Take a very good look at that face.
That, is the face of a little boy who just got busted telling Santa he eat’s all of his veggies like a good boy.

This is Jaxon…

Going to the moon in a rocket ship…

It had to be a blue moon, like the one in The Smurfs movie.

I asked him to smile but I think there was like 9G’s pushing down on his face by the time I got the camera

This is how it goes every single night!

Nanny made Jaxon the most beautiful quilt these past few weeks. It is absolutely AMAZING! Jaxon loves it, we love it and it might just be the thing he needs to get away from his teeny weeny Sesame Street cot blanket that his feet have been hanging out from for months now! Thank you Nanny, we LOVE it and I’m glad you didn’t sew your thumb to this one…ouch!!!

I’m pretty sure that my Mum is going to come along and say that I did this too. But I assure you she’s lying. I know this, because she has no photographic proof like I do and I don’t remember being like this. Seeing is believing people. I WAS NOT like this at all! (Promise)

This is how badly Jaxon reacts to mosquito bites!

Typically, when we don’t want Jaxon to know something we’re about to say, we spell it out. It makes life easier for us and I KNOW other parents do it too.It means that we don’t have to tell him certain things until they’re actually happening, hence, avoiding tantrums!

Some examples of this would be:

“P A R K ” (Let’s take the kids to the park after dinner”)

or “I C E  C R E A M”(Let’s have ice cream when Jaxon’s gone to bed”)

or “N and P’s Tonight?” (“Let’s go and see Nanny and Poppy tonight”)

This morning though, we figured that in another year we wont be able to do that. Because Jaxon is SO SMART. He’ll know soon enough what we’re up to.

We discussed it thoroughly. We’ll next have to start using Pig Latin. It should be at least another 6 or 7 years before he can figure that out. And after that we may actually have to learn another language. It’s either that or we need to make up our own language.

I’ve left learning Morse code off of this list of to-do’s because Mum and Dad did that to Terry and I. It didn’t work though because our brains picked up on the language much faster than theirs did and soon enough Terry and I would hear them doing their beeps and dashes to each other and respond “Ewe!” or “Can we can we can we?”or “There’s an image I could live without Dad!”

Tim and I are screwed!

In the space of about 24 hours Jaxon has become Mr Independent.

Yesterday, he did something to the dishwasher. I don’t know what but it ran for an entire night. When I opened it in the morning and it STILL wasn’t finished it’s first cycle Jaxon looked at me and said “I did it by myself” He’d even put in a dish washing tablet.

Then this morning, he poured himself a drink. He also poured the bench a drink. And the floor a drink.

He has learned that he can get to the freezer all by himself. He now comes to us with his hands behind his back only to pull out an icy pole asking “Can I have this one?”

Several times a day.

Today he helped me push the button’s on the washing machine. I was cleaning sheets. While I was giving Dexter a bottle the load finished and started beeping. It beeps every five minutes just to remind you that you have not done your motherly duties yet. When I finished up with Dexter and went to hang the sheets out, the washing machine had been started again. My sheets are very clean.

Today we made cookies together. The kind where you buy the dough and just cut it up ready to go. These things never work so Daddy and I decided to make a MONSTER COOKIE. We had nothing to lose, since they never work. When they came out of the oven and were cooled we came in to the kitchen to share it around. Only to find that it was ALL gone. I bet it was the best cookie ever. Jaxon will tell you that anyway.

He’s also learned to navigate the computer. In particular my facebook account. I’ve found him many times just looking through our photo’s. Or photo’s of my friends.

The only really good thing he’s learned to do all by himself is get himself dressed.

I honestly don’t know where he get’s it from. I don’t know if the way we have raised him has made him the person that he is or if he would have been like this anyway. But Jaxon is the most social person I have ever met.

For example. I took him to the park after dinner tonight and the first thing he did was go and make friends with all of the adults in the park. And then all of the kids.

His conversations went something like “Hello, what’s your name? My name’s Jaxon. Its nice to meet you. Do you know my baby brothers name? It’s Dexter. How old are you? I’m 31″ and on and on.

He proceeded to drag everyone in to a make believe ice cream shop where they all got to order their own ice cream and then give him wood chips as payments.  Only I seemed to be uncomfortable with this. Everyone else thought it was just adorable that this 4 year old thinks he’s 31 (and acts 31) and wants to play with everyone.

