The kids and I went to a fundraiser for the YWCA today at MyGym.  If you brought package of pull-ups or diapers, your kids could play for only $1.  Sadly, I didn’t even have a dollar on me, and not really wanting to charge $1 on the credit card, I raided Jayden’s piggy bank for it.  He caught me too, and then said, “It’s alright Mom, you can borrow it”  Thank goodness, or we would of just been stuck at home today!  And that just wasn’t going to work because Willow had a race to compete in!

Jayden and Noah burying themselves in the ball pit.

Willow tackling some stairs.

I was starting to think that Willow wasn’t having much fun.  I couldn’t get her to smile for me and in all the pictures she was looking so concerned.  And then I stuck her on the trampoline.

Spring Loaded…

BOING!!!

And from another angle…

Good thing I got her on the trampoline because we had to get her legs all warmed up for her race.  She was going to have to be scooching her fastest today because she was going to be competing against a walker, because, well, most kids are walking by the time they are 15 months old.  Not my kid though!  And you’re not gonna believe it, but Willow won!

Her competition got a little distracted and went off course for a bit.  See the little girl in the brown pants and blue shirt?  That’s Joyce, Noah’s little sister, and Willow’s competition.  The race started at the red taped line and Willow sure enough came scooching across the floor to get a ball, while Joyce turned around and started going the other way.

WINNER!  Willow made it to the red mat first.  There’s Joyce behind her, she started coming the right direction, but just a little too late.  Slow and steady wins the race, right???

We’re having an impromptu pajama day at our house.  Jayden came into our bedroom this morning and declared, “Mom, we are NOT working out today.  I just want to play with my toys”  And I really didn’t have the energy to argue with him, not to mention I sliced off the end of another finger yesterday and then proceeded to burn it on a hot pan, so I wasn’t sure how the throbbing in that finger was going to feel while pushing a stroller and doing pushups (not at the same time of course).  And poor Willow seems like she’s been living on Tylenol lately, thanks to teeth and colds and shots.  So, I’m taking the day off and we are hanging out in our pajamas, or at least I am until I figure out time to get a shower in.  And lets face it, Jayden will only stay in his pajamas until he discovers that in fact I did not wash his dino costume yesterday and after a few words to me about it, he will put on his horse costume.  And Willow, well she likes to dress herself.  So, she asked me to take off her pajamas by pulling on them and yelling, ‘ahhhhhhhh. ahhhh. ahhhhhhh’  And then handed me these slippers for me to put on her.  When I brought her a shirt and showed it to her, she shook her head at me.  No, I am not kidding.  Even at 1, Willow seems to have an opinion about what she wants to wear, sadly for her I’m bigger and stronger so if we need to go outside and a diaper and slippers just isn’t going to keep her warm, I can force her to put on more clothes.  I figure this will last until she’s 2 and bigger than me.

Today a major, and I’m talking major, disaster happened around here.  The dinosaur costume got dirty enough that I wouldn’t let Jayden put it back on.  Jayden is in his dinosaur costume all. the. time.  When we get home from StrollerFit, he puts it on.  When aren’t going to StrollerFit in the morning, he puts it on.  When we make him take it off to go to church, the minute he gets home he puts it on.  He’s worn it to the grocery store a few times, to the paint store, to our life group, riding bikes, riding scooters, taking walks, checking the mail, pretty much for anything except sleeping.  Luckily we have dinosaur pajamas for him to wear to bed.  And he’s grown like 2 inches since Halloween so the costume is getting pretty short in the legs, not to mention the crotch area.  I just try to avoid my eyes.

Jayden was making a normal pit stop in the bathroom, where he normally strips down to nothing to go pee, but sadly, today, something went wrong.  He came out almost crying and said, “Mom, I couldn’t get my penis in the toilet and my dino costume now gots pee on it”  Oi vei.  While he was trying to clean it up with a towel, I told him he wasn’t going to be able to put it back on until I got it cleaned.  I’m not sure how I am going to clean it because it has a little dinosaur roaring button in it that I’m pretty sure will get ruined if I stick it in the washer.  And then there’s the problem of shrinkage, and if this costume gets any smaller, there is no way Jayden will be able to pull it on. So, I guess handwashing is the way to go.  Awesome.  I love handwashing.

I told Jayden to go into his room and find some more clothes and I’d help him get them on.

This is what he came out in.

Thank goodness for backups!

Me and the kids went to a friend’s 2nd birthday party today at Pure Entertainment.  The kids both had so much fun.  Jayden went buck wild around the place and kept running by me saying, “Mom, I’m so sweaty!”  He was all red in the face and out of breath, but that wasn’t going to slow him down.  Thank goodness they were serving chicken fingers for lunch, a personal fav of Jayden’s (he asks for them for breakfast), or I don’t think I would of got him to take a break and cool off.

or, as Willie and I always called it, Happy Singles Awareness Day!

For part of the kid’s presents this year, I decided to make them something.  For Jayden I made him a flannel dinosaur pillow case, which sadly has already gotten a lot of use since it was opened this morning.  Jayden has been real sick for the past few days.  He had the flu on Thursday and then Friday the flu seemed to turn into a cold, and now he’s all laid up on the couch.  Poor kid.

For Willow, I made a little valentine dress.  And for the 5 minutes she had it on today so I could try and take some pictures, she managed to get food on it!  How the heck did she find food????  I figure she’s got a secret stash  around somewhere…

For lunch, I made the kids and Royal some heart shaped sandwiches.

And then I finished up my heart sugar cookies by frosting them with some chocolate royal icing, Royal’s favorite.

We went to the Museum of World Treasures this afternoon because we had heard they had some dinosaur bones and we wanted to go check them out with Jayden.  Come to find out, the dinosaur display here is the #1 dinosaur display in the world, because it is the only one with an almost complete (60-70%) skeleton of a T-Rex and a Daspletosaurus.  Ivan, the T-Rex, is the 3rd most complete skeleton of a T-Rex in the world, and the first one to be on display with all it’s vertebrae being actual fossils.  Who knew?  Another reason to come visit me in Wichita!  So I can show you Ivan!  :)

There was lots of other things in the museum as well, like 2 mummies, lots of world war stuff, lots of American History stuff, 42 presidental signatures, but as most museums go, you can hardly take pictures anywhere, and really the only thing we (we being Jayden and his bossy self) were interested in were the dinosaurs, so somehow we kept coming back to that display.

Here is the Daspletosaurus killing another dinosaur

Here is Ivan and the Daspletosaurus - the buddy dinos who make Wichita more than just a dot on the map!  (Can I get a woot woot?!?)

Here is the skull of a Triceratops

Jayden managed to find the video screen playing a BBC show about dinosaurs.

It was a tad graphic, and Jayden was bothered for the rest of the day about watching an Ornitholestes eat a baby Diplodocus right after it had hatched out of it’s egg.  I mean, who wouldn’t be??? At least we stuck around long enough so Jayden could see all the dead Diplodocus’s brothers and sisters hatch out and run for cover in the bushes, so the “bad little meat eater” couldn’t get them.
Are you wondering how I know the name of all these dinosaurs?  I read dinosaur books daily people, over, and over, and over.

Here is a concerned Jayden.

Good thing I steered him clear of the Civil War video that was playing, because as we walked by and I hurried Jayden on, I watched some confederate soldiers shoot some farmer and then hold his family hostage as he burned their house down.  Glad I didn’t have to explain that one!

Here is a Xiphectinus Fish

And finally, a view of Ivan the Terrible T-Rex from the 2nd floor!

While I was getting lunch ready, Jayden told me he had “thought about it” and that it was going to be okay for him to play in the snow and ice outside, “right now”.   So, out he went.  And then I glanced out the window to see what he was doing and I found this:

“I have whiskers, just like dad!”

Time for me to hide the blue highlighter.  Jayden now has blue whiskers that don’t wash off very easily at all, and when I came home from my mini roadtrip with Kaylee this weekend, I found Willow with little blue dots on her head.  :)