All Bundled Up

I just had to take a picture of jackson in his jacket and hat. He looks just too cute in the hat! He's ready for winter.



I just had to take a picture of jackson in his jacket and hat. He looks just too cute in the hat.

Jackson's Birthday Parties

To celebrate Jackson's first birthday with family and friends we threw him 2 birthday parties.

Jarvis and I typically go to his family's house for Thanksgiving so I think 2 parties will be an annual tradition since Jackson's birthday falls near Thanksgiving. The first party in Montgomery was mostly family but also a few good friends. As you guys know from previous entries, Jackson's allergies prohibit him from enjoying the things we love...cake, icing...ice cream so being the good mommy I am I scoured Montgomery in search for gluten free ingredients to make him his own special cake. After staying up late the night before the big bash and making two cakes (in case one didn't turn out right), Jackson's cake was ready for him to dive in. Of course when it came time to dive in, he needed a little help from me but ultimately was OK not having cake! He had such a good time at his party and enjoyed playing with his cousins. With the party wrapping up around 3:30, the Boyd's were packed up and on the road for our 10 hour trek back to Dallas and Jackson slept 9 of the 10 hrs!

For birthday party #2, I went a little overboard. I handmade all of his invitations.(not sure I would ever do that again after 20+ hrs of work) and attempted to make another cake for him and the cake for the party. The theme was a Jungle so we had blow up jungle animals, jungle treat boxes, jungle theme music and animal tags for the kids. All of his frito lay friends came out to celebrate with him and a few friends that we've met since we had Jackson. I made little mini turkey sliders and animal cookies for the kids. A friend suggested having an older activity for the older kids so we bought some canvases and oil paints for the kids to paint pictures. Everyone enjoyed themselves so I know it was all worth it. Can't believe my baby is one!! This has truly been a blessed year..I will cherish this time forever...

Jackson's Now Walking!!

So as you may remember from my many previous posts, I have been wondering when this day was going to finally come. Well 12 1/2 months and it is here. Jackson took 26 steps today, the most yet and so I will say he is walking! It's soo interesting to watch. It's very robotic, as if they are really thinking "how do I do this walking thing." But we are very excited for this milestone for him. I know we might not be thinking that when we are chasing him all over the house like crazy but for now we are just as excited as he is.

Jackson Turns ONE!!!

Today is Jackson's official birthday. We started the day at the allergist getting round two of his flu shot. Then we went to the doctor for his 12 month check up. Jackson is growing is definitely growing and as the doctor said is very advanced. He weighed in as a lightweight of 18 lbs, in the 10th percentile. He's so active now that the doctor said we probably need to just feed him more to keep up with his metabolism. His height came in at the 30th percentile at 29 in.

Jackson's development continues to amaze us. He's taking steps but not full on walking, but we imagine it will really be any day now. He's becoming more independent and loves to walk around holding his bottle, multitaksing:-) He is doing well with his vocabulary and loves to try and repeat every word you say. His favorite thing to do still is to read. He will sit quietly on the floor and flip through books as if he's reading to himself. He almost likes this more than us reading to him. We believe he is destined to be a scholar:-)

To celebrate pre-birthday parties, we took him to cheesecake factory. He had a good time eating french fries - which he loves and was pleasantly entertained by the cheesecake factory staff when they sang happy birthday. Initially we started out going to this new restaurant, Cozy Kitchen, because they advertised that they had gluten free desserts and breads, but they were closed so unfortunately Jackson didn't get any cake on his official birthday. All Jackson could do was look at his ice-cream sundae that the staff brought out.:-(

Halloween...Tricks & Treats

Halloween was a busy three days for Jackson. Thursday my marketing department invited all the babies born between January 2007-present to a fun celebration where they all dressed up in their costumes. You ask why did they restrict the age, well we've had a bit of a phenomenon in the department where about 35+ babies have been born since 2007. Since I've given birth to Jackson 17 other women have also given birth to babies!!

