Happy Happy New Year!

So many exciting things happening this year.  It's hard to believe it's already "this year."  Craziness.

First, Jayden and I had a good trip to Seattle.  It's hard leaving the day after Christmas, because Jayden is so excited about his new toys and just about everything in general.  And Carmen was expecting to work over the weekend, but then didn't have to.  Although he did get some quality time in, by himself and with a couple of his buddies, so it wasn't a total loss.  Luckily Jayden was very excited to see Gramma, Grampa and Auntie, so he wasn't too sad about leaving home.  He did however miss his daddy quite a bit.  He reverted back to not wanting to talk to him on the phone.

The flight up was good - Jayden watched Planes Fire & Rescue, which Santa brought for him.  He liked the movie quite a bit and wasn't scared much at all, which surprised me.  He managed to not nap at all the entire day, which blew my mind. He has never done that before in his life.  The time he would have napped was on the ferry boat and there were too many exciting things.  And then, by the time we got to Bainbridge, it was too close to bedtime for me to even try to put him down.

Beautiful view of Mt Rainier from the plane.

Luckily the excitement, new surroundings and new people kept Jayden in good spirits  If it had just been me it would have been disastrous.

Saturday we laid low, hanging around the house and generally relaxing.  Oh, and of course playing marbles, all. day. long.  I got a run in Saturday morning - despite the hill, it is absolutely my favorite place to run.  The 40 degree weather didn't even feel that cold, and I felt like I could run forever, which is not how I feel when I run in California!

The Seattle-Bremerton ferry boat.

Puget Sound.

The hill I conquered.  I went a whole lot slower than normal, but I made it the whole way! 

He passed out hard at naptime.
For anyone with kids, I highly recommend the inflatable toddler beds (thanks Kelly!).  They are amazing.  This one is by the Shrunks.  He didn't fall out of it once and loved having his own bed.  He also slept in the room with me, which totally made his year as far as I could tell. 

Sunday was Seahawks Sunday, of course.  The Wrights (looong time family friends) came over to watch the game and we had a party.  So much fun!

In his Seahawks colors.  We decided his shirt is a "beast" as in BEAST MODE!
Also, he does this awesome thing when I ask him to take a picture to show someone something, he lifts his foot and bends hi knee, posing for the picture.  I think it's so adorable.

Playing on the dock with Auntie before the game.  

Selfie with Mama.

He didn't want to be in the picture, but of course that meant he really sort of wanted to be in the picture.  You can't see it, but I promise Mom is wearing a Seahawks shirt under that jacket!

Proof that the whole family was decked out in Seahawks gear.  Even Carmen was rooting for them from California! (he has decided he likes one of his clients on the team more than he originally thought and actually wants him to win - but probably not the Super Bowl, that he probably still wants it to go to the Broncos)

Jayden was great, and even joined in the wrapping paper battle fun after presents were opened.  He got pretty good at pelting Michael in the face with balled up wrapping paper.

Monday we made our trek into Seattle.  Ellen had some returns/exchanges to make (and has no Nordstrom in NYC) and we wanted to see Aunt Terri.  I knew it was going to be a little tough with no stroller, and of course Jayden passed out in my arms in line for food at the Nordstrom Cafe.  At least he got some rest, even if it was laying on my lap and another chair, since we couldn't get a booth.  I dream about sleeping as well as he does in awkward situations.

Reflections.  Checking out the view from the ferry boat.

12s everywhere!

The city at night.

Jayden powered through, again, despite being carted all over the place.  He got mad at me when we passed a pretty bad car accident on the freeway and I covered his eyes because I thought there might be things he shouldn't see.  I was wrong - they'd put everyone in the ambulances already - but it was a brutal accident.  We had a good dinner with Aunt Terri and Molly, and Jayden and Molly rekindled their friendship, as expected!  I only feel bad that I didn't arrange for him to sit next to her.  I think that would have been better than the corner he ended up in.  :)

And then Tuesday it was time to head back to the airport and take off again.

Saying goodbyes to Gramma.  But only for a few weeks - she'll be down to visit us at the end of January during Carmen's marathon travel from mid-January to early February.

Bainbridge Island from the plane!  The bottom of the photo is Bainbridge, and Gramma and Grampa's house is somewhere on the water there, I just can't tell exactly where.

