Gardening (or "Don't pull up the baby plants!")

Again, here's a placeholder post while we get ourselves organized and upload all the pictures from the last couple of months. Jackson is coming up on his second birthday here in just a couple weeks (5/21). It's hard to believe that he's not a baby anymore. He's been counting, saying the ABCs (or A-D in any case) and using multi-word sentences ("Jackson rip book, oh no!"). He's enjoying his new daycare and talks a lot about all his buddies there. At home we've been gardening a lot (see picture of Jackson helping plant squash seeds) and getting ready for summer. The yard is looking good. Little Gym has been fun - Jackson is close to being able to do a somersault on his own and loves swinging from the parallel bars and bouncing on the air track. We've also noticed he's getting a lot pushier about sharing (or not), so we're learning how to deal with fierce independence and stubbornness in a toddler. It's a challenge. More pictures to come, hopefully soon.

Video update

Yesterday was busy; we had swim lessons and we played at home. We have lots of videos to show. First of all the little digital camera case works great. (you saw the sills last week of swimming) So I changed the camera settings to take movies. They are short 10 to 15 seconds each, but they show the swimming. And I was surprised to hear that it picks up sound well despite the water proof case. So here are swimming videos: Video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4 and video 5. Then while at home we used the larger (real video camera) to film Jackson. This first video is him playing with the electronic drum sticks Mary got him. This second video is him playing with a book. I think that he says something there, but I can't quite make it out. (Mary was saying she didn't hear it, but now that I have AV proof she has changed her mind and agreed with me.) So we are looking for confirmation of the word. Technically this is not the first word he has said, just the first recording (I have heard "mama" before). Then the third video is him "crawling" we did get more moving early, but I was too slow with the camera. But this is still a good video.