Trip to Sophie's new house

On one of Jeremy's business trips we decided to go and stay with Craig, Asia and Sophie in their fabulous new house for a couple days. It is AWESOME! I don't know what 2 year old gets to have their own giant playroom, art room, reading room and bouncy house room in their house!

Jaydon and I had a great time (until of course our last night when he got sick and being sick, not at your own house, in the middle of the night, without all the comforts of home really sucks!!!). We look forward to being able to go back and visit again once our baby girl arrives and awhile after baby Xander has made his appearance (Asia is due mid-April).

Sophie has seen pictures of Jaydon's giraffe from Christmas and really wanted a chance to play so we took it along, it was pretty awesome!

Indoor bouncy house! Could it get any better?

Having a snack at the duplo table!

This is the playroom! The art room and reading room are off the play room along with the guest room we stayed in. It worked out very well!

Thanks for a great visit Craig, Asia and Sophie!!

Jaydon's Big Boy Bed!!

Well, when my midwife told me that in fact this new baby was going to be coming in the next month and a half and that now was the time to get ready we finally got around to doing the big furniture move and transition! Jaydon now has his big boy bed - thanks to dad working like a maniac for a couple days!

He loves it! He climbed up at the beginning doing his usual "no fall down, no fall down," fear thing (he developed this a couple months ago but I hear it is quite a normal development stage). Once he was up there he enjoyed it but was a bit hesitant. He napped their for a little while yesterday (while chaos ensued around the rest of his room and house with everything all over) and then slept just fine all night last night. He is now quite good and going up and down but luckily for us he doesn't think he can just climb down when it is nap or night time. I am sure that day will come but we will enjoy it for now!

It is definitely a big bed - twin size with lots of storage underneath and a fun play area 'cave' as Jaydon likes to call it. Needless to say he has a new favorite hiding spot for hide n' seek!

Story time! Today he has realized that mom or dad can be up on it with him reading stories and snuggling - it is pretty cute (and much easier on the body than leaning over).

The look of the room from the rocking chair, the little book case stayed but his changing table and crib have moved, more on that below!

Re-arranging!

Well at least we now have our furniture moved and ready for the baby girl to make her appearance. Though I still don't want her to arrive any earlier than March 14th, we at least have some space for her (though don't look in the closet that is supposed to be hers - we will get to that next week).

I didn't think to do before and afters so if you haven't ever seen our house before, sorry - may not be so fun, if you have you can see how some of the rooms have had to change.

The guest room/baby room. We had to remove a couple book cases and move the bed way against the wall to get the crib to fit but it works out okay. Not ideal but we can't do away with our guest room so this allows us to still have people stay and when we don't have people staying the little one can be in there.

The master bedroom. We now have a bassinet and the changing table in our room so we had to move Jeremy's nightstand to the closet and our tall dresser to the corner. Surprisingly it is working for me. I may not be really thrilled with the changing table being there but for now it is the best solution.

The dining room hutch got shifted corners and one of the book cases from the guest room is now in the dining room, doesn't match all that well but it is out of the way and we really didn't have to do away with any of the furniture or space we had in our house even bringing in Jaydon's huge bed! The only problem is the poor large houseplant/tree thing that was in a corner of the dining room is not readily finding a new home. We shall see what happens there.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a fun family Valentine's Day. Unfortunately I forgot the camera so I took a couple pics of the Valentine's Jaydon made for us but that was it.

We went down to visit my mom because her town was having a big free event with dancing, food, crafts and cookie decorating. When we first arrived the Hokey Pokey was just starting and Jaydon loves that so he and I had a fun time participating. He then danced quite a bit more with grandma throughout the evening.

He made the card on the left for me at the event that evening and he painted the heart for his dad at our parent and me preschool in the morning. It was a fun day!

I would say his favorite part was probably the cookie! He is quite a fan!

Mr. Helpful

I have tried getting Jaydon involved in a few more household jobs - he has always loved to sweep and vacuum so we decided to move onto dishwashing. He has a great time with me and while I feel slightly guilty over the extra water we are now using it is nice to have such a willing helper.

In fact, after lunch I was at the computer looking up some baby stuff and I heard him get up to the sink and start re-washing one of his cups, I really didn't think that much of it. It was a clean cup and he was just playing with the water and having some fun. When I finally went over there to check how it was going (yes maybe another bad mom moment), this is what I found...

Thank goodness we have an undermount sink and the edge of the granite comes above it so that the sink that he manged to get the stopper in just poured over into the other side to drain rather than get all over my floor. It was still quite a mess but boy was Jaydon one happy dishwasher!

Numbers and the clock!

I am happy to report that my kid loves numbers! He counts well (forwards and backwards) and he recognizes numbers. We can now ask him to wait until the clock says a certain number to be done with something and he will patiently wait and get so excited every time a number changes that he makes us look at the new time and then when it hits the time he was waiting for he knows it and is ready to move on to the next fun thing!

Jaydon also really enjoys his evening naked running time. It doesn't even have to be full-on naked, just no pants and diaper. In fact, socks are favored because they help him not hurt his toe when he runs and kicks his football out of his block as if he were kicking off in a football game. We have a policy where before he gets his running time he has to sit on the potty for a minute (he isn't really all that interested in potty training yet but he understands some of the concepts so for now we just give him some opportunities and let him choose). Then once he has sat on the potty he tells me how many minutes of running time he wants. This is often something around 8 minutes. Well, one evening I got distracted setting the oven timer when his running had begun so I went to set it after he had been at it for a couple minutes, I figured I would just put 7 on their because he had already gotten a bit of extra time. No luck on my end, Jaydon ran up and looked at the clock, then he looked at me and said "no mama, 8 minutes not 7." Well I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because I know he can recognize all the numbers but there was no pulling one over on this kid.

Building and Puzzles

Jaydon enjoys building with his blocks (the taller the tower the better) we are still working on having a solid base but he does pretty well. He also has become really good at a couple big puzzles. He can do an Animal Train puzzle that is 10 feet long and the Thomas puzzle (seen below) by himself and he loves to put them together then tear them apart by knocking them onto the floor and then building them again. It is fun to watch him problem solve and get so into some of these toys and games.

cheesy smiles posing with his tower (dad may have provided a little help on this one).

Posing with his Thomas puzzle - thanks Timothy and Alex for passing this puzzle along from when you were kids using it 12 years ago.