Sadly these are not the winning lottery numbers.  If they were, I’d be really excitedly telling you that I am NOT moving to Kansas.  I’m staying here and now going to do whatever the heck I want!  Well, Royal did say he’d still want to go work at NIAR even if we won the lottery, so I’d probably still be moving to Kansas.  But I wouldn’t be selling my house and I’d be buying myself a private jet.  But it’s really hard to win the lottery when you don’t buy tickets.   Hmmmmm…   Anywho…. these lovely numbers are the number of time I’ve had to put Jayden back to bed.  When I decided to convert his crib to a bed, I did a little reading in my sleep book.  Yes, I have a sleep book, a fantastic sleep book!  Jayden was a HORRIBLE napper as a wee little one.  He liked to take 15 minutes naps, just enough time for me to take a shower, or eat lunch, or not really do anything.  So I bought a book on sleeping and how to get your kids to sleep and so far the methods work great, so I read up on what to do when they are sleeping in a bed and get out all the time, because I knew there was no way Jayden was going to just stay in bed because I told him it was time to take a nap.  Even though he promised me all he would do is sleep in his new bed.  You saw the picture….

 I haven’t had any troubles with him at night (fingers crossed) just during nap times.

2 days after I converted his crib, that is when all the fun began.  I put him down for his nap, and it just happened to be on a day when I was deathly ill, so all I wanted to do was take a nap.  A couple minutes later I hear the door banging.  It was Jayden trying to get out.  That day, I put him back in his bed 39 times before he finally went to sleep.   The next day, I put him back in his bed 10 times, the next day 5 times, then 3, and today I only had to put him back in his bed once and he stayed there!  Hallelujia!  Tomorrow, maybe I won’t have to put him back in bed at all!!  We’ll see.  :)

Jayden is LOVING his swimming lessons.  The first time we tried swimming (like back in November) it was extremely traumatic.  Jayden screamed and cried and hated it the whole time.  Luckily for Jayden the pool had to have some maintenance done on it and his swimming lessons got canceled early. 

This time he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it at all, and the pool is colder this time.  Well, that’s according to Royal.  Royal does all the swimming with Jayden, because for one, I don’t want to put on a bathing suit.  Two, the air in the pool building is so hot and humid and I love being warm and if I got in the water, I’d be cold.  Three, swimming lessons gives me a good 30mins of just chillin’ time where I can sit and watch and not have to talk or listen to anything.  Well that only happens on Thursday swim night.  Tuesday swim night, Royal’s dad, Fireball, comes along and he talks nonstop.  He fills me in on all the highschool sports, stories about fishing, stories about when he was a teacher, stories about his friends shinanagins, etc…  Good, interesting stories, they’re just cutting into my quiet time.  :) 

Here’s Jayden getting ready to jump off the side.  It looks like he’s saying, ‘Later suckers!  I’m jumping in!  Yea, I’m talking to you!’.  I personally like how his left hand is like a little gun…

Check out this new blog started by a couple architechure students at Portland State.  They are working on a sustainability project for school and are looking for feedback on what people are doing in their own homes and lives.  Tell your story on how you are being nice to the environment!  And you’ll probably help them get a good grade!

Yesterday, we decided that it was time to convert Jayden’s crib into a daybed.  He’s been real close to bailing out over the side of his crib for awhile and instead of waiting to hear the dreaded ‘thud’, or maybe a cracking sound as his head hits the chair on the way down, Jayden and I spent part of the morning rebuilding his bed.  Jayden pulled the door stopper off the wall and was using that to screw in the screws with.  He was a real help! 

Here is the finished product.  Jayden was real excited about his new bed!

This is what he promised me he would do in it.

We’ll see, I’m expecting more of this…

I ran out of time yesterday, so I wasn’t able to go out and get the bedrail I was planning on using.  So, I figured that we’d see how he would do in the bed without one side.  He made it through his nap without falling out, so I thought I’d press my luck at night.  I’m not afraid to admit it, it was a bad-parent-kind-of-a-risky move.  And low and behold, he managed to fall out of the bed, not once, but twice last night.  Ooops!  So, this morning we went out and got the bedrail and now he should be safe from rolling out onto the floor while sleeping!

Oh!  And I made this hat!

Well, I did it.  I went to the yarn store and I spent ALL of my gift certificates. 

