Celebrating Six Years!

So this weekend was our six year anniversary.  It's nice to know that every six years we get to have our anniversary on Labor Day weekend.  We had thought about going on a short trip or something like that, but ultimately decided it would be more stressful than fun.  So we arranged a babysitter for Friday night and planned to spend the rest of the weekend doing not much at all.

These were my photo memories for the weekend:

Throwback Thursday - celebrating our one year anniversary in Costa Rica.

Flashback Friday - seeing each other for the first time on our wedding day, just before heading to the ceremony.

Married!  And getting the party started.  :)

Some pictures:

Thursday night during dinner.  Carmen got home late, so Jayden and I started eating.  He would take a bite, then put his hands on his face and chew.  

Mom!  Take a picture of me chewing with my rice, too.
Me: Um, sure?  Why not?

Momma, momma, take a picture of me laying in my chair.  Because I weally weally tie-yehd.

The weather around here has been hot.  It's generally in the 70s when we go for our walk at 7:30 or 7:40 am and is in the 80s not too long after that.  But Friday morning, because he's three and he's awesome, Jayden demanded that he wear a jacket.  So we sent him to Juju's wearing a fleece jacket, just in case he got cold.  Yeah.  But hey, Carmen always keeps the A/C on high in his car, and I knew he'd take it off as soon as he got to Juju's, so if it makes him happy then it's fine.  Plus, he said "cheese" for this picture and we got a pretty cute smile.  

Nothing like fleece on an 80+ degree day in August in Southern California.

Friday night we had our anniversary celebration dinner.  We had gift cards to Flemings (a steakhouse) that we needed to use and so decided to go there.  I'd never been, but Carmen had been a number of times.  It was a great dinner.  I highly recommend the place - and then we go to ask for our bill and the waitress says "your dinner has been taken care of."  Carmen immediately knew who did it, but once the waitress read the message, I knew too.  Carmen's boss figured out where we were going, called ahead and paid for the bill.  It was incredibly sweet.  But now we still haven't used our gift cards and are going to have to plan another night out, back at the same place!   I am in no way complaining.  But it was funny.  And equally funny, after dinner we walked around for a few minutes and ended up in Barnes and Noble.  We bought three books - for Jayden!  Someone, I can't remember who now, gave him a book called "Otis" about a tractor on a farm.  He loves the book.  So we found three more Otis books and bought him all three.  One small one for the next day and the other two for his birthday.

We got home a little before 10, and Katrina said Jayden was actually hilarious.  He told her that he wished his mommy and daddy would get married.  She told him they were already married and showed him one of our wedding pictures that was in the family room.  He looked at it, and then decided that when he gets married he's going to wear a white thing on his head just like Mommy.  And he also told her he's going to marry Daddy.  AND he told her he wanted her to come to his birthday party.  So cute.  So I'm going to text her the info for the party, but make sure she knows there's no expectation that she come.  He was so much better this time than last; I think the last time was just such unfortunate timing, with him being thrown off his schedule and all.  Thank goodness.

Saturday was our actual anniversary and we had no plans.  No swim lessons this weekend, since the pool was closed - so we had the whole day.  We had received a delivery on Friday of furniture from my grandparents' apartment.  We'd expected mover-type people, but it turns out it was more like shippers, so everything was in boxes and on pallets.  We got FOUR pallets delivered, with a total of 18 boxes.  The farthest the guy would take the stuff was inside our garage.  I freaked out a little, but couldn't do much about it, so just made sure it only took up my half of the garage and figured we'd deal with it later.  So Saturday morning Carmen and  I got to work and unpacked every single box, moved every single item inside (including two rather heavy and awkward items - as I told him as we were lugging one item upstairs, we are super-people!) and moved all of the trash outside.  Jayden wanted so badly to be useful, so we had him help us move the styrofoam and cardboard outside.  He was so happy to be helpful, it worked out perfectly.  Our house is now a random mixture of styles, but we think it works well enough.