Heaven forbid any of them decide to leave the park without saying good bye. Because he would run after them yelling “bye. Have a good night. It was great seeing you” as the hopped in to their cars.

I worry about many things when it comes to Jaxon and how he’s going to deal with the things life is throwing at him. But making friends and being the most polite and friendly and accepting person in the world is never going to be a concern.

It’s so hard to believe that Jaxon is now four years old. It seems like millions of years ago that we were anxiously awaiting his arrival. Yet here we are. He actually made it this far!

The cake was made by Daddy and Jaxon. Daddy was given very specific instructions on what it had to be. It had to be a strawberry flavoured cake that was green, with red icing. Despite looking a little odd, the cake was delicious!

I had actually intended to come here today to tell you all about Jaxon’s new found skill of song writing. But that can wait another day because today, he made me laugh so hard and it has to be recorded!

My morning sickness is getting pretty bad now. Up until today, I’ve only been forced to go and drive the porcelain bus once in front of Jaxon. Today, I had to do it again.

So there I am trying not to just do it. Trying to prepare Jaxon for what’s coming.

Mummy: Jaxon, Mummy’s going to be sick.

Jaxon: Mummy you come with me?

Mummy: Jaxon, Mummy needs to be sick in the toilet.

Then I start heaving.

Jaxon stands there, different to his father in that he put his hand on my back and patted me while I was sick. His Daddy would be making jokes about holding hair back and pretending to dry heave.

Then he says to me “Mummy, you got a sore throat?”

Mid heave, I have to laugh. Do you know how hard that is!? I tell him, yes…something …like …that. Heave.

Mummy, you need to have some panadol!

OMG! It hurts my entire body to throw up at this stage in the pregnancy. But let me tell you, it hurts to LAUGH and throw up even more! Who would have thought you could be made to laugh during one of life’s more awful events!?

A conversation with Daddy.

Jaxon: Daddy we saw a rainbow! Daddy we saw a rainbow!

Daddy: REALLY! Was there a pot of gold at the bottom of it?

Jaxon: No Dad, just a pot of popcorn.

A couple weeks ago (I KNOW! I’m getting slack!) Jaxon and I went with Tasha and her kids to see a live show of Dora the Explorer.

We weren’t meant to take photo’s I don’t think…or video. But we did, as did everyone else.

I was so incredibly impressed with all of our kids who were so well behaved for us. I fully expected to be all stressed out and in fact, I was dreading the experience for weeks. But they did as they were told, they held hands and crossed the roads well. They stayed together as a group and not one of them chucked a hissy fit. I was just so HAPPY with them all!!

The funny thing was that Tasha’s youngest Abbi and Jaxon took a very long time to figure out that the stage was not just a HUGE TV! I actually think Jaxon STILL thinks he just went to the movies!!

Here’s some pics.

Jaxon was so impressed with the show that even now, weeks after we went he’s still asking me to sing “Pyramid, jungle, lost city” and if I don’t put the right kind of SPIN on “loooost city” like Dora does…well!! I might as well be dead to him!

A BIG thank you to Michael who gave us the tickets to go!

He-Man says “By the Power of Grayskull!”

Jaxon says “By the Power of Gray-cow”

Fun for…er….the whole family!?

There are a lot of changes going on around here at the moment.

Among them, we’re upgrading our spare bed from a blow up mattress to a proper bed for times when Grandma comes to visit.

We got our new bed frame, and Tim gave it a coat of vanish. It’s not wet anymore but it’s still a little grabby.

So as we’re in the room assembling it with Jaxon playing with Buzz Lightyear in the middle of us we tell him he’s not allowed to touch it.

Then we needed to leave to get the remaining bits to the bed and as we leave we reinforce our request for him not to touch while we’re gone.

On our way out to the shed Tim asks me how long I think it will be before he touches it. And I tell him he’ll do it just once “just to figure out WHY we asked him not to touch it”

When we return we fully expected that Jaxon would have his sticky little mits on the bed frame. Instead, there’s Jaxon holding Buzz in such a way that his hand was touching it!

He proclaims “Buzz touched it! Buzz touched it!”

Evil little genius he is!?

We’ve got a fairly solid bed time routine set up with Jaxon, even if we’re slightly lax during the day about when we have meals and naps and plays.

It was all too obvious tonight, given the conversation that Jaxon and I had as I left his room.

It’s normally ME saying this stuff to him and him repeating it to me!

