My little model

Our friends did a professional family photoshoot (yes I feel slightly guilty that we haven't done one) but they wanted a few pics of Jaydon and their daughter because they are pretty much cousins and then we could give a photo to nana and papa. Anyway, Jaydon was sort of sick, Jeremy was out of town but off we went (an hour late) and while I will hope the photographer got some amazing photos, I will impress you with my one point and shoot shot. Awesome I know, he is eating some bunny crackers but I will say I love the sweater and leaves.

He sure is growing up fast!

My weekend away

My sister Kelsey, in AZ, just had a baby in August and I was really trying to figure out a way to get down and visit. Jeremy awesomely offered to have me just fly down with my sister Jenny while he stayed home and took care of Jaydon. It was the first time I had been away for a weekend and it was great. I had a lot of layover time in the airport and loved every minute of just sitting around and reading and not having any responsibilities.

The terrible thing was that I forgot to take photos! I can't believe it but I didn't even get a pic of the mom and dad with their beautiful little girl, Piper, and I forgot to have anyone take a picture of me holding her. Man I sure hope we can have our next child be as easygoing as Piper is at this point. I know that may change for Kelsey and Tyler but right now Piper is a pretty good sleeper and quite content with life.

Here she is snuggled in her carseat on the way out to lunch one day.
I did manage to get a couple good shots of Auntie Jenny with Pipes. We were so lucky to get to go spend a few days with her and help out Kelsey and Tyler whereever we could. We even got Kelsey and Tyler out of the house for a little while to enjoy some 'them' time.

More posts to come

I haven't been neglecting the blog on purpose, but we have been transitioning to a new computer and I don't have the software I need to get the pictures from my camera onto the computer. While I will get more pics and stories on here soon, for now know we have been keeping busy and are having fun. Jaydon and I have a number of weekly activities we attend (library story time, Time with Twos (at the tech college), toddler time, a moving and music class, and many trips to the park or to watch sporting events when the weather is cooperating).

Jeremy is keeping very busy with work and school, he started the coursework for his PhD program.

We are excited about fall and Halloween rapidly approaching. Jaydon has asked to be a giraffe so I will be making a costume (we will see how that goes) and will make sure to get pics and good stories on here of the events we have planned surrounding Halloween. I love to be able to have my house decorated and enjoy the many different decor changes that will happen between now and Spring.

Jaydon's 'preschool' artwork

Jaydon and I enrolled in a class once a week at the local college that is a parent and me class. We go for a few hours and there is a ton of cool stuff to do. Part of the time is lots of free play and art projects and neat activities, part of the time is singing and stories and part of the time the kids play while the parents take turns in two groups having a parenting discussion about various topics. It has been a lot of fun! Jaydon loves the singing and music time, he requests songs and is great at doing some of the hand motions. I love that they have so many art projects out and ready for the kids to work on because Jaydon doesn't do any art thing for more than a couple minutes and it seems so daunting to do all the work at my house for a couple minutes of playtime. The parenting discussions have been great and really helpful for different ideas and strategies, especially since we are really hitting those tantrums and challenges the come with raising a 2 year old.

In the first couple weeks he built a wood sculpture, painted with an apple slice (though it is just the red painting from the picture), and colored on a paper plate.

Here he used eye droppers full of different dyes in a really large coffe filter like thing. It has been fun and I am so glad we are getting this great opportunity. Minus the crazy parking ticket issue that was happily resolved but still irritates me.

More Jaydon Photography

Jaydon now has a bit better understanding of the camera and so instead of just taking really bad photos of whatever he is near (though he still does that at times), he wants to take pictures of items he likes. So one day he wanted to take a picture of his Teddy and the robot we built. These are pictures he took, I just sort of pushed him back far enough to get the image in the screen.

Teddy

Robot

And another real close up, can you guess what it is?

If you guessed Higgins you are correct, Jaydon wanted to take a picture of his cat.

Cats Hiding

Jaydon is getting taller and he is pretty good at climing on things. Fortunately, the cats still have one place they can go and truly escape...the top of the kitchen cabinets. You will find Lily up there quite often as she doesn't put up with much of Jaydon's 'playing' Higgins however just does his usual growling while staying within reach because he is above running away.

Working on getting dressed

Jaydon is working on dressing himself. He did manage to get his shirt all the way on by himself a few days after these pictures were taken and while the shirt was on backwards we went with it all day, he was quite proud. Here was an attempt that did not turn out so well.

I am not even sure I know how he got this twisted up, one arm is in the correct hole but the head and arm are through the neck hole. Fairly constrictind and unfortunately not all that warm or even acceptable in public, would this count as no shirt or shirt?

ta da!

Now that the shirt is fixed he wanted to accesorize. We got some headbands for his giraffe costume for Halloween, he is pretty excited about it and is really cute because he sort of feels magically transported into a giraffe while wearing the headband since he knows it will be part of his costume.