Having snack on the moving blankets in the garage.
Also, he didn't want to take his pajamas off because they were so soft. Once again, he might get a little hot, but sure, whatever.

The aftermath.  This doesn't include the giant box in front of our garage that doesn't fit through the back gate and it doesn't include the two boxes still inside filled with breakable items.

Saturday afternoon we went down to Carmen's boss's house.  Their actual house is being renovated so they're renting a beach house for a few weeks.  They have four kids - all older than Jayden - but the kids were really cute with Jayden.

Hanging out on the patio at Dave's house.

Playing on the beach with the two youngest kids - Michael and Katherine.  

Playing soccer with the much older neighbor kids.  They were so sweet with Jayden, letting him kick the ball and celebrating with him.  He'd kick the ball and run the distance back to where we were sitting and say "Mommy, mommy, I hit a shot!!!"  He was so proud.

Running around in the sand, "playing soccer."  When it was time to go, all the kids came over and gave him high fives.  These were seriously some awesome kids.  So patient.

We got home late, and Jayden of course did not fall asleep on the car ride home.  So I read him a book and got him to bed finally around 9:30 or 10.

Jayden slept in a little bit today, but not much.  We knew he'd be tired.  We went to a park and the grocery store in the morning.  By noon he was ready to go upstairs.  I took off to go to a yoga class and Carmen took care of naptime.  After naptime we went straight to the swimming pool and spent the rest of the afternoon outside.  It was hot, but it was a nice day.

Jayden showing you his first bandaid.
In the grocery store Jayden got an owie somehow (a tiny little scratch - we have no idea how it happened), and it resulted in his first bandaid.  Luckily for everyone they had Lightning McQueen bandaids in the grocery store so I grabbed a box, pulled out a bandaid and then bought the box.

And now he's down to bed and I'm not going to be too far behind him.  We've been out in the sun a lot the past two days, and all of the moving yesterday was exhausting.  I'm hoping to get some good rest tonight because the next two weeks are going to be a wild ride.  Not necessarily bad, just busy, trying to fit everything in.

Hope you all are having great weekends - and that everyone enjoys the day off tomorrow!

Fun times continue - and tie dye!

Jayden is back at Juju's this week and I think he is relieved.  The kids there are less exciting for him - there's only one other girl his age and she only comes part-time - but he's comfortable there, which is good for him.  He's so careful about changes in his life and in his routine.  We've been talking to him about going to preschool and he seems really excited about it.  But I think that's because he thinks his two friends from Juju's who have left recently, Lucas and Kale, will be at preschool with him.  He knows they went to preschool, but I think in his mind there is only one preschool in the whole wide world.  Or in Jayden's world at least.

We're not going to push it, but we really want to get him somewhere that is closer to our house.  The commute home of an hour or more is killing me (and Jayden).  And when he was at Dorkis' house and we could be home in a matter of 7 minutes it was amazing.  And such better quality of life for everyone involved.  But, since he hates change, I don't want to move him more than once.  So if we leave Juju's I wouldn't go to another in-home daycare, unless I could work something out with Juju and Dorkis.  But that might be awkward since they're family.

I think I mentioned this before, but when he was at Dorkis' house two weeks ago they made tie dye t-shirts.  The shirts were so cute; it was such a great idea!  Well, Jayden finally got around to wearing his last night.  And so far he's worn it for 24 straight hours, and is sleeping in it right now.  We'll see if I can get it off of him tomorrow.

Jammin' in the pa-gee-jays last night before bed

Posing for the camera before bed last night.

Tonight Carmen had his fantasy football draft, so it was just Jayden and Mommy (and Jasmine - Happy National Dog Day, by the way!  Hug your dog tonight!).  We had a good evening of piggy back rides, eating chips and dip while making dinner, having milk drinking races that resulted in milk mustaches and "accidentally" falling down in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom and falling all over each other.  

Milk mustache (and tie dye, again).

Mommy' milk mustache, as captured by Jayden.

