Best of times, Worst of times

Our days now consist of extreme highs and lows.

Need I say more?

Eating is by far one of our big stresses. I am grateful we have a relative abundance of food, but I am always at a loss to find something Jackson will eat on a particular day. One day he'll love it, the next he won't touch it. This is insanely frustrating when hunger is causing grumpiness, because I have no idea what to feed him. Generally my mantra is that he'll come home wagging his tail behind him, i.e. something's bound to be attractive enough to fill hunger. It's just hard to remember than in the moment of stress.

Without fail, he loves anything he helps make. Good old investment. Here are some sugar free (meaning really no sugar) whole wheat pancakes we made last Saturday. Mark wouldn't touch them with a stick, I wasn't terribly impressed with them, but Jackson ate 3.






And here starts the real fun. We're thrilled his drawing skills increase exponentially each day. Unfortunately he is very creative in finding new canvases all around the house. All markers and pens are now on a high shelf.



Honestly, his first wall drawing was exciting. It meant I got to begin logical consequences to try and teach him not to do it again. Too bad he thought the consequence was as fun as the crime--probably not the most effective deterrent.



Logical consequences are lovely and all, but what in the world is a logical consequence for hair pulling at age 18 mo? This kid is totally attracted to hair, especially when he's frustrated. I can deal with it being mine, but he's probably yanked on 10 little kids' hair this week. That's a problem. So logical consequences. I certainly could pull his hair--which makes sense, except he's usually pulling hair during a heightened emotional state. I'm not sure making him more mad is the best idea. This last week we started time outs with the hair pulling. So far it hasn't really helped, but at least I feel like he's not being rewarded for pulling hair. He usually sits out until he's calm, and then we go back and tell the little kid sorry. He had to do it 3 times yesterday, and 3 times today. Advice???

Back to the best of times, he'd gotten really good at throwing things (this can also be a worst of times category). Footballs were the star of the week, following his awesome friend Bodi's amazing 2 year old football themed birthday party. We got to take home a fabulous blow up football, and Jackson has thoroughly enjoyed using it, and I'm thrilled it's a blowup.



Our neighbors threw a real football into our yard a couple of weeks ago. That stays outside. Of course it was a nice distraction while I was taking pictures for my Mom's birthday card (idea stolen from my amazing friend Kristen). With everything else in the yard, it was SO hard to capture a moment these fast paced distracted little boy!

And here were most of the pictures:

Blurry, with no visual on the sign or face



Or me carefully putting the sign somewhere conducive to the distraction



A few of them were decent





Talk about cheese.. and a bent sign.



But then this one came around, and I nearly died. Our little studly model.
(Imagine it in black and white)



I did not take a picture of the end product of the card, but I told my mom to save it because Jackson had a really hard time giving it away. He LOVED it! I guess he was invested again.