Jaxon: Leave the door open a little bit Mum (peease)

Mum: Yes, I will Jaxon

Jaxon: See you in five minutes Mum.

Mum: Um, ok!?

Jaxon:  “I love you Mum”

Mum: I love you too Jaxon!

Jaxon: Sweet Dreams Mum

Mum: Sweet Dreams Jaxon

Jaxon: See you in the morning Mum

Mum: Yes Jaxon

Jaxon: Sleep tight Mum

Mum: Jaxon, you’re stalling. Go to sleep.

Jaxon: Yes Mum.

As I’m walking off, and now no where for him to see I can still hear him yelling out “Night Mum!!”

This is what happens on an ordinary night…when parents ASSUME that their child has gone quietly off to sleep.

At 11.30 tonight, after watching our normal nightly documentary…I went to check on Jaxon.  I didn’t panic so much when I saw from a distance that his light was on. Sometimes he does that. But normally, he’s asleep.

Tonight…not so much sleeping was happening.

When I walked in all I could say was “JAXON!”

He began to cry immediately. Like deep down inside he knew he was going to get in trouble all along.

But I couldn’t help but LAUGH! So much so that I had to stop to go to the toilet.

He cried to Daddy that he hurt his head, here…here…and here. And over there. And he wet his pants. And could we please change him now.

You gotta love em, right!?

That little blue cup of water on his bed side table looked like it had an inch of slim on the bottom of it. When I took the sheet off the bed the room was filled with white smoke. There is a layer of powder on EVERYTHING and it smells VERY pretty in there.

When the terrible threes hit hard here we found ourselves dealing with a very head strong little man. One who didn’t like being told it was bed time, or time to leave the park or time to do anything for that matter.One little boy, who would kick and scream all the way home if it wasn’t something he didn’t want to do.

So a few weeks ago we implemented the five minute warning. It’s fairly obvious what that is, but just in case you’re a little behind the 8-ball today…it means that we give Jaxon a five minute warning for something very specific that is going to happen. Five minutes until bed time Jaxon, five minutes until we leave Jaxon, five minutes left in the bath Jaxon. It’s not just a five minute warning, but a follow up of 4-3-2 and 1 minute warnings right up until it’s time he does what we’re telling him.

This method of warning Jaxon that we would soon expect him to do as he was told, or that something was about to change works very well. So well in fact that now, if we should happen to forget to give him his five minute warning….he will remind us.

Tonight, for instance, when  I told him it was bed time BEFORE telling him it was five minutes until bed time, Jaxon said “No Mum, three minutes till bedtime”

I used to think it was kind of cute. And truth be told I still do. But it’s also a little annoying because I know that after *I* have implemented the five minute warning, then it’s only fair that when I have forgotten to give him that warning…I should anyway. Especially, if he reminds me of it!

I just don’t know why I don’t post more often. I have so much to say. So many changes to our lives to report. And yet, I just can’t find the motivation to sit down and report them to you. Yet.

The biggest thing, would have to be the changes in Jaxon. Where once we had to report his physical abilities changing and growing…now we have his mental abilities changing and growing.

He really is becoming a little man. And he talks SO MUCH!

I mean…the boy NEVER shuts up.

There are so many things that he says these days that it get’s a bit hard to come here and write about just one thing. Without boring everyone with the simple details that make it all fit together.

Like the other day when Jaxon was sitting on the couch with Daddy and out of the blue asked “Sleep well Daddy?” and Daddy replies “Yeah I did. What about you Jaxon?” and Jaxon just nodded. He acted as if this was an every day kind of thing. To be having a back and forth with his Dad. But really, it was new to us and amazing!

I really should just get off my ass and come here to report this stuff more often. So I don’t forget about it in years to come. And I really should tell you about all of the other things happening in our lives too…like….nah. You can wait

This is a photo of my great, great great great grandfather. Followed by a photo of my Dad. I asked him if his Dad looked like him when he was younger and the answer is no. And then his grandpa died before he was born so we don’t know about that one either.

That’s not actually a good photo to show the likeness. I’ll have to get Dad to stand and look the way G-Grand-Daddy is standing. They have the same nose, the same eye shape and eye brow shape. Same eyes and I bet they have the same gingerish hair. When Dad has his hair combed…he even has that little cowlick at the front.

I wonder if Jaxon will look like his great great great grandfather too??