Look Mommy.  Wanna see this?  Take pick-chur of me while I wipe off!  Ready?

Here I go!

(giggling) Mommy, we're sil-wee!

And in case you're wondering, a slice of cheddar cheese melted on a frozen waffle in the toaster oven is actually pretty good.  Who knew toddlers were such inspirational chefs?!?

Nooooo, don't make me goooooo!

I don't wannnnnnna go to work tomorrow. So frustrating.  I'm so ready for a break, but every time I try to take a vacation, I remember I have some prior engagement.  Argh.

In any case.  At least next weekend is a three day weekend.  That always helps, even if only a little bit.  Today was good.  Jayden was absolutely a new kid.  He only woke up once last night, and it was on the early side (about midnight).  Carmen heard him crying as he was heading to bed, so he went in, soothed him back to sleep in a few minutes and that was it. That's totally doable.  And then he woke up today and he was just happy.  He ate everything we put in front of him, he went for a long walk with Jasmine and me (we can't remember the last time he volunteered to walk with us, as opposed to riding in the stroller), and he was just generally happy and easy going.  So wonderful.

I mean, he is still two - I'm sorry, two and a half and almost three - but for a two almost three year old, he was easy going.  Everything is relative.

There's not too much more to say, so I'll just get to the pictures:

There were a million and one sirens this afternoon.  This is Jasmine howling during one particularly long stretch of sirens.  It was awesome.

Racing cars down the homemade cardboard slide with Daddy. I don't know why I said "homemade."  If you thought I bought this at a store or even that a store would sell a cardboard slide, I really don't know what to say to you.

More racing.

Happiness.

Trying to get Mommy to stop taking pictures.  But look at those eyelashes!

Coolest kid on the block.  It was "too bwight!"

Week o' fun (warning: talk about poo-poo inside; enter with caution)

This week has been . . . interesting.  We had no childcare, which actually turned out to be the easiest thing to deal with.  We both took Monday off and had a grand old time.  We took the train from Santa Ana to San Juan Capistrano.  It's only about 30 miles away and we easily could have drove, but we took the train on purpose for Jayden's sake.

Waiting for the train, and watching the northbound train pull in to the station.

In Mama's arms because the "twain was 'cary!"

Riding the rails with Daddy.

We visited the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.  They had a pond with lily pads, just like in a book Jayden has.  He was super excited about the lilies and lily pads.

Some pretty flowers at the Mission.

Grapes at the Mission.

Jayden holding on for dear life.

Sliding down a little bit.

Jayden took this picture!  We helped him a bit, but he held it steady enough to take the picture.
(and FYI, Carmen chose the woman, I did not force him)

Carmen solo.

Me solo.  Jayden took this picture too - and that's his finger in the right side of the photo.  Supposedly Daddy was helping the photographer, but I apparently can't be confident in either of them as photographers.

The original Mission.

Happily (and tiredly) riding the train home.

We had a great Mexican lunch and generally had a great time.  I made a bad call once we got to the train station in Santa Ana, which ultimately ended up in Jayden having about a 20 minute nap.  That made the rest of the afternoon tough - and upset me for whatever reason.  Which I think ended up scaring Jayden.  He's so amazingly sensitive to other people's emotions, particularly mine.  We have to be careful what we say and how we express ourselves around him.  He picks up on everything.

Tuesday Carmen went to work and I took Jayden to work with me in the morning.  He was wonderful, as usual.  Wednesday I had clinics all day so Carmen took him to work in the morning.  Carmen and I had tickets to the Hollywood Bowl that night - John Legend performing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.  My birthday present from my lizzle.  So amazing.  We had Katrina (our babysitter) come at 4 pm, we got ourselves together and took off for L.A.  Jayden was of course sad when I left, particularly since I had left early that morning and had only been home about 20 minutes before I left again.  Looking back, this was the beginning of the end for me and Jayden that week.  Katrina said Jayden was less friendly than usual, which is really not that friendly since he's not usually all over himself to be nice to her.  He made her feed him dinner, which I guess has never really happened.  And then around 7 pm he told her it was time to go to bed.  He also told her that he was two and a half but that he was about to be three.  But those were pretty much the only words he said.  She put him to bed, and confirmed with him that when he woke up his mommy and daddy would be home.  Well.  Being the smart kid that he is, he woke up 30 minutes later and started yelling for Katrina.  She said he was genuinely pissed that his mommy and daddy were not yet home.  She explained to him that he hadn't actually gone to bed yet so that didn't count, but he wasn't having it.  He woke up a few more times, I guess.

