Adventures in Santa Pictures

Last week was hard.  It was just a long week.  Carmen was only gone 2-1/2 days, which really is nothing, but I had a work event one of those nights, and of course, shortly after I left, the sink overflowed in the downstairs bathroom and there was water everywhere.  I was up until rather late cleaning and washing towels.  And then Jayden decided last week would be a good week to wake up between 4:00 am and 5:30 am every. single. day.  Except for Friday, the morning after Carmen got home.  Of course.  Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end of it.

Jayden was very excited to see his Daddy, and wanted to wear matching outfits on Friday.  It was Superman Friday in our household, complete with gray pants and green shoes, and blue jackets when they were necessary.  Carmen did forgo the trucks underwear, but wait until he sees what shows up in his stocking this year!!!  In any case, the matching outfits were very cute.

Today was a good day too, although it involved a lot of errands.  Swimming was exciting - missing class last week was a bummer for Jayden, and he was suuuper excited to be in the pool today.  I had to take five pictures of him kicking, which means you all have to look at five pictures of him kicking.

He was awesome today.  He did the butterfly all on his own.  He still goes vertical when he tries to breathe, which makes him sink even more, but he's getting better.  And his froggy kicks are getting a lot better too.

After swim class we made the decision to brave Santa Claus.  I didn't go back to Ana this year because she is so expensive.  But I may go back next year  He just needs more than two minutes to get acclimated, and he can't get that at a department store/mall Santa.  As is obvious from the picture:

This is Santa "helping" Jayden smile.  Still nothing.  

For some reason, the picture made me kind of sad.  I think I felt like I was forcing him to do something he really didn't want to do, everyone was looking at us as if they felt sorry for us, and then we picked this sort of embarrassing picture to show.  I realize it'll be funny looking back on it, but I wonder if we should have left this as a story and just picked one of the other pictures where he was looking down and not smiling, rather than this rather comical one.  I don't know.  Maybe I'm just overly tired.  But for something that's supposed to be fun and exciting became sad and stressful, and I didn't like that.  Being a parent is hard.

After pictures we stopped at home for a nap and then went back out to a mall to shop for Christmas presents for our families.  Poor Jayden didn't get to have a lot of fun today, but the mall does have ride on toys, so that made him happy.

THIS would be the smile we were looking for earlier in the day.  Oh well.  

One of the cars he got into shook, which did not make him happy.  That was the last one we went on at that time.  And when we found another group of ride on toys later in the day, before he got on any of them he would ask me "does this move?"  He also saw some other kids actually enjoying the cars shaking (because their parents put money in the toys so that they would shake on purpose) and then became worried that any toy he got in would shake.  He's exactly the opposite of what other parents worry about - most parents would be thinking how am I going to pretend I don't have quarters, or explain how he is limited to how many times he can ride, etc.  But no.  With our kid we're having to explain how we promise we won't put coins in the machines to make them move.  I guess we should be grateful.

Tomorrow should be an easier today.  We'll have soccer class as normal and hopefully make it to the grocery store, since I haven't been in a rather long time and we've been eating way too much take-out recently.  Hope everyone is having a good weekend!