Friday we went over to one of Jackson's friend's house's, Charlotte for some pumpkin carving. Charlotte's mom also works with me and she had Charlotte 2 months after Jackson. Jackson enjoyed playing with all the children. He's such a social baby he just bounced around from playing with one baby to the next as if he was working the room.:-)

Then Saturday we started out the afternoon going to the Dallas Arboretum. Every year they have a fall festival with a pumpkin patch and fun activities for the kids. We spent some time exploring the arboretum and ended up in a very organized and creative pumpkin patch. Jackson loved the arboretum he was facinated with all the flowers, fun props and the pumpkins.

After the arboretum we raced home to get ready for trick or treating. One of our neighbors invited us and a few other neighbors to her house for some pizza and treats before we all headed out for some trick or treating. We ended up just going trick or treating on our street and then came back to the house to give out candy. Jackson was pooped by 8pm and our little lion was fast asleep by 8:15.

Swim Class With Daddy

Normally I am the one in the pool with Jackson for his swim class but today I was running late from work so I ended up meeting Jarvis and Jackson at the pool. I was able to get a really good video of Jackson swimming with Daddy.

Jackson Feeding Himself

Jackson is getting the hang of feeding himself. He either enjoys it too much or he's just plain greedy. We often have to stop him or limit the amount of food we put on his tray because otherwise his mouth will be stuffed. It's amazing that he only has two little teeth at the bottom but he can stuff his mouth and work the food with his gums and two teeth until it's small enough to swallow...crazy!

Jackson's 11 Months!!

Jackson turned 11 months today, can hardly believe he'll be a year next month. He's taking a few steps...and then of course resorts to his crawling. We made a major milestone this month, he no longer needs us to rock him to sleep!!! We put him down in his bed and he talks to himself until he dozes off or just plain dozes off.

Swimming at Home

Occasionally we think Jackson is taking the skills he’s learning from swim class and applying them in other settings. Here he is sliding across the floor with both hands otherwise occupied. At first we thought, maybe he’s trying to swim but then we thought, maybe he’s just multitasking…his hands are occupied and he still wants to get around so he is going to glide across the floor:-)

We're Almost Walking

Jackson made huge progress on his way to being able to walk. We bought him this push toy several weeks ago to try and get him interested in pushing something around, ya know so that he would walk soon and to our surprise he had NO interest in pushing the toy, all he wanted to do was turn it over on it's side and play with it. Well Jarvis started working with him the past day and voila he is cruising with his toy. I believe he will be walking by his first birthday!

Day Out With Daddy

As you've seen in earlier pictures, Jarvis gets a kick out of dressing Jackson up like him and taking pictures of themselves. Here they are with hats and zip up sweaters ready to go out as "twinkies":-)

Our series of words

One of the exercises we like to do with Jackson (I know he already has exercises and he's not even 1) is we like to run through all the things he knows and then we say "yeah" at the end to praise him. He loves to praise himself so often that sometimes he stops our exercise and starts to clap to say "yeah" after one command.

7-11 Playdate

Jackson invited all of his frito lay baby friends over for some good food, football and fun! There are six babies that were born within 2-3 months of each other at work, two actually born within a few weeks of Jackson. So we'd thought it would be fun to have them over for a playdate...hence the 7-11, they were all between 7 and ll months. As you can see from the pictures, it was like herding cats. We had 3 different cameras and probably 8 or so pictures and NONE of them came out clear or with all five babies looking straight ahead:-)

Jackson's 10 Months!!!

Today Jackson celebrates another monthly birthday Jackson is now 10 month’s old!!! We are making a lot of progress, he’s finally signing back to me!!! He know how to sign, “milk”, “all done”, and blow kisses. He’s still not walking but he will take a few steps when you hold his hand in front. He is a self praiser and likes to praise himself when HE feels like he’s done a good job. And while we probably won’t have to worry about self-esteem issues, we may have someone who may be too assure of himself – but hey confidence isn’t a bad thing. Our method of praise is “yay” with a hand clap and boy does he love this!

He has added “stop”, “pup pup” to his vocabulary. He loves to tell us “stop” and with attitude when we tell him “stop” as he’s doing something he’s not supposed to do. I’ve got him pretty well trained when I yell his name or say it with force I sometimes don’t even have to say stop, he’ll just automatically say it for me. Now, most of the time he stops what he’s doing but then goes right back and does it again but we are making progress:-)

Dirty Looks...Just for Play?