Jayden passed out before we even took off on the flight home.  He was exhausted.  He slept about an hour and a half or so.  He woke up with just enough time to color in the Disney coloring book the flight attendant gave us and say, as we were flying over the water, "I hope the plane doesn't go into the water!"  I tried to quiet him down - you never know what kind of paranoid people are on the plane nearby!  Before he passed out, he was the star of the airplane.  As we were getting on, there were multiple people staring at him and trying to talk to him.  One lady told him he had beautiful eyes.  And then spent the next few seconds looking from me to him and back again, probably trying to figure out where those beautiful eyes came from (I told them they came from Daddy).  A flight attendant asked where he was going, and Jayden said "Santa Ana."  She laughed and asked if it was home or vacation and he said "home."  I asked him who he was going to see when he got home and his eyes lit up and he said "DA-DA!"  So when we were leaving the plane, she said "have fun with da-da!"  It was very cute.

We were home by 4 pm, which was wonderful.  Carmen had gotten home a couple hours earlier and had already picked up Jasmine.  Jayden was SO excited to see his daddy, as you might have already guessed.  I warned Carmen that when he gets back from his traveling in January/February, no matter how tired he is, he's going to have to suck it up and give Jayden some quality (phone-free) time.  He is becoming more and more important to Jayden and more frequently he wants Daddy to do things for him instead of me (finally!!!).

Wednesday Carmen had to work for a few hours.  Jayden and I ran a few errands, including opening a bank account for him.  If anyone wants to donate to his savings account at birthdays and Christmas, you can actually make checks out to him, and as his custodian (and pursuant to my fiduciary duty as custodian) I will dutifully deposit those checks into his account.  :)  He had a nice long nap, mostly because I told him Carmen and I wanted to show him something on television when he woke up.  Netflix had a special with King Julien from Madagascar where they counted down to the New Year.  It was only three minutes long, but it let us count down with him at 6:45 so we could still get him to bed relatively close to on time.

Partying hard.  Chugging the apple-cranberry sparkling cider.  And sharing with his mommy, while his daddy drank the real stuff.  ;)

And then it was 2015.  Yesterday we didn't do a whole lot, but we did ride bikes and we did dance.  And one of my friends from law school was having people over so we went.  There were a whole bunch of kids, between the ages of 3 months and 6 years.  Jayden picked his people to follow, two girls, one 3-1/2 and one 6.  The 3-1/2 year old hit him in the face with a plastic toy so she quickly lost his favor.  But the six year old was really nice to and patient with him.  He wasn't all that much shorter than her either!  It was a really nice relaxing afternoon.  I haven't done a great job of keeping in touch with my friend, but she had a baby last year and we've reconnected since she's become a mommy.  Hopefully we'll stay in touch because Carmen likes the husband and we both liked the group of friends at the party.

Obviously there was bicycle riding.  He looooves his bicycle and is really getting so good.  We're going to have to take him to a bigger flat space to ride soon, since our little concrete pad is going to get too small pretty quickly.

There was also some pretty awesome dancing.  Make sure your volume is up (and you're not in a library) to get the full effect of the awesomeness.  Thanks to Carmen for the soundtrack, as always.

Today Carmen took Jayden to work for a couple hours in the morning.  I was supposed to rest and get stuff done, but inevitably I ran out of time and got nearly nothing done.  Oh well.  We met for lunch and then I took him home to nap while Carmen finished working.  Jayden and I also got to go to the park and ride bicycles again, of course!

Top of the slide.

Bottom of the slide.  Love these smiles.

Bicycle riding at sunset, waiting for Daddy to get home.
Jayden has been expressing many of his emotions, especially those about missing his daddy, through Jasmine.  He'll look at Jasmine, then turn to me and say "Jasmine reallly misses her Daddy.  She really wishes he was home."  And I just nod and say "uh-huh.  I think maybe you miss your daddy a little bit too!"  And he usually agrees.  :)

And it was hair washing night, which is usually a disaster, but tonight it went smoothly.  And we even threw in a little mohawk, which usually helps things along.

I'm so grateful I have two more days before returning to work, but I could really use another week.  There's so much organizing to do at the house, especially with all of the new toys (really, people - it was way too much.  Next year there's going to be a four gift per grandma limit - he doesn't even know where to start with all the new toys!).

