18 Months!

Wow, it’s flying by!  Jackson turned 18 months old today (depending on your time zone).  I can’t believe how big he’s getting, all the things he’s doing and saying, and what a fun kid he is.  I won’t run through everything like I usually do, but I’ll give you some fun tidbits about our one and only Jack…

• He says lots of words, but most of them start with the letter “B.”  Don’t know why, but this seems to be his favorite letter of the alphabet.  Here are some of his words at 18 months:
• Ball, bow, bell, bear, bye-bye, ba-ba (what we call a bottle), booger (daddy taught him that one), baby, bike, bus, bug, boat, button, big, belly, book, boobs (daddy taught him that one too)
• Pool (he learned this one today!), water, MoMo (means Elmo), pooh (as in Winnie the…), duck, no!, this (always accompanied by pointing)
• Dadda, Mama, Papa, Ziazia (yiayia), Jack, and some 2 syllable nonsense that means Granjoe
• He still signs EVERYTHING, and has way too many to list.  His arsenal of signs is in the range of 50+.  My favorites are: mouse, baby, monkey, fish, and water.
• His latest antics include imitating Mommy by wagging his pointer finger and saying “no, no, no.”  He’ll do something he knows would get that response from me, just so he can quickly turn and pre-empt me in wagging my pointer finger and saying “no no!” 
• He LOVES to hug and give kisses, but he always likes to call his moves so he’ll point at his lucky recipients, and that’s their cue to come get their lovin! 
• He loves for us to play “this little piggie” with his toes
• He likes us to sing nursery rhymes to him, but he always wants to dictate which ones we should sing.  If we start one that he doesn’t want us to be singing, he does this thing where he puts his hands out, palms facing up (like a “WTF” gesture) and yells “hey! hey!” until you stop…then he’ll sign which song he wants (”spider” for Itsy Bitsy Spider, or “boat” for Row Row Row Your Boat, etc.). 
• He loves to pretend to make phone calls.  He’s always picking things up and pretending it’s a phone that he can pass around to everyone for them to take a turn talking.  He calls his “Papa” often!
• He is really into shoes lately.  He adores his “alligator” shoes (crocs) and will put Daddy’s Crocs on over his own.  He wears my flip flops too, and today he even put on Shane’s nanny’s high heels since she left them on the ground outside the baby room! 
• He tests us on EVERYTHING!  We’ve learned to only pick the battles we truly feel we need to with him, and when we choose to engage in those, a lot is at stake so we have to win them.  He’s SO damn smart that he’s outsmarted us on a few issues already.
• He’s developing quite the healthy ego - he enjoys clapping for himself, and when he initiates that, he likes those around to follow suit.  He has also been giving kisses to “Jack” in the mirror recently. 
• He discovered nose-picking today.  Gross!  Travis pointed out how interesting it is that our finger always stays proportional to our nostril.  He tried to use that as an argument that we were meant to pick our noses.  Um, I don’t think so! 
• He touched a water buffalo this morning!  They use them here at the resorts to flatten the beach sand by towing a platform behind them to level the sand.  Jackson was intrigued and got to touch the beast! 

There’s so much more, but I’ll stop there for now.  He’s such a high energy, fun, charismatic kid.  He’s an absolute blast, curious, mischievous, decisive, silly, wild, sweet, affectionate, and has the cutest sense of humor.  We LOVE our boy!

Today was another incredible day.  The orphanage visit couldn’t have been better!  Since it’s Sunday, only 2 of the 4 nannies were working today, and it was the 2 I didn’t think liked us much.  They have really come around and have truly opened up to us.  Today was full of gentle pats, jokes, and attempts at communication.  They love when we try and say things in Vietnamese, and Travis said a couple of phrases that really tickled them and warmed them up to him.  They insisted on us eating lunch with them, which they had cooked, and were just genuinely so kind and welcoming of us.  They even let Shane take an 1.5 hour nap ON ME.  No one plucked him off my chest today!  Jackson was ADORABLE with the other babies.  He’s been SO good, and we’re just really trying hard to reinforce that with a lot of praise and reward.  He shared his books today, gave TONS of hugs to the babies, used gentle touches, and was fine with us holding Shane and Shane’s buddies.  He recognizes the landmarks when we pull up to Shane’s orphanage, which takes a little over an hour to get to, and starts signing and saying “baby, baby, baby” as soon as he sees where we are.  It’s really cute.  Here’s one of me and Shane from today:

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and we’re planning on spending it playing Santa for the special needs kids at Hoi An orphanage.  We figured it might be good to give the nannies at Shane’s orphanage a little break from us, and we’ve tried hard not to overstay our welcome - we keep our visits to 2 hours.  We’ll be with Shane for Christmas, which gives us something to look forward to on that day despite being so far from the rest of our families on that special day.  I can’t wait to hold Shane again!  He is SO sweet.  Here are a few random pictures from the resort today: