New skills

Because Jackson is SO advanced, he has mastered quite a few things this past month. He now CLIMBS. Yes, climbs. No walking, but climbing. He makes it up on to the couch and I found him on the second shelf of the bookcase the other day. He gets scared once he's there and just starts crying. He's so determined though and sticks his tongue out the whole time he tries. He also shakes his head no, and grunts. And, he has 4 teeth coming in at the same time. So he'll now have 4 on top, 4 on the bottom. What a man! He really is such a sweet boy and sometimes I have to remind myself he just has TONS of energy. Or "life" as other people comment.

I'm pretty sure he's saying a few words now, besides the "mom" and "dada", he says "oook" when he wants you to look (and of course he's pointing with his little tiny index finger). He says "ooh ooh" for ducks and food that he likes. His new favorite food are grapes. He can down those so fast. I always try to cut them up, but he usually gabs the bowl and just eats them off the stems. I still haven't figured out how he chews them up, but man, he loves them. Tonight, he said no to cookie and no to ice cream, and proceeded to eat the whole bowl of grapes. I know what we're buying for our trip to Arizona this week!

Fourth of July fun

I love July in Provo. I first went to the freedom festival when I was like 12 with my family and I still remember how much fun I had. We loved the "frontier days" the best as Jackson fell in love with the bagpipe band (clapping, cheering) and we even had a artist draw James and Jackson. Ha ha. James was so embarrassed and yes, the picture is definitely modern art. Freedom days was a lot of fun as we mostly just looked at all the booths. I got my hair "styled" (aka. braided) by the Paul Mitchell ladies and Jackson loved the free suckers. We tried 3 mornings to make it to the balloon festival, but we never made it out the door by 6:30 am! So, that's the only thing we missed out on. We watched Stadium of Fire fireworks outside late that night and Jackson didn't even cry! We had gone a double date (we set up Whitney Metcalf with Russ Cardon, and enjoyed the fact we don't have to go on awkward first dates anymore! We saved seats for the Grand parade with some of James' cousins and Jackson LOVED it. Of course, we finished the day off with the annual water fight at Grandma and Grandpa Bennion's. James is always the hit of all the cousins. Probably because he rips his shirt off, runs around like a crazy man, and soaks EVERYONE. He shows no mercy and you can often hear him say "oooh...sorry, are you ok?..... ouch, that must have hurt.... you're right I shouldn't do it so hard..." Gotta love him!