I am feeling much better, although I am really starting to feel pregnant even though I don't really look it.  I am 16 weeks as of today.  I have a doctor appointment Monday morning, just a check up, but it'll tell me when my next ultrasound is, which is likely when we'll get to find out the gender.  Of course the ultrasound is likely to be during Carmen's marathon travels, so if so we'll do the same thing as last time and put the pictures in sealed envelopes, I'll Fedex the envelope to him and we'll open them at the same time over the phone.  That's fun too, it just takes a lot of discipline on my part.

The kid is about the size of an avocado, or 4-1/2 inches long, and weighs about 3-1/2 ounces.

The fruit/vegetable comparison is always a tough one.  At my grocery store, some avocados are huge, some are small, and some apples a huge, some are small.  So I guess you have to imagine the most average fruit/vegetable and just go with that.

In the next few weeks the kid should double in weight and add inches to the length, which is why a lot of people start showing a whole lot more by 20 weeks.  We'll see what happens.

The kid is continuing to develop, with the eyes and ears moving closer to their correct position and the head becoming more erect.  The legs are continuing to develop as well, and toenails are growing!  The baby's heart is now pumping about 25 quarts of blood a day.

I swear up and down I've felt the kid move.  It's very light, and feels like little flutters more than anything, but it's not gas, so it's gotta be the kid.  :)  I don't feel it all the time, but if I lay down for a while, particularly on my side, I start to feel little movements.  I felt it quite a bit either yesterday or the day before.  I haven't felt it as much today.  It's pretty awesome.  I don't remember feeling Jayden move until at least 20 weeks, maybe even 22.  I know that's pretty common, but it's crazy I'm feeling this one move at 15 or 16 weeks.  I can't wait for Carmen and Jayden to be able to feel it from the outside of my belly - that's not quite possible yet, but hopefully soon if the kid really does double in weight in the next few weeks!

I'm feeling quite a bit better, although I still have occasional nausea and I still feel quite tired.  Some of the exhaustion may come from the fact that I didn't sleep that great in Seattle since I was sharing my room with a three year old and I'm typically a light sleeper, and from the fact that since we've been home Jayden has not been sleeping well.  Last night I was up at 3:15 am with him, and spent some time, I don't even know how long, half asleep sitting outside his room.  I can't lay on my stomach or back, so my hips/sides get really sore, particularly on the floor.  So I decided sitting up was the better plan.  It probably was, but just not comfortable for my neck/back.

Hope everyone has had a fabulous start to 2015.  Here's hoping this is one of the best years yet!

Merry Christmas to all - and to all a good night!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas - or Hanukkah or whatever holiday you may or may not celebrate around this time of year.  We had a lovely couple of days off.  Lucky me I get to have another 10 days off.  Carmen will work over the next few days, but not too much.

I'm updating a day early since tomorrow Jayden and I fly up to Seattle for a few days.  I could do it up there, I just figured I'm less likely to have time to sit down and do it.

Last weekend was good.  He's doing well in swimming class, but also as he becomes more outgoing, he becomes less focused, and a little more difficult for Ms. Stacy.  Here he's practicing his froggy kicks after swim lessons.  He only wanted to do it if I would take a video of it and then show it to him.  Whatever works!

Sunday was soccer as usual.  Both classes are off this weekend.  Swimming is also closed the following weekend (January 3rd), but not soccer.
Saturday night was my friend's 40th birthday party.  It is next to impossible to find a babysitter the weekend before Christmas, and for us, actually impossible.  So Carmen and I put Jayden to bed and then I took off for the party.  It was a lot of fun, but I was home and in bed by 11 or 11:30 at the latest.  The birthday girl was also pregnant, so she and I were drinking lemonade and laughing at the drunk people.  Not really - mostly we just got to dance and have fun.  It was really nice to have a night out by myself - I think the last one that was not work-related was a year ago about this same time, when I got a babysitter for Carmen's holiday party, he ended up being out of town, and I just kept the babysitter and went to a movie by myself.  I should probably do it more often.

"Flexing" his muscles and turning side to side.  Somehow, in the last few weeks, he's gotten it in his head that flexing his muscles means holding his arms straight out in front of him.  That's how he shows me how strong he is.  Clearly.