All those that have been around Jackson over the past several months has seen his famous dirty look. At first he was just doing it for fun, now he knows how to use it in context. It's funny because he'll even play with you, if you give him a dirty look he'll give you one right back. He'll go back and forth dirty look, release to a smile, dirty look, smile.

Trip to San Antonio

Jackson and I drove down to San Antonio for my nephew's birthday. This was my first time driving a long distance (4.5 hrs) with Jackson by myself. Jarvis stayed behind because he had tickets to see a UFC fight and the Cowboy game in the new statium.

As you folks with children know, we become a slave to our children's schedule so it was important that we leave during jackson's nap time so I could get as much driving done while he was sound asleep. The plan was successful and he slept for the firs 2.5 hours. By the time he woke up we stopped so I could change him and feed him. Then back on the road for another 2 hrs. Well he wasn't so excited about that. He fussed for about 15 min then miraculously fell asleep again!! I guess the ride was too relaxing for him in the end or was tired of fussing and realized he couldn't get out.

We had a great time in San Antonio at Chuck E Cheese. I guess that will be us someday...parties for Jackson at Chuck E Cheese. At least jarvis and I love the pizza there! After the party we went to meet one of my best friends from high school and her mom. Jackson was excited to see them and it was great catching up with auntie april and her mom. The drive back was much of the same but we stopped off for a nice treat at the Kolache Bakery!

Jackson is Dedicated to the Lord

Soo sad about this one as we do not have one single picture!!! We were too busy rushing out the door to make it to church and then when we got there everyone, including our friends and family, were in the pulpit for the dedication. Jackson had a very cute outfit from his Ne Ne (Jarvis' mom) that he wore. He was also on his best behavior, but no surprise with that. Our Pastor wrote a nice poem that we will treasure as Jackson gets older. We felt so blessed to share this momement with our friends and family that were able to join. Here are a few pics with his cousin Karys...

Jackson's Play Dates!

So for all our blog readers, we are of course behind in the blog, but catching up quickly...

Jackson had more play dates this weekend. First we went over to Noah's house for some Friday afternoon fun. Noah and Jackson played very well together, no fighting just sharing and pushing up on each other... well Jackson did most of the pushing:-)

Then Monday for labor day we invited Miss Zoe and her parents over for lunch. We met Zoe at Gymboree and come to find out her parents are good friends with some friends of ours from cincinnati, small world!! Jackson is such a loving person, he greeted Zoe with kisses and many times tried to yell and scream in excitment at her... to which Zoe showed no interest:-) All I have to say is You go Zoe...Let the boys chase you...

And Low and Behold, We Have Teeth!

At 9 mo, 3 wks, Jackson's teeth have finally started to emerge. I know you are not supposed to get caught up in those developmental milestones, but I have to admit it's hard not to. So since 7 months, I've been looking, asking the doctor is there any sign and now they are here. I probably would not have known for a while because he has been his normal self, still sleeping through the night, not iritable, no excessive drooling but when I went to put him to last night he put my finger in his mouth and I was like "whoah, what's this scratching me?" In my excitement, bedtime quickly ended so we could go show daddy. Then in normal fashion the Boyds made a song out of the milestone, well Momma Boyd did..."you gotta teethusus, you gotta gotta gotta teethusus." Then the next day I noticed his second one was cutting! So I am hoping this is how he will be, calm, cool and collected. Now on to walking:-)

P.S. No pictures yet, it's been difficult to get them with his mouth open.

Jackson Learns to Swim

We have enrolled Jackson in a baby swim class through Emler Swim, which teaches babies through the age of 5 how to swim. He has the cutest little trunks, babies still in diapers are required to wear two pairs of swim trunks so if the first pair doesn't catch his business, they second one will... don't think he'll be excited to wear these speedo type briefs when he's 20 but they are cute now:-) At his age, he's in the waterbabies class so there is not a ton of backstroke or freestyle practice but they are learning to hold their breath under water, become acustomed to the water and how to get out quickly if they ever fell in. Jackson absolutely loves the water! He's not afraid, he kicks and plays and when I'm busy trying to get him to follow our instructor he drinks the water...I know, not so appetizing but I am constantly trying to keep him above water to prevent the swallowing. Now if I could just get him to drink plain water from a bottle!


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