Our Baby is One!

Our crazy little Jackson Boy turned one yesterday. We can hardly believe how fast the year has gone! Jackson has progressed from being perfectly content to cuddle all day long to constantly moving! I swear that boy never stops! It wears me out just watching him!

He loves crawling. One of his favorite things to do is try and run away from us during church. Yesterday he almost escaped clear out the door of the Relief Society room before I could catch him! He laughs as he runs away from us when he knows we want him to come closer. He loves pushing anything around the room (paper, books, water bottles, you name it!) as if it's a car. He also loves walking, so long as he is holding onto our fingers or the furniture.

He absolutely loves playing with his toys. He had some favorites, but I think his birthday presents are gonna take the cake. Mommy and Daddy gave him clothes and books (BORING!!!) and a Little People school bus. He sat and played with that and pushed it around and pulled out the little people and bonked their heads and pushed buttons for a good 10 minutes today. And Grandpa made him a set of wooden blocks (just like I used to play with that my Grandpa had made my mom, that Jackson now plays with when we visit Grandma and Grandpa). When he saw those, he knew just what to do and immediately started trying to pull the blocks out to build with them. And Grandpa made him a wooden-block xylophone. He loves banging on that thing. Grandma and Grandpa also gave him one of those push-popper things, just to drive me crazy! Needless to say, I'm going to have a very noisy house now with all of these noise-maker toys. But I'm also going to have a happy little boy, so it is all worth it.

He loves to eat...so long as it isn't baby food. He'll eat anything of our food he can get his hands one. He LOVED his cake, and it was so fun to watch him dig in as soon as it was set down in front of him last night. He enjoys anything sweet...probably not the best thing to have him eating...but I have been told he needs to put on some weight...

The little stinker would not take a nap yesterday. Okay, that's not entirely true. He slept for an hour before I had to wake him up for church, and for 40 minutes on the way to my grandma's for his party. But that is NOT enough sleep for a little boy, and then he didn't fall asleep until after 10:00 as we were playing games. There was too much going on...and he was probably wired from his cake! (home-made fun-fetti cake with home-made buttercream frosting. Yeah...I'm sure it was a sugar high) He woke up several times last night too, which was a real bummer for me, because I didn't get to bed til 2, and he woke up just was I was getting there, then again at 4, and at 5 when I gave up and brought him to bed for the last couple hours I could sleep, because his one year checkup was this morning.

Anyway, his checkup went well. He's still too skinny... as in the zero, yes, zero, percentile. I'm not too worried. He's gained almost 2 pounds in the past 3 months and my brother was...is...super skinny. He's in the 74th percentile for height. Tall and skinny. That's how we roll. He got to try real milk yesterday for the first time, mostly because I was out of formula and I wanted to try to get him to sleep. He LOVES that stuff! I need to go buy him whole milk to fatten him up :). He got his shots today too and screamed, until I put his shoes on. He knows that he only gets his shoes on when we go outside, so that cheered him up. (We went to the zoo after the doctor today).

Slaving Away

Managing the apartments certainly has it's perks. I get to stay home with Jackson and just be a Mommy every day. Our rent is super cheap. Plus, we live in the BEST ward and have so many friends. But lately I've been seeing the downside of managing.

We've recently had 3 apartments vacated. They are disgusting. I honestly don't know how people can stand to live in such filth.

For example: One of the apartments had huge holes punched in the drywall. There was black mold all over the bathroom. There were black, black hand prints all over the walls. One of the apartments had burnt food crusted all over the oven--took me 2 hours to get it clean. I had to physically pick things up off the entire floor before I could vacuum. There was food left in the fridge. One of the apartments had meat that had leaked in the fridge and there was a thick layer of blood in the bottom. There was crayon, sharpie, cat hair, old gum, and boogers all over the walls. There were cobwebs everywhere. And it was infested with roaches.

As managers, we are the lucky ones who get to clean these apartments. Yes, we get paid extra for doing so. (Basically, our rent this month will be free). I have spent days on end for 3 weeks now cleaning these apartments. We are almost done. I really think we'll be done today. I hope we'll be done today. We have another project outside that we need to do--laying down new weed block fabric and covering it with bark--that we want to get done this weekend.

Can I just say that I am ready for a break? To have time to clean my own messes? To just be a mommy and play with my boy instead of trapping him in the playpen while we work, or locking him in the apartment with the monitor with us while he sleeps? Soon. Then I get to do it all over again at the first of next month when we have another tenant move out. Oh goody. :)