I have no pictures because I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures when other people are around apparently, but Kelly, Mike and Ella came by for a visit on Sunday afternoon.  They were in town visiting family for Christmas and actually got away for a couple hours to come hang out with us.  Ella had all kinds of fun with Jayden's toys (Jayden unfortunately napped pretty much the whole time they were here), and was very cute.  She'd kept her parents up all hours the night before so both Kelly and Mike were zombies.  I sent them off with some cookies - I'm sure it didn't help the zombie-ness, but at least it gave them a brief sugar rush!

Sunday night we ordered Chinese food for dinner and got fortune cookies of course.  This was Jayden's:

So appropriate.

I worked Monday and Tuesday, but took Wednesday off.  Carmen worked all three days, but only for a couple hours on Wednesday.  There was a lot of excitement about Christmas every day, but also confusion.  Jayden sort of understood, but sort of not.  

Jayden managed to come down with a cold on Saturday, which was preceded by hives that appeared Thursday.  He had hives off and on pretty much until today.  I didn't call the doctor until Tuesday, because I'd read a lot about them and it seemed like they were viral, we couldn't think of anything he could have possibly eaten that was out of the ordinary and they didn't bother him one bit.  They were pretty sad, though.

When I did finally call the advice line, they told me not to worry, to take him to urgent care if they lasted more than a week and to give him benadryl every six hours.  So we've been dosing him with benadryl and they're pretty much completely gone.  If I see any more tomorrow, after we land in Seattle and get settled, we'll probably head to urgent care and hope that our insurance covers it!  His cold is much better - not completely cured, but better - so I'm hoping that means the virus is leaving his body too.  

Of course, as you'd expect, since Jayden is sick, I am also sick.  I've been nauseous, congested, had headaches and just generally tired.  I'm beginning to feel a little better, but not much.  And there's very little medicine I can (or want to) take, so that makes it even more difficult.  I'm going to rub my chest with Jayden's vapo-rub and hope that clears up some of my congestion too!

Because I'm sick and pregnant and just generally not paying good attention recently, I didn't plan anything for Christmas eve dinner.  We were going to order pizza, but it turns out there is not a single pizza place that is open on Christmas Eve.  Or at least none of the three we called.  So we scrounged around the house and found a mish-mash dinner.  It was not my proudest moment, but we all got fed.  And we ate outside under our lights, which was a lot of fun, so we made it festive in our own way.

Jayden also had a message for everyone that I forgot to post last night:

We then wrote a letter to Santa and set out cookies, carrots and milk for Santa.  It was a lot of fun. 

It says: "Dear Santa, Happy Christmas Year! I'd really like some cars for Christmas.  Reindeer, have a piece of carrot.  Love, Jayden W."  He then drew a picture of himself (with Daddy's help), in case there was any confusion.  It was amazingly cute.

This was also really cute.  Jayden is usually not one to wear hats, glasses, etc.  But he's really growing up a lot and tends to have a lot more fun doing these things now.  Poor Jasmine has not matured quite the same way.

Santa then came, of course.  This is what it looked like before the tornado hit it in the morning:

And today, of course, was Christmas.  Jayden has definitely learned how to tear wrapping paper, so we were done with presents in a matter of minutes, which is significantly faster than last year when we opened one present and would sit there for twenty minutes.  

Santa brought us these awesome glasses.  Mine are snowflakes, Carmen's are Christmas trees and Jayden's are reindeer antlers.  We had a lot of fun with them.

Loving the truck with eight motorcycles on it (from Juju).  He wants to bring the whole thing to Seattle to show Gramma.  I think it's probably not going to fit in the suitcase, but at least Gramma can see a picture!

The last present in his advent calendar was probably Jasmine's least favorite - a recorder!  He actually figured out how to play it pretty well, or at least to sort of pretend to play it.

He also got new "shiny" shoes from Mommy and Daddy, and mini soccer goals so he can practice scoring a goal.  And here's his first one!  He was a big fan of that.  He and Daddy played soccer for a while before it was time to start cooking.

AND the biggest present of all, a new BIKE!  He actually took to it immediately.  It's hard for him to get his feet over the top and push it forward, but after practicing for a while he had it down pretty well.  He hasn't quite figured out how to stop, but Carmen and his dad can tell you a story about that too, so it's a little bit of payback.  I almost hate that we're leaving tomorrow, because there are so many good toys he has to play with.  But it'll give him something to look forward to when we get home, especially since I have another four or five days off once we get back.

