OnE-HUNdreD & FouR!!

So yesterday while Jackson was getting stuck doing this....  (and yes that is a pink diaper, this is the 21st century boys can wear pink)             

and this..... 

I noticed some blood on his left big toe. You can kind of see it if you look closely at the first picture. Well after washing the blood off his toe I was relived to see that there was only a tiny little scratch with just a dot of blood coming out of his toe.

Well that tiny little dot must have been bleeding for quite some time because as I looked around the living room I saw dozens of little red blood spots.

Prior to these photographs he had been "vacuuming" the living room and dining room with the vacuum attachment pictured in the above photographs. Apparently he was very thorough in his carpet cleaning (he must take after his father) because I found 104 tiny little blood spots in various places all over our carpet.

There were some by the front and backdoor, some by the couch, behind the hallway doors, between the two bookshelves, in the bathroom, pretty much every where, there were even some under the kitchen table. Luckily everything came out just fine, but it did take quite some time to clean up.

The funniest part is that it didn't even hurt until I put a bandaid on it, he is still asking me to kiss it better.

The Frog Prince

Just wanted to share a quick story. This evening I found a frog outside so I caught it in a glass jar and brought it in for Jackson to see. He loves animals and bugs and pretty much all things outside so I knew he would really like it. I brought it in and showed it to him and he started smiling from ear to ear. 

At first he thought it was a lizard, but then realized it was a frog. I dumped it out of the jar down on the ground by his legs thinking that he would like to see it hop...boy was I wrong. As soon as it took its first hop he started screaming and jumped up from the floor and ran over and climbed on Justin's lap, still crying. I picked it up and showed him that it was okay and that it wasn't going to hurt him. He was still crying at this point so I set it on the ground so he could watch it hop and see that it wasn't going to do anything. That was a bad idea and only made him cry harder. 

I finally gave up and put the little frog back in the jar and Jackson immediately stopped crying and just looked at the jar. We asked him if we should take it back outside and he said, "yeah, froggie outside" so we took it to the porch to let it go. Once it hopped out of the jar he started to squirm a little bit and was very glad when it hopped off the porch. He said, "bye bye froggie". 

Guess we won't be buying him a pet frog anytime soon. 

In the Rain

So I know I said that I would write next about getting to church carless, but I changed my mind and instead wanted to talk about all the crazy things Jackson and I are getting ourselves into.

First I think its worth noting that sometimes being a Stay-at-Home-Mom is really hard. Once Jackson was born I dreamt about what it would be like to be able to stay at home with him full-time and not have to shuffle him between mine and Justin's class and work schedules. In my mind I had it all planned out we would color, read, go to the park and just play together all day every day. Our days would be filled with laughter, learning and just plain old fun. Yes I did think about diaper duty and the fact that Jackson and I would probably drive each other crazy sometimes and maybe I was a little naive about the whole thing, not realizing how hard draining it is sometimes.

Some days are pretty much perfect and I love being home with Jackson and we really do just have 'plain old fun', and those are usually the days when he takes a nap for me. But lately he has been refusing to nap and on those days I literally want to cry and scream and pull my hair out and I'm sure Jackson does too. Actually sometimes he does, but usually its pulling my hair, not his. =) Well yesterday was one of those days.

A friend and her 15-month-old son came over in the morning, which was pretty fun, even though Jackson wasn't playing very nice. After they left it was nap time, which of course Jackson refused. He sleeps in a toddler bed now and usually he is pretty good about staying in bed, I mean of course he gets out and plays sometimes, but then when he is tired enough he gets in bed and goes to sleep. Well not yesterday. He stayed in his room for about 10 minutes and then began banging on the door with his shoes! I don't know how he figured that out, but what a smarty pants, it was so loud I could not ignore it, which I sometimes do. We continued to try nap time for the next hour and then gave up. It was so hot outside that going out wasn't an option so we tried to find things to do inside, but all that ended up happening was Jackson dumped out a box of 97 crayons, stepped on a few breaking them in pieces and then drew all over my (and his) arms, I'm actually still slightly purple today. He even found the scissors and gleefully ran them through the house while I desperately chased him down before he poked his eye out or stabbed any of the furniture...yikes.

We had an early dinner, and yes a frozen pizza counts as a dinner, especially if it is a veggie pizza, and then decided that we didn't care about the budget anymore and headed to Walmart/Michael's/The Dollar Store to find some crafty things for us to do indoors. We caught the bus no problem and got off at the stop nearest Walmart, which is about 1/2-3/4 mile away. After walking through a reptile pet store, which Jackson both loved and hated we headed to Walmart. Shopping was actually pretty uneventful and Jackson was just about as perfect as a baby can be in a store. He sat nicely in his stroller just watching the people and toys pass him by. We ended up buying side walk chalk, paints (water colors and finger paints), coloring books, play dough, a sketch pad, a bucket of miscellaneous craft supplies and some fake flowers for the house.

As we were checking out we saw the sprinkles starting so we finished our purchase and literally started running once we hit the pavement outside. By the way we do have an umbrella, 3 actually, but for some unknown reason I actually took it out of the diaper bag before we left...won't be doing that again. We were at Michael's, which is about 1/4 of a mile past Walmart and we made it to Walmart just as it was starting to down pour and I mean like torrential rain, as in literally walk in it for 10 seconds and your soaked all the way through. Those of you from Utah who have really never seen a good rain storm because they do not exist there, may not realize the magnitude of this rain storm, but it was crazy. Luckily we were only a little bit wet, however it was past 8pm and we couldn't exactly sit in Walmart all night we had to catch the bus. So we went to the umbrella section and bought the biggest one they had and headed out. I covered Jackson's legs in plastic bags because no matter how I held the umbrella they still stuck out. I'm sure we looked ridiculous, but it worked. The rain did let up a LOT, but it was still raining as we very slowly made our way to the bus. Its pretty tricky pushing a stroller while strategically holding an umbrella to make sure you, your baby and all your new purchases stay dry. I ended up giving up on keeping myself dry and just stuck the umbrella over the stroller to keep Jackson and our goods dry.

Well as we were about to cross the street to get to our stop the bus pulled up and we missed it...bummer. Next bus 25 minutes. I thought about just walking home, but wasn't sure what the rain would do and I didn't want to get caught in another down pour so we just waited. I put a plastic bag on the ground and sat on it and positioned the umbrella over Jackson and we just sat and waited. It looked like a tent was set up by the bus stop. You couldn't see the stroller or I unless you peeked under the umbrella, which several people actually did. Again Jackson did beautifully. He did ask to get out several times, but because by this time it was dark and still raining I told him that he couldn't get out so we had fun pointing out the different vehicles that went by. I actually had to tilt the umbrella up so we could see the road, just to give you a better idea of what we looked like...ridiculous...welcome to my life.

The bus got there about 8:45pm and by this time the rain had almost completely stopped. The ride was uneventful and we got off at our stop with no major problems. Jackson decided he did not want any part of getting back in the stroller because little boys can only sit for so long so he walked beside me, while I pushed the stroller full of goodies for another day.

Oh the life of a mother.