The Johnstons: Babbling, Football and Jumping back!

~This week we are staying at The Kirk's house. "Why" you ask? Well they are in the glorious town of Telluride, Colorado with family vacationing (ironically enough Jackson's Great Grandparents are staying there too right now at Uncle John and Aunt Pam's vacation house! Maybe they will run into each other!) and we were going to dog sit for them, but then I realized, "Hey, you have a pool and I need a tan, can we just stay at your house?" Maranda obliged thankfully! It is just so difficult doing the redneck pool thing at home (sprinklers in the backyard with a lawn chair) with Jackson. Hot + Sweaty+ Grass on feet + Baby waking up from nap = NOT a comfortable situation for me. A pool is so much easier and makes for a much happier situation when baby wakes from nap! We have been over there since Saturday and will be there until this coming Saturday, so one full week! I am at my house today, dropping some stuff off, checking on the cat (who now is interested in Jackson..woohoo!), and updating my blog. Ill be back on Thursday and update again then.

~I have to say (although I am knocking on wood as I type) this whole baby thing is getting so much easier! Now that he is almost 3 and a half months he is happy almost all the time, babbling (video above), great when we take him out (except if its bedtime...my birthday dinner meltdown at Guadalajara..whoops), and is just all around an easier baby than even a few weeks ago. I LOVE my job! I have the best job anyone could ask for and I dont even mind not getting paid any money for it. We have learned that the screaming thing is his source only when he is hungry, tired or has a dirty diaper...thank God. So it happens far less frequently now. We have been working on alot of independent play time lately!

~ So highlights from the last week on Jackson: The only bad thing that has happened is I got my first call from the church nursery. Yep thats right, he was inconsolable and I was paged out of the service (during the prayer when its silent only to have to flip flop it out of the sanctuary quickly and not as quietly as I would like..dang it casual summer at church and dang my love of flip flops). Of course by the time I got there he was fine and the ladies were like "go on back he is okay now, I think he must have had gas". I said "well he looks kind of tired, try putting him in the swing with his pacifier". When we went to pick him up after the service he was in the swing happy as a bug in a rug! I love it when Im right!!He is starting to really be interested in his toys around his exersaucer, he actually can hit the music buttons now (maybe on accident, but still its a hit!) and he reached for the sun today. No pun intended, he literally grabbed at the sun on the exersaucer. The other day he accidentally spun this clicker thing (There are these three spinner things I like to call the coin slot spinners and each one makes a different noise..there is a clicker noise, a clanging bell noise, and another noise I cant think of right now) ANYWAYS he hit the clicker one (its super loud) and it scared him b/c he didnt know he did it and he jumped back in the exersaucer and stared real serious at the source of his startlement for awhile, I guess he was expecting it to do it again! So funny.

~Speaking of jumping back, I have another funny story but this one involves our dog Dixie, who I swear has a human brain. She gets smarter every month I think. She is on allergy medicine right now and she has to take these two pills twice a day. The last time I gave her medicine was a month ago and I gave her a pill a day with peanut butter (so now she's a treat snob, but thats another story). So this time the doc made a comment about her weight and said if you give her the pills with peanut butter, then cut back on the dry food. Well I just decided to throw her pills in with her food, since she garbles it down anyways. It was a success the first night. Taylor decides thats what he will do in the morning as well when he feeds her her breakfast. So he puts the pills sort of close to the top but where she couldnt see them. Dixie goes over there takes a bite and I guess as she pulls back to chew she sees the top of the other pill, JUMPS back and spits all her food out on the floor immediately. All in one action. Laughing yet? So he decides that way wont work so he takes the pill out of the food, and picks the other one off the floor and gives it to her the ol standby way of shoving in back of throat. After, he tries to coax her to her food but she wont go near it and is acting a little freaked out by the whole food in bowl concept. He finally got her to eat out of the bowl but the whole time she would take a bite and then look around and chew. Hilarious right? Well we thought so. If you know Dixie I am sure you can see this happening! Come to find out those pills smell horrendous, which we figured out quite quickly. Poor thing, she could probably smell them! She wont take them in anything at all, not even peanut butter bc she can sniff them out.

~ Enjoy the photos below, the first few are of Jackson in Jake's exersaucer at the Kirks house. Yah thats football he is watching. I tried to get on the floor to play with him and turned him away from the TV but he got mad and I turned him back around and he started smiling and was happy. Whatever. I love college football too. Dad and Uncle Troy were very happy about this development. Only prob, it was a Tech vs. Texas game from a few years ago. We must teach him...they are not our friends!!! Must teach him the sssing noise! But we are getting so excited for football season..woohoo! The video is a look at Jackson babbling earlier today. He wasnt as happy as he normally is when he talks, but I think he wanted up and I was trying to get a video so enjoy it but know that most of the time he is smiling big while he is talking!