Quick update

So today was Monday.  Or so I was told.  I could've sworn it was at least Thursday, if not Friday.  First, Jayden thought it would be fun if he woke up when Carmen left the house, which was 5:35 am.  I convinced him to lay down until about 6:30, and I think he went back to sleep sort of, but not real sleep.  And me neither.  So we were both a little tired today.  Then, we were running out of the house so I could get 14 minutes of work done before my first of four meetings today.  I almost made it.  At 10 am I texted my sister that I was ready for the weekend.  At 11 am I had a minor breakdown and cried in my office.  By 2:30 pm I was feeling better.  I spent 5:00-7:30 reading books (thanks frizzle - we read Pete the Cat and Duck on a Bike 2372 times this evening!) and having fun with Jayden.  Despite the whining, that was clearly the best part of the day.  I just spent two hours reading about Veterans Benefits and appeals processes and reviewing an answer to a complaint for partition.  Love my life!  And soon it will be Tuesday, when I have a 9:00 am meeting, which is going to mean hustling out of the house tomorrow morning to get to my office by 8:45.  We'll see how this goes!

But before I go pass out, here are some pictures from the weekend:

On Saturday we had family pictures taken.  Here are a couple of sneaks that I took afterwards - without giving too much away!

Running up the path after pictures.

Smiling voluntarily, after we spent an hour doing some amazing things to convince him to smile, and after we had to run back down the path to the photographer's bench to take one last picture.  "But I wanna take mooorrrrrrre pick-shers!"  Yup, that's our kid.  Won't smile for the official hour of photos, but immediately afterwards? Super excited to smile and take pictures.  Argh!
But seriously.  How cute is this smile?!????

And Sunday was two things: it was the beginning of the NFL season, which results in the beginning of my life as a single mom on Sundays.  Awesome.  But, most importantly, we had Jayden's first soccer class.  I signed him up for these classes because I got a deal.  I wasn't sure how he would take to them, but he was suuuuper excited to go.  I think playing soccer on the beach with the big kids a couple weeks ago helped.  But he couldn't wait.  He kept asking why we weren't leaving for soccer yet.  He was slow to warm up (literally and figuratively) when we got there, but as soon as the coaches said "let's run," he was off.  And he never looked back.  He was at least an inch or two taller than any other kid in the three year old class.  And he was definitely the most athletic.  He's kind of a freak of nature in that sense.  It's going to be hard for other people not to put all kinds of expectations on him - and it'll be interesting to see what his actual interests are as he gets older.

Taking cone towers and putting them all over the soccer field.  Then they had the kids take the soccer ball and kick the ball at the cones to knock them over.  And then they had the kids run around and put the cones back upright using their feet.  Pretty cool way to develop all kinds of skills.

Racing after the ball, to go knock over some cones.  

Racing after double hoops.  The coach would roll the hoop or hoops and tell the kids to chase the cones and grab them.  The first one Jayden caught after maybe 15 yards - maybe 20 - and the coach said "oh, that was too easy for you!"  The second one Jayden made it a little farther, but still got both hoops.  Another one of those things that I never would have thought he was coordinated enough to do, but what do I know?!?  

So, overall, soccer was a huge success.  He pretty much ran for 45 minutes, and then didn't want to leave and ran for another 5 minutes after class was over.  He was dripping sweat, and was telling us how he got his "exercises" in and he was "allllll sweaty!"  After we left, Jayden kept asking what the soccer field was doing after we left, and why we weren't playing more soccer.  It was awesome.  He has no concept of time.  When I asked him today when his birthday was (after telling him 10 minutes earlier his birthday was on Friday), he told me it was in three months!  I said "sort of.  or four days.  either way."  He didn't seem particularly impressed.  I think he'll understand "tomorrow" when we get to Thursday.