We tried to have a good time, but the L.A. traffic was against us in so many ways.  We got up to L.A. quickly, but made the mistake of stopping.  We never should have stopped.  After we got going again, we had about 7 miles to go and we gave ourselves 1-1/2 hours, thinking we could get there early to get snacks and enjoy the evening.  Well (again).  Turns out it took 2-1/2 hours to get to the venue, parked and inside, so we missed the first half of the concert.  I was really disappointed.  The only saving grace is that the concert was played live on Yahoo, and you can still watch it.  So I'm going to watch the first half sometime this weekend.  But.  The second half was amazing.  John Legend is outspoken about all of the current drama and had these young poets speak in between the songs who were incredibly powerful and amazing.  I recorded one of the poems and one of the songs.  Enjoy!

And a few pictures from the parents night out:

Drinks on a rooftop bar.
(mine was sparkling rose - I highly recommend!)

Waiting for the elevator back down.  Carmen didn't know the picture was being taken.  And I apparently didn't hold the camera steady.

Oh, and did I mention John Legend (and Sharon Jones and the DAP Kings) were backed up by the L.A. Philharmonic?  Yeah.  It was awesome.

He' so awesome.  I couldn't get a good picture, but his shirt says "DON'T SHOOT."  He's amazing.
I read a brief article (through lizzle - thank you!) that discussed his tweets about Ferguson.  Someone tweeted at him "Music...stay in your lane."  Being the amazing person he is, he tweeted back "human.  citizen.  taxpayer.  i'm in my lane, homie."

Thursday morning Jayden was a mess.  He was incredibly clingy and all kinds of crazy.  He was supposed to get his haircut with Carmen but that idea was vetoed and he came to work with me instead.  It was not so successful for me, but we survived and we made it home.  The other thing he had been dealing with was constipation.  He's somewhere between Carmen and me in terms of regularity (sorry if TMI, but it is what it is, and while potty training a toddler you talk about potty and poo poo waaaay more than you ever have in your life).  But when he has changes in routine, changes in diet, etc., he really gets thrown off.  This week was bad.  It had been at least five days, maybe more.  So by Thursday he was struggling.  Thursday night  I slept on the floor outside his room from about 1 am to 5 am, after he had woken up at 9:30 to go potty and at 11:30 from pain, I guess.  Friday he was obviously tired, but he was still clingy and having what I can only figure was separation anxiety.  He did not want me to go anywhere without him.  He desperately wanted to go to work with me.  Carmen was staying home from work, though, so I managed to get out the door and Jayden calmed down.  He was still tired and fussy with a stomach ache, but was relatively pleasant.  I got home as early as I could, although not as early as I wanted and we had a quiet evening at home.  Jayden was still constipated, poor kid.  Last night I slept on the floor outside his room from about midnight to 6 am.  Thursday night I actually slept pretty well, but last night not as much.  He woke up four time last night.  And then was up for good at about 6:20 am.  Poor kid.

