The life of Jax

This boy really keeps me on my toes.  I tell him multiple times a day that it's a good thing he's cute......

 Jackson's first ever lollipop.  First ever real sugar too.  Immediate success.

And of course you can't give one boy a sucker without giving both boys a sucker.  Or two, or three.....

 This is what happens when you take said sucker away from Jax.  It was the saddest, saddest cry I have ever seen/heard.  Unfortunately when you only have 10% of your small intestine sugar is BRUTAL on your body.  Suckers are a rare, rare treat.  Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth giving him one occasionally because he always ends up in tears.  Life really isn't fair.  A dum dum only has 20 calories and his poor body can't really even tolerate 20 calories worth of sugar.  My heart breaks a little each time he has a melt down over the millions of food he CAN'T eat.  Getting away from the negative...

At 14 months old (July)Jax finally learned how to crawl on all 4.    We were convinced that he would never crawl and would just go straight to walking.  He was super motivated to walk and then he finally decided to crawl. And he has been on the go for the last 2 months.  14 months is behind the average baby but is quite normal for a baby who spent a million days in the hospital.  Plus once you subtract his 4 weeks of prematurity and his 4.75 months in the hospital from his actual age that put him at about an 10 month age when he started crawling.  So quite normal.  And I actually don't even worry about it because Carter was "normal" and healthy and he didn't crawl on all 4's til he was 13 months and didn't walk til he was 18 months.  I guess we just breed slow movers.

 I was actually a bit ok with him not crawling.  Ever since he started crawling my house hasn't looked the same......some of his favorite things are to pull all the medical supplies from his closet.

                                      
Destroy my living room in less than 3 minutes and his all time favorite...........

                                         

Carter's room!  He pulls all the books off the shelf and cars out of the closet.  Carter really doesn't appreciate this (not that he cares about a clean room...) but I kind of like it.  Jax will play by himself in Carter's room for almost an hour sometimes.  And that let's me get some other things done.  

He also loves the stairs.  He figured out quickly how to get to the top of the stairs but hasn't figured out going down them yet.  He has no desire to learn to turn around.  Which has resulted in one tumble down the stairs. I wish I could say this cured his curiosity but it didn't.

 He loves to be at the gate by the stairs and gets mad when Carter goes downstairs without him.  He will stand at the gate and shake it til someone takes him down.

 Unless you don't take him downstairs and then he finally gives up and just lays down!

Playing under the table is also a fun game.  He will even clean up the food he dropped.  Way better than having a dog!

Jackson has a developmental therapist come to observe and help him once a month.  Once again this comes from all the time in the hospital.  They want to make sure he doesn't get behind or stay behind in everything.  It's just like a big play time for him and so he loves it.  One thing his therapist wanted him to start doing was pointing at things and pointing at body parts.  The picture above shows him mastering the skill of pointing to his nose!  He's a quick learner.

This boy is obsessed with books.  His language is a tiny bit delayed so I use books as a motivator/incentive.  He learned to sign AND say book after I withheld it only one time from him.  His language has improved about 100% over the last month.  He is really learning that speaking and signing can get him things.  He will do anything for Kix cereal including signing and saying MORE at the same time.  Right now he says the words: dada, momma, more, all done, book, out, and up.  Plus a few more when he wants to.  He also learned animal sounds which was really pushed by his therapist.  He can name the sounds for a cow, duck, dog and pig.  The best part is a book he has that tells all the animal sounds and when you get to the part about the pigs it says "3 singing pigs say La La La."  So when asked what a pig says he replies "la la la."  And I don't correct him.  It's too darling.

 Remember how I said it was a good thing Jackson was cute...........

Along with learning to crawl came learning to pull himself to his feet.  I went through this phase with Carter and it is my least favorite trick that they learn.  Instead of napping and sleeping at night he would pull himself up and then either play or cry.  He knew how to sit himself down but he wouldn't.  He would go all day some days without a nap even after I'd go in and lay him down 50 times.

And when you'd walk in the room his little face would light up and he'd stretch his hands out and say "Out."  At this point whenever he'd say a word we would honor it to give him the motivation to keep using words.  So this night I let him out to keep playing.  Luckily this phase only lasted a few weeks but they were a LONG, Hard few weeks!

Crawling brought some fun times at the little pool at Liberty park in SLC.

Now that's he started crawling and getting everywhere he needs he has lost a bit of the desire to walk.  He can walk across the room if he wants but he prefers to crawl.  Much like his older brother.  We are doing the same thing with Jax as we did with Carter.  We take him to the grocery store and let him push the little carts all around the store.  He'll walk when he's ready and not a minute before.  I've had good practice with being patience.
   

All in all Jax is doing really well.  People always ask me how he's doing and I say good.  And then people take that as he is "Cured."  He's not.  He never will be.  He IS doing well for having a chronic condition but he does in fact have a chronic condition.  It is never going away and we deal with the side effects daily.  We are very grateful for how well he is doing and how happy he is.  He is truly a blessing in our home and one sassy little redhead.