belly art with baby 2

We've reached 34 weeks and I'm feeling pretty good. Its hard to believe that last time around (with Jackson) we had him in just one week. Speaking of last time around. Tony and I did things slightly different the first time around. We didn't really have a baby shower and never set up a baby registry. With this baby we have set up a small (very small) registry on Amazon.com. There are a few things we never bought or received the first time around that we think would be useful with two kids. This is no way intended to suggest that people need to buy us things or that they need to buy things only on the registry. Also know that if you do see something on the registry you'd like to purchase don't feel like you need to buy it on Amazon.com. Here is the link (search for either Tony or I): http://www.amazon.com/gp/baby/homepage?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Now on to the fun stuff! In addition to helping clean up our park last weekend, Jackson and Daddy had fun painting Mommy's belly. We used the baby belly as a canvas of sorts, and Daddy and Jackson created 3 amazing pieces of art. The first piece is obviously created and designed by Dad in honor of Earth Week - but Jackson loved helping him and kept asking for brown paint. So Daddy filled in the Andes and part of southern Africa. 

 

The second was all Jackson and free hand. It was so fun to watch him carefully make circular motions with the paint brush around my belly. He also wanted to get my sides, which was tickle-y.

 

 

The last was what you might call a "classic" -- hand prints! It was a lot of fun. Can you tell that we are all excited? Special thanks to Daddy for initiating this activity and for being a fabulous photographer!

 

 

 

Earth Week!

Happy Earth week y'all. Last weekend was great, regardless of the gloom that is the weather this Spring. There was a clean-up event at our little neighborhood park/play lot. Only a few families showed up but it was fun. Jackson loved helping out. More so then the other, older kids. He raked with Mom and Dad and helped put the old, decaying leaves into bags. We didn't bring a camera but our neighbor was nice enough to email a few pics.

 Picking up trash with Daddy. Jackson insisted on riding his bike that morning and we forgot to take his helmet off at first. It didn't seem to phase him.

Jackson and his new buddy, Wesley. Wesley and Jackson are only a month apart. Jackson and Wes like to "ride" bikes (aka scoot slowly). This particular morning Jackson promptly asked Wes "Wanna ride bikes?"

spring forward

Spring is here and its been awhile since we last blogged. Winter has seemed so long for us, even as we move into Spring. We have had some sunny days but for the most part Chicago has been gloomy, rainy, and windy (of course!).

We had a great visit a couple weekends ago from the Carnot Family - great Grandma Mary, Grandma Chris, Aunt Kathy, Aunt Lisa and Aunt Mary Jo. Unfortunately it was a short visit and we didn't get photos ... but it was great to see them. Here are a round of photos from one of those sunny days (at our neighborhood park).

Mom's friend Anne was in town for a conference and Jackson and I drove her to the airport. Jackson was a trooper and spent almost 3 hrs in the car with little toys and no snacks. I know, bad mom, right? Well, I decided to treat Jackson to "Old McDonald's" (aka McDonald's). We've only ever gone a handful of times, mostly when traveling long distances. But Jackson knows McDonald's, just like he knows the character "Diego" even when we don't have cable. Jackson asked for a hamburger but little did he know I got him a Happy Meal. Yes, I did it. We took it home and ate the whole hamburger and sliced apples. I had to at least "make" something and had to also feed him something healthy. He was curious about the Happy Meal box but didn't investigate what else was in it until near the end of dinner. After taking a peek, Jackson noticed the toy. "What's that Mom?" and "What's this?" soon followed. He is so wonderful and still refers to McDonald's as "Old McDonald's", especially when playing with/talking about his toy. 

 Jackson loves Mumford and Sons. He asks us to play the "banjo song" and refers to a specific part of the song as "he's going nuts" when ... well, when the banjo goes nuts. Anyway, here Jackson is "going nuts" with his own guitar. Daddy calls this his "power stance" whereas I call this his "Johnny Cash stance". Sometimes Jackson will hold his guitar high up and close to his chin and dip his hand up and down while moving kind of slow when dancing. I know this probably makes no sense to everyone and I wish I had video of it but I didn't.

So Jackson is in a big Daddy phase. It truly is awesome to see the two of them together, laughing with each other. Its sometimes hard at times for me, like when I'm about to help Jackson put on his pull-up but he quickly changes his mind and insists (and man, do I mean insists) that Daddy does it. "Daddy, you want to do it?" I know it seems silly to think that this is difficult but what's difficult is that there is no rationalizing or communicating the simple act and time it will take to put a pull-up on. So until then I just let Dad do it and need to remind myself to not take it personally ... and to watch videos like this:

Finally made it to the Shedd Aquarium. It was a lot of fun but super crowded, which was mostly annoying. The Shedd is a beautiful building but I wasn't all that impressed with it. I thought the Columbus Zoo had an equally (if not better) aquarium. Maybe my opinion was swayed by the massive (and did I mention annoying) amounts of people there and the ridiculous price to get in. Luckily we had a free pass (usually 34 bucks a person and kid) but the upgrades were still ridiculous and totally not worth it. Alright, now I'm just going off on a negative tangent and that's no fun. We made the most of it and did have fun, especially seeing everything through the eyes of Jackson.

The big anaconda was pretty cool!

 

"Turtle Mom!"

 Jellyfish!

Kisses.

 Hold on Dad.

 Something is down there.

 "Goodbye Turtle"