Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Chats with Jack⎮ June, 2014


June started off busy with birthday celebrations and goodbyes as my sister and her family packed up and made the move from Tennessee to Florida. After a low-key middle of the month, we wrapped up the end of June celebrating Daniel's youngest sister's engagement. 


Last Friday, we drove to Smyrna to meet up and surprise Emily at a pre-planned engagement dinner. I think she was pretty surprised when we walked up! On the way to dinner, we coached Jack to say, "Congratulations Aunt Emily!" He kept wanting to say, "Happy Birthday!" but did manage to say the correct thing once we arrived.


We are very happy for Hunter and Emily and wish them many happy years together.


Other stuff from this month: 
Jack had his first tick incident. We calmly removed it from his head at bedtime. I don't know what it is but I have a knack for finding ticks. 


Then Jack had a bee sting on the playground. I saw him running as as soon as he started screaming hysterically I knew he had stepped on a bee. Oh the woes of summertime. I gave him some Benadryl and an ice cream sandwich. We don't typically use food as a reward (or for calming) but sometimes ice cream really does fix things.


Jack has also been running more and had more scraped knees this month. It can be hard to watch, knowing he is going to fall, but letting him run and learn anyways. Hopefully his balance and running abilities will continue to improve this summer.


Since Jack has been eating at the table with us (in a booster and not strapped in), we have worked hard to teach him that he has to sit at the table for the duration of the meal. My sister does this with her children and we have watched several friends with kids do this as well. It makes life so much easier when we go out to eat and he can sit through an entire meal without running around a restaurant. Earlier this month, we met up with friends for dinner that ended up lasting 3 hours (45 minutes just to get seated). We had 5 kids at the tables (three were under age 4) and ALL OF THE KIDS sat through the ENTIRE MEAL. The manager even came by and commented on how well behaved they were. I guess this is a humble brag, but it really is possible to have young kids sit through a long meal.


Some things Jack is saying these days:
"I'm gonna chomp you" while pretending to be a shark.
"I sure can" with a very southern accent. We're not sure where he picked this up, but it makes us smile.
"Marsh-a-bellow" for marshmellow
"Neptile" for reptile
"1, 2, 3, lift off!" or "3, 2, 1, blast off!" He is really interested in rockets blasting off into space right now. Also, he is consistently counting to 10 these days.
"You rule!" Something he picked up from The Lorax. He can also quote a good portion of the movie The Lorax as it plays.

In June Jack discovered Dr. Seuss and as we read Jack will repeat the words as we go. In addition he has started to memorize books and can "read" them with us at bedtime.



Since it is still light until after 9pm here, we started allowing him keep books in bed and he reads himself to sleep after we do our bedtime routine.


This month Jack also conquered the swinging walkway at the Y. I'm so proud of this guy.


And finally, bedtime prayers now involve Jack listing that he is thankful for EVERY type of truck and tractor that appears on his pillowcase. We eventually have to cut him off, but overall we really love to see how he is learning and interpreting the world around him with each passing month.

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