This is what I got.  It’s a hand painted yarn from Mountain Colors called Ruby River.  Hand painted yarns are always real expensive, but thanks to gift certificates, it was free to me!!! I’m going to knit up a sweater with it.  It’s going to be fantastic!!  People will probably say to me, ‘wow, that sweater looks like it’s been dipped in the ruby river’.  We’ll see how it turns out, hopefully not ugly.  If it is ugly, it will just go in the dressor drawer full of lots of other ugly things I’ve done.   I should put a label on the drawer that says, ‘nothing but ugly in here, do not open’.  That way they are hidden away and everyone thinks that I make nothing but beautiful things.

And then of course, I got more yarn for making baby stuff.  Debbie Bliss’ baby cashmerino is one of my favs.  More baby hats on the way.  There are way more patterns in the Itty Bitty hats book that need to come to life!

Jayden and I delivered some valentines around town today.  We made heart cookies and pink meringue kisses earlier in the week, then found some cute valentine boxes, and we took some to our friends Erin and Brady, Heather, Aunt Jojee, Great Aunt Nancy, Great Grandma Leona, and Uncle Willie (or Lilly as Jayden calls him).  And then we left a HUGE plate of heart sugar cookies at the funeral home for all the boys and girls.  I mean lets face it, either I start giving away all the crap delicious holiday food we keep making, or I am going to have to seriously invest in bigger clothing.  At our house I still have heart sugar cookies, meringue kisses, oatmeal scotchies, and heart shaped brownies, and that’s just the stuff I made this week.  This is not counting all the other stuff that is in the cupboard to snack on.  It’s just not a good thing.  Well it’s a good thing when all I want to do is eat sugar, but really it’s just not a good thing.  I guess I could eat it all in one day, make myself really sick, and then I won’t want it again for probably a good 2-3 days.

Today, besides being Singles Awareness Day (as Willie and I always call it), was the 10 month anniversary of Willie’s death.  So, since it wasn’t rainy outside, Jayden and I went to Shelton to go visit Willie at the cemetary.  It was nice to go in the daylight, as most of the trips I make are in the dark after Royal has come home to take care of Jayden (very sneakily of course since the cemetary is closed - refer back to our month 1 visit).  We brought him a cookie that Jayden worked so hard on.  Jayden did all the mixing, and then cut out heart shapes inbetween eating all the dough off the counter.  But Jayden loved his cookie just a little too much, so much so that he decided to show Willie just how delicious it was before he left it.

“Mmmmm….cookie”

Well, I made yet another hat yesterday.  Why another hat?  Well, Royal got me this new book called Itty Bitty Hats for Christmas, so that is where all my inspiration has been coming from.  AND I’ve only been using scrap yarn that I have around, and with scrap yarn, usually I only have enough to make baby hats out of it.   

Yesterday, I pretty much didn’t do anything.  Well, that’s not true, I did do some cooking for my boys, and I did do 7 loads of laundry (guess I’d been putting it off, but when people start running out of socks and underwear you just have to buckle down and spend some time with the washer, dryer, and baskets and baskets of clothes, however Royal did do all the folding…hmmm maybe I really didn’t do anything), but other than that I pretty much lounged around and I made this!  The Cherry Hat! 

Although, I’m not sure the red balls look like cherries, they kinda looked like strawberries to me for awhile, and then later on I thought they looked a little like radishes, so I messed around with them to get them into a better ball shape, but I’m just not sure they pull off they whole cherry thing.  Maybe they are more like Christmas ornaments, the green leaves could be like holly, the red stripes could be a candy cane…so really this could be a Christmas hat.  Hmm…that’s kinda sad because it limits the time the hat can be worn.  So, I’m going to say they are cherries!  I hope you’ll agree.  Don’t you like how Royal’s husky guy thingy is always the model/hat stand?  I do.

My ugly knitting rut might be over!  Cute baby hats are just flying off my needles!

Maybe the ugly knitting phase is over.  Last night, as I was searching through my piles of scrap yarn left over from other projects (I still am refusing to go use my gift certificates until I’m certain I can make good, cute yarn decisions), I ran across a handful Rowan DK Cotton.  So, I thought I’d give it a whirl, and since Easter is soooo early this year, I decided to make a baby bunny hat.   Now all I need is a cute baby boy to stick this on.

Lately, Jayden has been calling Royal’s shirt his blanky, and then he proceeds to crawl up inside of them.  Maybe we should turn the heat up…