Feeling better!

3-6-06

Jack,

Sweetie - I'm so glad to be able to tell you that you are feeling better! You are back to being your happy, healthy little self!

This weekend was such a breath of fresh air! Your Daddy and I got to spend some time with you - all of us healthy and really appreciating it. Your Daddy worked on caulking the new windows in our house (they look EXCELLENT, by the way! :) and I had a very stressful week at my job this past week, so this weekend brought with it a LOT of relief not to mention that it's the first weekend in a long time where we were all feeling better.

This weekend I worked on transferring early video tapes of you as a young infant to VHS so that we could have the tapes clear and ready to use again in time for your birthday. It was so much fun to look at how far you've come!

As I've mentioned before - you love to dance. You love dancing to the opening themes of a lot of television shows that your Daddy and I watch. For example, your Daddy and I LOVE The Office and we watch it every Thursday. You play with your toys on the floor with us while we watch it and, whenever the opening theme comes on, you drop what your doing, stand up and bounce up and down with your hands in the air to the theme song until it's over. Then, the spell is broken and you return to your toys. (It's SO cute that your Daddy and I frequently will turn on a show JUST to play the theme song and watch you dance - sometimes we replay it again and again).

Well, there is another show that your Daddy and I love on the weekends and that is America's Most Wanted. I know it's not supposed to be funny, but there is a section of each program called In The Line of Duty where they will honor a fallen policeman or someone that was killed in the line of duty. During this part of the program, they always play a slow, sad ballad in the background. This weekend, you began your own tribute of standing during this slow ballad and performing a much slower dance of up and down movement with your hands in the air, but very slowly to the tune of the ballad. Your Daddy and I were both amazed and tickled to see you do this. It really cracked me up because you are so solemn about it. Man - you are adorable!!!

Your communication is greatly improving. You have started to consistently call food: "Na". If you ask for "Na", I know it means one of many things: solid food, bottle or pacifier (you don't distinguish pacifiers from food right now. I hope that doesn't signify that food is a comfort to you yet.... I know that is a pitfall that all of us adults deal with throughout our lives as we battle with maintaining our healthy weights).

The other day, I had put a bunch of pacifiers (3 of them) on the tray of one of your stationary toys. You found all of them and put one in your mouth and had the other two - one in each hand. I watched you looking at the other two trying to figure out what to do with them. You raised them up over your head and put them on your head and slowly brought them down to your ears. It was SO CUTE! Trying to have your pacifiers and suck them, too! :) You were trying to put the two others in your ears so you could have all of them at the same time.

I got it on tape and was cracking up about it when I think you picked up on the fact that it was a big joke to me and then you took the extra pacifiers and started throwing them - just to show me how much you didn't really need them.

When you look back over these early years, Jack - I just want you to know that there are stressful times in our lives (both mine and Daddy's) and you have helped us pull through those moments.

I'm struggling right now with a lot of stress and you (and your Daddy - wow! what would I do without him?!? - he's the BEST!) always bring so much joy to every moment.

It used to be that I looked forward to weekends where your Daddy and I had plans because it was so exciting. For example, I would get so excited about a vacation weekend because we would travel and have excitement and memories to look back on forever.

Well, that is EVERY weekend now because of you. There isn't a weekend that doesn't end where I don't look back and think - what a great weekend! - and feel a tinge of reluctance to walk out that door and go back to work, but then I think - there's always this next weekend! and that's what I work for every day. I work for our nights together and our weekends - holding your sweet little body in my arms and talking to you, planting kisses on your pudgy little cheeks!

I love you Sweet Jack! Thanks for being our solid little rock (of happiness!)!

Lots of Love always,

Mommy