Jackson the traveler

the magic of the blogosphere is that i can make this post from the seedy backstage dressing room at the barfly in liverpool, a very drab industrial port town which somehow birthed the greatest band in history. i have big shoes to fill tonight. and it's hard to do what i'm supposed to do when i have a boy at home with such a smile and eyes like his mom's (mum's).

so here are a bunch of pictures. what you see in the next 2 pics is jackson the diplomat, jackson the politco. jackson has learned how to play both sides. the first picture is how he responds to his dad when a football is in his lap. the second picture is how he looks at his mom when a football is in his lap. same football. same boy. different audience.





this next picture deserves a bit of an apology. in the last post, i took a cheap shot at my boy, suggesting that he should clean his act up a bit, that to be a responsible and contributing member of society, one had to actually remove the sweats, put on another suit and go out there and make things happen. sarah was quick to point out to me that perhaps i wasn't being the best role model...unintentionally, jackson and i are dressed identically. this picture was taken at 3pm on a weekday, mind you.



to try to shake off any insinuations that he might be lazy or even slow, sarah and jackson tried to trick the world into thinking he actually was standing on his own...some 2 ft tall bear ready to take on the world or the woods. but don't be fooled. if you look close, real real close, you can see sarah playing the scaffold.


all that out of the way, the real reason for this post is that jackson has gone through a bit of a brain explosion of late. and that is because he has seen the world, tasted the fruit, grown up. and this is a picture of his first flight--a short flight to atlanta. he was quite a sport, flirting with a girl behind us and the flight attendants. and though he didn't sleep a wink, he was good company for his dad who is used to being the only one awake on most flights and enjoyed having someone to talk to and, much to the chagrin of sarah, show off.




the next few pictures are of us in the chateau we stayed in in atlanta near our old place where, without being too graphic, jackson was conceived. this house is owned by a lovely man named alan castro, and his place, though palatial, was furnished just for jackson--who has developed a taste for the finer things like a big bed, an antique paint job and a small chair.









once jackson got a whiff of the world beyond the BQE, he couldn't get enough, and so it was that after atlanta, we were back on a plane to california to visit these magical creatures known as the TWINS! california is also home to Jackson's paternal grandparents who were ready to eat him at every turn.

but before we get to all that, here's a bit of context. imagine what jackson felt seeing the pacific, the world's biggest bath tub...



his mom didn't mind it either. that's a decaf.



and there he is: max the magnificent, reaching right out and taking jackson's hand or sleeve. they are almost the same size, which is quite a sight. (that's michelle, his mom. she isn't much bigger than the babies herself, but somehow she had both of them inside her for a while.)


that's a bit of the back of sierra asleep on her grandpa's shoulder. you'll see more of her in a moment.



and there's jackson's uncle ben teaching him the finer points of doing a proper sit up and showing off the pectorals. we learned during this trip that said correctly, saying "ben" will make jackson laugh. ben is quite funny. so it was a great moment to learn that jackson actually has a good sense of humor.






here's a better one of sierra in the arms of her aunt sarah. sarah, which sounds a lot like sierra out of the mouths of the blokes i'm with now, has a bit of an obsession with sierra. dreams about her, etc. so this was a big moment for both of them, though i doubt sierra has had dreams of sarah. but who really knows with twins. particularly michelle and dan's twins. they just might have some sort of brain power that most of us only read about.



we just threw this pic in to reveal ben's tshirt--which, if you could pan down, says corsica beneath a profile of someone who looks like a gang member or terrorist. that's where we're going to be taking jackson.


here's another of the lady sierra with her grandpa. see the resemblance?



sadly, we had to leave the twins and return to berkeley where jackson met our good friend jane who, in teaching jackson about how to write a creative essay, also showed him how to pose like a matador.


not to break tradition (well, if twice can be called tradition), grandpa reads to jackson with sammy (until jackson renames her) happily looking on.



this post is a bit paternally heavy, because it sadly takes a 6 hour trip for jackson to see that side of the family. but luckily he has his first friend/big cousin/big brother jacob just a few minutes away. here, jacob is measuring jackson's foot for the boot that he's working on in his cobbler shop back home.


and so that's about all we have time for. and i need to hit the stage. but we'll leave you with one of the most recent pictures of jackson in his (jacob's) green sweatshirt. this is after we returned from all our travels and jackson was still spinning from all the newness, the sites, the sounds, the smells. although he got a terrible case of the croop a day later (he's almost all better) you can see how much he grew. i hope he'll stop this growing for a few days at least. for i'm a week away from seeing him, and i miss him (and the mom he looks so much like) terribly.