WALKING!!!!!!!!

We were at Brian and Cathie's for Lyn's birthday, when out of the blue he decided that, as long as he's holding the popcorn popper, he can walk anywhere (Shawn calls it his Dumbo feather).

OMG!

Thank goodness Cathie had the presence of mind to grab her camera to capture the moment. He just suddenly took off walking. This video starts about 30 seconds into his first walk ever. Wow. Just wow.

I Have A Cute Caboose

 Well, don't I?? ;D

In other news, look what else he's figured out how to do (uh oh . . .)

Thanks mom, but I'll get my own water

(holy carp, I think I see one corner of my house that's clean!)

Laughing Jackson

Am I on a roll or what? Here's your daily dose of laughing baby. Enjoy :D

Yogurt!

Did I really need to post three pictures and a video of my baby eating yogurt? Um, YES! CUTEST BABY EVAR!!!!1!! :D :D (as my friends with no babies all go barf in a trash can, lol).

This is the first time I've given him something in a bowl with a spoon and just sat back and let it all take place (you can tell I'm trying REALLY HARD not to intervene and be a spoil sport). By the time I grabbed the camera he had figured out that there were faster, easier ways of getting that yogurt in his face than by using that cumbersome spoon:

Love it!

 He had a bath after this :D

 Num num, fingers work way better

Though the spoon is good to chew on . . .

Super Cute Videos! (Belated)

Okay, I've finally got these (sort of) up and running. These videos are courtesy of Cathie. It took me a while to figure out how to edit them for size, so if they look a bit weird, it's my editing skills, not Cathie's camera skills, that are behind that :D.

Showing off for Nana and Grandpa

Grandpa's really getting his exercise

Babbling away

Still loves his jumper

First Finger Paint

I cooked up a batch of homemade finger paint made from cornstarch, water and food colouring. To be honest, it wasn't very paint-like, but it was slimy and squishy and colourful. Jackson still had fun:

Messy fun

 Great for squishing between the fingers

 Yep, I'd say he liked it

Silly Mama, These Shoes Are Made For Sorting, CHAIRS Are Made For Walking

Jackson has discovered that he doesn't like walkers right now, since they roll too easily, but chairs are quite fun to push around. Oh, and who doesn't love a good shoe-sorting session?

I might just be imagining that he's saying "ta", maybe not though . . .

Also, he likes his new sunglasses that I picked up at Walmart. Check him out:

He is just too cute

And finally, a video of Jackson laughing :D. This is the end of the tickle session, so he's a bit tired out, but still, cute!

How lucky are we to have such a great little boy to tickle??

An Update And Video

It's HOT up here! Not complaining really, since summer took its sweet time showing up this year, but we pretty much stay inside from about 11am to about 6pm, just to stay out of the heat. We've actually caved over the last couple of days and run the air conditioner for a couple of hours each day. Sorry Earth, it's frickin' hot.

The house is  *s l o w l y* coming together, mostly because I've still got what some people have affectionately referred to as "baby mush brain" (which, apparently according to some people, never goes away and just gets traded in for senility later on - awesome, thanks for the head's-up), and get distracted very easily, so it takes me a long time to finish any job. BUT, I have now hung most of our "art" (mostly Ikea stuff) and the piles of uncategorized stuff lying around the house are getting smaller. Of course, as I do this, Jackson has grown a couple more inches, so we have had to move a bunch of stuff even higher than it was, but hey, we'll get there.

And now, to brighten your day, a cute video that has nothing to do with anything:

Me and Chris used to do this. Jackson's so serious about it though, lol

Bunch of Cuteness

This post will just be a bunch of cute stuff, no real theme. Here's Jackson just waking up from a nap. I wish I could still wake up this happy and excited to see the world.

And it's been a while since we've had a sleeping baby photo, so here's Jackson 5 minutes before the video:

Awwww

And a selection of baby cuteness from the past week or so:

 Crazy professor hair after a bath

Wearing Dad's big shirt

Playin' in a big box
(Edit: I lightened the video so you could see more)

Attachment Parenting

No pictures, I'm gonna talk for a little bit.

While I know that we are very fortunate to have loving, supportive parents and extended family that encourage us to parent however we feel is the best way, I know that some of our choices (probably most of them) depart from traditional parenting, and many of them are traditional parenting no-no's, or may sometimes appear, for lack of a better word, neglectful. While it is great to know that we will have support no matter what, I feel like everyone might breathe a little easier if they knew why we are taking the approach that we are.

Now, I postponed writing this post for a long time because I really didn't want anyone to think that our choices reflect on any negative feelings we feel toward our parents. Guys, WE LOVE YOU. We love you to the moon and back. And, now that we're parents, WE TOTALLY GET IT. You guys did an AWESOME JOB, and we have no doubt that you guys busted your butts for us day and night for YEARS. (Sorry for the yelling, I just want to make sure that you understand that we really mean it. You kick serious butt. I can't hand you trophies through the computer, so please stop and pat yourself on the back, or hug each other or something.)

Ahem. So like I said, we've made this choice because it feels natural to us, and it makes a heck of a lot of sense, even if it's very different from how we thought we were going to parent.

So the name of what we're doing (loosely, it's not like we're going to follow a rulebook to the letter) is Attachment Parenting, or sometimes Unconditional Parenting. I've tried to write a synopsis of what it's all about several times now, and failed miserably, so I scrapped it. I do, however, have some great links, should you like to check out what it is.

Attachment Parenting => Aha! Parenting
This website does the best job of explaining it. It's written by a child psychologist.

Unconditional Parenting: A Radical Parenting Style of Loving Unconditionally
Another good one, but it gets a little preachy (as in, we're the best and all the other parents are bad, which we DON'T believe).

If you don't feel like reading up on it, that's totally cool, because I really wrote this post to reassure everyone that we've really thought this through, and although it might look like we're spoiling Jackson, or failing to "teach" him (for lack of a better term), it's all part of the plan. The end result is an emotionally secure and mature child who develops empathy much earlier.