Catch-up: January 2010

So, I've got a year's worth of back-log (if not more?) to go through. Let's assume a year's worth...

My project this weekend was to organize our photos, and group them by date and event. Previously our photos were just... in a folder. With no naming convention. So I couldn't figure out what pictures were what. Now, we've got a format (year-month-date descriptor). I'm able to easily find our photos and videos, and know what they are before opening them. It's much more descriptive than IMG_3495, which is how my camera names them...

Part of this was inspired by the fact that in trying to move images from my camera to my hard drive, I erased nearly eighteen months of Jackson pictures and images. I was inconsolable, thinking they were just gone. But then I figured that they were probably still there, just no longer accessible. And then in searching the beautiful beautiful interwebs, I learned that when you delete something from a memory device, you don't really delete it - you tell your devices that the memory the file was taking up is now available to write on again. So, if you delete something, you can technically still find it, with the right program, provided you haven't taken any photos yet. I found a great recovery program, and voila! I found all 846 images I had deleted.

But that's not what you're here for... you're here for Jackson.

My nephew Brody's birthday is mid-January. In 2010, he had a Spiderman themed birthday party at one of those awesome jungle-gym kid centers. For whatever reason, there were animals on the wall. Jackson loved them, and Mom-Mom (holding Jackson) would run up to the monkey on the wall. Jackson loves monkeys (as you can see from the picture of him with his cousin (and Brody's sister) Dylan and Sebastian the Monkey, and of Jackson touching the monkey on the wall.

Video of Jackson below:

We also had a lovely play date with our friend Kate and "Mama Greebel", Kate's mom. I think it's great Jackson has so many people who love him and want to be a part of his life. It gets me thinking that sometimes family is what you make, and not necessarily what you're born into... Jackson may be an only child (who knows?) so we like to extend our nuclear family so Jackson will grow up with an extended network of cousins that will have shared his life from the beginning... it's not the same as a sibling, I know... but it's as good as we can do for now.

And, a rare shot of Mommy and Jackson! I'm usually the archivist, which means there are very few pictures of me with Jackson. That's fine by me, but I'm wondering if I'll look back and miss that there aren't more pictures of me with Jackson... It doesn't bother me now, so I don't think it will bother me then. Just so long as Jesse jumps behind the camera every now and then to get a good action shot of me and my little Gentle-mine playing.

Jackson had one of his first play dates in January, with Alex (the son of some friends of ours via Jesse's Kung Fu school). Alex is short and round, and his parents Ian and Christie have taken to calling him "The Meatball." Jackson's the opposite - how any child of mine is in the 90th percentile for height is beyond my 5'1" self! So, when they're together, we call them Spaghetti and The Meatball. Tell me these two aren't up to some sort of mischief. Don't tell me that they can't crawl or walk and so they can't be up to something... they're up to something all right...

And we end the photo portion of our summary of January with Jackson and Mom-Mom playing "This Little Piggy." As you can tell, he is beyond delighted with the game. The other thing Mom-mom does is lick Jackson's palm. I think it's a little gross, but Jackson loves it and thinks it's hilarious.

But now, the piece de resistance - I can hardly believe that a year ago this month, Jackson was just learning how to crawl. Babies grow up way too fast. In this video, he hadn't even mastered the art of the crawl - he's still doing the army crawl, and only for short bursts at that. Anyway, here is video of Jackson one year ago, attempting to crawl: