So, Jayden and I were out shopping for some clothes today. I grab some stuff to try on and we head to the dressing room, while Jayden grabs as many things as he can off of hangers proclaiming the whole time, “Look at this mom, it’s really, really cute”. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is on a hanger and on the wall. He grabbed some big ole ginormous silky granny pannies off the wall and told me how cute they were. Not really my idea of cute, but whatever. Anyways, I sit Jayden up on the bench in the dressing room, give him some crackers to munch on, and start trying some shirts on. I can hear that there is some construction going on behind the wall of the dressing room, but I really didn’t think anything of it. That is, until I look over at Jayden who has this total look of panic on his face and is literally being bounced off the wall. He says, “Mom, the wall banging.” I slide him a little ways away from the wall so I can see what the heck is happening, and right when I do, a sledge hammer comes crashing through the wall and hits Jayden right in the back. What are the freaking chances? It’s not like it was a small skinny little bench, it was a long bench along the entire wall, and a sledge hammer comes through the wall right in the place where Jayden had been sitting. Luckily, I had pulled Jayden away, so not much of the hammer got him, it was mostly the wall that got pushed through, but it totally left a red mark on his back. I immediately start yelling at the guys on the other side of the wall, quickly put my shirt back on, grab Jayden and head out to find someone. As I walked out of the dressing room, someone comes walking by and I’m like, “You might want to close these dressing rooms, as a sledge hammer just came through the wall and hit my son in the back.” (uh, not to mention, I was in a freaking dressing room, where I really don’t expect holes in the walls to appear as half my clothes are off) They have me fill out an accident report and they take pictures of Jayden’s back, and keep assuring me that if something is wrong they will pay for everything. Jayden keeps looking at the guy and going, ‘My back hurt, my back hurt’ I’m not really too worried about it, he won’t even have a bruise from the whole thing, but still the potential for something really bad could of happened. If they guy on the other side of the wall had really swung that hammer through the wall with more force and hit Jayden, he could of done some major damage. If I had my head on straight I should of demanded free clothes for the rest of my life, but really I was just a little shocked at what had happened and very grateful that Jayden wasn’t really hurt. So, we left and went into another store to see what we could find there. We went into the dressing room, Jayden refused to sit on the bench saying the whole time, “wall banging”. Great, one more thing he’s gonna have to work out about his mom in therapy.

Jayden has really been wanting to paint lately. He keeps grabbing my pastry brush out of the kitchen and painting the windows and walls with it. My guess is he picked up the idea from when there were workers in the house touching up the walls and stuff. So, today because it was nearing 100 degrees with 60% humidity, and I just couldn’t get myself to put on a bathing suit and walk the half a mile to the pool, we went to Target and a school supply store and picked up some art supplies. I happened to have a little table easel and an art board from back in the day when I liked to pretend I was an artist, and thanks to my ability to not throw anything away, it has come in real handy! So, I put a little tarp down to protect the carpet from Jayden and wild paint, set up the easel on his table and let him do some painting and then some pictures with markers. He loved it!

I’ve decided that despite the heat, I’m preparing for winter, as I am told winter here is just as extreme as summer. (yipee…) Now, I just need to make it to the yarn store and get some blue yarn so I can make Jayden a matching set. Yes, even with a boy and (perhaps) a girl, I am totally making them matching stuff. (If this child pops out a boy, I’ll just have to add all this purple and pink stuff to my already big pile of girl things I have knit up and wait for the first girl to show up. :) )

A bunny from the neighboring wheat field came and visited our yard the other night. I was so hoping it was a relative of the Cadbury bunny and was going to leave me some cream filled eggs when it left. Sadly, it didn’t. I even went out in the yard and checked. (yes, i know our grass looks a little sad, but it’s growing! and it’s way better than super hot clay/dirt that turns to super sucking mud that you could lose small children in when it’s wet)

I know my postings from Wichita have been a bit sparce. But the internet I’ve been pirating from my neighbors is a big shoddy and I can’t be sure that anything I start to write will ever make it to being published before I get booted. Good news, cable company is coming on Saturday, so I shouldn’t have to worry about it much longer. Really and maybe the bad internet is just an excuse. Maybe once I get my own, I still won’t post much. I mean, lets face it, I live in freaking Wichita. Who wants to see more wheat fields? You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. And it’s so hot and humid here, you’re trapped in the house for most of the day. Especially since little Jaydo has the skin of practically an albino, he can’t stand the heat and sun very long anyway, his face starts turning beat red after 15 mins in the heat with no pool to jump in. He was running around naked the other day and low and behold he has a bit of a tan, but with his buns covered up, you’d never know. He is a northwest kid through and through. Let’s just hope I keep putting on enough sunscreen and not damage his skin forever.