Jayden and I went running this morning (and by "we went running" I mean I ran and pushed the 35 pound kid plus the 30 pound stroller up and down hills for four miles).  We read 785 books on the couch and headed to swim lessons.  We stopped at a restaurant on the way home, per Jayden's request; we had just left the swimming pool and I asked Carmen if he wanted me to stop for food.  As I mentioned earlier, Jayden hears everything.  He piped up: "I wanna go to west-a-waunt.  Pweeeese!"  And Carmen pointed out he did ask really nicely, so we gave in.  Jayden still was constipated so he ate about 5 chips, two bites of his taco, two bites of his rice and beans and gave in. He napped for a bit, then woke up and was clearly in some pain.  I force-fed him water.  I looked for whatever I had in the house that had the highest fiber content.  And we talked to him over and over again about relaxing, letting the poo-poo come out, etc.  He could barely walk and stand up.  He was clearly just hurting.  Finally, we got him in the bathtub with some warm water.  We got out a few times to sit on the toilet but got nothing.  And he would cry and strain and whine and whimper something awful.  So, finally finally, we just made him sit in the bathtub in the warm water.  And I won't go into details, but we were successful.  Thank goodness (and oh my goodness).  Literally the minute he emptied himself he was a different kid.  He suddenly had all kinds of stories for us ("AND, all the kids love their mamas.  And you love me.  And Daddy loves me.  And Jazzy loves me.  Alll the people love me.  And allll the dogs love me.  Oh no!  Iss getting dark!  We bettah hurrrr-ree and eat my pasta before it gets too wate!  Mommy.  Don't sing.  Shhhh.  Isss bedtime!")  And he ate his dinner, then happily went upstairs to brush his teeth, we read a few books and then he laid down and went to sleep.  No complaints, no whining, no nothing.  So, moral of the story is that I think I have to watch his diet as carefully as I can and incorporate as many foods high in fiber as I can.  It was horrible to watch him dealing with that pain and struggling to figure out what was going on and feel so utterly helpless as to how to fix it.

Tomorrow we have no plans (although I did mention the park to him - we'll see if he remembers.  He usually does).  And Monday it's back to regularly scheduled programming, assuming Juju makes it back from England.  We'll see how it all goes!

A quick note

Today was a good day.  Nothing exciting, but a good day.  Some errands in the morning, a nice long nap (I got to a yoga class and got to relax during his nap it was so long) and then some swim time in the afternoon.

Our favorite story: We were playing in the pool, with a foam water squirter we bought today (more about that later).  Carmen was getting squirted by Jayden.  Jasmine was having all kinds of fun running along the side of the pool.  She ran up to the side where Carmen was, barked, slipped and fell right in the pool.  It was amazing.  I was outside the fence at the time, trying to get her some non-chlorinated water to drink, so we are lucky Carmen was right next to her and that Jayden didn't try to jump in at that time.  Carmen turned around, saw Jasmine's head come up above water, he grabbed her and got her back onto the pool deck.  Needless to say she was traumatized.  And by traumatized, I mean she ran around in circles, her adrenaline obviously going and then rolled around in the grass:

Jasmine's look of "what the HECK just happened to me?!??"

Trying to use the grass to dry her off.  It only sort of worked.

So, about those water squirters.  We went into a pool supply store to get something else - goggles for Jayden that actually work instead of my $5 Toys R Us goggles - and ended up getting other things we didn't need.  Like a foam water gun.  But that actually turned out to be an awesome purchase.  If you ever come swimming with us and you don't want to get your hair wet - you're pretty much out of luck.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever:

Conversations

In case I haven't made it clear already, Jayden is hilarious.  Except for when he's whining or when he wakes up at 5:45 am on Saturday AND Sunday.  But the rest of the time (mostly) he's hilarious.  He has great conversations, with us and with himself and his toys.

So, in case you're ever in this predicament: I've been trying to upload these videos for five days now.  Maybe longer because the one above is from 10 days ago.  It wouldn't work in Blogger.  So annoying.  BUT.  If I create my own YouTube channel, upload the video there and then put it in my blog from YouTube, it then works.  So yeah.  Eighteen more steps, but at least you guys can finally hear just how awesome Jayden is.

Jayden does have his own language sometimes, so if there's anything you don't understand, let me know.  I regularly interpret for Carmen so I've gotten good at understanding Jayden-talk.

