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.

Fun in the sun (mostly)

It has been an action packed 10 days since I last updated the blog.  We had a summer barbecue with my office, we drove to San Diego for a 4-year-old's birthday party and my cousin's wedding, we hung out on the U.S.S. Midway, we swam, we ate too much, we played with Gramma and Auntie, we went to Juju's, we said goodbye to Daddy for a few days, we went to a concert and a movie and we said hello to Daddy again!  Like I said, action packed.

Last Saturday was my cousin's wedding in San Diego.  On the way there we stopped in Encinitas for Carmen's friend Bard's son's fourth birthday.  It was Star Wars themed ("May the Fourth Be With You" - very cute) and was a lot of fun.

Blue lips!

There were a ton of kids, all of whom got in the pool at the same time.  Except Jayden and Seena (Kian's little sister who is about 2-1/2).  Jayden mostly wanted to play by himself at the train table.  Their house is about 45-50 miles from us, which means it usually takes us an hour or a little less to get there.  Well this time it took us a little over TWO hours.  It was rough.  Jayden slept for some of it, but probably not enough.  Because we were late we could only spend a little time there before we had to get back on the road to check in to the hotel, change our clothes and head over to the wedding.  It was a beautiful San Diego day in August - except it was raining.  And it was an outdoor wedding with no back up.  Luckily the bride was fine.  Apparently the groom was freaking out a bit, but in the end it stopped raining for the ceremony and the only side effect was slightly frizzier hair for all the ladies.

Fun times during cocktail hour.

Playing with Auntie (and after only a few hours!)

Handsome lil' dude.

Talk about a cool kid!  The orange sunglasses came with our place setting.  It's as if they knew...

Auntie being sad because Jayden is now tired and is picking favorites.

Family photo.  A little dark, but the best I could do.

We stayed up a little late, but that didn't keep Jayden asleep.  A few hours after we put him down he woke up and demanded to be in our bed.  To avoid a fit (we could tell how thin the hotel walls were by the kid noises we were hearing from other rooms!), we just hauled him into our bed.  It was good.  Carmen and I spent the night being poked, prodded, kicked and bumped.  But at least Jayden slept well.

Sunday we went on a walk and found ourselves on the U.S.S. Midway.  It's a retired aircraft carrier from Vietnam era, I think, that is now a museum.  They have old airplanes and helicopters on board, some of which people can sit in and walk through.  At first it was a little much, but Jayden ended up having a great time.

U.S.S. Midway

Flying the airplane.

In a training fighter jet.  Jayden didn't want to ride by himself so he sat on my lap.

Buckled up in the supply helicopter.

Mommy!  Take a pik-sher of me!  (in front of the fighter jet)

Hanging from the wing.

So tired he let Grampa carry him!

Happiness is...

Jayden passed out at lunch.  Carmen and I hauled him the 87,423 miles back to the hotel - he slept through it all - and then all three of us slept some more at the hotel.  I'd say we were exhausted.  We woke up and joined my mom and sister at the Nordstrom anniversary sale where we (and by "we" I mean "I") spent way too much money.  We then had a great dinner at a much nicer restaurant than normal for us!  The best part was halfway through the dinner Jayden said "Mama, mama I have to go potty!"  So I grabbed him and we headed to the bathroom.  We get in and it turns out it was actually poo-poo (which is amazing - he'll barely go on our toilets at home, not to mention in a public bathroom).  He was super proud of himself, and probably felt a whole lot better afterwards too.  He goes running back out to the table and exclaims "Guys!  I went poo-poo!"  I don't think anyone else really heard, but everyone was really great (even Grampa!) and nobody made fun of him or made him feel bad about it.  Everyone celebrated the accomplishment, which only encourages him more, which is great.

Monday morning we got up and had brunch with Aunt Terri, Emily, Molly, Michael and Melissa (the last two were the newlyweds) and then packed up, checked out and drove back up to Santa Ana.  The drive back up took significantly shorter than the first part of the drive on Saturday, which we were all grateful for.  We went swimming and then had cheese-ga-burgers for dinner at Islands, our favorite place.  :)

Tuesday Carmen and I had to work so Jayden got to spend the day with Gramma and Auntie.  Before I left for work I did manage to drag my sister on a nice four mile run.  It was supposed to be a three mile run but I (truly and honestly) forgot how long the route was.  

Wednesday Gramma and Auntie had to leave so we ran our routes, dropping Jayden off at Juju's, Ellen off at the airport and then Mom off at the airport, and then me to the office.  Wednesday night Jayden decided it would be fun to wake up 876 times, beginning at 10:30 pm.  Carmen took the brunt of the middle of the night wake-ups, although it did teach him to let Jayden fall back asleep in his bed, not to rock him to sleep in the chair!  Carmen had a 6:45 am flight Thursday morning so I decided to let Jayden sleep in a little bit and head in to work late.

