving it! Our house originally just had one bathroom and with the way the market is right now, we new selling our house with only one bathroom someday, might be somewhat hard. So we decided to bite the bullet and add a second bathroom to our basement. Half of our basement is finished and half is laundry and storage. So my dad, being the amazing guy that he is, built us a second bathroom into our unfinished basement, from scratch, with a door from the finished part.. There was no plumbing or anything for the bathroom! He did such an amazing job and we absolutely love it!

Let me start by saying, these pictures really don't do it justice at all. I took them with my phone, so they just don't show how nice it really is. Once its decorated and our basement is put back together, I'll take some better pictures and add them to the "Our Home" portion of the "Our Story" tab at the top of my blog.

Here are the doors from the finished part of our basement. (To see what our basement looked like before, you can click here.) The door on the right leads to the unfinished part of our basement and the door on the left is for the bathroom.

Our pretty new bathroom!

Now that the bathroom is done downstairs, we can move on to moving the office downstairs and then finally get to painting and decorating the nursery. Right now my dad is building a closet in the unfinished part of our basement so Jake can have a closet. Our closets are small in this house so Jake has always used the closet in the office. Since that will now belong to Baby Girl, he needed somewhere to go with his clothes. So since the downstairs bathroom is essentially Jake's new bathroom, my dad is building him a closet down there too. :-) Once that's done, which should be in the next couple days, we can start moving the office downstairs and then start on the nursery. I can't wait!! With all that being said, I think I've finally narrowed down exactly the look I want for the nursery. Here is a little mood board I've put together! I can't wait to finally get started on it.

 Last week we traveled to Phoenix to visit a friend! We had a great time!! It was so nice to get away from this frigid cold and snow and relax in the sunshine! Here are just a few pictures from our trip. I hope to do a more detailed post later next week.

Jackson's first plane ride. We flew out Wednesday, early and thankfully Jackson slept a majority of the flight! He did great.

Landing in Phoenix.

Thursday was spent sight seeing around Phoenix. First we went to the Deer Valley Rock Art Center to see some Petroglyphs.

 Then we went to the Japanese Friendship Garden.

Friday, we drove to Tombstone!

Saturday, our friend Jim had a BBQ and invited some of his closest friends. We spent the day outside on his beautiful back patio and then spent the evening by a fire he built. It was a very relaxing day. Jackson even fell asleep outside by the fire. :-)

Sunday, Jake and Jim went to the Phoenix Open (a Golf Tournament), so Jake's mom and I took Jackson to the Phoenix Zoo! We had a great time.

Jackson mooing like the cow! Ha.

Then Monday we left early and flew home to the ice box that is St. Louis right now. :-( We had a great trip!

I think this little outfit is so adorable!! I'm pretty sure Baby Girl needs this once we finally pick a name.

Speaking of baby girl names, we are narrowing it down even more. There are just about 2 or 3 names in the runnings now. I think it's narrowed down to Lyla, Harper or Ellie. I hope to have a name announcement soon. I promise to let you know as soon as we know. :-)

And that's it for this long and very random post! I hope you all have a super great weekend.

Project 52 2014 - Week 5

"A portrait of Jackson, once a week, every week, in 2014."

I'm a little behind on getting this posted, but with being out of town last week, getting back to work and the snow storm that hit yesterday, I'm glad to have gotten to it at all. :-) 

 Jackson playing in our friend's back yard while we were in Phoenix, AZ last week. 

*Linking up with Practising Simplicity.*