Anyways, that has nothing to do with what I was going to post about, the new thing I love. I love love love my new washer and dryer. I hate doing laundry, but I may start to love it thanks to my new GE Profile Harmony washer and dryer. Royal and I found them in the dented and scratched aisle and got a screaming deal on them. I LOVE the dented and scratched aisle. They were brand new, just had a couple dings here and there, which I don’t care about, they are going to sit in the laundry room anyway and who shows off their washer and dryer to people when they come over (well I might now). These suckers though are ginormous, but only use half the water of a normal washer (you’re welcome earth). They have freaking touch screens - which makes me feel real modern and trendy and who doesn’t like that, and they have a cable that runs from the washer to the dryer, so when I go to throw the clothes in the dryer, the washer sends the info from how I washed the clothes to the dryer, so the dryer knows what’s coming and recommends how to dry them and for how long. Genious! My washer an dryer are like best friends. In what used to take me like 7 loads of laundry, I can now do in 3. Sadly, they don’t fold the clothes for you. Jayden is also in love with the washer and dryer, mostly because the top of the washer and door to the dryer are see through, so you get to watch all your clothes magically getting clean. It provides hours of entertainment.

Our basement is finally finished! And as we just got back from signing the papers on the house, we can finally move our stuff out of the garage and downstairs! Yipee!!! Here’s some before and after pictures…

This is what our basement looked like when we got here

And this is what it looks like now! Now all we need is some freaking furniture down there.

Here is our tornado room. They didn’t even call it a “storage” room, like normal. They said, if a tornado’s coming, you need to be inside this room. Sheesh, way to freak out a newbie…

Jayden can’t believe it’s finally finished. I told him the basement is now finished and he can come down here whenever he wanted. He looked at me with a blank stare…”really? you’re serious mom? i can’t believe it, i’ve been waiting for so long….”

So, tonight as Jayden kept getting out of bed and bringing Horsey with him to sit by his door and sing Twinkle Twinkle, I decided I’d just give him another bed. I grabbed a small down comforter that we have and went into his room and made a little nest out of it on the floor. I told Jayden that he could lay on that if he wanted to. I put the comforter right next to the door, but far enough away that I could get the door open later and put him back in bed. Royal and I went out on the porch and listened to him sing Twinkle Twinkle and Old MacDonald for awhile until he kept saying ‘i need mom, i need mom’. So, I went back into his room and he told me he needed a blankie. I was a little surprised and said, ‘you want to sleep there all night?’ He said, ‘yea, blankie’. So, I grabbed a spare blanket, he laid down on the down comforter with Horsey and I put the blanket over him. He said, ‘Night night mom’. I went back out on the porch with Royal and we didn’t hardly hear another peep from him. When Royal and I came back in the house for the night, I went back into his room to put him in his bed. But, I just couldn’t do it. He looked so comfy. So, I just left him there. I haven’t decided exactly how I feel about this. What are the consequences? What is he going to get set on doing now? Is he going to want to sleep on the floor by the door every night? Do I care? I guess I just came to the conclusion, I don’t really care where he’s sleeping, as long as he’s sleeping and he’s in his own room. We left his door open a crack, so we’ll see if he wakes up in the middle of the night and freaks out or, if he just loves his new bed and sleeps in.

Here’s a before picture of our yard from our deck off the back of our house.

And here’s what it looks like today since the landscapers have left.

Here’s a before picture of the front of our house.

And here’s the after from today.

Oh, and here’s a lovely picture of the wheat field that’s right next to the house, at least what it looks like now, before they harvest it and send my allergies into total panic mode. Notice the tree….it’s a little windy here today.

Since getting to Wichita, Jayden’s sleeping habits have regressed a little, shall we say. He gets out of bed more when we are trying to put him down for both nap and at night, he would love it if Royal would sleep on the floor next to his bed (Royal did this the first night b/c Jayden seemed to be having much anxiety about us not being there in the morning, which we weren’t going anywhere, but it had been 2 weeks of nothing but changes happening before that), and now he’s pretty much just workin’ it. So, we affixed a child proof door knob on the inside of his bedroom door, so at least he can’t get out of his room, we’ve taken all toys and books out (except for horsey, which he’s been attached to since we got here), and we pretty much now just leave him in there. At our old house in Olympia, we ended up doing the same thing with him, and he eventually would just get tired, crawl back in bed, pull his covers up, and go to sleep. Well….it hasn’t worked quite the same way here. We leave him in his room for awhile, then when things get quiet, we peek our heads in to make sure he’s asleep and hasn’t forced himself to poop or something (another annoying nighttime habit he started doing). Royal went in one night and found Jayden asleep laid out across his caterpillar chair, I went in the other night to check on him and could hardly open the door and this would be why…

Then the other night, before Royal and I went to go sit on the porch and watch the sun set over our neighboring wheat field, we walked to his room and found this…

see the little fingers???

Jayden has been pretending to chew gum for the past couple weeks. I’ve never even really thought about giving him gum, I just figured he’d swallow it or choke on it (he is related to Jojee afterall…) Now, I don’t know if this is something he picked up from his aunt Kay-kay and his cousins while they were here visiting (he did pick up the saying, ‘What the heck?’ from little Brennie, that he says ALL the time and over and over), but for some reason, Jayden has been real interested in chewing gum. He hasn’t asked me for any, he just walks around like he has something in his mouth and then when you ask him what’s in his mouth he says, ‘gummy gum’. So, yesterday I decided to give him some. I split the piece in half and when I gave it to him I explain you just chew and chew and chew on this, you don’t swallow it. I figured he’d swallow it the first minute I looked away, but I was wrong. He chewed on the sucker for hours, never swallowed it, and kept showing it to me and Royal saying, ‘look! gummy gum’, while opening his mouth. Royal finally made him spit it out when Jayden was taking a bath before bed, but today he’s back at it, chewing, chewing, chewing!