Thursday night smiles . . .

. . . and kisses for Daddy!

Friday was a normal day as far as Jayden was concerned.  And then it was the weekend!  Thank goodness.  Saturday we had swim lessons as usual.

Refusing to get in the pool and instead offering to put his feet in the fish pond.  I suggested that was a bad idea.

Floating in the water in in the inside pool.

 In the evening we headed to the Verizon Amphitheater for the Pacific Symphony performing live to excerpts from Disney's Fantasia.  The show didn't start until 8:00 pm, since they had to wait for it to get dark so we could see the movie screen.  I was a little worried about the late start, but figured we'd go for it and see what happened.  We got there early to eat dinner and let the kids run their energy out, which they did quite well.

Checking out the view with the binoculars.  Ollie's mom is significantly more prepared than me at all times and at all events. And Jayden always benefits!

Messing around in the grass.

Jayden refused to roll, but would run down the hill after Ollie and Camilla while they rolled down the hill, saying "I'm comin' to getcha!"

This brave man brought bubbles and blew them for the kids for about 30 minutes.  Jayden had a great time with the bubbles, trying to jump and get the bubbles six feet up in the air.  He was shrieking and giggling and having a great time.

And then the movie started.  About eight times in the first five minutes Jayden asked to go home.  The first Fantasia excerpt they played was not particularly attention-grabbing for kids.  Ollie and Camilla had a hard time focusing and a grouchy old man came over, yelled at us, and went to get security.  They took his complaint, told Ollie's dad to "try to keep it down," and as soon as the man left, apologized to Ollie's dad for having to deal with the grouchy old man.  It was a Disney concert for goodness sakes, and there were kids and babies all over the place making noise.  It was crazy.  A nice lady nearby looked at us and said loudly enough for us to hear "he's making more of a scene than they are."  I smiled at her and shrugged my shoulders.  What were we going to do?  In any case, the kids soon settled down and enjoyed the movie.  And the grouchy old man missed half of the first set on his quest to find security.  Oh well.  I think we came out the winners in the long run.

Too many distractions to get a good photo...

The Sorcerer's Apprentice!

It was another late night - we left a little early because Ollie had hit a wall and it was after 10:00 pm already.  Jayden was a trooper - he walked the whole way up the hill and the whole way back down too.  And no complaints.  It was amazing.  His mama was super grateful for his awesome-ness.

I figured (hoped) since it was such a late night Jayden would sleep in.  And he did, by about nine minutes.  At 7:24 am my door bangs open and he lays down on the floor in my doorway.  It was awesome.  And also not awesome and way too early.  So we cuddled in my bed (after hitting the potty, of course) and watched Little Einsteins for 25 minutes.  Then we got our day started by going for a nice long walk and then a swim in the pool.

Jasmine never minds when Jayden drives cars all over her.  :)  Or, Jasmine was too tired from the long walk to put up too much of a fight.

Enjoying what I believed to be freezing cold water until Jayden made me dive in head first.  He promised, "Mom, it will be warm in a minute.  Just dive in!  You can do it.  Iss okay!"  Yeah, I was not convinced, but did it anyway because there truly was no other way I was getting all the way in.

We got out, got ourselves ready and waited for Daddy's call.  The time when he was supposed to land came and went so I finally figured out the plane was 30 minutes late.  We were already pushing our happiness limits so we took off for the restaurant and hoped Carmen would meet us there.  It started off rough, but he lit up as soon as his food got there, and was even happier once Carmen arrived.  He even sat next to him, which just about never happens.

We got home, had a good nap (while I made dinners for the week - a thick chicken noodle soup and a version of jambalaya - yummy!) and then played outside.  Jayden has decided he wants to play baseball so he stands on the tile with the bat while Carmen and I pitch to him.  Jayden does not move for anything.  The ball could land at his feet, hit his feet, etc. and he does not move.  All of those things happened and he'd look down and then look up and wait for me or Carmen to grab the ball.  Amazing.

If it looks like Jayden is wearing pajamas (pa-gee-jays as he says), that's because he is.  When he woke up this morning he did not want to put on clothes and  I didn't see a reason to fight him.  So he wore his pajamas all day - on the walk, to the restaurant, to play baseball, to play in the sandbox - everywhere.  So long as he is happy it doesn't matter one bit to me what he wears.

Jayden really wanted me to take a picture of the shovels.  So I did.

And now the weekend is over and the week begins tomorrow.  Juju is out of town, but we just learned Thursday that Dorkis is available this week so Jayden will get to go to Dorkis' house and play with kids instead of having to go to work with Carmen and me, thank goodness.  So only one week of no child care - totally doable!