You are my sunshine

Recently I received the best compliment ever, that my love for my children just exudes out of me. Now there are some days that I am sure this is not case, but I like to think that most days people can tell I am head over heels in love with my family. I have a little over 30 days till we get to meet our baby girl. For the most part, I am still feeling really good. The heat is starting to get to me, so I try to limit my time outside but I love to drive around in my car cause then I don't feel guilty for cranking the air down to frostbite level. I would hate to see our power bill if I did that at home! She is still pretty active in here and was causing some pain as she was trying to pop out a rib yesterday. I feel her hiccup several times a day. I need to do a couple final things in preparation for her arrival. We need to wash and fold her clothes, put the car seats in the cars and I need to pack for the hospital.

Jackson is doing so many amazing things. Since he had reaching talking age, I had always wondered if he was 'up to speed.' Mostly this fear was related to the well baby checklists the ped gives at each visit to monitor his progress. He was at the lower end of the word counts each time, then at his two year visit he was 'supposed' to have several sentences, but he only had one 2 word sentence of 'whats that'. Anyway, the ped suggested we have him evaluated she didn't feel anything was wrong since he comprehended everything we tell him, but she thought early intervention would be best. After the evaluation, we were told he was borderline for speech but would most likely score off the charts for understanding. We were given some tools to try and they said he should be mimicking our sounds within 30 days. See he had 20 words but they weren't conversation words. He didn't ask for anything he would just grunt and point. So the day after the evaluation was rough trying to 'make' him talk to us, but by lunch time he was saying more for more food. After that his words just grew. He now says up, down, milk, more, please, eat and other item words. We are now working on getting him to combine words, but it is so exciting to see his vocabulary almost double in a couple weeks.

He is getting interested in coloring. Thank goodness for Crayola paper where the markers only show up on special paper. Sure it costs more but think of what it saves in un-ruined furniture and time of cleaning up walls. We had placed him in swim class earlier this year and I worried that he hadn't really picked anything up. He still want to play in the water. But I found him a float that has the two arm supports, but also has a float piece that goes across his chest. We tried it out this past weekend for the first time and he did awesome. He will venture out and actually swim around and turn around and come back while kicking. He is also starting to incorporate the arm movements. And he loves it!!

The title of this post comes from a one of our baby toys. I found it while I was cleaning up the baby items- car seat, bouncer, etc. It is a toy that when you squeeze it plays musical "you are my sunshine." Course Jackson didn't miss a single new item that found its way into the house, so he will play with that toy and get such a kick out of the fact that mommy knows the song and sings along.