And a really quick update on baby #2.  The baby will be 15 weeks tomorrow.  It's about 4 inches long, and weighs about 2-1/2 ounces - it's about the same weight as an apple.  

The baby's legs are longer than its arms, and it is using all of its joints.  The baby's eyelids are still fused shut, but it can sense light.  If I were to shine a flashlight at by abdomen, the baby might move away from the light.  I won't do it because it sounds mean, but it is interesting.  The baby's taste buds are also forming, even though there's not much for the baby to taste at this point.  

Besides the cold, I'm actually feeling better.  I'm still at the stage where I just feel like I have a gut - I don't have a cute pregnant belly yet.  I'm also in a lot worse shape than I was with Jayden and that makes me a little sad.  But I'm not doing too badly, and I'm still eating healthy, so I'm trying to console myself with that.  My next appointment to see the doctor is January 5th, but it's just a regular appointment.  I think I wrote this last time, but hopefully I'll get to schedule an ultrasound in the couple of weeks after that so we can see the kid again.  That's by far my favorite part.  :)

I'm looking forward to going home tomorrow, and am mostly packed.  Jayden is suuuper excited, which is also good.  He'll be sleeping in an inflatable toddler bed in my room, which I think will be much better than in a crib since he's so big.  But I don't know how it'll go, so I'm a little nervous about that.  He slept in one at Kelly and Mike's house and really enjoyed it, so I'm hoping he remembers that and is just as excited!  

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and if I don't make it back here before 2015, Happy New Year too!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I cannot believe that Christmas is less than a week away.  I'm prepared, but not prepared.  We'll see how it goes.  I have four presents under the tree, which I think is plenty since I've got another four or five to wrap and then I should be done.

I managed to not take too many pictures this week, or really none at all.  I have a video from soccer class last week, to show you all how much progress Jayden has made:

In other news, as most people who read this now have learned, baby #2 is coming June 2015.  The first trimester ended today - which means I am officially 14 weeks.  I've told everyone at work (or at least my supervisors, and word is slowly traveling to everyone else), and everyone else who needs to know so now the knowledge can go public.  The first trimester has been rough this time - I've been extremely tired and nauseous most of the day, which is not so fun.  I'm starting to feel better, but I still have bouts of nausea throughout the day, get bad headaches and generally am tired.  As the ultrasound tech pointed out, I wasn't chasing a three year old last time, which greatly adds to my exhaustion.  I'm really hoping that second trimester boost of energy kicks in soon, because oh my goodness.

It also means I'll have to change the name of the blog - because it most certainly will not be Jayden's world anymore.  He is now excited to be a big brother, sort of, but he has no idea how his world will be rocked come June 2015.  He has decided he wants a "Molly," or essentially the same baby Molly who is at his daycare.  I've told him that might not work out (we don't know yet if it's a boy or a girl), and that no matter what, the name probably won't be Molly.  He's not happy about that, and has had almost tantrums when I try to explain that, but he's going to have to get over it.

I have been sending out a weekly update to my family up until now, but unless someone objects I'm just going to combine the blog with the updates, because that's easier for me.  At 14 weeks, the baby is 3-1/2 inches long, which is about the size of a lemon:

The kid can squint, frown and grimace, because its facial muscles are stretching and working themselves out.  The kidneys are producing urine, which he pees out into the amniotic fluid surrounding him.  It sounds super gross that the kid is floating in its own pee.  I hope nobody is eating right before or after reading this.  If so, sorry.  The baby can grasp, which means the kid could be sucking its thumb.  I had an ultrasound on Monday as part of some genetic testing we had done, and it looked like the kid might have been sucking its thumb.  Preliminarily all tests look normal, which is a relief.  I won't know complete results until next week.  Carmen got to come with me on Monday, and it was his first time seeing the baby, so that was fun.

The body is growing faster than the head, and its arms are almost proportional to the body - the legs not so much yet.  The hair that covers the fetus is also beginning to grow.  I remember with Jayden thinking this was so weird - kind of like a baby duck or something.  The kid is moving like crazy each time I've had an ultrasound, including one time where they couldn't find a heartbeat because the kid was doing flips.  It's pretty cool.

And I'm sort of starting to show.  People who know can tell I'm showing - anyone who doesn't really know me probably couldn't really tell:

The mini bump.

