It's Almost Fall?!

We had a party last weekend for Jerret's grandfather's 80th birthday. It was a good party and everyone enjoyed the good weather, swimming, food, and company of family that we only get to see a couple of times a year. Here is JJ and his cousin Alexander playing together like good little boys.......

JJ really has been doing well playing with other kids. We did, however, have a minor set back two weeks ago when JJ changed classrooms at preschool for the new school year. He ended up biting someone two days in a row. The teachers didn't make a big deal of it and said that the first kid tackled JJ over a toy and the second day they didn't even fill out an incident report. The funny thing was that JJ told me about it as soon as I walked in the door that night. He ran right up to me and said "Mama - right there" and pointed to his arm where he must have bit the kid. So we had a little talk and now every morning I ask him to be a good boy at school and he answers me with "Oh Tay."

His speech is also improving greatly. He has added all sorts of new words and phrases. He now says "right there, over there, love you, nite nite, and elbow." I'm not sure how we taught the kid elbow, but he knows right where it is.

And I know I say this a lot, but you have got to see this kid swim. I am going to take a video this weekend to post because he really is amazing. He can float on both his front and back sides, go under water, and actually swim across the entire pool. On his last day of swim lessons he even jumped off of the diving board at the Y, into the 12-ft-deep water...all on his own. Jerret just stayed in the pool to catch him and JJ climbed the ladder and walked the plank twice! There were 6 and 7 year old kids who got up there and started crying, but not our JJ. Yes, he took swim lessons, but they weren't actually taught to "swim." It was a parent/child class where the kids were taught the basics of kicking in the water and learning to reach out in front of them. The motions were all there, but the kids were never taught to put it all together - after all, they were just babies. He learned the most by swimming at Jerret's parents house and we would just tell him what to do and he did it for the most part. We will sure be sad when the fall weather starts to hit us and we can't swim any more. And we'll all be asking - where did the summer go?

In other news, Jerret bought a new John Deere. He and his dad were at a tractor show and got the "deal of all deals" so of course, had to buy it. The two of them have made quite a hobby of refurbishing tractors. They prefer the older ones and say you can't buy one these days that is made like they used to. He was very excited to tell me how big it is and that it has a 60-inch deck, perfect for mowing a our land - 2.5 acres that we will not be building on for another couple of years. But in the meantime, he admits he will look rather silly mowing our lot at home, in our subdivision.