Mmmm...grapes.

Well, we got our tax return. Before tithing was paid, it was nearly four months of living expenses for our very limited budget. But we ended up spending most of it on just one thing:

Our old (if you can call lasting all of four years "old") spring mattress was pretty badly mangled and causing us both sleep problems, but especially Jason. He has a very bad back, which he's in physical therapy for right now. We took a couple days to research, shop around, and pray about spending all that money on it. Turns out it was the right thing to do, and we got a good deal. Jason has pretty much been singing its praises since we got it. He's amazed to have nights without pain! Though it was and is hard for me to have that extra money gone, I love that he's so much happier.
Jason's second semester is coming to a close. Soon we'll have one year down, two to go! He's been learning and growing so much, and gaining the respect of his teachers and classmates. The debt is scary, but we hope it will be worth it in the long run. Note: you wouldn't think typing "Arizona State University" in Google Image search would bring up so many inappropriate results.

Jamie, at almost 27 months, is talking a LOT more, though it's still not too clear. "Dat-un" is only about 5% of his vocab now, as opposed to the previous 90%. He started saying "apple joots" [juice] clear as day today. He goes pee-pee in the potty most days but has yet to do #2. Not for lack of trying, however. Especially since I started giving him a Skittle after each time he pees in the toilet, and told him he'd get 3 for going poo-poo. (There have been times where he wanted that Skittle so badly that he was sitting on that toilet jiggling himself trying to get some pee out. It was so dang funny!)

I started dumping his diaper poops in the toilet with him watching (lovely subject, this), and telling him, "See? Poo-poo goes in the potty," hoping he'd cut out the middleman. Instead, he insists on ALWAYS dumping the poop in the potty, even if we're downstairs (both of our bathrooms are upstairs), and then makes the "candy" sign afterward like he's earned it!

He's going through a phase I don't enjoy much--he has to point out EVERYTHING, and wants me to acknowledge it--correctly. As in, if he's insistently repeating total jibberish, my replying "oh yeah, uh-huh" doesn't cut it. He wants to hear how it really sounds, and he won't quit until I get it right. This is all day long, continually almost, about EVERYTHING.

Jamie still loves planes, yogurt, and his blue blanket I made for him here, which makes me so happy. Oh, and he LOOOOOOVES basketball. He had us turning over his pop-up playhouse so the round door was in ceiling position, so that he could throw balls through it. We finally got him a kids' basketball hoop last week, and he's obsessed. He takes the basketball on walks, takes it to bed with him, and now instead of demanding food first thing when you go into his room to get him in the mornings, it's "ah-bee-bee-bee!!!" (Somehow, that does translate to "basketball.")

We read Goodnight Moon every night before bed, and he loves to pick out the mouse on every page and say "squeak, squeak." He also says "hush" after it's read. He still gets so upset if Jason puts him down instead of me.

Jamie's an INCREDIBLY picky eater. I am definitely getting my comeuppance. (I used to refuse to eat dinner, consent with haughty indifference to threats of getting nothing else to eat, go out to "play" in the backyard, and fill myself up with cherries off our tree. And I once threw up green beans right next to the table--if memory serves me, it was just after my mom said, "see, they weren't so bad, were they?") Anyway, this is why he can still wear 18- or even 12-month sizes sometimes, and the 24-month pants fall off him.

He loves Sesame Street, which, for anyone who knows my family well, you know how happy that makes me. For Oscar, the Count, and Ernie, he identifies them with impressions of their laughs. For Cookie Monster, one of his favorites, it's an impression of him devouring cookies with gusto--"Nom, nom, nom, nom!" in a growly voice. Adorable.

Ehmo - Elmo (LOVES Elmo's World)
Bir - Big Bird
Abby

He knows the colors yellow, blue, and red pretty well, and is getting the hang of green and purple. From watching Sesame Street, he picked up on the letters "O" and "Y" entirely by himself and surprised me to death by pointing out an "O" on my Cordova shirt one day!

Sesame Street, thankfully, is on the Netflix Instant Queue. Recently they consolidated all the episodes, and we thought they'd taken them all off because we couldn't find them. And I seriously nearly cried. I kept thinking, how are we going to get by without Sesame Street??

A few pics:I picked out a thing at Ikea for holding toys in pull-out buckets. Jamie helped put it together by sitting on it, trying to climb on it, picking up the hammer and screwdriver and carrying them away when Dada needed them, etc.

Stinker.

Check out those feet! He loves this sleeper, which is weird because for awhile he was completely anti-sleeper, and now he throws a tantrum when we take this one off.


This was yesterday, during the misnomer Easter Egg "Hunt" at our local park. (They dumped the eggs on a field, even for the older kids, and the kids picked them up. Not at all a hunt, in my humble opinion.) It was dumb, but there was a free bouncehouse, so Jamie was happy and it was worth going for that, and of course for this picture.

He's such a good little guy, who brings unbelievable light and happiness to our lives. I know zillions of parents have already said all this, but it's so amazing to watch him grow and figure things out. He can drive me up the wall, but I'm finding that if I try to focus on teaching him for his own benefit instead of correcting him in anger because he's inconvenienced me with a mess or whatever, it's a lot easier to keep my temper, deal with things as they come, and just love him more.

Jason took a good video of Jamie playing with his basketball hoop, but it wouldn't play when I uploaded it from the camera. I'll have to have Jason look at it.