And one last one:

So hopefully you enjoy this little look into what every. single. day. is like in the Wallace/Ferrin household.  It's nonstop chatter, which really nobody but us can understand.  :)

This week...

First off, once again I seem to not be able to upload videos.  It's driving me nuts, because I've actually been able to capture some hilarious conversations with Jayden recently and I wanted to upload even one of them and it just won't work.  SO annoying.  While I try to figure that out, I'll update in words and pictures.

This week was good-ish.  It was nice that we had substitute daycare, particularly for me, because my work was just hard.  So it's even better now that the week is over.  Jayden does have fun at Dorkis' house, and this time he didn't cry when I dropped him off on Monday.  Kind of a miracle.  On Tuesday or Wednesday the little girl who he loves playing with showed up, which made it even better for him.  The little girl's name is Genovee (or that's at least how I understand it) and she is hilarious.  She's loud and obnoxious (in the cute almost three year old way), but she and Jayden have too much fun together.  She is two days older than Jayden, and about the same size, so they are about perfect playmates.

The kids made a painting together on the first day, and Dorkis displayed it outside her front door.

What I see when I go pick him up.  Genovee is the girl in the far back, and the boy in the middle is Keelan (that's how it's pronounced but I doubt that's how it's spelled).

Wednesday and Thursday were killer days for me, and Friday morning Jayden was adamant about staying home, to say the least.  I got kicked, hit, yelled at, generally abused.  And then after dropping him off at Dorkis' house, practically ran out the door to prevent more crying.  By the time I got to him Friday everyone was better - my day was better, his day was better, everything was better.  Thank goodness.  We got home, played frisbee, bat and ball and drank lots of apple juice.  

Pantless Fridays.  Because that's how Jayden rolls.  I almost said that's how we roll, but then wanted to make sure you didn't think I was also pantsless.

Nothing like playing baseball in a t-shirt and Lebrons.  

Today we had a pretty typical day of errands and swim lessons.  Nothing exciting.

All smiles in the swimming pool.

If you can't tell, he's the one in the middle, diving underwater.  He swam across the pool all by himself, breathing and kicking and everything.  And he was diving to the bottom of the pool, picking up rings and bringing them to the top.  

Relaxing on a mattress in Macy's. 

Checking out Mama's credit cards.  Gotta start 'em early...or not.

Playing with the new toy, that was also daddy's favorite toy when he was young.  Jayden wanted to take it to bed with him but we discouraged that (I could imagine flippers breaking off the first or second time he rolled over onto the little plastic man).

Jayden has been overwhelmed this week, I think.  He's been mostly good, but also hit or miss depending on the minute, hour, time of day, etc.  It's hard on everyone, including him, but at least his parents can remind themselves he's two (two and a HALF, if you ask him) and can only do so much.

This morning he was up at 5:45 am.  He had peed through his diaper, so he had a legit reason to be up.  But he wouldn't go back to bed, no matter how hard I tried.  So by about 6:20 we were just up.  And after we had eaten breakfast, Carmen had exercised (and changed an accident in the middle), I had walked Jasmine and gone for a run, and we'd both showered and gotten ready for the day, it was only 9:30 am.  Unreal.  But it did mean we were productive.  And then, somehow, Jayden only napped for an hour.  So then we were even more productive in the afternoon.  We made it home, he enjoyed his diver and then bedtime.  Carmen and I continued watching Orange is the New Black.  We finished the first two seasons of House of Cards this week and are moving on to OITNB.  It's pretty good, although both Carmen and I are trying to figure it out still.  We're moving on to either Homeland or Breaking Bad next, so tell me if you have a preference.

This upcoming week we have no childcare, but both of us are kind of okay with it.  We're taking Monday off.  I'll work all day Wednesday and Carmen will stay home and we'll work out Tuesday, Thursday and Friday between the two of us.  It'll be fun, I'm sure.  But actually we both are looking forward to it - it will be nice to spend some extra time with him and to have an excuse to be out of the office.