Baby Giggles

"That's the most beautiful sound I ever heard!"

-Denise

Mmmm......I Want More!

Jackson had his first solid food tonight, rice cereal with lots of milk.

It was a big hit....once he got used to the idea.

"Your feeding me what?

"Hmmm......"

"Oh, I get it.....this is pretty tasty!"

"More please!!!!!"

Jackson's 1st Christmas

Here are a few of the pictures from Jackson's first Christmas

at Granma and Granpa Cochran's House.

Opening his first stocking.

Check out all the loot!

(Thanks Everyone!)

Hanging out with Dad.

Playing with the cousins.

Watch out, he'll be crawling soon!

All tuckered out from the big day!

Waiting

It seems that my whole life, I've been anxiously waiting for something. I remember counting down the days until graduation from high school. Waiting for the first day of college and moving off to Chicago, then marking off days on the calendar until I could get the heck out of Illinois. The wait to marry Denise was a particularly long one, as I recall. And most recently, we were both pretty anxious for early September to roll around this year.

I've just been waiting and waiting and waiting for 26 years. Watching the clock and counting the days, with something bigger and newer and more exciting just around the corner. Older people like to tell you how quickly time flies, but for me, it never flew. It always crawled toward a much-anticipated horizon.

The past few months have been the first I've ever felt like time was passing by me too quickly. Every day when I come home from work, Jackson is doing something new. He can laugh! He can put stuff in his mouth! He can make a baby pterodactyl sound!

Christmas this year was a blur of tinsel and diapers. It seems like we just put up the tree last week, and today we're taking it down. The ornaments are still cold from sitting in storage, and already it's time to box them up and put them away for another year. When I was kid, I remember the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas seeming to take about a decade to pass. Now Jackson's first Christmas is over in what seemed like about 5 hours.

Jackson is 4 months old, for crying out loud. He's twice as big as the day we brought him home from the hospital. Our tiny newborn is gone, and in his place we've got a regular baby!

That's the part that gets to me the most; the sense that our 7-pound infant is somehow gone forever. Jackson will never be that small again. He'll never again sleep in Dad's cradle. Even my days of feeding him a bottle are numbered.

It's strange to say, but there's a certain sense of loss about it. For once, all those geezers telling you to "enjoy these moments while you can" are actually making sense.

I am trying to be mindful of the moments that I have. I'm trying to do only one thing at a time. When I'm at home, I make sure that I'm actually at home and not still mentally stuck at the office or at school. The days and hours are precious, because all of a sudden they are rushing by awfully fast!

Strong As An Ox

Here's Jackson showing off for the ladies. He'll be doing one-armed push-ups within a month. Look for him on the cover of next month's issue of Bulked Up Babies. Everyone says you can't start solid foods until 4 to 6 months, but Jackson seems to be doing just fine on 5 raw eggs and a protein shake every day.

Working Woman

Everybody's got to pull their own weight around here.  Just because you're "getting up at all hours of the night" or "feeding this stinking kid every two hours" doesn't mean you get a free pass.

Denise reluctantly agreed to do a few kitchen drawings for work last weekend.  Who knew motherhood required so much multitasking?  

In his defense, Jarrett made dinner.

The Many Faces of Jackson Ward

This kid is getting more and more lively every day.

He and Denise had a photo shoot the other day.

I could look at these all day.

Ho Ho Ho...

We all celebrated the approach of Christmas (and Christmas Break!)

with a little holiday dress-up, followed by some culinary festivities.

Jackson was pretty upset when we told him that he couldn't have any cookies.

Woohoo!

Snow Day!

The snow is Beans-deep, and the wind blew all night. All the roads are buried; the county never even had a chance. Jarrett gets the day off, and some kindly soul with a skid steer came by and plowed out the driveway this morning. Hooray!

In other news, Denise made it all the way to December 8th before breaking down and opening all the early Christmas presents under the tree.

Thanks Nana & Papa!

Growing Like a Weed

Our baby boy is growing fast. Compared to a month ago, he spends a lot more of his day awake and alert. He's noticing everything, and he is very excited about it.

He still can't reach out and grab things, but if you set a toy on his chest, he'll shove it into his mouth.

Jackson really likes toys.

He's a pretty happy kid, generally.

And we're pretty happy parents, generally.

For anyone who wants to look at 6 million pictures of Jackson, there's a new batch up at Shutterfly.