Reflux update -- Jackson seems to be doing better now that he's been on Prevacid for some time.  He's sleeping through the night -- consistently now (7:30P - 7:00A...and when he wakes up he soothes himself back to sleep!!)!  And he's napping much better as well.  I'm so glad he's feeling better!

New this week:  Jackson is now ticklish!  It depends on his mood, but sometimes we can get him to laugh....the best spots are his feet and neck. 

He also had his first fever this week -- it was a low one, but we aren't sure what it was from because he only had it one night, and he didn't have any other signs of illness other than just being a bit fussy.

And...I did some rudimentary at-home measurements of Jackson's growth.  I'm not sure how much to trust it, but I got 18 lbs (97 percentile!) and 25 inches (86 percentile).  He's not far from being at the limit on the infant car seat, so I guess it's time to look into getting the convertible seat --- I've decided to start with the Recaro Signo and if we like it we'll get a second for the other car.

Coming up next week -- we're off to White Lake tomorrow with Josh's mom, Lynn, and Sydney & Abbey for a couple of days. 

DJ Jackson mixing up the animal sounds

Jackson hugging on Mazzy

Jackson, Mazzy, & Stephanie

....I slacked on the pictures this week for a couple of reasons.  1 -- we had a lot of craziness at the house this week because we had some stuff done to our kitchen floors so our house was a mess for about 4 days.  And 2 -- I planned on getting portraits made today, but canceled the appointment after Jackson had a fever last night and was a bit fussy.  I'm sure we'll take a ton at White Lake though, to make up for it!

We found out we were pregnant with Jackson exactly one year ago, today!  (I don't remember random dates like that usually, but was just looking through the baby book and came across it)....  Happy pregger-versary to us!

I saw this in Parents magazine recently.  What a neat idea!  I'll definitely be getting some of these for Jackson when he's walking!  And they even have cute dinosaurs :)

I can get so excited by neat and simple technology --- cool tricks on photo sharing sites, my new Palm phone, Outlook calendaring, and any other system that makes me a little bit more organized and life a little more fun....it makes me so happy!  (and hence I confirm to my blogdom that I am indeed, as suspected, a supernerd)

So with Jackson, I wanted to go old-school somewhat and do the typical journaling / baby-booking (but definitely not back into full-fledged scrapbooking...it's just too slow and tedious for me when the computer can do so much more!).  So I did a fill-it-in style photo and record journal while I was pregnant and am also recording many pictures and tidbits of information in Jackson's traditional baby book.  There are a good number of "make your baby site here!" places all over the intar-web, but none of them appealed to me.  I don't need any blogging or photo storing / sharing, because I already do those things and prefer the providers and setup we already have. 

However, I came across kidmondo from a mention on parent hacks (GREAT blog btw --- I recommend you add it to your Google Reader now, if you are a parent or are planning a little one in the near future).  This site is awesome!  It's targeted as a full service journaling site for recording milestones, growth, health records, and also offers photo storage among some other neat features.  I'm skipping the photo and video portion, since I don't need that feature, but everything else is so neat!

First neat thing:  It imported all this cool info to display on Jackson's profile based on his birth date:

Greek Zodiac Sign

Aquarius

Chinese Zodiac Sign

Rat

Birth Stone

Amethyst

Birth Flower

Iris

Day in History

Wikipedia

Birthdays

Wikipedia

Second neat thing:  It automatically produces growth charts from the weight and height data you enter!  There's even a visual dental chart to record when the various teeth come in.

Third neat thing:  You can create a medical and food journal, listing important information, medical notes, and food / eating records -- and it will generate a fabulous pie chart from your food entries!

Final neat thing (worth mentioning):  It puts everything you record on a chronological timeline!

Now if only Totspot would hurry up and get going.....

Jackson's birthday, Feb. 17th, is shared by many famous people (as to be expected -- there are only so many days in the year!).  HOWEVER -- one such person that shares his birthday just happens to be Lupe Fiasco, who is one of my and Josh's favorite hip hop artists.  Jay-Z has recognized Lupe for his "non-obscene rapping style and describes him as a 'breath of fresh air' in a new hip hop world characterized by mainstream pop and glamour" (Wikipedia).  So he's a far cry from the grimy, flashy, gangsta or gutter rap that so many turn their noses up at (and which by no means defines the hip-hop industry as a whole).

Sharing a birthday ---- coincidence....or mere destiny? Haha. :)

Here's one of my favorite Lupe songs for your listening pleasure.

Major "new" thing this week -- Jackson learned a new sound, and he's obsessed with it -- the "b" sound, and sometimes accented with a few raspberries.  Here's a short video of Jackson practicing the "bbb" sound.

Here are a few pictures from this week:

 
Me with a sleepy baby

Jackson enjoying his new stationary entertainer -- he loves all the noise he can make with it!

In the bumbo seat

He's got that innocent face perfected early!

Coming up this week--
Josh starts his new job, so it will be the first time we are both working parents, and Lynn will be keeping Jackson while we're at work.  I'm sure it will take a bit of time before we get used to our new routine. 
 
