Fort Jackson

Not the army post located in South Carolina. We're talking Fort Jackson right here in our very house here in Kansas City.

Jackson has a new (to us) bed! It's a loft bed with a slide. Add some curtains to the bottom and he has a nifty little fort! Of course, he loves it. And of course it's added a challenge to bedtime, but it's getting better as the newness wears off. It really is super fun and Derek is a bit jealous that he doesn't  didn't have one.

Here's a video of Jackson enjoying his new bed!

Quite a bit of fun for a hand-me-down bed! And Great-Grandpa picked up some race car sheets at a garage sale that make the bed even cooler! Jackson is in little boy heaven!

The family bed

After Derek left for training in July, I remember commenting that our king sized bed just felt so big and lonely sleeping in it by myself. When I was anticipating Derek coming home knowing I wouldn't have to sleep alone anymore, this isn't what I had in mind. Refer to Exhibit A. Our bed has become the family bed. And it's not something that Derek and I are all that thrilled about. In fact, if I could comfortably sleep in Jackson's little bed, I would sleep in his room. Truthfully, I'd probably have more room in his toddler bed than I currently have sharing our king sized bed!

Exhibit A

This is one of the different variations of how the bed sharing takes place. I cuddle Belle because the spoiled sweet little thing goes through phases of only sleeping when held. But on the rare occassion that she does allow me to put her down and give my arm a rest, I can put her in the corner of the pillows and go back to the middle to make sure she doesn't get rolled on or smothered with blankets or pillows. Then every night at varying times Jackson makes his way to our bed. And when we take him back to his bed, it's only a matter of time before he's back again. And of course,there are pillows on the other parts of both sides to prevent child-falling-off disasters. Since I generally have Belle, he goes to Daddy's side. Jackson sleeping style is as follows: on top of you or on top of pillow (as pictured above).

There are of course several variations of the sleep arrangement with special consideration to avoid having Jackson and Belle not sleeping next to each other because I'm fairly certain Belle wouldn't make it out alive.  There are times though when Jackson's on my side, in the middle, or just all over the bed actually. Derek woke up two mornings ago in what he called a kid sandwich. He was squished in between both of them and he couldn't get out until I moved one!

That leave Derek and I with about as much room as a twin bed would offer. There's room to lay straight and that's about it. Sooooo not comfy.

I came upon this comic in the interwebs this week. I totally laughed outloud. 

I went to my 6 week post-partum check up yesterday and she didn't happen to mention this form of birth control. I guess she didn't have to! And hey, this method doesn't even require a co-pay! Derek and I don't plans for another child anytime soon... and these kids must feel the same way!

(I do realize that we could insist on having no kids in our bed, but that involves battles that occur in the overnight hours. Once we can get Belle on fewer, or none, nighttime feedings we may have the energy to make her sleep in her bassinet. And also take Jackson back to his bed several times and deal with the screaming that ensues. But for now we will take the greater amounts of uncomfortable sleep than the lesser amount of comfortable sleep. Though, I will still complain.)

Two-year old tid-bits

Jackson is at such a super fun age. I feel as if I've said that at about every stage he's gone through...but it's just so fun to watch him grow!

First, he is talking non-stop. My mother pretty much laughed in my face when I told her that I really just needed a break from him telling me story after story one day. So, I guess I had it coming. It is so fun to have real conversations with him! After spending time with grandparents, he'll tell me what they did together. Or he'll bring up a movie or a book he's recently read.

His vocabulary is growing rapidly. And I am reminded of how much he picks up on all of the things I say and do!    Like, when I hear him in the back seat going "dang-it" over and over again. Oops! Not all of it's bad. Whenever he coughs he says, "gracious" (as in goodness gracious) or he'll come up to me and say "icky cough!" He is currently in the stage of saying, "Aaawww!" at lots of things, actually, but mostly at clothing items and pictures of babies, however, he did say it while looking through the Hy-Vee grocery ad today. Not sure what that was about, but apparently, he's heard a lot of "ohhing" and "ahhing" over baby girl stuff!

Speaking of baby girl, he calls her "baby sister". He does know her name, however he has no interest in even trying to repeat it back to me ever... and in the few times that he does, it sounds nothing like her name. Feel free to ask him. Today he picked out one of the pink blankets I had out, and proceeded to "make her bed" on the ottoman (I'm super excited to post about how I transformed by coffee table into an ottoman!).

Jackson has been going down for bedtime really well for several weeks. And for the past couple days, nap time has been super easy too! Oh, it's such a relief! I purchased room-darkening curtains from Wal-mart (I don't recommend then, they are totally not-room darkening... but my windows are very short, so if I double them, they do the trick). Really, it made all the difference in the world having those curtains, so he's not distracted by the toys!

Jackson loves to give hugs and kisses when people leave, often multiple times. And yesterday when I dropped him off at the nursery at morning church, I totally thought he was going to have a melt-down with me leaving by the way he was acting, not letting me leave... but it turned out he just wanted to kiss the bulletin I was holding in my hand. At night church, it was my purse. Weird.

He is convinced that we have a cactus growing in our front yard... somewhere underneath the 7 inches of snow that is covering our yard.

His current sentence structure sounds a lot like, "Where James is?" when asking for a friend at church. He still says, "up you/hold you/help you"- whatever he wants at the moment. And it is very, very important that you repeat back to him what he says to you or else he gets extremely frustrated and will shout it over and over until you do actually repeat it.

Then at bath time tonight, he was unusually gassy. As if he didn't already giggle enough when he toots, he figured out that tooting underwater makes bubbles. And apparently, that's really very funny.