September

To my boys:

Tyler you are the sweetest little baby, I love you so much! You smile all of the time now and talk and coo with such excitement! I love the way you look at me, you are such a mommy's boy! Sometimes you cry and nobody can do anything to stop you but all I have to do is come pick you up or even hold your hand and you calm right down. It melts my heart that you know and love your mommy. I love snuggling you, rocking you, and singing to you and I love that you love it too. After our midnight feedings I always have to make myself go put you down and go back to bed rather than stay up and play with you. You give me some of your best smiles then, like you know I need them after getting woken up. You had your 2 month appointment a couple of weeks ago and were 22 and 3/4in and 11lbs 9oz, right at the 50th percentile for both. I know you are still so little, but I look at you and keep thinking how much you've grown! You are such a beautiful little baby!

Jackson you are so wild! I love playing with you! You have such a great imagination these days. Almost every day we play "firefighter" where you are the fire chief and you make us wear plastic bowls on our heads (our fire helmets of course) and drive our ambulance around the house putting out imaginary fires. You also love making bowls of "soup" for the squirrels to eat. This yummy concoction usually consists of water, dirt, leaves, rocks, sticks, acorns, and more dirt. You are a very messy little boy:) You also like when we pretend to be animals. Your favorite is hopping around like a kangaroo. You talk nonstop, just like I did when I was your age. I love the funny things you say, you make me laugh every day. Here are some of the most recent examples:

-You tooted and said, "Oh no Jackson, that's gross! Excuse me!"

-We were at the grocery store and I didn't make you ride in the cart because you needed to get some energy out. You were so cute strutting around the store that everybody was talking to you and saying hi. I asked you to hurry up and stay next to me so you ran to catch up and said, "Mom, people like Jackson!" The lady next to me and I had a good laugh:)

I love rocking you and singing to you at night before bedtime, and I especially love that you have started singing with me. You always shock me when you start singing along to a song that I didn't know you knew. You have such a good memory and are so smart, I'm so proud of you!

You two are so cute together. Jackson you love Tyler and always want to hold him and play with him. You especially like to sing & do patty cake with him. Your always kissing him and talking to him and you even share your toys with him which is a hard thing for you these days. Tyler you already love Jackson too. You constantly watch him, your eyes always follow him. You give him slobbery kisses (which he loves) and give him your biggest smiles when he comes to talk to you. I hope you two will always be close.

Jordan wrapped up the boys in our sheets one day and clever little Jackson declared that he was a caterpillar inside of his cocoon.

And some other pictures of what we've been up to the past month:

Jackson has started a bad habit that we need to break. In the middle of eating he thinks it is funny to rub his food in his hair and "shampoo" it as he he says. As if he isn't messy enough as it is.

We made dirt cups for FHE and Jackson thought they were so cool. He now asks to make them every Monday night:)

Jordan and Jackson like to play the "balancing" game which scares me half to death. They are pretty good at it though. Here they are having Jackson rescue his stuffed animals from the top of the armoire where daddy hid them.

One more trip to the zoo before Jackson turns 2 and we have to pay for him. They finally had the sting ray petting area finished and Jackson got to touch one! We asked Jackson what his favorite animal was and this time it was the peacock. He can do a pretty good peacock imitation:) He also keeps talking about how stinky the rhinoceros was!

Jackson and I were both pretty excited when our grocery store finally got some pumpkin in stock after not having any for almost a year. This picture pretty much says it all.

Apple picking with our friends! Jackson loves playing with these two little ladies which is great because I love talking with their moms! We met them at the local library a year ago and have been great friends ever since. We had a fun time and even invited the hubbies on our little adventure.

Our friends took us rock climbing with them and we had a blast! Jordan did great and climbed right up! I had a harder time without real climbing shoes, but still had fun. We agreed that maybe someday when we have an income that this is a sport we could get into. Even Jackson was climbing around on the rocks.

Jordan took Jackson to his first football game! It was a Pitt game, but they play at the Steeler's stadium

So I'm upstairs with Tyler one day and I keep hearing a beeping sound. It took me awhile to figure out what it was and as soon as I did I ran down the stairs much too late. Jackson had already taken probably 50 pictures with my camera. He must have known what he was doing because about half of them were pictures of himself that weren't so bad. Perhaps I have a future photographer on my hands.

I came into the kitchen to find Jackson had completely emptied one of my cupboards and built what I thought was a tower with my tupperware. He quickly corrected me and told me it was a temple:) Too bad he then proceeded to knock it down.

One last raspberry picking trip. I brought my camera this time but Jackson actually stayed pretty clean surprisingly. He even put the berries into the bucket and not just his mouth:)

Labor Day at the baseball stadium with the Pittsburgh Pirates! We were glad we got to get in one last game for Jackson- he is still completely obsessed with baseball and probably knows more players' names than I do.