   

We spent a good deal of time thinking about what to name our little guy; even before we knew he was was a "he," we were making list of boy and girl names.  But nothing was juuuuust right enough.  So after countless hours of reading baby name books and discussions and lists online, we randomly stumbled upon the name Jackson.  It was the perfect balance of being not too popular and not too odd, and it blended well with our names and surname (speaking of surnames, we definitely had an affinity for them -- all of our boy and girl names, as well as both Jackson's first and middle name are surnames!).  We loved it from the start, and just like the perfect wedding dress or true love (barf, barf), we knew it was THE ONE! :) 

So the first thing I did was plug the name into The Baby Name Wizard NameVoyager, which displays naming statistics including ranking for many years prior.  It's neat to see the popularity of names across the years, but it also tells me which names to stay away from-- I didn't want anything too popular...I wanted to avoid having our little boy be one of many "name here"s among his peers. 

It takes a little while for the data to import for the previous year, so the 2007 data was just included recently.  I quickly looked to check Jackson -- hoping it hadn't suddenly shot up in popularity (in 2006 it was ranked #36 --- I wanted to stay below 30 if possible, since that's the size of a large class in school).  It only went up 3 spots in 2007 -- to rank # 33.  Yay!

It's such a neat tool -- I definitely recommend playing around with it!  It's fun to look at your own name, prospective baby names, etc.  For example, "Sharla" peaked in the 1970s ranking at 793, but has since dropped off to not even rank in the top 1000.  Props to my mom for giving me a really unique (but not weirdo) name! :)

Mocha has a new Collins doggy cousin, Mazzy.  She's Alan & Steph's new puppy; she's a feisty little tiny Chihuahua, and is as cute as can be.   Here are some recent pictures of Miss Mazzy ---

Thinking she's a big dog and trying to eat Mocha's food....

Giving that rug the business

 
Swaddled up for a nap

Developmentally, Jackson has changed so much within this week!  He's using his hands more and more to grab at things, and he's getting better and better with his aim and with bringing them back to his face / mouth.  His favorite thing to grab and explore?  Our hands! (but he does also have a newfound affinity for "eating" his own hands...)  And he's so funny now that he visually recognizes and remembers certain things -- like the ribbon his pacifier hangs from.  He'll grab it and see it and grunt and fuss because he knows it's part of his pacifier and he's trying so hard to get it in his mouth.  And he "remembers" the bottle too -- he starts grunting and fussing more when he sees it at feeding times. 

He's also starting to "laugh."  He's done it a few times, and sometimes it's closer to a real laugh versus the happy smiling squeals.  Here's a video of him "laughing" and talking to us.

One fun thing we did this week was go to a cookout at Adam & Beth's house.  I met Beth in my Moms in Motion class when we were both pregnant, and since our due dates were only 1 week apart we always compared symptoms, worries, and questions.  And her son Caleb, is one week younger than Jackson.  Erin (another girl from our Moms in Motion class) and her husband were also there with their son, Euan, who is 3 weeks older than Jackson.  We've all been together before, but not since all three babies were alert and interactive.  We set them up on the floor across from each other to see if they would play or talk to each other, but they seemed more interested in their own hands and looking at the big adults all around.  Here's a picture of the babes (Jackson is on the upper right):

It's so neat that the three of us had boys all within one month of each other.  I'm excited to see them when they can start to play together!

Reflux update -- Jackson still isn't doing too good.  He has "okay" days where the crying is minimal and he only wakes up a few times in the night.  And then he also has "bad" days....where he cries for what seems like the entire day, won't eat much, and barely naps and then wakes up continually at night.  Yesterday was a "really bad" day....and I could confirm it by smelling the acid on his breath (and Steph smelled it too so I could make sure I wasn't crazy and making up smells since Josh can't smell it).  So the Axid seems to be doing NOTHING in the way of helping to reduce the acid.  At this point, we've gotten the doctor to agree to help us get the Prevacid, but in order for the insurance company to pay for it, the dr. has to send a letter to them confirming a diagnosis of "chronic GERD."  As of Friday, we had not heard the status on the letter / prescription, so I called again this morning to find out the deal....waiting on a call back today.  The boy has been on this medicine for 11 days now with no relief, and we've been trying to get him treatment for 2 weeks now!!  I'm growing rather impatient.  Sometimes I want to just take a video and send it to the insurance company....like yesterday when the only way I could get him to eat was to lay my head against his to soothe him enough so he would stop crying.  Arggh.

Fun things coming up?  We're thinking of taking Jackson to Speed Street in uptown Charlotte one day this week.  And we're getting him a stationary entertainer (yay for a craigslist deal!) and a jumperoo, since he likes to stand up so much now and can hold his head up well.

3 months old today!  And with our super-scientific home weight-measuring system (holding him on the scale), he's measuring about 16 lbs (between percentile 75 - 90)....he is a hefty one to carry in the car seat!  Here are the comparison stats:

1 month old
11 lbs

3 months old
16 lbs

Current developmental milestones --

Smiles a lot! 
Coos and "talks" all the time. 
Can sit up in the high chair, bumbo, and other places when supported. 
Holds his head up easily. 
Smiles at us when we first see him.
Can hold his head up well when laying on his stomach.
Grasps at his hands and other objects -- and he's getting better aim every day!
He's laughed a couple of times, but hasn't yet done it consistently.