Jayden managed to break out into hives yesterday morning/afternoon.  Not awesome.  We couldn't think of a single thing that would have caused them, and we didn't get the chance to grill Julia about it.  They moved around his body, covering his legs last night, his legs and stomach this morning, his arms after breakfast and he had a small one on his back when he went to bed tonight.

They're mostly gone, so I'm hoping they continue to fade away and are gone by tomorrow.  I went out after he went to bed last night to buy children's benadryl, but then it turns out you're not supposed to give kids under 5 benadryl without a doctor's permission.  So that was a wasted trip.  If things haven't cleared up completely by Monday/Tuesday, I'll call the doctor to be safe.  But he isn't sick, he isn't short of breath, and he isn't even itching, so those are all good signs.

I've got all kinds of good quotes from Jayden that I'll try to put up, particularly regarding the baby.  It's so hard to capture everything when it's being said, but I'll try to get better!

Daily Surprises

Last year we did an advent calendar for Jayden, and I'm going to continue that tradition this year.  He understands it much better this year, and often wants to check his calendar two or three times a day!  It's very hard to explain to him that he really truly honestly only gets one little treat a day.  He's been getting very little things - and I'm going to try to keep it that way.  One of my friends posted a picture of a present from her daughter's advent calendar and it was a Barbie electric toothbrush and a bag of goodies from a surf store in SoCal.  He never needs that many toys, so I'm going to have to get creative as he gets older.  He also has a much better understanding of Santa Claus, so we talk about how Santa comes to the houses where kids are and fills stockings and leaves presents for people.  His stocking is also going to be hopefully not too huge - so far Carmen and I have been pretty good!

The week itself was decent.  Carmen's tire wasn't fixed until Thursday, so I was on drop off and pick up duty pretty much all week long.  That was a little frustrating to me, but not the end of the world.

Last Sunday we went to soccer, which was the start of the new session.  Jayden was one of two kids in the class!  There was supposed to be a third kid there, but s/he didn't show up.  It turned out to be okay, although the other kid is 5 and much more coordinated than Jayden, with fewer kids Jayden gets less distracted and can actually participate better.
Above he is kicking the ball with small kicks through all those cones from one goal to the other goal.

Doing an obstacle course.  Hopefully you can see how his coordination has improved!

Clearly an outfit is not complete until you have your super fast shoes, your Jordan shorts, your running shirt and your sparkly jacket.  A-1 style.

Swim class today.  Surfing in from the deep end to the shallow end.

Getting a cannon ball toss from Ms. Stacy.
He had a hard time focusing today, and he's really got to work on breathing just with his head, not with his whole body.  Every time he picks his head up to breathe, everything else below his shoulders drops.  I have a feeling it's one of those things that suddenly he'll just figure it out and we'll forget he one say struggled with it.

 

We also ran some errands at the mall quickly before lunch.  We saw the GIANT Christmas tree.  Jayden was mesmerized.  And there was a woman singing on our way out and so we sat and listed to some Christmas music for a bit.  It was a lot of fun, especially since she sang some songs that we all knew.

 It was a rainy week in Southern California, but it was much needed and pretty much just made me happy.  We don't live anywhere near any mudslides or flooding, so our only negative consequences are having to turn our heater on at nighttime and having to avoid some flooded streets on the way to work.  Oh, and getting drenched when we (read: Carmen) walk(s) Jasmine in the mornings.  We're supposedly getting more rain this week, which although bad for mudslide areas, will be really good for California and the drought problems.

And now for some random photos:

One of the best dishes I've made with leftover turkey: stacked enchiladas!  With refried beans with chipotle peppers (for me and Carmen only, not Jayden), cotija cheese, cheddar cheese, mild enchilada sauce (also for Jayden - Carmen and I added Tapatio) and a fried egg on top of course!  Except for the mildness, channeling my Granddad!
In years where you have six cups of leftover turkey like I did this year, I highly recommend stacked enchiladas as a way to use up leftovers.

The wonderful part of rain is that we get beautiful sky scapes during and after.

The sky on our drive down to San Diego today to see Von and his family.  The Broncos play the Chargers tomorrow, so we made the long trek to SD and back for dinner.  Maybe not totally worth it, but the 1,800 churros we brought home made it allllll better!

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!